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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
This comprehensive new Handbook explores the significance and nature of armed intrastate conflict and civil war in the modern world. Civil wars and intrastate conflict represent the principal form of organised violence since the end of World War II, and certainly in the contemporary era. These conflicts have a huge impact and drive major political change within the societies in which they occur, as well as on an international scale. The global importance of recent intrastate and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nepal, Cote d'Ivoire, Syria and Libya - amongst others - has served to refocus academic and policy interest upon civil war. Drawing together contributions from key thinkers in the field who discuss the sources, causes, duration, nature and recurrence of civil wars, as well as their political meaning and international impact, the Handbook is organised into five key parts: Part I: Understanding and Explaining Civil Wars: Theoretical and Methodological Debates Part II: The Causes of Civil Wars Part III: The Nature and Impact of Civil Wars Part IV: International Dimensions Part V: Termination and Resolution of Civil Wars Covering a wide range of topics including micro-level issues as well as broader debates, Routledge Handbook of Civil Wars will set a benchmark for future research in the field. This volume will be of much interest to students of civil wars and intrastate conflict, ethnic conflict, political violence, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR in general.
Migration is now regarded as a security issue, both in public debate and government policies. In turn, the phenomenon of detention as a governance practice has emerged, and the developing presence of camps in Europe for migrants has given rise to a tangle of new and complex issues. This book examines the phenomenon of irregular immigration, and provides a comprehensive picture of the practices and the implications of detention of migrants within and the European Union. It analyses 'detention' as a tool of governance and in doing so explores several key themes: the security threat for Europe the security governance processes enacted to handle irregular immigration the forms of detention in different geographical contexts the effectiveness of the EU's approach to the issue. The EU, Migration and the Politics of Administrative Detention will be of interest to students and scholars of the EU's external relations, migration, human rights, European politics and security studies.
Widely regarded as expert in techniques of surveillance and political control, Israel has been successful in controlling a native population for a long time. Despite tremendous challenges, it has maintained a tight grip over a large Palestinian population in the territories it occupied in the 1967 war. Moreover, it has effectively contained the Palestinian minority inside its 1948 borders. Although members of the latter group were granted Israeli citizenship, various policies have blocked them from challenging the state's Jewish identity. Israel's continued administration of a large Palestinian population into the twenty-first century represents a serious challenge for scholars and theorists of colonial forms of political control. Relying on hitherto unpublished archival material, this book traces the genesis of Israeli policies and tactics of population management, surveillance and political control towards the Palestinians. It identifies the principal architects of these strategies, discusses their approaches, summarises their discussions and traces the implementations of these policies and their impact on the everyday lives of Palestinians. -- .
Now available in paperback, this book examines same-sex unions (SSU) policy developments in eighteen western democracies and seeks to explain why the overwhelming majority of these countries has implemented a national law to recognise gay and lesbian couples since 1989. Drawing on extensive interview and document analysis the book illustrates the ways in which SSU policy debates and outcomes have been catalysed by international norm diffusion and social learning. The second part of the study analyses these processes in greater depth using two comparative case studies (Germany and the Netherlands; the United States and Canada) to identify how the norm influences domestic policy debates as well as which factors determine how much power it can exert in different national environments. The case study analysis also reveals why western democracies have implemented different models of recognition (marriage vs. registered partnership vs. unregistered cohabitant). -- .
Video surveillance, public records, fingerprints, hidden microphones, RFID chips: in contemporary societies the intrusive techniques of surveillance used in daily life have increased dramatically. The "war against terror" has only exacerbated this trend, creating a world that is closer than one might have imagined to that envisaged by George Orwell in 1984.How have we reached this situation? Why have democratic societies accepted that their rights and freedoms should be taken away, a little at a time, by increasingly sophisticated mechanisms of surveillance?From the anthropometry of the 19th Century to the Patriot Act, through an analysis of military theory and the Echelon Project, Armand Mattelart constructs a genealogy of this new power of control and examines its globalising dynamic. This book provides an essential wake-up call at a time when democratic societies are becoming less and less vigilant against the dangers of proliferating systems of surveillance.
