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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
This book provides a qualitative analysis of post-9/11 counter-terrorism strategy undertaken by the United Kingdom and United States of America. Since 9/11, both the UK and the U.S have significantly revamped their counter-terrorism approaches. The approaches apply, to varying degrees, three key policy instruments - intelligence, law enforcement and military force. However, the success or failure of these counter-terrorism strategies has never been satisfactorily validated. Analysts and policymakers alike have assumed success due to the inability of terrorists to conduct 7/7 and 9/11, respectively, scale attacks upon each state. This assumption has existed despite the fact that it fundamentally underestimates the impact of transnational terrorism. This volume provides an in-depth qualitative assessment of the three primary policy instruments implemented to counter the transnational threat of terrorism during the period 2001-2011; an approach somewhat neglected by the current body of literature which focuses on a purely quantitative methodology. Drawing upon previously unpublished data collected from interviews with policymakers, specialists and academics, the book fills this lacuna by ascertaining and analysing both the UK's and USA's counter-terrorism strategies and developing a holistic approach to understanding these strategies. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism studies, security studies and IR in general.
This is a timely new edition of Sharyn L Roach Anleu's invaluable introduction to the sociology of law and its role as a social institution and social process. Discussing current theory and key empirical research from a diverse range of perspectives Law and Social Change gives relevant examples, from various cultures and societies, to provide a sociological view which goes beyond more jurisprudential approaches to law and society. The book: * provides coverage of major classic and contemporary social theories of law * is informed by empirical research drawn from several countries/societies * includes up to date and relevant examples This thoroughly updated edition engages with modern scholarship, and recent research, on globalization whilst also looking at related issues such as the internationalization of law and human rights. It explores recent reforms at local and national levels, including issues of migration and refugees, the regulation of 'anti-social' behaviour, and specialist or problem solving courts and also provides a clear, accessible introduction to research methods used in the socio-legal field. Direct and wide-ranging this text will be essential reading for students and researchers on social science and law courses and in particular, those taking sociology, legal theory, criminology and criminal justice studies.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that improvements in the status of women and girls - however worthy and important in their own right - also drive the prosperity, stability, and security of families, communities, and nations. Yet despite many indicators of progress, women and girls everywhere - including countries of the developed world - continue to confront barriers to their full and equal participation in social, economic, and political life. Capturing voices and experiences from around the world, this work documents the modern history of the global women's movement - its many accomplishments and setbacks. Drawing together prominent pioneers and contemporary policymakers, activists, and scholars, the volume interrogates where and why progress has met resistance and been slowed, and examine the still unfinished agenda for change in national and international policy arenas. This history and roadmap are especially critical for younger generations who need a better understanding of this rich feminist legacy and the intense opposition that women's movements have generated. This book creates a clear and forceful narrative about women's agency and the central relevance of women's rights movements to global and national policy-making.. It is essential reading for activists and policymakers, students and scholars alike.
This is the first book on U.S. policy in Angola during the 1980s. Elaine Windrich shows how the Reagan administration and U.S. media inflated the importance of Jonas Savimbi and helped inflame the civil war in Angola. Pinpointing media strengths and weaknesses in shaping and in reporting on a major crisis in Africa, this ground-breaking work analyzes Savimbi as a cold war guerrilla, the role of different media segments in the dirty war in Angola, and the right-wing influence of the Reagan and Bush administrations into the 1990s. This moving and well-researched account, providing insights into how the U.S. media covers African and Third World issues, is a good text for foreign correspondents and for courses dealing with U.S. foreign policy, journalism and communications, and with Africa. The image of the Angolan rebel leader as a freedom fighter is shown to be a product largely of the U.S. media and the collaboration of right-wing lobby groups closely linked to the Reagan and Bush administrations. The resurrection of Savimbi, who represented a lost cause after his defeat in the Angolan civil war in 1976, but who was kept alive by South African support, was due to his adoption by the Reagan administration as an ally in the crusade against Third World governments supported by the Soviet Union. The study shows how the mainstream media tended to follow the administration's agenda and right-wing views in portraying Savimbi as an ally. Windrich also explains how the Bush administration and the media have continued to support Savimbi and his rebel movement.
