The western economic and financial crisis began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and led the European Union countries into recession. After this, governments started to implement austerity measures, such as cuts in public spending, including public subsidies and jobs, and rising prices. In this context, Europe started to experience a wave of protest movements. Individuals started to use the manifold interactive digital media environment to both fight against the austerity measures and find alternative ways of claiming their democratic rights. Inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York (USA), the Occupy LSX encampment in Central London (UK), The Outraged (Los Indignados)/ 15M encampment in Central Madrid (Spain), the Syntagma Square's Outraged movement in Athens (Greece) and the March 12th Movement in Lisbon (Portugal), although short-lived, epitomize an emerging alternative politics and participation via the media. This wave has promoted a debate on how the realm of politics is changing, as citizens broaden their ideas of what political issues and participation mean. Beyond the Internet examines the technological dimension of the recent wave of protest movements in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland. Offering an opportunity to achieve a better understanding of the dynamics between society, politics and technology, this volume questions the essentialist attributes of the Internet that fuel the techno-centric discourse. The contributors illustrate how all these protest movements were active in the social media and garnered high levels of media attention and public visibility, in spite of their failure to achieve their political goals. As intra-elite dissent was pivotal in understanding the Arab uprisings, the coalition of national ruling elites with European institutions in terms of austerity strategy is essential in understanding the limits of media/technology power and, therefore, the dissociation between communication and representative power.

A shocking depiction of one of the world's most ruthless regimes - and the story of one woman's fight to survive. I will never forget the camp. I cannot forget the eyes of the prisoners, expecting me to do something for them. They are innocent. I have to tell their story, to tell about the darkness they are in. It is so easy to suffocate us with the demons of powerlessness, shame, and guilt. But we aren't the ones who should feel ashamed. Born in China's north-western province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime: being Kazakh, one of China's ethnic minorities. The north-western province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years it has become home to over 1,200 penal camps - modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities. Imprisoned solely due to their ethnicity, inmates are subjected to relentless punishment and torture, including being beaten, raped, and used as subjects for medical experiments. The camps represent the greatest systematic incarceration of an entire people since the Third Reich. In prison, Sauytbay was put to work teaching Chinese language, culture, and politics, in the course of which she gained access to secret information that revealed Beijing's long-term plans to undermine not only its minorities, but democracies around the world. Upon her escape to Europe she was reunited with her family, but still lives under the constant threat of reprisal. This rare testimony from the biggest surveillance state in the world reveals not only the full, frightening scope of China's tyrannical ambitions, but also the resilience and courage of its author.

The attitude of Russia towards climate change is extremely important for the success of climate change control policies worldwide, as Russia, with its cold climate and vast resources of carbon fuels, is one of the world's biggest polluters. Moreover, Russia frequently comes across as not being very interested in containing environmental pollution. This book explores how issues to do with climate change are handled by the Russian media. It discusses how the state and economic elites have influenced Russia's environmental communication, with the state's control of the media strengthening since Putin came to power, and with control being exercised in some cases by ignoring or silencing the key issues. However, the book also shows how, recently, elites and the state in Russia have begun to realise that it is in the state's best interest to pursue more climate-oriented policies. The book concludes by examining how the communication of climate change issues in Russia could be improved and by assessing the extent to which a recent change in state climate policy could mean that media coverage of climate change in Russia will keep increasing.

The war in Afghanistan came to an end in 2014 after nearly thirteen years of conflict. Throughout that period, British officials have described UK operations there in various conflicting and often contradictory ways; as a counter-terrorism mission, a stabilisation mission, and a counter-narcotics mission, respectively. This book investigates how the war was 'sold' to the British public and how Britain's 'transnational' foreign and defence policy impacted on the unfolding of UK strategy in Afghanistan and the way it was communicated. It argues that because the UK's foreign and defence policy is transnationally-oriented - meaning that it is foundationally aimed at maintaining alliance with the United States and the institutional coherence of NATO - UK strategy is contingent upon collective security and, crucially, is fundamentally concerned with the means of policy (maintaining alliances) over the ends (using alliances to effect change). Explaining the inalienability of collective security systems to national security is no easy task, however, and, when faced with the adversities of Afghanistan, the UK state has since 2008 instead opted to describe the significance of Afghanistan in narrow, nation-centric, counter-terrorist concerns in order to maintain public support for collective security operations there whilst, paradoxically, framing the conflict in a manner that avoids talking about the transnational structure and purpose of the mission. This kind of 'strategic' communication is increasingly becoming a focus of the UK state as it faces a transnational dilemma of maintaining its collective security bonds whilst facing a public increasingly sceptical of liberal interventionism.

