This book makes an important contribution to contemporary debates over the place of civic participation in democratic theory and practice. Drawing on a detailed case study of the Blackbird Leys area of Oxford, the book employs a novel empirical approach to ask whether widespread participation in civic life can enhance the prospects for democracy, given the low levels of participation which tend to exist in deprived areas. Throughout, it presents an account of participation rooted in the history and development of the case, in order to avoid the kinds of abstraction which are characteristic of many existing studies in the area. The book will appeal to scholars working on democratic theory in applied settings, and will be of interest to anyone concerned with inequalities in civic participation.

Most people believe that criminal justice in Colombia is rife with impunity and corruption. Elvira María Restrepo delves beneath such beliefs to reveal a system driven at a fundamental level by fear and distrust from outside the system itself. With the present difficulties in the country tantamount to a state of irregular war, the judiciary is in crisis. It has to contribute to the construction of peace and the reconstruction of trust, or perish.

America and the Rogue States traces and examines the policies and interaction of the United States with the main adversarial nations in the post-Cold War era. The book concentrates on the three major rogue states-North Korea, Iran, and pre-invasion Iraq. What are termed as lesser rogue nations-Libya, Syria, Cuba, and the Sudan-receive summarized treatment in one chapter together with a brief discussion about why Afghanistan and Venezuela are not rogues. The author makes clear the distinctions among these confrontational regimes, noting that North Korea, Iran, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq aroused much more anxiety in Washington than lesser rogues and other troublesome states. After an opening chapter placing the rogue-nation phenomenon in historical and current context, the manuscript devotes one chapter each to the three major adversarial rogues. A final chapter deals with the less threatening rogue regimes. Each chapter follows a chronological format with description and analysis. The work is intended for a general reader interested in the topic; it also will have appeal as a supplemental text for university classes in international relations covering the period after the Cold War ended.

This volume highlights the complex intra-alliance politics of what was seen as the likeliest flash point of conflict in the Cold War and demonstrates how strongly determinant were concerns about relationships with allies in the choices made by all the major governments. It recounts the evolution of policy during the 1958 and 1961 Berlin crises from the perspective of each government central to the crisis, one on the margins, and the military headquarters responsible for crafting an agreed Western military campaign.

In 1991, the Puerto Rican government abolished bilingualism, claiming that "Spanish only" was necessary to protect the culture from North American influences. A few years later bilingualism was restored and English was promoted in public schools.This revised edition of The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico is updated with an emphasis on the dual arenas where the language controversy played out-Puerto Rico and the United States Congress-and includes new data on the connections between language and conflicting notions of American identity. This book shows that officials in both San Juan and Washington, along with English-first groups, used these language laws as weapons in the battle over U.S.-Puerto Rican relations and the volatile debate over statehood.

One of the issues central to both classic and contemporary theories of cognitive development is children's goal-directed behavior, which is typically investigated in terms of strategies. This book brings together in one volume the latest research and theory regarding the development of children's strategies for a variety of cognitive tasks. Opening with a history of strategy development research and concluding with a chapter that integrates the diversity of ideas expressed by the contributors, Children's Strategies offers intervening chapters that examine strategy development for attention, analogical reasoning, mathematics, memory, reading, and problem solving in infancy. Although there is much common ground shared by the various contributors to this volume, there is no consensus concerning what exactly a strategy is. This mixture of consensus and disagreement reflects both the explosion of research in this area since the late 1960's and the complexity of the issues involved. It also reflects the fact that this is a topic that is very much alive in cognitive circles, one that will continue to stimulate research for years to come. The papers in this volume describe current research and theory concerning the development of children's strategies for handling a variety of cognitive tasks. After providing a historical view of the concept of strategies in cognitive development, the book highlights many of the issues of concern to contemporary developmental psychologists interested in strategies. The issues discussed include problem solving in infancy, memory, selective attention, mathematics, analogical reasoning, and reading.

In Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty new research by leading international scholars is brought to bear on a single crucial issue: the role of early modern natural law doctrines in reconstructing the relations between moral right and civil authority in the face of profound religious and political conflict. In addition to providing fresh insights into the hard-fought struggle to legitimate a desacralised civil order, the book also shows the degree to which the legitimacy of the modern secular state remains dependent on this decisive set of developments.

Through an examination of the critical junctures in postcolonial Sri Lankan politics, this book refines and advances our understanding of the dynamics underpinning violent and nonviolent "ethnic" conflict. It enables us to understand how the ebb and flow of relations within ethnic groups affects relations between groups, for good or for ill.

This book examines Foucault's political framework for connecting political authority with practices of freedom. It starts from the older Foucault's claim that where there is obedience there cannot be government by truth. Then it shows how this claim runs like a red thread through his entire life project.

From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames

Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.

Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.

The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit.

In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.

Hailed in the Times Literary Supplement as ‘probably the finest piece of non-fiction to come out of South Africa since the end of apartheid’, The Dream Deferred is back in print and updated with a brilliant new epilogue.

The prosperous Mbeki clan lost everything to apartheid. Yet the family saw its favourite son, Thabo, rise to become president of South Africa in 1999. A decade later, Mbeki was ousted by his own party and his legacy is bitterly contested – particularly over his handling of the AIDS epidemic and the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Through the story of the Mbeki family, award-wining journalist Mark Gevisser tells the gripping tale of the last tumultuous century of South Africa life, following the family’s path to make sense of the liberation struggle and the future that South Africa has inherited. At the centre of the story is Mbeki, a visionary yet tragic figure who led South Africa to freedom but was not able to overcome the difficulties of his own dislocated life.

It is 15 years since Mbeki was unceremoniously dumped by the ANC, giving rise to the wasted years under Jacob Zuma. With the benefit of hindsight, and as Mbeki reaches the age of 80, Gevisser examines the legacy of the man who succeeded Mandela.

"Which practices count as resistance? Why, where, and how does resistance emerge? When is resistance effective, and when is it truly progressive? In addressing these questions, this book brings together novel theoretical and empirical perspectives from a diverse range of disciplinary and geographical locales"--Provided by publisher.

Civilian control of the military is intricately linked to democratic rule. The authors analyze civil-military relations in new democracies of East, Southeast and South Asian nations, beginning by proposing a new conceptual and theoretical framework to identify the status of civilian control in newly established democracies and to explain changes over time. Based on this framework, they then trace the interrelated development of civil-military relations and democratic institutions in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. By comparing the insights gained from the case studies, they then identify patterns and differences in the relationship between civilian control over the military and democratic quality and consolidation. While establishing civilian control of the military is a necessary condition for a functioning democracy, it requires prudent strategic action on the part of the civilian decision-makers to remove the military from positions of power and make it follow their orders.

This book explores educational and cultural experiences of "part-time unveilers" during their degree programs in public institutions in Turkey. The term "part-time unveiler" is coined to refer to undergraduate female students who cover their hair in their private lives, but who remove the headscarf while at a Turkish university as a result of the higher education headscarf ban policy. The book is based on a qualitative study that involved one-on-one interviews with thirty participants. The book highlights how part-time unveilers understand and negotiate the policy, the challenges and opportunities associated with unveiling and the strategies they use in response to these, and the impact of the headscarf ban on part-time unveilers' sense of identity.

Placing struggles for communication rights within the broader context of human rights struggles in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this broad-based collection offers a rich range of illustrations of national, regional and global struggles to define communication rights as essential to human needs and happiness.

The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is the only Asia-Pacific-wide forum for consultations and dialogue on political and security issues. Although many articles and books have been published on the ARF, this is one of the few books that treat the forum comprehensively and from the standpoint of the region itself. It traces the ARF's origins, the efforts to move it from confidence building to "preventive diplomacy," and the forces that hold them back, analysing the strategic environment that both constrains the ARF and makes it essential. The book discusses the question of participation, describes the numerous cooperative activities that the participants undertake, and deals with the issue of institutionalization. Finally, it assesses the ARF as a forum and a process on its own terms. The book is written by the former ASEAN Secretary-General and former senior official who was involved in the ARF's early years.

