South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 heralded the end of more than forty years of apartheid. The Government of National Unity started the process of bringing together this deeply divided society principally through the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

However, interest in – and responsibility for - the reconciliation project first embodied through the TRC appears to have diminished over more than two decades of democracy. The narrow mandate of the Commission itself has been retrospectively criticised, and at face value it would seem that deep divisions persist: the chasm between rich and poor gapes wider than ever before; the public is polarised over questions of restitution and memorialisation; and incidents of racialised violence and hate speech continue.

This edited volume uses a decade of public opinion survey data to answer these key questions about the extent of progress in South African reconciliation. Leading social scientists analyse longitudinal data derived from the South African Reconciliation Barometer Survey (SARB) – conducted annually by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation since 2003 as well as interrogate and reach critical conclusions on the state of reconciliation, including in the areas of economic transformation, race relations and social contact, political participation, national identity formation and transitional justice. Their findings both confirm and disrupt theory on reconciliation and social change, and point to critical new directions in thinking and policy implementation.

The book aims to improve our understanding of what it means to create high-quality analytical products by focusing on the concept of relevance for policy-makers. Despite variations in context, strategic analysts in different sectors (in both intelligence and non-intelligence government organizations, private consultancies, think tanks, and academia) face similar problems in identifying the needs of their clients and setting up organizations with the mandates, structures, and personnel necessary to address those needs. The objective is therefore to identify these common challenges, compare solutions, and share lessons learned. To do so, broader thematic reflections on strategic analysis are combined with innovative case studies of how organizations have worked to successfully produce relevant analysis. The first section explores challenges to achieving relevance at the level of the analyst, while the remainder of the book analyses cases at the level of organizations.

The January 2015 shooting at the headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the subsequent attacks that took place in the Ile-de-France region were staggeringly violent events. They sparked an enormous discussion among citizens and intellectuals from around Europe and beyond. By analyzing the effects the attacks have had in various spheres of social life, including the political, ideology, collective imaginaries, the media, and education, this collection of essays aims to serve as a contribution as well as a critical response to that discussion. The volume observes that the events being attributed to Charlie Hebdo go beyond sensationalist reports of the mainstream media, transcend the spatial confines of nation states, and lend themselves to an ever-expanding number of mutating discursive formations.

As cultural, social, political, and historical objects, guns are rich with complex and contested significance. What guns mean, why they matter, and what policies should be undertaken to regulate guns remain issues of vigorous scholarly and public debate. Gun Studies offers fresh research and original perspectives on the contentious issue of firearms in public life. Comprising global, interdisciplinary contributions, this insightful volume examines difficult and timely questions through the lens of: Social practice Marketing and commerce Critical theory Political conflict Public policy Criminology Questions explored include the evolution of American gun culture from recreation to self-protection; the changing dynamics of the pro-gun and pro-regulation movements; the deeply personal role of guns as sources of both injury and security; and the relationship between gun-wielding individuals, the state, and social order in the United States and abroad. In addition to introducing new research, Gun Studies presents reflections by senior scholars on what has been learned over the decades and how gun-related research has influenced public policy and everyday conversations. Offering provocative and often intimate perspectives on how guns influence individuals, social structures, and the state in both dramatic and nuanced ways, Gun Studies will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology, political science, legal history, criminology, criminal justice, social policy, armaments industries, and violent crime. It will also appeal to policy makers and all others interested in and concerned about the use of guns.

Central to discussions of multiculturalism and minority rights in modern liberal societies is the idea that the particular demands of minority groups contradict the requirements of equality, anonymity, and universality for citizenship and belonging. The contributors to this volume question the significance of this dichotomy between the universal and the particular, arguing that it reflects how the modern state has instituted the basic rights and obligations of its members and that these institutions are undergoing fundamental transformations under the pressure of globalization. They show that the social bonds uniting groups constitute the means of our freedom, rather than obstacles to achieving the universal.

A "highly readable and compelling" account (Science) of brainwashing’s pervasive role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries “Riveting. . . . Dimsdale . . . shows how the art of dark persuasion a generation ago led almost inevitably to today’s misinformation, cyberbullying and cultlike behavior on the Internet.�—Dina Temple-Raston, Washington Post   This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control.     Tracing these developments through many of the past century’s major conflagrations, Dimsdale narrates how when World War II erupted, governments secretly raced to develop drugs for interrogation. Brainwashing returned to the spotlight during the Cold War in the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. In response, a huge Manhattan Project of the Mind was established to study memory obliteration, indoctrination during sleep, and hallucinogens. Cults used the techniques as well. Nobel laureates, university academics, intelligence operatives, criminals, and clerics all populate this shattering and dark story—one that hasn’t yet ended.