The surge in divisive and far-right politics and growing Islamophobia in Britain pose new challenges for Muslim advocacy organisations. British Muslim activism has taken centre stage in the public sphere as a result. Yet for over fifty years Muslim advocacy groups have worked to preserve religious identity, lobby the state and provide concerted responses to the political establishment. This is the first book to chart critically the national and global factors influencing the political mobilisation of British Muslim activists as Muslims. Khadijah Elshayyal traces the changes of thought, direction and method within Muslim identity politics after 1960, noting key organisations and turning points such as the Rushdie Affair, the 9/11 attacks, the 7/7 bombings and the current conflict in Syria. The book argues that the Rushdie Affair prompted new debate around the subject of freedom of expression, which has continued to be a point of contention ever since. Providing a history of the interaction between Muslim advocacy groups and the state, and the impact of state policy on Muslim communities, Muslims Identity Politics shows that that Muslim citizens continue to experience an `equality gap' and recommends where transformation and progress can be made. Based on primary sources and in-depth interviews, this book is a vital resource for government officials, policy-makers and researchers interested in multiculturalism, Islamophobia and security issues in Britain.
In East and Southeast Asia, the creation of civil society is a crucial yet most difficult issue. Europeans have had the luxury of centuries in a slow-moving world characterised by weak governments in which the foundation institutions, norms and values of civil society could ferment and develop. Asia, however, faces this task when a nation's currency can devalue in seconds, destabilising its government, and when states have far more effective means of surveillance, suppression and terror. This book examines these issues and shows that a better understanding of civil society in the Asian context is central to promoting contemporary political, social and economic reform in Asia. It will appeal to students and teachers of politics, law and sociology because it provides new perspectives on how to understand civil society drawing on Asian examples, as well as indications for rethinking what civil society means in Asia. Individual chapters combine theoretical and empirical issues in a way which fills a major gap in the literature. Henceforth, works about 'civil society' will need to take more account of the Asian evidence and Asianists will need to have a clear idea of what civil society in Asia means.
Offering comprehensive coverage for those examining Civil War propaganda, this volume provides a broad analysis of efforts by both Union and Confederate sides to influence public opinion of America's deadliest conflict. This illuminating reference work contains excerpts from roughly 100 individual pieces of propaganda generated during the American Civil War in the North and the South, as well as contextual analysis to assist readers in understanding its utility, importance, and effect. It includes written arguments, staged photographs, and political cartoons, all of which were used to advance one side's objectives while undermining the enemy's. This helps readers to understand the underlying arguments of each side as well as the willingness of each to distort the truth for political, military, or economic advantage. This book is organized chronologically, allowing readers to understand how propaganda developed and expanded throughout the war. It includes a chapter dedicated to each of the war years (1861–1865), an antebellum chapter, and a postwar chapter. Each document comprised in the volume includes an analysis of the significance and effectiveness of the piece and guides readers to examine it with a critical eye. The original source documents remain in their original verbiage, including common spelling errors and other interesting aspects of 19th-century communication.
Over the last two decades, international migration has become a global issue. It is perceived as an ongoing challenge for governments, as well as an issue that is deeply related to other international challenges, such as development, climate change, security and public health. In this context, international organisations have become influential in the way in which migration is thought about and governed. They play an important role, steering states' behaviour and intervening on the ground, through the design and implementation of immigration policy. International organisations tend to promote a positive view of migration, extolling its benefits for all parties. There often exists a contrast between this positivity and the public and political scepticism regularly expressed in Western receiving countries. According to their advocates, international organizations have the potential to improve the governance of migration, by supporting cooperation between states and promoting balanced and comprehensive political strategies. However their detractors criticise them for aligning themselves with the interests of receiving states and for their political agenda. This book brings together analytical and empirical contributions that explore the role of international organisations in migration politics worldwide. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.
This book presents a range of papers by philosophers and economists who consider the definition and value of liberty; freedom in rights and equality of opportunity. Until recently freedom has played no explicit role in the conceptual framework of economists, however freedom seems to be at the heart of economics. The book provides a substantial contribution to the fruitful dialogue between the philosophy and economics in this area. Each chapter is integrated being followed by comments which explore the underlying debates. Contributors are French economists, philosophers and political scientists, as well as authors from Belgium and the Netherlands.
In 1991, the Puerto Rican government abolished bilingualism, claiming that "Spanish only" was necessary to protect the culture from North American influences. A few years later bilingualism was restored and English was promoted in public schools.This revised edition of The Politics of Language in Puerto Rico is updated with an emphasis on the dual arenas where the language controversy played out-Puerto Rico and the United States Congress-and includes new data on the connections between language and conflicting notions of American identity. This book shows that officials in both San Juan and Washington, along with English-first groups, used these language laws as weapons in the battle over U.S.-Puerto Rican relations and the volatile debate over statehood.