This book explores the connection between strong democracy and neoliberal development schemes based on the concept of 'social entrepreneurship' in Thailand and Southern India. With an original approach, this book addresses the intersection between emerging approaches to development; namely microfinance, microenterprise, and social entrepreneurship, and the ability of societies to generate their own public goods without state assistance. Utilizing observation, fieldwork, and practice in Northern Thailand and Southern India, as well as secondary sources from the southern Asia region more generally, the author examines the challenges of democratic governance and generation of public goods where civil society and democracy, as development strategies, have become less meaningful to citizens across the developing world than micro-development. The author argues that these approaches to development have impacts on development and civil society building, but do not necessarily amount to political empowerment, raising important questions for civic participation in the state when the state is no longer viewed as the locus of public goods and democratic governance. Presenting a new theoretical approach to understanding the changing paradigm of development and political participation, Democratic Governance and Social Entrepreneurship will be of interest to students and scholars of development politics, political economy and governance.
This multidisciplinary edited volume explores how the spread of the 'War on Terror' has entwined matters of state sovereignty and states of war into mutually affecting relations. Pre-emptive attacks on terrorist groups in 'rogue' states, 'outsourcing' of state militancy and the mutable state of armed conflict required to wage a 'hybrid war' have increasingly been issues for the War on Terror. Moreover, such measures have seen the spread of this war to countries such as Israel, Russia, Ethiopia, and Uganda, all of whom have justified their own attacks in other nation-states as a war of 'self-defence' against terrorism. States of War since 9/11 offers a timely, innovative analysis of how the War on Terror has taken on different modes of militancy and militarisation in spreading to different nation-states and regions. Featuring a multidisciplinary line-up of eminent contributors, the book ranges in reference from the early stages of the war up to France's 2013 intervention in Mali. Part One examines the various modes of war and militarisation that have been employed in particular nation-states, including Afghanistan, Russia and Chechnya, and Israel and Palestine. Part Two examines how the war's innovations have more generally involved 'just war theory', biopolitics and sovereignty, networked battlespace, new military urbanism, citizenship, homeland security and surveillance. Overall, this book offers a fresh insight into how states have attempted to secure their own bounds by extending the boundaries of war itself. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, foreign policy and IR in general.
Despite South Africa's successful transition to democracy and lauded constitution, political freedom for the majority of South Africans remains elusive. The poor and unemployed majority are poorly represented and lack power and thus freedom. Under these conditions, the freedom of the privileged minority is also seriously impaired due to the costs of maintaining their relative security and well-being. Lawrence Hamilton is an internationally-known political theorist, who has spent ten years teaching in South African universities. In this unique book he brings ideas - political and philosophical - to the fore to understand a contemporary political conundrum. He outlines the persistent, unresolved problems characterizing contemporary South Africa: poverty and quality of life statistics that are appalling for a middle-income country, levels of inequality that make South Africa one of the most unequal places in the world, skewed economic and political representation that reproduces elites rather than generating opportunities for all and an electoral system that implements the idea of proportional representation so literally that it undermines meaningful representation. Are South Africans Free? aims not only to explain the current state of South Africa but to provide positive new directions and suggestions for institutional change. Hamilton argues that freedom as power in South Africa does not depend on good will, charity or duty, and it goes beyond the complete realization of the political and civil liberties currently safeguarded in its constitution. Such change will depend on courageous leadership, active citizenship, new forms of representation and a macroeconomic policy that offers radical redistribution of actual and potential wealth.
This volume aims to operationalize General John R. Galvin's call for a new paradigm to fight the most prevalent form of conflict in the world today-insurgency. It contributes to the understanding needed to formulate and implement efforts in the contemporary international security arena.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that improvements in the status of women and girls - however worthy and important in their own right - also drive the prosperity, stability, and security of families, communities, and nations. Yet despite many indicators of progress, women and girls everywhere - including countries of the developed world - continue to confront barriers to their full and equal participation in social, economic, and political life. Capturing voices and experiences from around the world, this work documents the modern history of the global women's movement - its many accomplishments and setbacks. Drawing together prominent pioneers and contemporary policymakers, activists, and scholars, the volume interrogates where and why progress has met resistance and been slowed, and examine the still unfinished agenda for change in national and international policy arenas. This history and roadmap are especially critical for younger generations who need a better understanding of this rich feminist legacy and the intense opposition that women's movements have generated. This book creates a clear and forceful narrative about women's agency and the central relevance of women's rights movements to global and national policy-making.. It is essential reading for activists and policymakers, students and scholars alike.