This book is written to examine Russian public opinion, culture and society in the context of the lies, liars and untruths consistent with, but not exclusively part of, the rule of Russia's second (and fourth) post-Soviet President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Then, it is to assess what future there is for Russia in view of Russia's peculiar 'socio-political' culture of parallel truth and untruth. Based on new research, literature and historical examination of 'untruth' in Russia, using political, social, cultural, media and public opinion analysis, this study develops and applies a new and novel approach, or "model(s)," to the study of lies in Russia. Further, this book seeks to provide an understanding of Russia's socio-political environment to outsiders not versed in the ins-and-outs of the influences, causes and reasoning for the Russian government's, and the Russian public's, reactions to publicized events.

We live in an age of crises that are global in scale and potentially apocalyptic in severity, affecting the lives of millions billions of people. Peter Lee examines the struggle for truth at the heart of these crises to show how political leaders attempt to shape individual behavior, attitudes and identity.

At a time when American political institutions are under intense criticism and facing internal and external pressures, Americans must identify opportunities for changing the status quo. Rather than reject the system as fatally flawed, Niall Guy Michelsen argues that lowering the voting age to 16 will decrease the voting gap between the college and non-college citizens. Increasing voter turnout will make the American electorate more representative of the country and add needed voices to political debates. Dr. Michelsen analyzes the nature of voting habits and concludes that too many citizens start their adult lives as non-voters and become habitual non-voters as a result. Using voter turnout data and demographics, Dr. Michelsen shows that lowering the voting age to 16 would help both college-attending and non-college-attending young adults develop voting habits and raise voter turnout.

This unique reference presents 59 biographies of people who were key to the sea services being reasonably prepared to fight the Japanese Empire when the Second World War broke out, and whose advanced work proved crucial. These intelligence pioneers invented techniques, procedures, and equipment from scratch, not only allowing the United States to hold its own in the Pacific despite the loss of most of its Fleet at Pearl Harbor, but also laying the foundation of today's intelligence methods and agencies. One-hundred years ago, in what was clearly an unsophisticated pre-information era, naval intelligence (and foreign intelligence in general) existed in rudimentary forms almost incomprehensible to us today. Founded in 1882, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)-the modern world's "oldest continuously operating intelligence agency"-functioned for at least its first forty years with low manning, small budgets, low priority, and no prestige. The navy's early steps into communications intelligence (COMINT), which included activities such as radio interception, radio traffic analysis, and cryptology, came with the 1916 establishment of the Code and Signals Section within the navy's Division of Communications and with the 1924 creation of the "Research Desk" as part of the Section. Like ONI, this COMINT organization suffered from low budgets, manning, priority, and prestige. The dictionary focuses on these pioneers, many of whom went on, even after World War II, to important positions in the Navy, the State Department, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. It reveals the work and innovations of well and lesser-known individuals who created the foundations of today's intelligence apparatus and analysis.

In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain specific provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the 'worst of the worst.' The same court had rejected the death penalty just four years before in the Furman decision because it found that the penalty had been applied in a capricious and arbitrary manner. The 1976 decision ushered in the 'modern' period of the US death penalty, setting the country on a course to execute over 1,400 inmates in the ensuing years, with over 8,000 individuals currently sentenced to die. Now, forty years after the decision, the eminent political scientist Frank Baumgartner along with a team of younger scholars (Marty Davidson, Kaneesha Johnson, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Colin Wilson) have collaborated to assess the empirical record and provide a definitive account of how the death penalty has been implemented. Each chapter addresses a precise empirical question and provides evidence, not opinion, about whether how the modern death penalty has functioned. They decided to write the book after Justice Breyer issued a dissent in a 2015 death penalty case in which he asked for a full briefing on the constitutionality of the death penalty. In particular, they assess the extent to which the modern death penalty has met the aspirations of Gregg or continues to suffer from the flaws that caused its rejection in Furman. To answer this question, they provide the most comprehensive statistical account yet of the workings of the capital punishment system. Authoritative and pithy, the book is intended for both students in a wide variety of fields, researchers studying the topic, and-not least-the Supreme Court itself.

