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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
This book examines different levels of narcotics control cooperation between the United States, Mexico and Colombia. Victor J. Hinojosa finds that Mexico is consistently held to a very different standard than Colombia and that the US often satisfies domestic political pressures to be tough on drugs by punishing Colombia while allowing Mexico much more freedom to pursue different strategies. He also explores the role of domestic terrorism and presidential reputation in Colombia for the US-Colombia pair and the role of competing issues in the US-Mexican bilateral agenda for that country pair, finding that congressional pressure and electoral tests exert the most impact on US behavior but that Mexican and Colombian behavior is best explained in other ways. Together, these findings suggest both the promise of integrating the study of international relations and comparative politics and important limitations of the theoretical framework.
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. Its aim - to end mass atrocities - could scarcely be more ambitious. Developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001 it was rapidly, and unanimously, adopted by the United Nations in 2005 in the Outcome Document of the World Summit -- a High Level Plenary meeting of the 60th session of the UN General Assembly. That achievement dampened neither the opposition of its detractors, nor the enthusiasm and expectation of its supporters. With each atrocity, actual or potential, come appeals to the most significant policy development addressing intervention. This handbook will be the authoritative guide to the Responsibility to Protect. It gathers the most respected and insightful voices to address key issues related to this emerging norm. The chapters offer a comprehensive and coherent account of the development of the Responsibility to Protect, the issues that will likely determine the extent to which its achievements match its promise, and opinions about - and possible applications of - this norm in various regions around the world. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, humanitarian intervention, genocide, human rights, international law, international organisations, security studies and IR.
Indigenous peoples throughout the world tenaciously defend their lands, cultures, and their lives with resilience and determination. They have done so generation after generation. These are peoples who make up bedrock nations throughout the world in whose territories the United Nations says 80 percent of the world's life sustaining biodiversity remains. Once thought of as remnants of a human past that would soon disappear in the fog of history, indigenous peoples-as we now refer to them-have in the last generation emerged as new political actors in global, regional and local debates. As countries struggle with economic collapse, terrorism and global warming indigenous peoples demand a place at the table to decide policy about energy, boundaries, traditional knowledge, climate change, intellectual property, land, environment, clean water, education, war, terrorism, health and the role of democracy in society. In this volume Rudolph C. Ryser describes how indigenous peoples transformed themselves from anthropological curiosities into politically influential voices in domestic and international deliberations affecting everyone on the planet. He reveals in documentary detail how since the 1970s indigenous peoples politically formed governing authorities over peoples, territories and resources raising important questions and offering new solutions to profound challenges to human life.
Long considered overwhelmingly resilient, Arab authoritarian regimes have begun to fall in surprising manner. While the future of governance in these countries is unclear, the new Arab movements, largely secular and youthful, reveal a vital and ambitious new Arab generation. For these youth, radical Islam has lost its seductive appeal and religion is being marginalized. Women now are far more visibly active in societies long bound by tradition. The participants in the new movements prefer peaceful means, but are prepared to fight if necessary to change the future. They are motivated by a new global awareness from the internet and the means provided by Facebook and other new media to quickly build massive, powerful movements. Khosrokavar's compares the different countries shaken by the protest movements and he contextualizes of the demands and claims of the determined, democratically minded participants. He also looks beyond the Arab world to show how the Arab revolutions are leaving a deep imprint on countries like Iran, where unsuccessful democratic movements began months before Tunisia and Egypt. The new revolutions change the geo-politics of the region and shed light on new dynamics in which the citizen's dignity takes precedence over religion, community or even regional issues like pan-Arabism. The movements reveal the true democratic spirit of this new Arab generation which is largely unsympathetic to the aims of Jihadi terrorist actions. Looking to the future, Khosrokavar discusses how the new movements may change the world.
This book offers an evaluation of female suicide bombers through postcolonial, Third World, feminist, and human-rights framework, drawing on case studies from conflicts in Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Chechnya, among others. Women Suicide Bombers explores why cultural, media and political reports from various geographies present different information about and portraits of the same women suicide bombers. The majority of Western media and sovereign states engaged in wars against groups deploying bombings tend to focus on women bombers' abnormal mental conditions; their physicality-for example, their painted fingernails or their beautiful eyes; their sexualities; and the various ways in which they have been victimized by their backward Third World cultures, especially by "Islam." In contrast, propaganda produced by rebel groups deploying women bombers, cultures supporting those campaigns, and governments of those nations at war with sovereign states and Western nations tend to project women bombers as mythical heroes, in ways that supersedes the martyrdom operations of male bombers. Many of the books published on this phenomenon have revealed interesting ways to read women bombers' subjectivities, but do not explore the phenomenon of women bombers both inside and outside of their militant activities, or against the patriarchal, Orientalist, and Western feminist cultural and theoretical frameworks that label female bombers primarily as victims of backward cultures. In contrast, this book offers a corrective lens to the existing discourse, and encourages a more balanced evaluation of women bombers in contemporary conflict. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism, gender studies and security studies in general.
