This book provides a critical overview of the occurrence of war in the international system by examining the concept from multiple perspectives and theoretical backgrounds. War is an essential concept in international affairs, if for no other reason than because prevention of war requires an in-depth understanding of it as a concept. This book seeks to examine the continued occurrence of war in international relations, despite the emergence of arguments concerning its obsolescence. It provides a new cognitive framework through which to understand war as a phenomenon, which can be applied to real-world scenarios and policy issues, making use of case studies predominantly from China and Japan. Theoretically, the book is primarily based on a structural realist framework but adopts a significant constructivist component through the emphasis on identity and reputation in the international system. The volume offers a nuanced yet holistic approach to the theory of war and seeks to engage critically with the major theoretical approaches, pointing out the major criticisms of these ideas and how the theories correlate. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, foreign policy, and International Relations.

A thorough and timely investigation of both well-established and emerging crime and punishment issues, this book provides readers with compelling examples of how different countries around the world confront these problems. This book offers a detailed look at 10 "hot topics" in crime and punishment that are shared by many countries. Some of these topics are well-established within the field of criminology, such as patterns of criminal behavior, juvenile delinquency, drug trafficking, policing, and punishment; others are emerging topics that have not been well studied across a variety of countries, such as violence against women, hate crimes, and gun control. Within each topic, the book explores how eight countries experience the issue, highlighting similarities across different places as well as unique treatments of the problem. The chapter on punishment addresses the widespread use of incarceration as criminal punishment but also considers different philosophies with respect to the purpose of incarceration and whether or not this strategy is effective in the face of large-scale criminal events, such as mass atrocities. The country narratives provide historical context for understanding the particular crime or punishment issue, current trends, and relevant statistical data for describing the extent of the issue and changes over time, in addition to contemporary examples of the issue. Allows students to make cross-cultural comparisons with respect to how other countries handle crime and punishment Explains how to critically and accurately compare crime and justice issues across countries Illustrates how political, economic, and cultural factors shape both the types of crime problems that countries experience and their responses to those problems Addresses emerging crime issues like gun control and hate crimes that are not given enough attention as international problems Provides a range of examples within each topic area to illustrate the breadth of the issue and the variations across countries Highlights important points with examples from current events

Migration is perhaps the most critical social and legal issue shaping global society today and the quality of life worldwide. Applying a range of disciplinary perspectives - anthropology, criminology, family social science, law, political science, social welfare, sociology, and women's studies - the essays in The Other People examine the lives of migrants and the communities through which migrants travel. Skillfully written in the passionate voices of experts in migration studies, The Other People will provoke scholars and students - as well as professionals in education, law, health care, politics, religion, and human rights - to think more broadly, not only about migration but also about social justice.

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.

In early 2010 Russia once again entered a turbulent period. From the system of property distribution, to structure of the political elites and relations between the Center and the regions - various spheres of Russian life are in a state of flux. Two major factors are driving this change: oil prices which are unlikely to grow the way they did in the 2000s and the rapidly deteriorating efficiency of governance. Relations between federal and regional elites, as well as public activism, are derived from these two factors and play an important role of their own. Will change take an evolutionary path or is Russia facing another revolution? The book offers a view of the Russian future until 2025 based on thematic scenarios created by an international team of Russia scholars whose expertise range from politics and economics to demographics and foreign policy.

In this history of right-wing politics in Brazil during the Cold War, Benjamin Cowan puts the spotlight on the Cold Warriors themselves. Drawing on little-tapped archival records, he shows that by midcentury, conservatives-individuals and organizations, civilian as well as military-were firmly situated in a transnational network of right-wing cultural activists. They subsequently joined the powerful hardline constituency supporting Brazil's brutal military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. There, they lent their weight to a dictatorship that, Cowan argues, operationalized a moral panic that conflated communist subversion with manifestations of modernity, coalescing around the crucial nodes of gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to youth, women, and the mass media. The confluence of an empowered right and a security establishment suffused with rightist moralism created strongholds of anticommunism that spanned government agencies, spurred repression, and generated attempts to control and even change quotidian behavior. Tracking how limits to Cold War authoritarianism finally emerged, Cowan concludes that the record of autocracy and repression in Brazil is part of a larger story of reaction against perceived threats to traditional views of family, gender, moral standards, and sexuality-a story that continues in today's culture wars.

This book analyzes the interaction of religion, society, and governance in China - suggesting it is much more subtle and complex than common convention suggests. The edited work addresses civic engagement, religion, Christianity, and the rule of law in contemporary Chinese society.