Scandal and sex sell, even in the serious business of presidential news coverage. The media deference shown to Kennedy and the scrutiny applied to Clinton illustrate the changed relation between the two, and bookend this pertinent, updated 1998 Choice Outstanding Academic Book award-winner. Liebovich tackles misconceptions about the media's role in politics; how chief executives cooperate with and manipulate the press as it suits their needs; and how ratings pressures have bent coverage of elections and the Executive Branch for the worse. Well-written, thorough, and the only book to explore the changing relation between the press and the presidency in the later twentieth century, students and researchers alike will profit from reading this work written by one of America's leading scholars in the field. For students interested in communications, history, or contemporary American politics, it is an unparalleled administration-by-administration introduction to the complex and intertwined workings of two of the most powerful and influential forces at work in American politics today. It furthermore provides researchers with a solid historical explanation of how both presidential politics and political news coverage have come to be popularly reviled and discounted.

One of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015 An epic, multigenerational story of courage and sacrifice set in a tropical dictatorship, The Rebel of Rangoon captures a gripping moment of possibility in Burma (Myanmar)Once the shining promise of Southeast Asia, Burma in May 2009 ranks among the world's most repressive and impoverished nations. Its ruling military junta seems to be at the height of its powers. But despite decades of constant brutality,and with their leader, the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, languishing under house arrest,a shadowy fellowship of oddballs and misfits, young dreamers and wizened elders, bonded by the urge to say no to the system, refuses to relent. In the byways of Rangoon and through the pathways of Internet cafes, Nway, a maverick daredevil Nigel, his ally and sometime rival and Grandpa, the movement's senior strategist who has just emerged from nineteen years in prison, prepare to fight a battle fifty years in the making.When Burma was still sealed to foreign journalists, Delphine Schrank spent four years underground reporting among dissidents as they struggled to free their country. From prison cells and safe houses, The Rebel of Rangoon follows the inner life of Nway and his comrades to describe that journey, revealing in the process how a movement of dissidents came into being, how it almost died, and how it pushed its government to crack apart and begin an irreversible process of political reform. The result is a profoundly human exploration of daring and defiance and the power and meaning of freedom.

Political advice has never seemed more prominent - or more problematic. This volume of essays speaks to a contemporary concern, set in a wider historical context. Political Advice: Past, Present and Future brings several very different voices to bear on the problem of advice and influence, the distinction in so far as it is valid between political and policy advice, the two-way parasitism of adviser and advised, the nature and idioms of political advice literature, the ever-pressing issue of access and exclusion, and the curious history of advisers' success and failure. With contributions from classics and literature as well as from history and politics, this volume treats political advice in an interdisciplinary fashion. Moreover, a unique practitioners' perspective on the problem of political advice is provided by the contributions of politicians, political advisers and former senior civil servants.

A media system does not exist in a vacuum. It develops and grows within social, political and economic systems. They interact with and influence one another, as well as stimulate each other's development. The main subject of this work is the dynamically evolving Polish media system, which is under the influence of institutions and external stakeholders. Thanks to this, it is easier to understand that the "crossroads" is not only a problem of the Polish media system, but a global one. For this reason, a comparative perspective is employed. Three chapters help to provide an answer to research questions dedicated to political parallelism and journalistic professionalization. The analysis would be limited and unrepresentative if the book enclosed it with one country's border, omitting the broad global, European and Centro-European context.

In Portugal between 2005 and 2010, "modernization through technology" was the major political motto used to develop and improve the country's peripheral and backward condition. This study reflects on one of the resulting, specific aspects of this trend-the implementation of public video surveillance. The in-depth ethnography provides evidence of how the political construction of security and surveillance as a strategic program actually conceals intricate institutional relationships between political decision-makers and common citizens. Essentially, the detailed account of the major actors, as well as their roles and motivations, serves to explain phenomena such as the confusion between objective data and subjective perceptions or the lack of communication between parties, which as this study argues, underlies the idiosyncrasies and fragilities of Portugal's still relatively young democratic system.

