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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations
Bridging the Prosperity Gap in the EU addresses the great social challenge currently facing the European Union. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the authors invaluably pinpoint both overarching problems and possibilities associated with the social dimension of European integration. Prominent researchers of economics, law and political science tackle this complex issue, providing new solutions within their respective fields of expertise. The chapters cover crucial policy challenges and analyse fundamental mechanisms that limit, or otherwise affect, the evolution of a European social dimension. These insights clarify the far-reaching measures that will be needed to gradually restore the balance between market integration and social protection across the European Union. Illustrating the importance of cohesion, this book is vital for those interested in comparative European studies, from backgrounds in public and social policy, law and economics. Contributors include: U. Bernitz, N. Charron, A.-C. Jungar, A.-S. Lind, M. Ljunge, L. Magnusson, M. Martensson, S. Murhem, P. Nyman, L. Oxelheim, J. Paju, T. Persson, B. Rothstein, J. Ruist, J.J. Votinius
This book tells a true detective story set mainly in Elizabethan London during the years of cold war just before the Armada of 1588. The mystery is the identity of a spy working in a foreign embassy to frustrate Catholic conspiracy and propaganda aimed at the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth and her government. The suspects in the case are the inmates of the house, an old building in the warren of streets and gardens between Fleet Street and the Thames. These include the ambassador, a civilized Frenchman, his wife, his daughter, his secretary, his clerk and his priest, the tutor, the chef, the butler, and the concierge. They also include a runaway friar, the Neapolitan philosopher, poet, and comedian Giordano Bruno, who wrote masterpieces of Italian literature, who was later burned in Rome for his anti-papal opinions, and who has been revered in Italy for his honorable and heroic resistance to papal authority. Others in the cast are Queen Elizabeth, her formidable secretary of state Sir Francis Walsingham, and King Henry III of France; poets, courtiers, and scholars; statesmen, conspirators, go-betweens, and stool-pigeons. When not in London, the action takes place in Paris and Oxford; a good deal of it happens on the river Thames. The hero or villain, who calls himself Fagot, does his work most effectively, is not found out, and disappears. In the first part of the book these events are narrated. In the second the spy is identified and his story put together. John Bossy's brilliant research, backed by his forensic and literary skills, solves a centuries-old mystery. His book makes a major contribution to the political and intellectual history of the wars of religion in Europe and to the domestic history of Elizabethan England. Not least, it is compelling reading.
The book is a study on planetary realism in a critical analysis of Australia in the age of the Anthropocene. It contextualises Australia in the degradation of the biosphere deeply harmful to humanity's wellbeing, accelerating the threat of nuclear war and the tensions of a declining democracy. The Anthropocene is a critical period, threatening the viability of the Australian nation-state. It involves the decarbonisation of the economy driven by domestic and foreign corporate power, and the geopolitics of world domination as a close ally of the US. Australia's militarisation for war against China must be contested in the pursuit for a green and just new deal framed in the foreign policy of reconciliation with Asia, including a fully cooperative entente with China
As bloody wars raged in Central America during the last third of the twentieth century, hundreds of North American groups "adopted" villages in war-torn Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Unlike government-based cold war-era Sister City programs, these pairings were formed by ordinary people, often inspired by individuals displaced by US-supported counterinsurgency operations. Drawing on two decades of work with former refugees from El Salvador as well as unprecedented access to private archives and oral histories, Molly Todd's compelling history provides the first in-depth look at "grassroots sistering." This model of citizen diplomacy emerged in the mid-1980s out of relationships between a few repopulated villages in Chalatenango, El Salvador, and US cities. Todd shows how the leadership of Salvadorans and left-leaning activists in the US concerned with the expansion of empire as well as the evolution of human rights-related discourses and practices created a complex dynamic of cross-border activism that continues today.
The study of foreign policy is usually concerned with the interaction of states, and thus with governance structures which emerged either with the so-called 'Westphalian system' or in the course of the 18th century: diplomacy and international law. As a result, examining foreign policy in earlier periods involves conceptual and terminological difficulties, which echo current debates on 'post-national' foreign policy actors like the European Union or global cities. This volume argues that a novel understanding of what constitutes foreign policy may offer a way out of this problem. It considers foreign policy as the outcome of processes that make some boundaries different from others, and set those that separate communities in an internal space apart from those that mark foreignness. The creation of such boundaries, which can be observed at all times, designates specific actors - which can be, but do not have to be, 'states' - as capable of engaging in foreign policy. As such boundaries are likely to be contested, they are unlikely to provide either a single or a simple distinction between 'insides' and 'outsides'. In this view, multiple layers of foreign-policy actors with different characteristics appear less as a modern development and more as a perennial aspect of foreign policy. In a broad perspective stretching from early Greek polities to present-day global cities, the volume offers a theoretical and empirical presentation of this concept by political scientists, jurists, and historians.