Marvel Comics has an established tradition of addressing relevant real-life issues facing the American public. With the publication of ""Civil War"" (2006-2007), a seven-issue crossover storyline spanning the Marvel universe, they focused on contemporary anxieties such as terrorism and threats to privacy and other civil liberties. This collection of new essays explores the ""Civil War"" series and its many tie-in titles from the perspectives of history, political science, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, law, philosophy and education. The contributors provide a close reading of the series' main theme - the appropriate balance between freedom and security - and discuss how that balance affects citizenship, race, gender and identity construction in 21st-century America.
Tibet has been occupied for over fifty years, yet no progress has been made in solving the Tibetan problem. The first serious analysis of the Tibetan independence movement, this book is also the first to view the struggle from a comparative perspective, making an overt comparison with the Indian independence movement. It rectifies the problem that the Tibetan independence movement is not taken seriously from a political perspective. The book is particularly concerned with the relationship between Buddhism and Tibetan politics and resistance, comparing this with the relationship between Hinduism and Gandhian political thought. It also expands on the limited literature concerning violent resistance in Tibet, examining guerilla warfare and the hunger strike undertaken by the Tibetan Youth Congress in 1998, rejecting the 'Shangri-la-ist' approach to Tibetan resistance.
The attitude we take to power is almost invariably one of distrust, never more so than when it claims to be sovereign. And yet, we have always been drawn to sovereignty. Out of fear or fascination, we accepted that it was a condition of our liberty; that to assert ourselves as free, we would have to work not against but through sovereign power. This book retraces the history of the implication of sovereignty and liberty, an implication that has shaped the way we live together, as individuals and as political beings. Shedding new light on the work of key political and constitutional thinkers, including Marsilius of Padua, Hobbes, Hegel, Kelsen, and Schmitt, it identifies the conceptual operations that created sovereignty and shows how subjection to an absolute and undivided power came to be a source of meaning. At the heart of the analysis is the idea that sovereignty made reference to and relied upon a form of faith which aligned man's political existence on law. Offering new and often controversial insights into the grounds of our attachment to sovereign power and into the crisis that is currently affecting its institutions, this book will appeal to students and scholars of law, politics, history of philosophy, and the social sciences.
Based upon a three-year multi-disciplinary international research project, "Political and Civic Participation" examines the interplay of factors affecting civic and political engagement and participation across different generations, nations and ethnic groups, and the shifting variety of forms that participation can take. The book draws upon an extensive body of data to answer the following key questions:
Together, the chapters in this volume provide a comprehensive overview of current understandings of the factors and processes which influence citizens patterns of political and civic engagement. The book draws on theoretical insights provided by a range of disciplines including Politics, Sociology, Social Policy, Psychology and Education. With contributions from leading international researchers, the book offers a uniquely authoritative and coherent overview of the field. The chapters also present a set of evidence-based recommendations for policy, practice and intervention that can be used by political and civil society actors to enhance levels of political and civic engagement, particularly among youth, women, ethnic minorities and migrants. " Political and Civic Participation" provides an invaluable resource for all those who are concerned with citizens levels of engagement including: researchers and academics in the social sciences; politicians and political institutions; media professionals; ministries of education, educational professionals and schools; youth workers and education NGOs; and leaders of ethnic minority and migrant organizations and communities."
"The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789" is
the French Revolution's best known utterance. By 1789, to be sure,
England looked proudly back to the Magna Carta, the Petition of
Right, and a bill of rights, and even the young American
Declaration of Independence and the individual states' various
declarations and bills of rights preceded the French Declaration.
But the French deputies of the National Assembly tried hard, in the
words of one of their number, not to receive lessons from others
but rather "to give them" to the rest of the world, to proclaim not
the rights of Frenchmen, but those "for all times and nations."