This book aims to further the research in the fields of social media and political communication by moving beyond the hype and avoiding the most eye-catching and spectacular cases. It looks at stable democracies without current political turmoil, small countries as well as large continents, and minor political parties as well as major ones. Investigating emerging practices in the United States, Europe, and Australia, both on national and local levels, enables us to grasp contemporary tendencies across different regions and countries. The book provides empirical insights into the diverse uses of different social media for political communication in different societies. Contributors look at the ways in which novel arenas connect with other channels for political communication, and how politicians as well as citizens in general use social media services. Presenting state-of-the-art methodological approaches, drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses, the book brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers in order to address emerging practices of the mediation of politics, campaign communication, and issues of citizenship and democracy as expressed on social media platforms. This book was originally published as a special issue of Information, Communication & Society.

The frequent failure of military or armed interventions to protect civilians is well known. This edited collection provides a comprehensive account of a different, effective paradigm: unarmed civilian protection (UCP). The principles and methods of UCP have been used for many decades to protect both specific, threatened individuals as well as whole communities. Featuring contributions from around the world, this book brings together a wide range of UCP practices in order to examine their underlying theory and interrelated strategies. The book provides an important illustration of the contributions UCP can make, while also discussing its limitations and failures.

Voting in Old and New Democracies examines voting behavior and its determinants based on 26 surveys from 18 countries on five continents between 1992 and 2008. It systematically analyzes the impact on voting choice of factors rooted in the currently dominant approaches to the study of electoral behavior, but adds to this analysis factors introduced or reintroduced into this field by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)-socio-political values, and political communication through media, personal discussion, and organizational intermediaries. It demonstrates empirically that these long-neglected factors have significant political impact in many countries that previous studies have overlooked, while "economic voting" is insignificant in most elections once long-term partisan attitudes are taken into consideration. Its examination of electoral turnout finds that the strongest predictor is participation by other family members, demonstrating the importance of intermediation. Another chapter surveys cross-national variations in patterns of intermediation, and examines the impact of general social processes (such as socioeconomic and technological modernization), country-specific factors, and individual-level attitudinal factors as determinants of those patterns. Complementing its cross-national comparative analysis is a detailed longitudinal case study of one country over 25 years. Finally, it examines the extent of support for democracy as well as significant cross-national differences in how democracy is understood by citizens. Written in a clear and accessible style, Voting in Old and New Democracies significantly advances our understanding of citizen attitudes and behavior in election settings.

A guiding principle in creating Political Marketing has been to examine the ways in which culture, politics, and society interrelate in the field of political marketing. In the course of the book, the editors and contributors consider 'culture' as a distinctive concept with transformative capacities that need further and deeper development in the engineering of the political marketing process. This may be introduced and, consequently, lead to broad formulation of a 'campaign culture'. Indeed, understanding and adapting a broader 'campaign culture', political marketing models may be seen as sets of pathways of key resources resulting viability in human assets, forms of influence, class stratification, alternative flows of information or networking and intercultural knowledge - sharing activity. This book consists of 18 chapters which deal with aspects of political marketing and 'campaign culture.' Theoretical chapters are found first, followed by two chapters that deal with theoretical issues which became a subject of research. Next presented are the articles that study aspects of electoral behavior, followed by the papers that analyze aspects of nationalism & national identity. Finally, the book concludes with three case studies on various issues in political marketing.