What, if anything, is similar about citizen participation at the local level in Canada and China? The answer, of course, is politically sensitive. There are many in Canada who would claim that the question is absurd. How can there be meaningful citizen participation in a country where there are significant restrictions on political activity, including on the right to form organizations with political purposes? Presenting the work of leading scholars, Citizen Participation at the Local Level in China and Canada examines how citizens in each country participate at the local level. The book examines the development of citizen participation in local governance in Canada and China respectively. It then covers the characteristics of political culture and climate on local participation, highlighting factors especially unique to urban poor, class migration, and aboriginal and immigrant populations. The chapters also explore means of protest, demonstration, and articulation of preference by populations and issues where citizen participation has effected change such as land use, housing, urban development, and resource sustainability. The book includes case studies that compare Canadian and Chinese communities and extrapolate interesting policy-level changes at the local level based on citizen behavior and involvement. It underscores the similarities and differences in political participation in both countries and sets the stage for the steps in the citizen participation in both countries.
It will soon be impossible to tell what is real and what is fake. Recent advances in AI mean that by scanning images of a person (for example using Facebook), a powerful machine learning system can create new video images and place them in scenarios and situations which never actually happened. When combined with powerful voice AI, the results are utterly convincing. So-called 'Deep Fakes' are not only a real threat for democracy but they take the manipulation of voters to new levels. They will also affect ordinary people. This crisis of misinformation we are facing has been dubbed the 'Infocalypse'. Using her expertise from working in the field, Nina Schick reveals shocking examples of Deep Fakery and explains the dangerous political consequences of the Infocalypse, both in terms of national security and what it means for public trust in politics. She also unveils what it means for us as individuals, how Deep Fakes will be used to intimidate and to silence, for revenge and fraud, and how unprepared governments and tech companies are. As a political advisor to select technology firms, Schick tells us what we need to do to prepare and protect ourselves. Too often we build the cool technology and ignore what bad guys can do with it before we start playing catch-up. But when it comes to Deep Fakes, we urgently need to be on the front foot.
Caught up in one of the many purges that swept the Soviet Union during the Great Terror, Leonid Petrovich Bolotov (1906-1987) was one of 86 engineers arrested at Leningrad's Red Triangle Rubber Factory and sent to the Gulag as "enemies of the people." He would be the only one to survive and return his family, enduring two decades in the infamous Kolyma labor camps. Translated into English and published here for the first time, Bolotov's memoir narrates with growing intensity his arrest, imprisonment and interrogation, his "confession" and trial, his exile to hard labor in Arctic Siberia, and his rehabilitation in 1956 following the official end of Stalin's personality cult.
Surveillance in Europe is an accessible, definitive and comprehensive overview of the rapidly growing multi-disciplinary field of surveillance studies in Europe. Written by experts in the field, including leading scholars, the Companion s clear and up to date style will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students in the social sciences, arts and humanities. This book makes the case for greater resilience in European society in the face of the growing pervasiveness of surveillance. It examines surveillance in Europe from several different perspectives, including:
Surveillance in Europe's interdisciplinary approach and accessible content makes it an ideal companion to academics, policy-makers and civil society organisations alike, as well as appealing to top level undergraduates and postgraduates. "
Do countries keep their promises to the international community? When they sign treaties or learn about new expectations, do they take them seriously and implement them? Since we already know intuitively that not all countries do, the next question and the topic of this book is: who complies? By considering a wide range of different rules each precise enough to allow one to measure state compliance and a variety of methods, we hope to answer this question once and for all. Including a systematic analysis of 8 different countries selected for the variety of regime type, international engagement and economic development they represent, the work caps a five-year research program and represents the culmination of twenty years worth of work in the disciplines of international relations and international law on legalization and compliance. Stiles highlights the importance of systematic study of compliance in order to move further towards solving truly global issues, such as terrorism, human trafficking, air pollution and collective goods provision. With international laws generally designed to improve the human condition and current levels of compliance inconsistent at best, it is vital to gain a better understanding of who complies and why. This detailed study will be of interest to students of Politics, International Law and International Relations. "
The book focuses on a topical question: are the old secularist arrangements well-equipped to tackle the challenge of fast-growing religious pluralism? Or should we move to new post-secular arrangements that are fairer and more efficient in dealing with pluralism in Europe? Offering an interdisciplinary approach that combines political theory and legal analysis, the authors tackle two interrelated facets of this controversial question, a theoretical and a practical one: Part 1 explores what post-secularism is and its relation to secularism; and examines whether post-secularism convincingly points towards a paradigm shift in dealing with religious pluralism in liberal democracies. The authors draw on a variety of different approaches to the issue of postsecularism vs secularism - from political-theological to public reason approaches. Part 2 teases out the practical consequences of the secularism- postsecularism debate, focussing on case-law with four empirical case studies. It is predominantly focused on a critical analysis on the latest developments of the European jurisprudence with respect to religious pluralism.This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, philosophy, religion and politics, European law, human rights, legal theory and socio-legal studies.