The book provides an empirically based analysis of changes on how various political and denominational actors seek to influence the Church and state relationship, as well as how we understand the idea of the secular state. A set of case studies shows how and why changes in the coverage of the secular state and Church-state relations have followed the dynamics of media logic. By establishing a grounded theory based on media content, legal regulations and political party programs in the years 1989-2015 as well as a current survey, the author throws new light on the theory of mediatization. The book demonstrates that the disseminated idea of the secular state is largely a result of the adaptation of both political and religious representatives to a dynamically changing media logic. "The book is the first study of this kind showing the Polish perspective. It is an interesting and important source of information for those who want to trace the media picture of relations between the Polish state and the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, representing the largest religious community in Poland." Professor Dorota Piontek, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan

This book facilitates civil discussion of controversial political issues. Unique to this book is a section that explains how to discuss politics without feeling angry or hostile toward people who hold different beliefs. In addition, the book provides concise and accessible debates of contemporary policy issues including gun control, immigration, the Electoral College, voting, and affirmative action. For each topic, readers are shown that opposing arguments are based on values and concerns that are widely shared by most people regardless of their political leanings. Perfect for students, professors, and citizens alike, this book promotes civility without shying away from controversy.

While imagological works in the field of American Studies have traditionally focused on the construction of America by outsiders, this study takes a new approach by examining U.S. self-imaging efforts in the context of U.S. international broadcasting to Iran. The author traces the history of the Voice of America's Persian Service and illustrates its conflict-prone organizational framework and modus operandi by considering legal documents, government reports, and personal interviews. As the inductive programming analysis and the case study of Simaye Amrica show, the Persian Service pursues a twofold image cultivation strategy by aiming to shape Iranian perceptions of the U.S. government in its news and political shows and perceptions of the American people in its arts and cultural programs.

It has been almost five years now since a new collective consciousness of Arab masses transformed the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa. In just a short period of time, the people of the Arab world protested against their rulers, putting an end to long-time authoritarian leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, while bringing others to the eve of collapse. Although the uprisings were initially successful, the people's strong will to see honour, dignity, rights, and good governance realized within their respective countries was fiercely combated by the ruling strata of these states and their strategies to ensure authoritarian survival. The changing political landscape and the dynamic processes of the Arab Spring have caught the attention of academics as well. There is a blossoming literature being written on the Arab Spring focusing on social protests, authoritarian resilience and learning, opposition strategies, the rise of non-state actors, state failure, foreign policy, and new the geopolitical landscape. Therefore, with the desire to contribute to this literature, this edited volume aims to address the changing political atmosphere and the challenges of the emerging geopolitical order, particularly focusing on Turkish foreign policy and its response to the Arab Spring. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.

Even as economic and military walls have come down in the post-Cold War era, states have rapidly built new barriers to prevent a perceived invasion of 'undesirables.' Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than along the geographic fault lines dividing rich from poor countries: especially the southern border of the United States, and the southern and eastern borders of the European Union. This volume examines the practice, politics, and consequences of building these new walls in North America and Europe. At the same time, it challenges dominant accounts of globalization, in which state borders will be irrelevant to the human experience. In short, the volume brings borders back in to the study of international politics.

Following the enormous political, legal, and media interest that has surrounded high profile cases of whistleblowing, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the fundamental ethical questions surrounding whistleblowing have often been obscured. In this fascinating book Eric Boot examines the ethical issues at stake in whistleblowing. Can the disclosure of classified government documents ever be justified? If so, how? Why does it require justification in the first place? Can there ever be a duty to blow the whistle? When is breaking the law justified? On a more practical level, this book also considers the various whistleblower protection documents and finds them often lacking in consistency and clarity, before providing an argument for a plausible "public interest" defense for whistleblowers.

Aeschines' successful prosecution against Timarchos of 346/5 BC is our best evidence for Athenian laws and moral attitudes concerning homosexuality, and for Athenians' moral expectations of their politicians. Though much discussed in recent years, the speech has never received a proper commentary. Nick Fisher provides a new translation, a fully detailed commentary, and an introduction which explores in depth all the political and sexual issues. It is fully accessible to those without knowledge of Greek.

Heinz Gaertner argues in this Occasional Paper, one area of arms control in which the NNA and smaller European states can make a significant contribution is verification. This study explores the possibilities for the smaller nations of Europe to make positive contributions to the verification of reductions in conventional forces and arms, a chemica