Voting in Old and New Democracies examines voting behavior and its determinants based on 26 surveys from 18 countries on five continents between 1992 and 2008. It systematically analyzes the impact on voting choice of factors rooted in the currently dominant approaches to the study of electoral behavior, but adds to this analysis factors introduced or reintroduced into this field by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)-socio-political values, and political communication through media, personal discussion, and organizational intermediaries. It demonstrates empirically that these long-neglected factors have significant political impact in many countries that previous studies have overlooked, while "economic voting" is insignificant in most elections once long-term partisan attitudes are taken into consideration. Its examination of electoral turnout finds that the strongest predictor is participation by other family members, demonstrating the importance of intermediation. Another chapter surveys cross-national variations in patterns of intermediation, and examines the impact of general social processes (such as socioeconomic and technological modernization), country-specific factors, and individual-level attitudinal factors as determinants of those patterns. Complementing its cross-national comparative analysis is a detailed longitudinal case study of one country over 25 years. Finally, it examines the extent of support for democracy as well as significant cross-national differences in how democracy is understood by citizens. Written in a clear and accessible style, Voting in Old and New Democracies significantly advances our understanding of citizen attitudes and behavior in election settings.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is the site of the largest mass repression of an ethnic and/or religious minority in the world today. Researchers estimate that since 2016 one million people have been detained there without trial. In the detention centres individuals are exposed to deeply invasive forms of surveillance and psychological stress, while outside them more than ten million Turkic Muslim minorities are subjected to a network of hi-tech surveillance systems, checkpoints and interpersonal monitoring. Existing reportage and commentary on the crisis tend to address these issues in isolation, but this ground-breaking volume brings them together, exploring the interconnections between the core strands of the Xinjiang emergency in order to generate a more accurate understanding of the mass detentions' significance for the future of President Xi Jinping's China. -- .

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe the world has witnessed a rising tide of contentious elections ending in heated partisan debates, court challenges, street protests, and legitimacy challenges. In some cases, disputes have been settled peacefully through legal appeals and electoral reforms. In the worst cases, however, disputes have triggered bloodshed or government downfalls and military coups. Contentious elections are characterized by major challenges, with different degrees of severity, to the legitimacy of electoral actors, procedures, or outcomes. Despite growing concern, until recently little research has studied this phenomenon. The theory unfolded in this volume suggests that problems of electoral malpractice erode confidence in electoral authorities, spur peaceful protests demonstrating against the outcome, and, in the most severe cases, lead to outbreaks of conflict and violence. Understanding this process is of vital concern for domestic reformers and the international community, as well as attracting a growing new research agenda. The editors, from the Electoral Integrity Project, bring together scholars considering a range of fresh evidence- analyzing public opinion surveys of confidence in elections and voter turnout within specific countries, as well as expert perceptions of the existence of peaceful electoral demonstrations, and survey and aggregate data monitoring outbreaks of electoral violence. The book provides insights invaluable for studies in democracy and democratization, comparative politics, comparative elections, peace and conflict studies, comparative sociology, international development, comparative public opinion, political behavior, political institutions, and public policy.

The Politics and Crisis Management of Animal Health Security addresses the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic in the United Kingdom - one of, if not the, most significant crises ever to face the UK farming industry. Underpinned by interviews with politicians and bureaucrats and with significant primary documentary analysis the book shows that the crisis was a critical juncture in how disease outbreaks have been planned and managed ever since. The author explores how this event affected policy and governance arrangements for managing subsequent disease-induced threats (such as avian influenza and bovine TB) and concludes by considering the 'temporality' of lesson learning by the UK government including the current and future challenges associated with managing incongruent risks (e.g., flood protection, swine flu and Ebola). This book provides students of public policy and administration with a significant illustration of how key concepts and analytical lenses from public policy can be applied to the study of the contours of practical policy change.

Our federal campaign finance system is in a state of disarray. The current regulatory scheme is not curbing, and may be abetting, the enormous increase in campaign contributions and expenditures. The enormous influence of major campaign donors on the process of government is a growing cause of national concern. The Special Commission of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York has spent the past two years studying the current system and developing a blueprint for reform. Composed of members with diverse political views and extensive legal and government experience, the Commission takes a fresh look at how to limit the undue influence of private money in federal elections. The result is a highly readable report that tells how the current system, established in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is being manipulated by monied special interests, and how the system can be reformed. The report addresses: how to develop a level playing field for candidates; how to limit the amount of money flowing into campaigns while allowing candidates to mount effective races; how to curb the use of soft money and issue advocacy while preserving the role of political parties; and how to structure a system that will restore public confidence in government. This account is must reading on an issue that is moving to the center of the national stage.

