This book examines how social media have transformed politics in established democracies. Specifically, the authors examine the influence of the unique qualities of social media on the power balance between and within parties. They present a general theory as well as an in-depth case study of the Netherlands and compare it to the US and European democracies. The authors show how and why social media's introduction leads to equalization for some and normalization for others. Additional to national politics, Jacobs and Spierings investigate often-overlooked topics such as local and European politics and the impact on women and ethnic minorities.

Despite great effort and some improvements, criminal justice today still seems like an oxymoron. There are some very good reasons for this feeling: catastrophic failures abound and marginal improvements appear revolutionary. This book addresses the idea of justice in order to guide society toward a more effective justice system. Specifically, the authors argue that justice and love are one and the same thing. They trace impoverished and accomplished thinking in criminological and justice discourses and show that the historic ills that have plagued humanity tend to evaporate when justice and love are understood to be synonyms.

This book examines the ways in which the views of the public inhabit the counter-terrorism policy space, with a focus on the UK case. Drawing insights from Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Security Studies and studies of public opinion, the book develops an argument that the relationship between public opinion is complex, iterative and mutually instantiating. Rather than public opinion and counter-terrorism policy existing in a simple, uni-directional causal relationship, the book argues that whilst counter-terrorism policy actors are informed by public opinion, in important ways they also construct that very opinion. This argument is made through an empirical analysis of UK counter-terrorism policy. Drawing on primary research interviews with key counter-terrorism policy actors, and security professionals, as well as original analysis of parliamentary debates, the book demonstrates that rather than UK counter- terrorism politics being closed and elite-driven, there exists a complex, dialectical relationship between public opinion and both the making and the implementing of counter-terrorism policy. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, security studies, British politics and communication studies.

Belarus has emerged from communism in a unique manner as an authoritarian regime. The author, who has lived in Belarus for several years, highlights several mechanisms of tyranny, beyond the regime's ability to control and repress, which should not be underestimated. The book immerses the reader in the depths of the Belarusian countryside, among the kolkhozes and rural communities at the heart of this authoritarian regime under Alexander Lukashenko, and offers vivid descriptions of the everyday life of Belarusians. It sheds light on the reasons why part of the population supports Lukashenko and takes a fresh look at the functioning of what has been called 'the last dictatorship in Europe'.

This book assesses what corruption means for populists, and the anti-corruption rhetoric of populist actors. The author uses the case study of Czech politicians to show how populist politicians exploit the notion of corruption in their communication. Using many examples of different political statements (by presidents, party leaders, MPs, etc.), the populist discourse of corruption is discussed in the context of other discourses presented in Czech politics. The author analyses both Czech (not only populist) political party election manifestos and the political communication on social media from Czech anti-establishment and populist political parties (ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy, and Pirates). Based on an extensive conceptual framework the book also focuses on whether mainstream parties respond to the success of populists by adopting populist anti-corruption rhetoric themselves and the similarities and differences between the approaches they adopt. Understanding the processes of more than 30 years of Czech post-communist politics, and offering a theoretical and methodological framework applicable to research conducted in other contexts, this book will appeal to scholars of political science, sociology and economics.

Keenie Meenie Services - the most powerful mercenary company you've never heard of - was involved in war crimes around the world from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua for which its shadowy directors have never been held accountable. Like its mysterious name, Keenie Meenie Services escaped definition and to this day has evaded sanctions. Now explosive new evidence - only recently declassified - exposes the extent of these war crimes, and the British government's tacit support for the company's operations. Including testimonies from SAS veterans, spy chiefs and diplomats, we hear from key figures battle-hardened by the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Iranian Embassy siege. Investigative journalist Phil Miller asks, who were these mercenaries: heroes, terrorists, freedom fighters or war criminals? This book presents the first ever comprehensive case against Keenie Meenie Services, providing long overdue evidence on the crimes of the people who make a killing from killing.