America's efforts to regain balance needs this book - key to a mysterious and neglected door that hides a litter of microscopic but deadly dynamites. The unusual eloquence of this unfamiliar voice leads this essential walk to enlightenment on a multidimensional war that America must wage

The book examines the industrial growth of sanctioned nations in terms of their ability to foster trade partnerships with countries that choose to evade or not comply with sanctions. When those "black knight" nations find strong local market competitive advantages in the absence of firms from sender nations, incentives develop to support local political status quos. For those reasons, the political resilience of rogue and repressive regimes is analyzed in terms of their economic incentives to remain repressive. The resilience is based on the fact that the local politicians are also the local businessmen. Through the growth of international production networks, their business opportunities augment and the rents associated with that growth also increase. As business opportunities grow in the absence of competition, so does the amount of rent extraction and protection. Rent protecting leads to strengthening economic and political leadership, because the wealth is used for creating further rents by providing economic benefits to the regime supporters. Economic Sanctions vs. Soft Power shows how the system of self-enforcing economic rents builds political rents and lowers opportunities for the development of viable political oppositions.

Why do empires build walls and fences? Are they for defensive purposes only, to keep the 'barbarians' at the gate; or do they also function as complex offensive military structures to subjugate and control the colonized? Are the colonized subjects also capable of erecting barriers to shield themselves from colonial onslaughts? In Empires and Walls Mohammad A. Chaichian meticulously examines the rise and fall of the walls that are no longer around; as well as impending fate of 'neo-liberal' barriers that imperial and colonial powers have erected in the new Millennium. Based on four years of extensive historical and field-based research Chaichian provides compelling evidence that regardless of their rationale and functions, walls always signal the fading power of an empire.

Tyranny and Music is an edited collection of essays that explore how musical artists respond to cruel or oppressive governments and ruling regimes. Its primary strength and unique quality lies in its diversity, presenting a postmodern collage of scholarship that reaches across the divides of classical, popular and traditional musics just as it connects musical resistance of the past with the present and the near (Western) with the far (non-Western). Contemporary topics include Chosan's analysis of blood diamonds in the Sierra Leonean Civil War, and collective memory in the Persian Gulf War songs. Historical topics include the image of John Wilkes Booth in the popular imagination, censorship in the Soviet Union, Victor Ullman's song setting at Terezin, artistic restrictions in Maoist China, anti-inquisition propaganda in the outbreak of the Dutch revolt, Revolutionary Era Anthems in the United States and much more. These essays, while remarkable in their scholarly erudition, also provide intimate glimpses of the resiliency of the individual artist. From Cherine Amr's Heavy Metal resistance to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hanns Eisler's battle with the United States House on Un-American Activities Committee, stories of human struggle and perseverance arise from each of these narratives.

Populism has become a favorite catchword for mass media and politicians faced with the challenge of protest parties or movements. It has often been equated with radical right leaders or parties. This unique volume underlines that populism is an ambiguous but constitutive component of democratic systems torn between their ideology (government of the people, by the people, for the people) and their actual functioning.

In Muslim countries, apostasy and blasphemy laws are defended on the grounds that they are based on Islamic Shari'a and intended to protect religion. But blasphemy and apostasy laws can be used both to suppress thought and debate and to harass religious minorities, both inside and outside Islam. This book - comprising contributions from Muslim scholars, experts and activists - critically and constructively engages with the theological, historical and legal reasoning behind the most restrictive state laws around the world to open up new ways of thinking. The book focuses on the struggle within Muslim societies in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia where blasphemy and apostasy laws serve powerful groups to silence dissent and stifle critical thought. The first part of the book covers the development of the law in shifting historical circumstances and surveys the interpretations of Qur'anic verses that seem to affirm freedom of religion. The second part examines the present politics and practices of prosecuting alleged blasphemers and/or apostates in Muslim countries. The third part looks to the future and where reforms of the law could be possible. Debates on Islam and freedom of expression are often cast in polarizing terms of rights versus religion, East versus West. This volume avoids such approaches by bringing together a diverse group of Muslim scholars and activists with the knowledge, commitment and courage to contest repressive interpretations of religion and provide a resource for reclaiming the human rights to freedom of expression and belief.