The Historical Dictionary of the Dirty Wars covers the period 1954-1990 in South America, when authoritarian regimes waged war on subversion, both real and imagined. The term "dirty war" (guerra sucia), though originally associated with the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 to 1983, has since been applied to neighboring dictatorships in Paraguay (1954-1989), Brazil (1964-1985), Bolivia (1971-1981), Uruguay (1973-1985), and Chile (1973-1990). Although the concept is by no means peculiar to Latin America-the term has become a byword for state-sponsored repression anywhere in the world-these regimes were among its most notorious practitioners. In the mid-1970s they joined forces-along with Ecuador and Peru-to create Operation Condor, a top-secret network of military dictatorships that kidnapped, tortured, and disappeared one another's political opponents. Their death squads operated both nationally and internationally, sometimes beyond the region. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of the Dirty Wars contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on the countries themselves; guerrilla and political movements that provoked (though by no means exonerated) governmental reaction; leading guerrilla, human-rights, military, and political figures; local, regional, and international human-rights organizations; expressions of cultural resistance (art, film, literature, music, and theater); and artistic figures (filmmakers, novelists, and playwrights) whose works attempted to represent or resist the period of repression. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the dirty wars of South America

A rabbi, a priest, a politician, public servants, a military officer, a student activist and a social media consultant are gathered in this book to discuss the incomprehensible situation of Israel's faltering public image. Rabbi Berl Wine addresses the Jewish diaspora tradition and the lack of religious understanding of the realities of running a sovereign modern state. Pastor Jorgen Buhler discusses the Christian Protestant pro-Israel perspective. Dr Meron Medzini, the biographer of Golda Meir, sets out the state's early policy toward propaganda. Dr. Moshe Yegar, a former deputy director in the Israeli foreign ministry discusses the time when Public Relations was abolished in the ministry by today's president, Shimon Peres. Danny Seman, formerly a head of department in the newly founded Ministry of Information and Government Press Office, tells of his experiences of working for the government without government backup. Barak Raz of the IDF Spokesman Unit gives the military angle. Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, sets out Israeli foreign policy objectives. Yossi Sarid, former senior minister and media personality, provides analysis of hasbara (public diplomacy) in an international perspective. David Olesker, a leading authority on global campus activism, gives a historical survey of anti-Israel campus activities. Eva Rosenstein and David Abitbol discuss professional media and social media perspectives of propaganda advocacy. Ron Schleifer sets out to rectify Israel's international image, through better understanding of historical and contemporary policy, and the political/religious/military philosophy behind the different approaches over the years, presenting media and psychological mechanisms of motivating a more resourceful approach to this increasingly necessary aspect of Israeli statehood.

This volume explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. In contemporary wars, with public opinion impacting heavily on outcomes, strategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict. This book asks how public support for the deployment of military troops to Afghanistan was garnered, sustained or lost in thirteen contributing nations. Public attitudes in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe towards the use of military force were greatly shaped by the cohesiveness and content of the strategic narratives employed by national policy-makers. Assessing the ability of countries to craft a successful strategic narrative, the book addresses the following key areas: 1) how governments employ strategic narratives to gain public support; 2) how strategic narratives develop during the course of the conflict; 3) how these narratives are disseminated, framed and perceived through various media outlets; 4) how domestic audiences respond to strategic narratives; 5) how this interplay is conditioned by both events on the ground, in Afghanistan, and by structural elements of the domestic political systems. This book will be of much interest to students of international intervention, foreign policy, political communication, international security, strategic studies and IR in general.

When it comes to elections, campaigns matter. And despite the ever-increasing role of volunteers and amateurs, modern American political campaigns are a professional affair. Understanding how they are run and how campaign strategies are set requires an in-depth analysis of what political consultants do, from opposition research to public opinion polling and from directing media strategies to mobilzing voters--with fundraising a priority at all stages. At all levels of the electoral arena, modern, sophisticated campaigns cannot hope to be effective without the guiding disciplines of professional consultants. This thoroughly updated edition of Dennis W. Johnson's classic text, originally titled No Place for Amateurs, highlights the growing importance of social media, targeting and analytics, Super PACs and dark money in a post-Citizens United world.