This book provides a comprehensive account of the role of the advisory, legislative and implementation committees involved in the policy-making process of the European Union. This is an aspect of EU politics that is often overlooked and remains under-researched, even though such committees can have wide-ranging influence in the policy-process. The group of international scholars contributing to this volume are all experts in their field, coming from different disciplinary backgrounds including political science, law and public administration. The volume combines contributions to a discussion of the normative issues arising from the nature of 'committee governance' in the EU with more empirical contributions on the role of committees in each of the stages of the EU policy-process: policy-preparation, legislative decision-making, policy-implementation and adjudication. The result is a text that provides not only a thorough overview of the role of committees in the EU today but also contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of European governance. The Role of Committees in the Policy-Process of the European Union will find its audience in final year undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers of European studies and politics. Practitioners, NGOs and lobbyists involved in the work of the EU will all find this a uniquely useful book.
This book advances North Atlantic Treaty Organization (henceforth, NATO) burden analysis through a decomposition of the political, financial, social, and defense burdens members take on for the institution. The overemphasis of committing a minimum of 2% of member state Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense spending, as a proxy indicator of alliance commitment does not properly reflect how commitments reduce risks should Article V be invoked through attack (i.e., 2% is a political & symbolic target adopted by Defense Ministers in 2006 at Riga). Considering defense burdens multi-dimensionally explains why some members overcontribute, as well as, why burden sharing negotiations cause friction among 30 diverse members with differing threats and risks. In creating a comprehensive institutional burden management model and focusing on risks to members, the book explores the weaknesses of major theories on the study and division of collective burdens and institutional assets. It argues that member risks and threats are essential to understanding how burdens are distributed across a set of overlapping institutions within NATO's structure providing its central goods. The importance of the USA, as a defense underwriter for some, affects negotiations despite its absence from research empirically; new data permit testing the argument (Kavanaugh 2014). This book contributes conceptual innovation and theoretical analysis to advance student, researcher, and policymaker understanding of burden management, strategic bargaining, and defense cooperation. The contribution is a generalizable risk management model of IO burden sharing using NATO as the case for scientific study due to its prominence.
By comparing the great-powers' foreign policy, this book investigates the global competition and revisionist attempts to dismantle the Western liberal order. Since February 2022, the international system has been challenged by the Russian invasion in Ukraine and its profound, multiple consequences.Putin's War has reinvented the West. But still, this is not "the end of history". To illustrate that tensions between democratic and autocratic great powers are nowadays at their peak since the end of the Cold War, one should consider President Biden's words in Warsaw, referring to President Putin: "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power!"
There has been little examination of the China policy of the Theodore Roosevelt administration. Works dealing with the topic fall either into brief discussions in biographies of Roosevelt, general surveys of Sino-American relations, or studies of special topics, such as the Chinese exclusion issue, which encompass a portion of the Roosevelt years. Moreover, the subject has been overshadowed somewhat by studies of problems between Japan and the United States in this era. The goal of this study is to offer a more complete examination of the American relationship with China during Roosevelt's presidency. The focus will be on the discussion of major issues and concerns in the relationship of the two nations from the time Roosevelt took office until he left, something that this book does for the first time. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on creating a more complete picture of Teddy Roosevelt and China relations, especially in regard to his and his advisers' perceptual framework of that region and its impact upon the making of China policy. The goal of this study is to begin that process. Special attention is paid to the question of how Roosevelt and the members of his administration viewed China, as it is believed that their viewpoints, which were prejudicial, were very instrumental in how they chose to deal with China and the question of the Open Door. The emphasis on the role of stereotyping gives the book a particularly unique point of view. Readers will be made aware of the difficulties of making foreign policy under challenging conditions, but also of how the attitudes and perceptions of policymakers can shape the direction that those policies can take. A critical argument of the book is that a stereotyped perception of China and its people inhibited American policy responses toward the Chinese state in Roosevelt's Administration. While Roosevelt's attitudes regarding white supremacy have been discussed elsewhere, a fuller consideration of how his views affected the making of foreign policy, particularly China policy, is needed, especially now that Sino-American relations today are of great concern.
Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it. Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online – a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.