Through the application of public opinion, interview, and print-media analyses, this book provides evidence that the state of transnational identification among citizens in the EU as a result of post-Maastricht integration measures, such as the completion of the Common Market, the introduction of the Euro, the initiation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy etc. in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany had limited effects in the member states to the extent that national political cultures and mass media orientations are compatible with the goals of EU integration. Policy recommendations are derived by reviewing the complex relationship between EU policies and structural factors such as immigration, ageing and the mediatization of politics in which European integration occurs.

This book is about how we can build back truth online. It provides solutions so that we can repair our existing social media platforms and build better ones that prioritize value over profit, strengthen community ties and promote access to trustworthy information. This book explains the problem of misinformation within the larger context of "information disorder." It provides a road map with six paths forward to understand how platforms are designed to exploit us, learn to embrace agency in our interactions with digital spaces, build tools to reduce harmful practices, require platform companies to prioritize the public good, repair journalism and strengthen curation to promote trusted content and create new healthier digital public squares. This book presents a comprehensive and connected strategy on how we can reduce misinformation and build back truth. New, experimental models that are ethically designed to build community and promote trustworthy content are having some early successes. We know that human social networks -- online and off-- magnify whatever they are seeded with. They are not neutral. We also know that to repair our systems we need to repair their design. We are being joined in the fight by some of the best and brightest minds of our current generation as they flee big tech companies in search of vocations that value integrity and public values. The problem of misinformation is not insurmountable. We can fix this.

In communist East Germany young people constituted the social group for whom the ruling authorities had the highest hopes - and in whom they were most frequently and bitterly disappointed. In Youth Politics in East Germany the author has undertaken a pioneering study of the East German communist youth organization, the Free German Youth (FDJ), and the young people that it tried, often in vain, to enthuse and control. Utilizing a wide range of primary sources, Dr McDougall focuses upon East German youth during five 'crisis points' in the GDR's early history, beginning with the June 1953 uprising and concluding with the impact of the Czechoslovakian Prague Spring in 1968. In the process, he provides a political and social history of East German youth within and beyond the framework of 'organized' youth life. Important events in East German youth politics are analysed in detail, alongside the subversive role of Western youth culture in the GDR, particularly during the 1960s when 'hot' music by groups such as The Beatles penetrated the Iron Curtain. This book has important wider implications in the thriving field of GDR studies. Dr McDougall contends that there is little to be gained from viewing the history of East German youth politics - and that of the GDR more generally - through the narrow prism of totalitarian theory, with its heavy emphasis on the role of repression and Soviet military power in maintaining dictatorial rule. The relationship between rulers and ruled in the GDR was in fact based upon the dual precepts of coercion and consent, according to which the communist authorities sought both to appease and control the East German population. This model helps to explain the nature of youth dissent - both its proliferation and ultimate limitations - in the GDR. Despite an expanding secret police apparatus, youth dissent in the GDR was far more extensive than many Western scholars assumed in the Cold War era. Though much of this dissent was limited in character and intent, especially after the June 1953 uprising, it undermined the GDR's long-term stability - a fact reflected in the prominent role of former FDJ members in its collapse in 1989. By integrating social and political aspects at each stage of his study, Dr McDougall provides a valuable study of the East German regime.

Torture. Secret prisons. Wiretaps on Americans. Even with a new president in the White House, daily headlines contain disturbing revelations about how the United States conducts itself in the "war on terror." While other books have analyzed specific, shocking issues about the war on terror, there is a surprising disconnect in them: they don't connect the actions of the George W. Bush administration to those of previous administrations. "State Power and Democracy" is the first to do that. It shows that the Bush police state didn't commence when Bush was inaugurated. It proves, instead, that the seeds of an American police state can be traced all the way back to the founding of the republic.