Drawing on an extensive array of sources – written, oral and visual – this richly illustrated volume provides a rounded social, intellectual, educational, cultural and political history of one of Africa’s foremost universities during the first phase of apartheid. It puts a spotlight on its leaders, lecturers and learners, but its wide focus takes in many other dimensions of this heterogeneous institution’s history too – teaching and research, social, cultural and sporting life and its chequered relationship with the apartheid state, ranging from formal opposition and protest and students’ growing defiance culminating in the sit-in of 1968, to ambivalence and willing collaboration. All of these it weaves together into a many-sided whole to produce an elegant, accessible and nuanced study of the operation of UCT as apartheid began to be imposed on South Africa. Howard Phillips gives us a pioneering and definitive history of the period. And one which will occupy pride of place on the bookshelves of the academics and the thousands of alumni who helped shape this history and the many ordinary Capetonians touched by Varsity.
Twenty years after NAFTA, the consensus seems to be that the regional project in North America is dead. The trade agreement was never followed up by new institutions that might cement a more ambitious regional community. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), launched with some fanfare in 2005, was quietly discontinued in 2009. And new cooperative ventures like the US-Canada Beyond the Border talks and the US-Mexico Merida Initiative suggest that the three governments have reverted to the familiar, pre-NAFTA pattern of informal, incremental bilateralism. One could argue, however, that NAFTA itself has been buried, and yet the region somehow lives on, albeit in a form very different from regional integration in other parts of the world. A diverse group of contributors, from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with experience in academia, government service, think tanks and the private sector bring to bear a sophisticated and much needed examination of regional governance in North America, its historical origins, its connection to the regional distribution of power and the respective governments' domestic institutions, and the variance of its forms and function across different issue areas. The editors begin by surveying the literature on North American regional politics, matching up developments there with parallel debates and controversies in the broader literatures on comparative regional integration and international policy coordination more generally. Six contributors later explore the mechanisms of policy coordination in specific issue-areas, each with an emphasis on a particular set of actors, and with its own way of characterizing the relevant political and diplomatic dynamics. Chapters on the political context for regional policy coordination follow leading to concluding remarks on the future of North America. At a time when scholarly interest in North America seems to be waning, even while important and interesting political and economic developments are taking place, this volume will reinvigorate the study of North America as a region, to better understand its past, present and future.
Israel-Palestine in the Print News Media: Contending Discourses is concerned with conceptions of language, knowledge, and thought about political conflict in the Middle East in two national news media communities: the United States and the United Kingdom. Arguing for the existence of national perspectives which are constructed, distributed, and reinforced in the print news media, this study provides a detailed linguistic analysis of print news media coverage of four recent events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in order to examine ideological patterns present in print news media coverage. The two news communities are compared for lexical choices in news stories about the conflict, attribution of agency in the discussion of conflict events, the inclusion or exclusion of historical context in explanations of the conflict, and reliance upon essentialist elements during and within print representations of Palestine-Israel. The book also devotes space to first-hand testimony from journalists with extensive experience covering the conflict from within both news media institutions. Unifying various avenues of academic enquiry reflecting upon the acquisition of information and the development of knowledge, this book will be of interest to those seeking a new approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
This book studies the role of the EU in peace and security as a regional actor with global aspirations, in the context of challenged and changing multilateralism. Multilateralism, governance and security are three concepts that have attracted a great deal of attention in the past decade and attempts to redefine them have produced lively conceptual debates. More recently, different strands of the literature have found common ground in the investigation of the EU's role in what has been labelled 'multilateral security governance'. Despite being frequently used, the term is yet to be fully clarified, and empirically explored. To contribute further our understanding of it, this book presents a conceptual and empirical exploration of 'multilateral security governance' and the EU's role in it. Expert contributors in the field analyze both traditional and non-traditional security areas, to investigate if and how multilateral security governance functions, and how the EU contributes (or fails to contribute) to the functioning of multilateral governance. The EU and Multilateral Security Governance will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of EU politics, security studies and governance.
National intelligence cultures are shaped by their country's history and environment. Featuring 32 countries (such as Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Norway, Latvia, Montenegro), the work provides insight into a number of rarely discussed national intelligence agencies to allow for comparative study, offering hard to find information into one volume. In their chapters, the contributors, who are all experts from the countries discussed, address the intelligence community rather than focus on a single agency. They examine the environment in which an organization operates, its actors, and cultural and ideological climate, to cover both the external and internal factors that influence a nation's intelligence community. The result is an exhaustive, unique survey of European intelligence communities rarely discussed.