This book proposes the idea of fictional International Relations (IR) and engages with feminist IR by contextualising the case of a woman spy in Korea in the Cold War. Fictional imagination and feminist IR encourage one to go beyond conventional or standard ways of thinking; it reshapes taken-for-granted interpretations and assumptions. This takes the view that a dominant narrative of events might be reconstructed as a different kind of story, once events are placed within a wider temporal approach. The case of the woman Korean secret agent- who reportedly bombed a South Korean plane (Korean Airlines (KAL) Flight 858) under the instruction from the North Korean leadership to disrupt the Seoul Olympic Games- is chosen to serve as an effective example of fictional IR and feminist IR scholarship, which can be investigated through the research puzzles concerning gender, pain and truth. Fictional International Relations has three main objectives. First, it investigates the way in which fiction-writing can become a method for dealing with data problems and contingency in IR. Second, the book examines how gender, pain and truth operate or interact in the case of the Korean spy and how this observation can strengthen feminist IR in terms of intersectionality. Finally, the author goes on to explore why this case has been so difficult to study openly and thoroughly. The aim of the book is not to refute the official findings; the point is to unpack complex dynamics surrounding truth-more specifically how the official account has been executed as 'the' truth-based on a feminist-informed investigation. This book will be of interest to students of IR theory, critical security studies, Cold War studies, gender studies and Asian studies.
Migration is now regarded as a security issue, both in public debate and government policies. In turn, the phenomenon of detention as a governance practice has emerged, and the developing presence of camps in Europe for migrants has given rise to a tangle of new and complex issues. This book examines the phenomenon of irregular immigration, and provides a comprehensive picture of the practices and the implications of detention of migrants within and the European Union. It analyses 'detention' as a tool of governance and in doing so explores several key themes: the security threat for Europe the security governance processes enacted to handle irregular immigration the forms of detention in different geographical contexts the effectiveness of the EU's approach to the issue. The EU, Migration and the Politics of Administrative Detention will be of interest to students and scholars of the EU's external relations, migration, human rights, European politics and security studies.
Northern Ireland has entered what is arguably the key phase in its troubled political history - truth recovery and dealing with the legacy of the past - yet the void in knowledge and the lack of academic literature with regard to victims' rights is particularly striking. This book, newly available in paperback, analyses truth recovery as a fundamental aspect of the transition from political violence to peace, democracy and stability in post-conflict Northern Ireland. Kirk Simpson argues that it is essential for any process of truth recovery in Northern Ireland to provide the victims of political violence with the opportunity to express and articulate their narratives of suffering within the context of public dialogic processes. He outlines a unique and original model: that victims of political violence should be enabled to engage in meaningful truth recovery through a Habermasian process of public democratic deliberation and communication involving direct dialogue with the perpetrators of such violence. This process of 'communicative justice' is framed within Habermas's theory of communicative action and can help to ensure that legitimate truth recovery publicly acknowledges the trauma of victims and subjects perpetrator narratives of political violence to critical scrutiny and rational deconstruction. Crucially, the book aims to contribute to the empowerment of victims in Northern Ireland by stimulating constructive discussion and awareness of hitherto silenced narratives of the conflict. This difficult and unsettling interrogation and interpretation of the conflict from a comparatively 'unknown perspective' is central to the prospects for critically examining and mastering the past in Northern Ireland. -- .
This volume evaluates the impact of coercive arms control efforts to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction in the twenty-first century. A new paradigm in arms control is gradually replacing the idea that mutually agreed restrictions on armaments can improve international security. Thus, Hedley Bull's classic definition of arms control as the "cooperation between antagonistic pairs of states in military affairs" needs to be amended by a new notion of coercive arms control as the set of non-cooperative and non-reciprocal measures to restrict the weapons or military capabilities of certain states. This volume addresses the topic of how this ongoing paradigmatic shift will affect the effectiveness of arms control as a conflict management instrument.While some argue that new instruments can complement and strengthen traditional, multilateral and inclusive arms control regimes, others maintain that conflicts and contradictions between coercive and cooperative arms control regimes will severely limit their effectiveness. This volume provides a forum for academics and practitioners from around the globe to discuss these developments in depth and to assess the specific strengths and weaknesses of these new instruments of arms control. This book will be of much interest to students of arms control, global governance, foreign policy and IR/Security Studies in general.