This book, first published in 1983, brings together leading world experts on film and radio propaganda in a study which deals with each of the major powers as well as several under occupation. By examining each nations’ propaganda content and comparing its various strands of output designed for different audiences, the historian is provided with an important source of a nation’s official self-image. Total war forced governments to formulate goals consistent with the received national ideology in order to support the war effort. To this extent, much of the domestic propaganda was directed towards stimulating the population to make sacrifices with promise of a new world if the peace were won.

This book focuses on China’s media diplomacy and its interplay with a range of international conflicts. It assesses the representation and framing of China, as well as the perception and reception of China’s media communication in relation to various crises and conflicts. Including detailed analyses of many cases, it highlights the complex, fluid and dynamic relationship between media and conflict, and discusses how this both exemplifies and also affects China’s relations with the outside world. In addition, in contrast to most existing studies of mediatized conflict in the digital age, it provides a very valuable non-Western perspective.

In the 1970s and 1980s West Germany was a pioneer in both the use of the new information technologies for population surveillance and the adoption of privacy protection legislation. During this era of cultural change and political polarization, the expansion, bureaucratization, and computerization of population surveillance disrupted the norms that had governed the exchange and use of personal information in earlier decades and gave rise to a set of distinctly postindustrial social conflicts centered on the use of personal information as a means of social governance in the welfare state. Combining vast archival research with a groundbreaking theoretical analysis, this book gives a definitive account of the politics of personal information in West Germany at the dawn of the information society.

As the leading Muslim political spokesman and intellectual, Izetbegovi'c was imprisoned by the Yugoslavian government in 1983 for a 14-year sentence. During the six years he served in prison, Izetbegovi'c wrote notes on life issues, religion and culture, and politics and political philosophy. These reflections were smuggled out of prison and edited for publication along with a selection of letters from his family.

After describing prison life, Izetbegovi'c has organized his reflections into sections. From his first note When I lose the reasons to live, I shall die, Izetbegovi'c provides a provocative collection of reflections that will interest scholars and researchers of contemporary Balkans, European Islam, and life during the last days of Communist Yugoslavia.

Through a rhetorical analysis, this book explores how the parties in a coalition government create a united public front while preserving their distinct identities. After proposing an original framework based on the 'new rhetoric' of Kenneth Burke, the author charts the path from the inconclusive outcome of the 2010 UK general election and the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to the dissolution of the partnership in the run-up to May 2015. In doing so, she sheds valuable light on the parties' use of rhetoric to manage the competing dynamics of unity and distinctiveness in the areas of higher education, constitutional reform, the European Union and foreign policy. This unique and highly-accessible analysis will be of interest to a wide audience, including scholars and students of rhetoric, British politics and coalition studies.

Philosophy and the African American Modern Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze describes the ideas that defined the movement and struggle to be free by Black people in the United States during their Modern Era. Using a historical perspective, this work engages the question of how the historical experience of oppression and the denial of humanity created space for the development of a certain consciousness. The existence and demonstration of agency within the ideas of the African diaspora and the creation of an intentional community with the aim of defining and attaining freedom are dissected in order to understand the Black community as a whole during the modern era.

This intriguing memoir details in a quiet and restrained manner with what it meant to be a committed black intellectual activist during the apartheid years and beyond. Few autobiographies exploring the 'life of the mind' and the 'history of ideas' have come out of South Africa, and N Chabani Manganyi's reflections on a life engaged with ideas, the psychological and philosophical workings of the mind and the act of writing are a refreshing addition to the genre of life writing. Starting with his rural upbringing in Mavambe, Limpopo, in the 1940s, Manganyi's life story unfolds at a gentle pace, tracing the twists and turns of his journey from humble beginnings to Yale University in the USA. The author details his work as a clinical practitioner and researcher, as a biographer, as an expert witness in defence of opponents of the apartheid regime and, finally, as a leading educationist in Mandela's Cabinet and in the South African academy. Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist is a book about relationships and the fruits of intellectual and creative labour. Manganyi describes how he used his skills as a clinical psychologist to explore lives - both those of the subjects of his biographies and those of the accused for whom he testified in mitigation; his aim always to find a higher purpose and a higher self.