This book examines the state of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and the issues it faces in the early 21st century. Despite the fact that most countries in the world have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) there is growing concern that the NPT is in serious trouble and may not be able to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons. If so, international stability will be undermined, with potentially disastrous consequences, and the vision of a nuclear weapon-free world will become utterly unrealistic. More specifically, the NPT is exposed to four main challenges, explored in this book: challenges from outside, as three countries that have not signed the Treaty - Israel, India and Pakistan - are known to possess nuclear weapons; challenges from within, as some countries that have signed on to the Treaty as non-nuclear weapons states have nevertheless developed or are suspected to be trying to develop nuclear weapons (North Korea and Iran being cases in point); challenges from below in the shape of terrorists and other non-state actors who may want to acquire radioactive materials or even nuclear weapons; and, finally, challenges from above due to the perceived failure of the five legal nuclear weapons states to keep their part of the 'double bargain' made by the parties of the NPT and take serious steps towards nuclear disarmament. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international security, war and conflict studies and IR in general.
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.
This book argues that terrorism in the modern world has occurred in four "waves" of forty years each. It offers evidence-based explanations of terrorism, national identity, and political legitimacy by leading scholars from various disciplines with contrasting perspectives on political violence. Whether violence is local or global, it tends to be both patterned and innovative. It elicits chaos, but can be understood by the application of new models or theories, depending upon the methods and data experts employ. The contributors in this volume apply their experiences and studies of terrorists, mob violence, fashions in international and political violence, religion's role in terrorism and violence, the relationship between technology and terror, a recurring paradigm of terrorist waves, nation-states struggling to establish democratic/elective governments, and factions competing for control within states - in order to make sense of both national and international acts of political violence and to ask and answer some of the most disturbing questions these phenomena present. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism, religion and violence, nationalism, sociology, war and conflict studies and IR in general.
Written by two leading scholars, this book is an accessible overview of the global political consequences of the 9/11 terror attacks. The War on Terror has defined the first decade of this century. It has been marked by the deaths of thousands of people, political turmoil, massive destruction, and intense fear. Regardless of the name it goes under, the long war on terror will continue to affect lives across the world. Its catalyst, 9/11, did not have to happen, nor did the character of the responses. This book offers a set of novel interpretations of how we got here, where we are, and where we should be heading. It is organised around twelve penetrating and readable essays, full of novel interpretations and succinct summaries of complex ideas and events. In their examination of those aspects of global order touched by terror, the authors argue that the dangers of international terrorism are not overblown. Future 9/11s are possible: so is a more just and law-governed world. Terrorism cannot be disinvented, but with more intelligent policies than have been on show these past ten years, it can be overcome and made politically anachronistic. This book will be essential reading for all students of terrorism studies, international security, war and conflict studies and IR in general, as well as of much interest to well-informed lay readers.
"Read this disturbing but vital book." - Tucker Carlson From the New York Times bestselling BLITZ: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win author and leading conservative thinker comes DARK AGENDA, an extraordinary look into the left's calculated efforts to create a godless, heathen American society - and how these efforts must be stopped. And it is written by David Horowitz, a Jew. In Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America, Horowitz warns that the rising attacks on Christians and their beliefs threaten all Americans - including Jews like himself. The liberal establishment and their radical allies envision a new millennium in which Christianity is banished, Horowitz argues. He says that Judeo-Christian values are at the very root of America's democracy. Kill off such values and all of our freedoms could perish. Horowitz examines how our elites - increasingly secular and atheist - are pushing a radical agenda: How the left trashes Christian doctrines critical to the American Republic, much like radical Islam's war on "infidel" cultures like ours. Why the left fights to keep prayer and religion out of public schools, and how those efforts fly in the face of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson's intentions. How fanatical liberals helped create the religious right by targeting evangelicals and believing Catholics and other conservatives. How Barack Obama's ultra-liberal agenda galvanized the anti-God, anti-religious left. The violent and shocking manifesto of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger who advocated the use of dynamite to promote "revolutionary solidarity." Filled with stories that demonstrate the mind-numbing reasons behind the secular Left's smug disdain for Christianity, Horowitz traces the history of religious liberty from the Founding Fathers to now. He shows how the Founding Fathers put aside their own skepticisms about God and religion to write The Declaration of Independence. Today, he writes Donald Trump's "genuine love for his country" has galvanized Christians to fight the secular war waged against them - as the president has become a lightning rod for the radical left. David Horowitz's powerful new book brings vital insights into the war against Christianity and names the global radicals, leftist Democrats, and money-hungry fat cats of Hollywood and Wall Street responsible for it. Finally, a clear and sensible American voice - one that is not Christian but Jewish - stands up to the twisted rantings of those who want to tear down faith and bedrock of American values. David Horowitz delivers an impassioned plea for the restoration of political sanity in America, a perspective that made America great by respecting the faiths of our fathers and mothers. "One of the most intellectually compelling and rational defenses of Christianity's role in America." - Gov Mike Huckabee The Best Book on Politics for Christians in 2019 - The Stream
In recent years the agenda of how to 'deal with the past' has become a central dimension of the quality of contemporary democracies. Many years after the process of authoritarian breakdown, consolidated democracies revisit the past either symbolically or to punish the elites associated with the previous authoritarian regimes. New factors, like international environment, conditionality, party cleavages, memory cycles and commemorations or politics of apologies, do sometimes bring the past back into the political arena. This book addresses such themes by dealing with two dimensions of authoritarian legacies in Southern European democracies: repressive institutions and human rights abuses. The thrust of this book is that we should view transitional justice as part of a broader 'politics of the past': an ongoing process in which elites and society under democratic rule revise the meaning of the past in terms of what they hope to achieve in the present. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.