It has been the home to priests and prostitutes, poets and spies. It has been the stage for an improbable flirtation between an Israeli girl and a Palestinian boy living on opposite sides of the barbed wire that separated enemy nations. It has even been the scene of an unsolved international murder. This one-time shepherd's path between Jerusalem and Bethlehem has been a dividing line for decades. Arab families called it "al Mantiqa Haram." Jewish residents knew it as "shetach hefker." In both languages it meant the same thing: "the Forbidden Area." Peacekeepers that monitored the steep fault line dubbed it "Barbed Wire Alley." To folks on either side of the border, it was the same thing: A dangerous no-man's land separating warring nations and feuding cultures. The barbed wire came down in 1967. But it was soon supplanted by evermore formidable cultural, emotional and political barriers separating Arab and Jew. For nearly two decades, coils of barbed wire ran right down the middle of what became Assael Street, marking the fissure between Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem and Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem. In a beautiful narrative, A Street Divided offers a more intimate look at one road at the heart of the conflict, where inches really do matter.
Examines the causes and consequences of Saudi Arabia's current security policy and the domestic, regional, and international challenges the country's defense program presents to the general welfare of the Middle East. As possessor of a quarter of the world's oil reserves and host to two of the holiest cities in Islam, Saudi Arabia is an integral part of the cultural, economic, and political well-being of the Middle East. From Persian Gulf security, to Middle Eastern politics, to the international energy industry, events in this desert kingdom strongly impact the stability of the region. This comprehensive resource analyzes contemporary Saudi Arabia-its modern history, the role of Islam, and the nature of Saudi foreign relations-and reveals how these and other factors dictate and shape the country's current security policies and priorities. Middle East expert and author Mathew Gray has organized the work into six sections: the first provides an historical overview of the region from the mid-1700s to the 1980s; the second explores the Saudi political and security system; the third discusses Saudi-U.S. relations; the fourth looks at Saudi relations with the Gulf region and the wider Middle East; and the fifth considers Saudi Arabia's role in Sunni extremism and terrorism. The final chapter looks at emerging security threats for Saudi Arabia. The book includes an overview of future challenges and risks including climate change, water shortages, and problems of Saudi identity and social dispersion. Explains the role of oil in sustaining the state-society political bargain, and the impact of population on its effectiveness Links Islam and Islamic extremism to a range of influencing factors, including political pressure, demographic changes, and the role of globalization in fostering more extreme views Weaves together an analysis of politics, economics, foreign relations, and social change, showing how these all relate to and impact each other and, above all, shape Saudi Arabia's and the Middle East's security environment
This book explains changes to Iranian grand strategy over the past four decades, and it does so by advancing a multicausal model that unifies the three main paradigms of International Relations (IR) theory. Hence, ideas (constructivism) mediate between the structure of material capabilities (realism) and agents (liberalism) and interact with each to produce, respectively, threat perception and political preferences. Using these two explanatory factors, the author demonstrates how the Islamic Republic's grand strategy has systematically varied over time to produce a mix of outcomes that includes balancing, expansionism, bandwagoning, appeasement, engagement and retrenchment. Beyond its theoretical contribution, this book is policy-relevant in that it explains - and predicts - the external conduct of what is arguably the Middle East's most consequential actor, with implications reverberating far beyond the region. Academic in conception and rigor, the book is intended not only for specialists and practitioners but appeals to the lay reader interested in the broader Middle East/West Asia, the region's relationship with major powers, and regional conflict dynamics.
After having been introduced by the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001 and after its affirmation by the UN World Summit in 2005 the concept of R2P has found broad approval both by international law doctrine and practice. It is fair to say that international law thinking has been profoundly influenced by this new approach. Nonetheless, many questions in this regard are still open. In this volume international lawyers discuss a series of fundamental aspect of R2P: the historical dimension, the relationship between R2P and general international law and the dynamics surrounding this concept. In particular it will be examined in which direction this concept will probably evolve. Contributors are: Alex Bellamy, Enzo Cannizzaro, Martina Caroni, Thomas Cottier, Hans-Georg Dederer, Fernand de Varennes, Oliver Diggelmann, Caro Focarelli, Andrea Gattini, Hans-Joachim Heintze, Peter Hilpold, Karolina Januszewski, Stefan Kadelbach, Federico Lenzerini, Manfred Nowak, Karin Oellers-Frahm, Nadakavukren Scheffer, Peter-Tobias Stoll, and Lotta Viikari
Challenging the conventional narrative that the European Union suffers from a "democratic deficit," Athanasios Psygkas argues that EU mandates have enhanced the democratic accountability of national regulatory agencies. This is because EU law has created entry points for stakeholder participation in the operation of national regulators; these avenues for public participation were formerly either not open or not institutionalized to this degree. By focusing on how the EU formally adopted procedural mandates to advance the substantive goal of creating an internal market in electronic communications, Psygkas demonstrates that EU requirements have had significant implications for the nature of administrative governance in the member states. Drawing on theoretical arguments in favor of decentralization traditionally applied to substantive policy-making, this book provides insight into regulatory processes to show how the decentralized EU structure may transform national regulatory authorities into individual loci of experimentation that might in turn develop innovative results. It thus contributes to debates about federalism, governance and public policy, as well as about deliberative and participatory democracy in the United States and Europe. This book informs current understandings of regulatory agency operations and institutional design by drawing on an original dataset of public consultations and interviews with agency officials, industry and consumer group representatives in Paris, Athens, Brussels, and London. The on-the-ground original research provides a strong foundation for the directions the case law could take and small- and larger-scale institutional reforms that balance the goals of democracy, accountability, and efficiency.
Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan offers a fresh perspective on gender politics by focusing on the Japanese housewife of the 1950s as a controversial representation of democracy, leisure, and domesticity. Examining the shifting personae of the housewife, especially in the appealing texts of women's magazines, reveals the diverse possibilities of postwar democracy as they were embedded in media directed toward Japanese women. Each chapter explores the contours of a single controversy, including debate over the royal wedding in 1959, the victory of Japan's first Miss Universe, and the unruly desires of postwar women. Jan Bardsley also takes a comparative look at the ways in which the Japanese housewife is measured against equally stereotyped notions of the modern housewife in the United States, asking how both function as narratives of Japan-U.S. relations and gender/class containment during the early Cold War.
The world's foremost expert on Middle Eastern relations explains Iran's current nuclear potential and what America can do about it: "Engrossing...If Congress gets a vote on going to war with Iran, let's hope that this book is on everyone's reading lists" (The Economist). In 2005, Kenneth Pollack's first book about foreign policy in Iran, The Persian Puzzle, sparked a national conversation, laying out the possible options for nuclear deterrent in Iran. But, despite the attention his solutions received, the world didn't follow his advice. Now, Iran is even closer to possessing nuclear weapons, and America will have to find a new path forward. In Unthinkable, a New York Times and Economist Best Book of 2013 Pollack explores the intractable American problem with Iran, and Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. With the authority of his years as a CIA analyst and his time as the Director of Persian Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council, Pollack keenly examines the nature of the Iranian threat to American interests and the long-going clash that has led us to this point. Pollack explains and assesses the options for American policymakers: redoubling our efforts at a "carrot-and-stick" approach that combines negotiations and sanctions; aiding the Iranian opposition to bring about a popular form of regime change; an Israeli military strike; the American military option; and containing a nuclear Iran. Ultimately, Pollack argues for an assertive version of containment to maintain pressure on Tehran and minimize its ability to contribute to the problems of the Middle East by keeping it largely on the defensive. "Learned, lucid, and deeply sobering" (Kirkus Reviews), Pollack has written one of the most important books on foreign policy in this decade.
This combination A-Z encyclopedia and primary document collection provides an authoritative and enlightening overview of U.S. anti- and counterterrorism politics, policies, attitudes, and actions related to both foreign and domestic threats, with a special emphasis on post-9/11 events. This book provides a compelling overview of U.S. laws, policies, programs, and actions in the realms of anti- and counterterrorism, as well as comprehensive coverage of the various domestic and foreign terrorist organizations threatening America, including their leaders, ideologies, and practices. These entries are supplemented with a carefully selected collection of primary sources that track the evolution of U.S. anti- and counterterrorism policies and political debate. These documents will not only illuminate major events and turning points in America's fight against terror-both foreign and homegrown-but also help readers understand debates about the effectiveness, morality, and constitutionality of controversial policies that have either been implemented or proposed, from waterboarding to targeted assassination to indefinite incarceration at Guantanamo Bay. In addition, this resource shows how political controversies over anti- and counterterrorism strategies are spilling over into other areas of American life, from debates about privacy rights, government surveillance, and anti-Muslim actions and beliefs to arguments about whether U.S. firearms policies are a boon to terrorists. Wide-ranging encyclopedia section featuring contributions from counterterrorism scholars Primary Document collection that provides additional illumination on major events, laws, policies, and trends Authoritative and evenhanded coverage of counterterrorism threats, issues, events, laws, policies, and organizations Reader's Guide to entries by subject category
The fifth in the CAIW series, this title reflects 50 years of experience of Cambridge (UK)-based World of Information, which since 1975 has followed the region's politics and economics. In the period following the Second World War, Saudi Arabia - a curious fusion of medieval theocracy, unruly dictatorship and extrovert wealth - has been called a country of 'superlatives.' The modernisation of the Kingdom's oil industry has been a smooth process: its oilfields are highly sophisticated. However, social modernisation has not kept pace. 'Reform', long a preoccupation among the Peninsula's leaders does not necessarily go hand in hand with religion. |
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