When it comes to elections, campaigns matter. And despite the ever-increasing role of volunteers and amateurs, modern American political campaigns are a professional affair. Understanding how they are run and how campaign strategies are set requires an in-depth analysis of what political consultants do, from opposition research to public opinion polling and from directing media strategies to mobilzing voters--with fundraising a priority at all stages. At all levels of the electoral arena, modern, sophisticated campaigns cannot hope to be effective without the guiding disciplines of professional consultants. This thoroughly updated edition of Dennis W. Johnson's classic text, originally titled No Place for Amateurs, highlights the growing importance of social media, targeting and analytics, Super PACs and dark money in a post-Citizens United world.

Beliefism (noun): Discrimination against people who disagree with us.

Do you avoid people who are strongly against immigration? Or strongly for trans rights? Against abortion? For drug legalisation? We might like to think that we're tolerant, but many of us struggle to engage with people whose opinions differ strongly from our own, even if they might have something useful to contribute to the debate. That means we're falling victim to what behavioural scientist Professor Paul Dolan defines as Beliefism: discrimination against those with different beliefs to us.

Drawing on the evidence from across the social sciences, Dolan shows how easy it is for us to divide ourselves into opposing camps - and how harmful that can be. Using the central metaphor of the duck-rabbit illusion - where the same image can be viewed as one animal or the other - the book shows that looking at an issue from only one perspective can lead to bad decisions and unnecessary conflict. The world would be a better place if there was less beliefism and Dolan shows how more tolerance is only possible "by design". We need to embed less beliefism into our organisations and lives and he provides a checklist called EMBRACE to help us do that.

Combining curiosity, irreverence and warmth, Beliefism is a definitive behavioural science take by a leader in his field. Whether it's among friends, at university or at work, being less beliefist will make you a better partner or parent, and a more effective buddy or boss.

This book examines the domestic electoral consequences of the economic and financial crisis in Europe, particularly in those countries where the crisis manifested itself more devastatingly: the Southern European countries of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, as well as Iceland and Ireland. On the surface, the electoral consequences of the crisis seem largely similar, having resulted, in these countries, in large electoral losses for incumbents, as the most elementary versions of "economic voting" theory would have us expect. However, behind this fundamental similarity, important differences emerge. Whilst in some cases, on the basis of post-election surveys, it is possible to see that the "crisis elections" followed a previous pattern of performance-oriented voters, with no major changes either in known predictors of electoral choices or in basic party system properties, other elections brought the emergence of new parties, new issues and cleavages, altering patterns of political competition. By examining these different outcomes by comparing the "crisis elections" with previous ones, this book takes into account their timing relative to different stages of crisis. It also scrutinises party strategies and campaign dynamics, particularly as governments attempted (and sometimes succeeded) in framing events and proposals so as to apportion responsibility for economic outcomes. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe the world has witnessed a rising tide of contentious elections ending in heated partisan debates, court challenges, street protests, and legitimacy challenges. In some cases, disputes have been settled peacefully through legal appeals and electoral reforms. In the worst cases, however, disputes have triggered bloodshed or government downfalls and military coups. Contentious elections are characterized by major challenges, with different degrees of severity, to the legitimacy of electoral actors, procedures, or outcomes. Despite growing concern, until recently little research has studied this phenomenon. The theory unfolded in this volume suggests that problems of electoral malpractice erode confidence in electoral authorities, spur peaceful protests demonstrating against the outcome, and, in the most severe cases, lead to outbreaks of conflict and violence. Understanding this process is of vital concern for domestic reformers and the international community, as well as attracting a growing new research agenda. The editors, from the Electoral Integrity Project, bring together scholars considering a range of fresh evidence- analyzing public opinion surveys of confidence in elections and voter turnout within specific countries, as well as expert perceptions of the existence of peaceful electoral demonstrations, and survey and aggregate data monitoring outbreaks of electoral violence. The book provides insights invaluable for studies in democracy and democratization, comparative politics, comparative elections, peace and conflict studies, comparative sociology, international development, comparative public opinion, political behavior, political institutions, and public policy.