This book offers an assessment of the naval policies of emerging naval powers, and the implications for maritime security relations and the global maritime order. Since the end of the Cold War, China, Japan, India and Russia have begun to challenge the status quo with the acquisition of advanced naval capabilities. The emergence of rising naval powers is a cause for concern, as the potential for great power instability is exacerbated by the multiple maritime territorial disputes among new and established naval powers. This work explores the underlying sources of maritime ambition through an analysis of various historical cases of naval expansionism. It analyses both the sources and dynamics of international naval competition, and looks at the ways in which maritime stability and the widespread benefits of international commerce and maritime resource extraction can be sustained through the twenty-first century. This book will be of much interest to students of naval power, Asian security and politics, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.
This book explores the factors that influence violent rebellious political organisations to transform into other entities, such as political parties, criminal organisations and terrorist organisations. From the end of the Second World War until 1990, many events in the world centred on the bipolar struggle between the United States and the USSR. Although there were numerous civil wars occurring during the Cold War era, many of these conflicts went virtually unnoticed unless they were linked to the Cold War struggle for ideological dominance. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of intra-state conflicts was prevalent around the globe. Along with the occurrence of civil wars, a variety of violent political movements also developed. Examining cases from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, this book addresses how violent political movements transform during and after conflict into new types of organisations using the collective political violence transformative (CPVT) model. The study uses a combination of pre-existing literature from the fields of sociology and political science, archival research, and interviews with movement members (former and active) conducted by the author. In studying the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein, the Spear of the Nation (MK) and the African National Congress (ANC), the Abu Sayyaf Group and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP), Transforming Violent Political Movements paints a picture of organisations that have to respond to their environments to survive. This book will be of much interest to students of political violence, terrorism, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR.
This comprehensive new Handbook explores the significance and nature of armed intrastate conflict and civil war in the modern world. Civil wars and intrastate conflict represent the principal form of organised violence since the end of World War II, and certainly in the contemporary era. These conflicts have a huge impact and drive major political change within the societies in which they occur, as well as on an international scale. The global importance of recent intrastate and regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Nepal, Cote d'Ivoire, Syria and Libya - amongst others - has served to refocus academic and policy interest upon civil war. Drawing together contributions from key thinkers in the field who discuss the sources, causes, duration, nature and recurrence of civil wars, as well as their political meaning and international impact, the Handbook is organised into five key parts: Part I: Understanding and Explaining Civil Wars: Theoretical and Methodological Debates Part II: The Causes of Civil Wars Part III: The Nature and Impact of Civil Wars Part IV: International Dimensions Part V: Termination and Resolution of Civil Wars Covering a wide range of topics including micro-level issues as well as broader debates, Routledge Handbook of Civil Wars will set a benchmark for future research in the field. This volume will be of much interest to students of civil wars and intrastate conflict, ethnic conflict, political violence, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR in general.
As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, South Africa continues to function under the oppressive burden – felt directly as such by all but the elite – of three continuities from apartheid: race thinking, capitalism and the politics of tradition. It is the last of this triad that is the focus of this book. Yet, as Gerhard Maré argues, continuities in the politics of tradition cannot be understood as separable from the other two, nor from the intimate metapolitics of patriarchy. Building on his previous research into how apartheid templates of ethnic separatism, and its popular mobilisations, played out in calamitous violence in Natal and Zululand, Maré now takes the story into post-1994 South Africa. He sets as his focus three powerful men – Goodwill Zwelithini, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Jacob Zuma – to illustrate how, from different social locations, each has relied on claims to Zulu tradition to occupy powerful and financially rewarding positions. This book alerts readers to the dangers of tradition as a formal, structured politics, which enriches a narrowly elite minority while overriding democratic rights, effecting a ‘state of exception’ for the governance of millions who are rendered as ‘subjects’. At the same time, tradition in this form leaves intact another divide, at a time when health disasters, inequality and climate catastrophe can be addressed only through shared and collective human engagement. |
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