President Bill Clinton has been more than generous, Blaney and Benoit point out, in providing fodder for examination of image restoration in politics. His accusers have also done their part in making the public aware of the president's real and perceived shortcomings. As the authors detail, Bill Clinton has been the subject of a tremendous, if not unprecedented, amount of scrutiny by his personal and political enemies.

Blaney and Benoit systematically review the background of the various scandals that have marred the Clinton presidency. They concentrate on the techniques used to advance the various accusations and the approaches taken by the president and his supporters to deflect the attacks. All scholars and researchers interested in political communication and rhetoric in contemporary American politics and the presidency will find this to be essential reading.

In this political history of twentieth-century Mexico, Gladys McCormick argues that the key to understanding the immense power of the long-ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) is to be found in the countryside. Using newly available sources, including declassified secret police files and oral histories, McCormick looks at large-scale sugar cooperatives in Morelos and Puebla, two major agricultural regions that serve as microcosms of events across the nation. She argues that Mexico's rural peoples, despite shouldering much of the financial burden of modernization policies, formed the PRI regime's most fervent base of support. McCormick demonstrates how the PRI exploited this support, using key parts of the countryside to test and refine instruments of control-including the regulation of protest, manipulation of collective memories of rural communities, and selective application of violence against critics-that it later employed in other areas, both rural and urban. With three peasant leaders, brothers named Ruben, Porfirio, and Antonio Jaramillo, at the heart of her story, McCormick draws a capacious picture of peasant activism, disillusion, and compromise in state formation, revealing the basis for an enduring political culture dominated by the PRI. On a broader level, McCormick demonstrates the connections among modern state building in Latin America, the consolidation of new forms of authoritarian rule, and the deployment of violence on all sides.

If we legalize physician-assisted suicide, will people be forced into it? Did allowing abortion make it compulsory for some women? Did abolishing the military draft create a 'poverty draft' for disadvantaged youth? Ironic Freedom analyses this familiar problem in feminist and liberal theory which asserts that freedom from governmental interference may actually make people vulnerable to other sources of coercion. Drawing on both political theory and popular discourse, Judith A. Baer inquires as to what kinds of evidence would be needed to support, or refute, the existence of these "ironic freedoms."

The New Deal as a Triumph of Social Work concerns the 'hand' the New Deal plays from the perspective of early American History in which government and business cooperation is assumed and economic rights are addressed collectively whereas political rights are considered individually. The New Deal reconfigures this 'ratio' of rights by folding 'social work' into the aims of government. Miller describes the vital part Frances Perkins and her personal history play in this development.

For the past thirty years, Howard Caygill has been a distinctive and radical voice in continental philosophy. For the first time, this volume gathers together Caygill's most significant philosophical essays, the majority of which are not freely available and many of which are previously unpublished. Here, a major philosopher is at work, offering rich, rigorous and politically-engaged readings of canonical and lesser-known figures and texts. From Kant and Frantz Fanon to Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute, Caygill uncovers the untapped resources that the history of philosophy provides for contemporary thought, whilst critically pushing beyond the limits of the tradition. Divided into two parts, the first part of the collection reveals the philosophical backdrop to Caygill's acclaimed study of political resistance, On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance (2015), whilst the second part sees Caygill further develop his account of resistance through wide-ranging analyses of contemporary culture. Exploring numerous subjects, including Nietzsche, metaphysics, radical politics, and digital resistance, to name but a few, Force and Understanding introduces readers to the orienting themes of Caygill's thought and provides the opportunity to engage with one of the most astute, learned, and critical philosophical minds around.