The subject of this book is the controversy-one of the oldest in philosophy-about whether it is possible to have freedom in the face of universal causal determinism. Of course, it is crucial to consider what such freedom might mean-in particular, there is an important distinction between libertarian "free will" and the more naturalistic view of freedom taken by compatibilists. This book provides background for laypersons through a historical survey of earlier views and some discussion and criticism of various contemporary views. In particular, it states and discusses the Consequence Argument, the most important argument challenging human freedom in recent literature. The main feature of the book is the argument for a solution: one that is within the compatibilist tradition, is naturalistic and in accord with findings of science and principles of engineering control theory. Some particular features of the offered solution include an argument for a close tie between freedom and control-where what is meant is the voluntary motion control of our bodies, and this "control" is understood naturalistically, by which the author means in accordance with concepts of engineering control theory and modern science. Such concepts are used to explain and demarcate the concept of "control" being used. Then it develops a working conception of what rationality is (since what is crucial is freedom in choice, and rationality is crucial to that), by reviewing texts on the subject by three expert authors (namely, Nathanson, Nozick, and Searle). It is argued that rationality is a species of biological learning control that involves deliberation; and that our freedom in choice is greatest when our choices are most rational.
This book examines different dynamics such as marketisation, globalisation and new media technologies that have driven the transformation of China's media industry - one of the primary battlegrounds where ideological, social and economic struggles are fought - against the backdrop of the growing tensions between economic growth, globalisation, and political control in China.
Assessing three of the most enduring civilian regimes in Africa--Botswana, Kenya, and, until the December 1999 coup, the Ivory Coast--Boubacar N'Diaye focuses on the role of civilian regimes in the institutionalization of civilian control. The author warns that only government legitimacy and a culture of genuine military professionalism are likely to assure civilian control of the military. N'Diaye calls for a bold conceptual shift in the study of African civil-military relations away from expedient short-term coup avoidance. Refreshingly, his study emphasizes the policies regimes enact instead of the structures of African societies or the personal idiosyncrasies of leaders. This book has important implications not only for understanding the causes and outcomes of coups in Africa, but also for the study of emerging democracies everywhere.
This book is the first systematic assessment of current trends and patterns of militancy in Shii communities in the Middle East and South Asia - specifically in Iran, Iraq, but also in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Bahrain More than thirty years after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, there are signs of a growing assertiveness on the part of Shii actors, at times erupting into political violence. The book addresses two key questions: What trends emerge in the types of militancy Shii actors employ both inside and outside of the Shii heartland? And what are the main drivers of militancy in the Shii community? The editor concludes that although at present Shii assertiveness does not take on a predominantly militant form, a 'subculture of violence' does exist among most Shii communities examined here, and suggests five key drivers of political violence among Shiis: the impact of Iran; nationalism and anti-imperialism; Shii self-protection and communal advancement; mahdism; and organizational dynamics. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of terrorism studies and political violence, war and conflict studies, and IR/Security Studies in general.
As experienced by the United States, competition has played out in three distinct types of threat activity: sabotage (the destruction of capabilities), espionage (the theft of specific capabilities), and defection (the carrying of knowledge out of the country). Today, the changing innovation environment has created new challenges. Significant advances are being made in start-ups as well as larger companies who no longer rely on U.S. government contracts. Not only does this place a key element of national power in the hands of the private sector, but it often leaves Washington at an informational disadvantage in understanding technologies. This book analyzes these concepts from the perspective of the United States' experience in the field of innovation security. Historical and recent examples illustrate the threats to innovation, the various approaches to mitigating them, and how the evolution of the innovative process now requires rethinking how the United States can benefit from and preserve its cutting edge human capital. |