21st Century Urban Race Politics begins by offering a twenty-first-century understanding of minority representation in historically majority-Caucasian cities and draws on case studies in cities throughout the United States. The aim of this volume is to take stock of what we know about the advantages and disadvantages of the "racialized" and "deracialized" approaches to governance and to describe a third approach, the "universalized interest approach." The authors argue that minority elected officials, when given the power and resources to do so, often do more than represent constituent interests without acknowledging the representation of members of their racial/ethnic group in urban communities. Contributors describe how mayors of various backgrounds have sought to represent minority interests in electoral and governing contexts. In each case, the mayors are found to represent minority interests. In most cases, the representation of minority interests is accomplished without deemphasizing the significance of race and as the mayor maintains support from whites within their electoral and governing coalitions. With case studies from across the country, in medium-sized and large cities, and mayors of various backgrounds, the volume provides a vivid account of how different minority mayors have handled minority representation in historically majority Caucasian cities and what lessons academics and politicians can learn from them.

The Randstad metropolitan region encompassing Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht in the western Netherlands is regarded worldwide as a model of a 'successful' polycentric metropolis. It is widely cited as an example of how a region of interconnected small cities can effectively compete globally by providing complementary functions which together match the power of large monocentric cities. The methods of strategic spatial planning, regional design and strategic projects that are said to underpin this polycentric metropolis are used as models for practitioners and students around the world. But is this high reputation deserved? Does the Randstad really function as a polycentric metropolis? The operation of the Randstad as a polycentric networked region is controversial both in terms of the actual strength of relations between its component parts, and the value of promoting polycentricity in policy. What are the costs and benefits of a Randstad metropolis? Does polycentricity improve the performance of the region in economic, social and environmental terms? How has the polycentric metropolis evolved and what part is played by its delta location? Has spatial planning made a difference in the form and operation of the region today? How will this spatial configuration fare in the face of the climate crisis and need to create healthy cities and regions? Is there benefit in pursuing the idea of a polycentric metropolis in government policy and action, and how? These questions are of critical interest within the Netherlands but experience in the Randstad offers valuable insights to many other complex urban regions around the world. This book will provide a critical analysis of the Randstad and lessons for strategic planning in other metropolitan regions.

No one could have predicted that a peaceful sit-in to counter government plans to raze Istanbul's Gezi park would escalate into a country-wide protest movement, arguably the most serious political crisis Turkey, a country often hailed as a 'model' in the region, has faced in the last ten years.
The protests left 8 dead, more than 8,000 wounded, and the country deeply polarized. Much ink has been spilled since June 2013 to explain the Gezi protests in the media, most of it based on hasty analogies and banal platitudes, referring to a 'Turkish spring'. Yet no academic analyses of the protests have been published so far and it is in this context that this collection of essays, the first academic book on the topic in English, is both timely and important.
This collection offers a preliminary analysis of the Gezi protests and addresses the following key questions: 'How can we account for the protests?' 'Who were the protesters?' 'Why did the Justice and Development Party government choose to suppress the protests instead of meeting the demands of the protesters?' and 'Were Gezi protests in any way connected to protest movements in other parts of the world?'

Foucault and Family Relations: Governing from a Distance in Australia analyzes how notions of property ownership were instrumental in maintaining family stability and continuity in rural Australia, outlining how inheritance and divorce laws functioned to govern the internal relationships of families to assist the state to 'rule from a distance'. Using a selection of Foucault's ideas on the "family", sexuality, race, space and economics this books shows how "property" operated as a disciplinary device, which was underpinned by "technical ideas", such as surveying and cartography. This book uses legal judgments as a form of ethnography to show how property, as a socio-technical device, allowed a degree of local freedom for owners. This aspect of property allowed the state to stimulate ideas of local freedom to assist in "ruling from a distance," demonstrating how the rural family as a domestic unit became a key field of intervention for the state as the family represented a bridge to larger relationships of power.

Squirt Saves the Day tells a tale of friendship, heroism, and self discovery as Squirt, a lovable stinkbug, is confronted by bullies at his new school. In overcoming rejection he learns that the best way to deal with problems is head on. By doing what must be done, he gains the respect and admiration of the whole school. The book is full of colorful illustrations that will win children's hearts and teach them that, if a little stinkbug can conquer his fears, so can they.