This Handbook offers a comprehensive examination of the Responsibility to Protect norm in world politics, which aims to end mass atrocities against civilians. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is amongst the most significant norms in global politics. As the authoritative guide to R2P, this edited volume gathers together the most respected and insightful voices to address key issues related to this emerging norm. The contributing authors do this over the course of three parts: Part I: The Concept of R2P Part II: Developing and Operationalising R2P Part III: The view from Over Here This book will be of much interest to students of R2P, humanitarian intervention, genocide, human rights, international law, peace studies, international organisations, security studies and IR.
Hobbes on Legal Authority and Political Obligation develops a new interpretation of Hobbes's theory of political obligation. According to the account developed in the book, the directives issued by the sovereign as introducing authoritative requirements, so that subjects are morally obligated to obey them.
Critical Security Methods offers a new approach to research methods in critical security studies. It argues that methods are not simply tools to bridge the gap between security theory and security practice. Rather, to practice methods critically means engaging in a more free and experimental interplay between theory, methods and practice. This recognises that the security practices we research are often methods in their own right, as forms of surveillance, data mining, visualisation, and so on, and that our own research methods are themselves practices that intervene and interfere in those sites of security and insecurity. Against the familiar methdological language of rigour, detachment and procedural consistency, "Critical Security Methods "reclaims the idea of method as experiment. The chapters offer a series of methodological experimentations that assemble concepts, theory and empirical cases into new frameworks for critical security research. They show how critical engagement and methodological innovation can be practiced as interventions into diverse instances of insecurity and securitisation, including airports, drug trafficking, peasant struggles, biometrics and police kettling. The book will be a valuable resource for students and researchers in critical security studies, politics and international relations.
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.
Current territorial disputes between the Northeast Asian countries have stimulated a resurgence of bellicose nationalism, and threaten to upset recent efforts to achieve regional cooperation and economic integration in East Asia. Alongside this, debates over pre-1945 Japanese wartime atrocities, aggravated by still unresolved territorial disputes between Japan and its neighbours have triggered diplomatic conflicts in Japanese-South Korean relations, virulent anti-Japanese protests in China, and a dramatic increase of right-wing nationalism in Japan. Many have perceived these phenomena as inevitable corollaries, inasmuch as they regard the Northeast Asian countries as historically homogeneous and nationalistic states, and have begun to question the feasibility of the post-Cold War efforts to replace nationalism with a moderate version of civic solidarity. This book contributes to the debates surrounding patriotism and nationalism in Northeast Asia, and investigates the feasibility of non-ethnocentric patriotism in countries across the region. In doing so, it highlights the differences between Asian and Western concepts of republican patriotism via theoretical discussions of the evolving discourses on nationalism, patriotism, democracy and civic solidarity. The chapters combine theoretical discussion with historical case studies such as modern state building in late Qing Dynasty; nineteenth century Japanese political thought; and the twentieth century Korean independence movement. In turn, the contributors explore the possibilities for republican patriotism in contemporary Northeast Asia, with a focus on the Chinese term minzu, and the possibilities it holds for an alternative configuration of national identity in the age of globalization; Maruyama Masao's theories of nationalism in Japan; the National Security Law in South Korea, and the impact it has had on the country's political culture; and the Taiwanese movement for self-governance. Patriotism in East Asia will appeal to students and scholars of Asian politics, political theory, Asian history and peace studies, as well as to those interested in issues of nationalism.
Crisis Management Challenges in Kaliningrad captures the evolving nature of the types of crises faced by a society as it transforms and evolves. Once the western most bastion of the Soviet Union and now the western most part of the Russian Federation, the Kaliningrad Oblast remains cut off from direct land communication with mainland Russia and provides a condensed, real-life laboratory in which to observe changing political, technological and economic priorities in Post-Soviet society. Expert contributors from the region chart the tensions, problems and opportunities created by the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and examine the change in status and situation of the Kaliningrad Oblast. By looking at a selection of economic, environmental and social crises a historical link between the Soviet and Post-Soviet eras is formed and rigorously examined. |
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