The book critically analyses the changing role and nature of post-Cold War humanitarianism and how we can make sense of it, using Foucault's theories of biopolitics and governmentality. While it is widely acknowledged that, since the 1990s, the nature of humanitarian action has been changing, and much effort has been invested into producing various accounts of these changes, there is a lack of serious theoretical engagement with a view to making sense of the policies and practices associated with new humanitarianism, their conditions of possibility and their implications. At the same time, the complexity of the post-Cold War developments and associated changes in the humanitarian enterprise call for an approach that would pay close attention to the constellations of power relations driving these changes and help us understand their effects at different levels.Using Michel Foucault's theorising on biopolitics and governmentality, the book interprets the policies and practices associated with the new humanitarianism in general, as well as the dynamics of two specific international assistance efforts: the post-2001 conflict-related assistance effort in Afghanistan and the post-2000 Chernobyl-related assistance effort in Belarus. The book thereby demonstrates that it is possible to generate a powerful and insightful interpretation of the changing role and nature of humanitarian action, and, in so doing, to better understand contemporary humanitarianism, as well as identifying resistances to it and envisaging alternative ways of addressing humanitarian concerns. The book makes an important contribution to several areas of scholarship: on humanitarianism and the changing nature of post-Cold War humanitarian action, on Foucault's theorising on biopower, biopolitics and governmentality and its applications, and on the conflict-related assistance effort in Afghanistan. Not only does it offer an analysis of the nature, role and effects of contemporary humanitarian governing, but also analyses them at different levels (i.e., global and local).It is also be one of the first works to engage critically with Foucault's later theorising and the 'corrections' offered to it by Agamben and Esposito to better understand the relationship between sovereignty and biopolitics as technologies of governing and the ability of biopolitical governing to produce negative, and even lethal, effects, something that it then uses to identify and analyse such effects prevalent in humanitarian governing, for example, what is termed in the book 'biopolitics of endangerment, invisibility and abandonment'. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, humanitarianism, governmentality, and IR more generally.

Is this how democracy dies?

The Coming Storm is Gabriel Gatehouse’s brilliant exploration of how conspiracy theories are tearing America apart. It’s a story that takes you down a rabbit hole - one that both the US as a nation and he as a journalist fell through - to unpack an epochal shift in political culture that starts in the earliest years of the Clinton administration and reached a crescendo on 6 January 2021 with the storming of the US Capitol. But that event wasn’t the wild finale of a chaotic Trump presidency many hoped for - it was only the beginning.

A compelling mix of research and reportage, The Coming Storm gets under the skin of these conspiracy theories to show us a radical new kind of politics emerging, a movement that has coalesced around a loose alliance of tech bros, internet trolls and white supremacists. At a perilous moment in the history of American democracy, Gatehouse tells us some dark truths about our present, and provides clues about our future.

The Coming Storm marks the debut of a major new voice in political journalism.

Usage of the political keyword 'propaganda' by the Chinese Communist Party has changed and expanded over time. These changes have been masked by strong continuities spanning periods in the history of the People's Republic of China from the Mao Zedong era (1949-76) to the new era of Xi Jinping (2012-present). Redefining Propaganda in Modern China builds on the work of earlier scholars to revisit the central issue of how propaganda has been understood within the Communist Party system. What did propaganda mean across successive eras? What were its institutions and functions? What were its main techniques and themes? What can we learn about popular consciousness as a result? In answering these questions, the contributors to this volume draw on a range of historical, cultural studies, propa ganda studies and comparative politics approaches. Their work captures the sweep of propaganda - its appearance in everyday life, as well as during extraordinary moments of mobilization (and demobilization), and its systematic continuities and discontinuities from the perspective of policy-makers, bureaucratic function aries and artists. More localized and granular case studies are balanced against deep readings and cross-cutting interpretive essays, which place the history of the People's Republic of China within broader temporal and comparative frames. Addressing a vital aspect of Chinese Communist Party authority, this book is meant to provide a timely and comprehensive update on what propaganda has meant ideologically, operationally, aesthetically and in terms of social experience.