In April of 2005 Shell sought an injunction in a Dublin court against residents of Erris in northwestern Republic of Ireland who were obstructing the laying of pipelines across their lands. On June 29, 2005 the court convicted and jailed five people for failing to comply with the order of the High Court restraining them from interfering with Shell's project. When Communities Confront Corporations examines the issues and events that led to the incarceration of the Rossport Five and how it resonates with events in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It argues that conflicts between communities and corporations, though pervasive, do not appear to receive adequate scholarly attention. The book compares the altercations between Shell and the Erris communities in Ireland and the responses to these conflicts, with similar conflicts generated in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria by the presence of the oil giant. It challenges the so-called conspiracy theory, which is often associated with the oil company's operations in the Niger Delta and argues that the key difference between the two sets of conflicts and responses to them is the context. ________________________ Austin Onuoha did his graduate studies at the Conflict Transformation Program (now Center for Justice and Peacebuilding) at the Eastern Mennonite University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is currently a PhD student in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, USA. He had worked as the executive secretary and head of conflict resolution at the Human Rights Commission (now Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Centre) Abakaliki, Nigeria. He currently monitors Chevron's community engagement initiatives in Nigeria for the Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility (CSCR) based in Nigeria. He was elected Ashoka Fellow in 2001 for his innovative work in harnessing conflict energy for development. He also conducts training in conflict resolution, corporate social responsibility, human rights, non-violence and peace-building and development. He is an adjunct fellow at the West African Peacebuilding Institute in Ghana and is the author of the book: From Conflict to Collaboration Building Peace in Nigeria's Oil-Producing Communities (London, Adonis & Abbey Publishers, 2005)

This book examines the ways in which Russia and Belarus use disinformation, "weaponised" historical narratives, and the politics of memory for domestic and foreign policy purposes, utilising these factors to justify aggressive foreign policy in defensive terms and, domestically, for legitimating local ruling elites, consolidating the states' propaganda machines, and mobilising both societies around national power centres. Besides analysing Russian and Belarusian disinformation, geopolitical narratives, and policies, the book also assesses the effectiveness of these measures and discusses how the West can counteract the geopolitical narratives disseminated by Russia and Belarus that attempt to undermine Western democracies and weaken the resilience of its societies.

Power and Protest presents chapters that analyse the dynamics of power in social movements. Examining how marginalized groups use their identities, resources, cultural traditions, violence and non-violence to assert power and exert pressure, this volume shines a light on the interaction of these groups with governments, international organizations, businesses and universities. Including chapters which draw from multidisciplinary theories and utilise quantitative and qualitative research to examine how power shapes the context and experiences of protest, the authors analyse movements in Asia, South Africa, Arab nations, the United States and Argentina to offer insights into the power utilised by average citizens, and particularly members of marginalized groups. With contributors serving up findings based on uprisings, strikes and activist activity across the globe, the first section provides theoretical insights into the power of protest campaigns against governments or corporations. Moving on to an examination of nongovernmental institutions and cultural traditions, the authors in the second section explore the role of business and education in bringing down illegitimate governments, investigates the clashes of transnational norms, government policy and the heritage industry, and examines student protests against university policies. This volume encourages readers to reconsider their assumptions about which groups can successfully wield power in social movements.

Christians in the Middle East have come under increasing pressure in recent years with the rise of radical Islam. In Egypt, the large Coptic Christian community has traditionally played an important political and historical role. This book examines Egyptian Christians' responses to sectarian pressures in both national and local contexts.

In this holistic examination of political scandal in the United States, David Dewberry argues convincingly that such scandals follow a consistent narrative centered largely on media coverage and politician performance rather than the actual corruption or ethics violation committed. In making this argument, he also provides an analytical framework for understanding the patterns underlying scandals regardless of their unique political contexts. Dewberry dissects four major examples-Teapot Dome, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Clinton/Lewinsky-and explores the roles of various constituencies involved in creating, reacting to, and mediating the scandal. What is the true role of journalism within the context of scandal? What persuasive techniques do politicians employ to develop and perpetuate scandals? What motives and values bring scandals to a close? In addition to the core cases, Dewberry incorporates briefer examples from contemporary and ongoing controversies including Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal, money and sex in Congress, how cover-ups have gone digital, and Chris Christie's Bridgegate. The result is a fascinating and thoughtful look at the relationships among political discourse, free speech, and democracy.

Elections always have consequences, but the 2017 Bundestag election in Germany proved particularly consequential. With political upheaval across the globe-notably in Britain and the USA-it was vital to European and global order that Germany remain stable. And it did through the re-election of Angela Merkel as chancellor, now in her fourth term. Just under the surface, however, instability is mounting-exemplified by the entry of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the largest opposition party, the decline of the Social Democrats, the ever-restive Bavarians, and the growing factionalism within the Christian Democratic Union as the Merkel era comes to an end. Paying special attention to the rise of the AfD, this volume delves into the campaign, leading political figures, the structure of the electorate, the state of the parties, the media environment, coalition negotiations, and policy impacts.