Aspirations, desires, opportunism and exploitation are seldom considered as fundamental elements of donor-driven development as it impacts on the lives of people in poor countries. Yet, alongside structural interventions, emotional or affective engagements are central to processes of social change and the making of selves for those caught up in development's slipstream. Intimate Economies of Development lays bare the ways that culture, sexuality and health are inevitably and inseparably linked to material economies within trajectories of modernization in the Greater Mekong Sub-region. As migration expands and opportunities proliferate throughout Asia, different cultural groups increasingly interact as a result of targeted interventions and globalising economic formations; but they do so with different capabilities and expectations. This book uniquely grounds its arguments in interlocking details of people's everyday lives and aspirations in developing Asia, while also engaging with changing social values and moral frameworks. Part and parcel of a widening landscape of mobility and contingent intimacy is the ever-present threats of infectious disease, most prominently HIV/AIDS, and human trafficking. Thus, impact assessment and targeted interventions aim to address negative consequences that frequently accompany infrastructure development and market expansion. This path-breaking book, drawn on more than 20 years of ethnographic research in the Mekong region, shows how current models of mitigation cannot adequately cope with health risks generated by wide-ranging entrepreneurialism and enduring structural violence as dreams of 'the good life' are relentlessly enmeshed in strategies of livelihood improvement.

This book provides a critical analysis of literature regarding nuclear policy and nuclear waste disposal while presenting major arguments in favor of retracing the regulative profile of concurrent diversification processes in the context of renewable energy policies. The book focuses on public knowledge transfers in governance, which allows for identification of emerging factors in regional and state regulations, along with institutional industrial energy planning. Moreover, Amato scrutinizes current patterns of governmental knowledge transitions to explain how nuclear power policy and nuclear waste disposal facilities are regionally assessed. All of this happens in the context of a progressive, regulative integration of scientific policy directions, local knowledge innovation, nuclear energy policy, and more.

This book analyzes how the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, one of the most well-known actors within the humanitarian sector, has responded to the expanding humanitarian needs. The Movement of today not only cares for the wounded and the sick on the battlefields, but also responds to disasters triggered by natural and man-made hazard, engaging in a wide health and social program, as well as in rehabilitation and recovery efforts. Recent debate has forced the Movement to reflect on the scope of its current response. The analysis of the issues currently shaping the provision of humanitarian assistance is followed by a discussion of how they affect the Movement, its operational work in armed conflict, emergencies linked to natural hazards, as well as in times of peace.

Prominent studies and opinion polls often claim that young people are disengaged from political institutions, distrustful of politicians, and disillusioned about democracy. Young People, Citizenship and Political Participation challenges these political stereotypes by asking whether young people have been contributing to or rectifying our civic deficit. In particular, it examines the role of civics education in addressing the so-called crisis of democracy. Turning away from conventional suggestions often advocated by politicians and educators that offer civics education as the solution, the book advances an alternate approach to civics - one that acknowledges the increasingly diverse ways in which young people are both engaging and disengaging politically.

This is the first book in any language to offer a comprehensive analysis of the political culture of the Russian Revolution. Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonitskii examine the diverse ways that language and other symbols - including flags and emblems, public rituals, songs, and codes of dress - were used to identify competing sides and to create new meanings in the political struggles of 1917. The Revolution was in many ways a battle to control these systems of symbolic meaning, the authors find. The party or faction that could master the complexities of the lexicon of the revolution was well on its way to mastering the revolution itself. The book explores how key words and symbols took on different meanings in various social and political contexts. 'Democracy', 'the people', or 'the working class', for example, could define a wide range of identities and moral worlds in 1917. In addition to such ambiguities, cultural tensions further complicated the revolutionary struggles. Figes and Kolonitskii consider the fundamental clash between the Western political discourse of the socialist parties and the traditional political culture of the Russian masses. They show how the particular conditions and perceptions that coloured Russian politics in 1917 led to the emergence of the cult of the revolutionary leader and the culture of the Terror. Orlando Figes was Professor of History at Birkbeck College, London. He is the author of 'Peasant Russia', 'Civil War' and 'A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924'. Boris Kolonitskii was Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of the Academcy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.