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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies
The Robust Federation offers a comprehensive approach to the study
of federalism. Jenna Bednar demonstrates how complementary
institutions maintain and adjust the distribution of authority
between national and state governments. These authority boundaries
matter - for defense, economic growth, and adequate political
representation - and must be defended from opportunistic
transgression. From Montesquieu to Madison, the legacy of early
institutional analysis focuses attention on the value of
competition between institutions, such as the policy moderation
produced through separated powers. Bednar offers a reciprocal
theory: in an effective constitutional system, institutions
complement one another; each makes the others more powerful.
Diverse but complementary safeguards - including the courts,
political parties, and the people - cover different transgressions,
punish to different extents, and fail under different
circumstances. The analysis moves beyond equilibrium conceptions
and explains how the rules that allocate authority are not fixed
but shift gradually. Bednar's rich theoretical characterization of
complementary institutions provides the first holistic account of
federal robustness.
J. A. Hobson's critical treatise on the practice of imperialism -
whereby countries acquire territories for economic gain - is a
classic in its field. This edition includes all of the author's
original charts and illustrations. Published at the opening of the
20th century, while colonial imperialism still held decisive sway
as a political and social practice, Hobson's treatise caused
shockwaves in economics for its condemnation of a procedure long
considered irreproachable. While Hobson acknowledges that
imperialism is often supported by a sense of nationalistic pride
and achievement - as with the British Empire's colonial imperialism
- he identifies capitalist oligarchy as the true motivation behind
imperialistic ventures. Owners of productive capital, such as
factories, generate a large surplus which they desire to reinvest
in further factories; this prompts imperialist expansion into
foreign lands.
This book is a philosopher's view into the chaotic postcolony of
Zimbabwe, delving into Robert Mugabe's Will to Power. The Will to
Power refers to a spirited desire for power and overwhelming fear
of powerlessness that Mugabe artfully concealed behind performances
of invincibility. Nietzsche's philosophical concept of the Will to
Power is interpreted and expanded in this book to explain how a
tyrant is produced and enabled, and how he performs his tyranny.
Achille Mbembe's novel concept of the African postcolony is
mobilised to locate Zimbabwe under Mugabe as a domain of the
madness of power. The book describes Mugabe's development from a
vulnerable youth who was intoxicated with delusions of divine
commission to a monstrous tyrant of the postcolony who mistook
himself for a political messiah. This account exposes how
post-political euphoria about independence from colonialism and the
heroism of one leader can easily lead to the degeneration of
leadership. However, this book is as much about bad leadership as
it is about bad followership. Away from Eurocentric stereotypes
where tyranny is isolated to African despots, this book shows how
Mugabe is part of an extended family of tyrants of the world. He
fought settler colonialism but failed to avoid being infected by
it, and eventually became a native coloniser to his own people. The
book concludes that Zimbabwe faces not only a simple struggle for
democracy and human rights, but a Himalayan struggle for liberation
from genocidal native colonialism that endures even after Robert
Mugabe's dethronement and death.
'Extremely convincing' - Electronic Intifada For decades we have
spoken of the 'Israel-Palestine conflict', but what if our
understanding of the issue has been wrong all along? This book
explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer
understanding of the Zionist movement's project to establish a
Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab
population and marginalizing its cultural presence. Jeff Halper
argues that the only way out of a colonial situation is
decolonization: the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination
and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in
which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a
shared political community. To show how this can be done, Halper
uses the 10-point program of the One Democratic State Campaign as a
guide for thinking through the process of decolonization to its
post-colonial conclusion. Halper's unflinching reframing will
empower activists fighting for the rights of the Palestinians and
democracy for all.
After three hundred years, the Anglo-Scottish Union is in serious
difficulty. This is not because of a profound cultural divide
between England and Scotland but because recent decades have seen
the rebuilding of Scotland as a political community while the
ideology and practices of the old unionism have atrophied. Yet
while Britishness is in decline, it has not been replaced by a
dominant ideology of Scottish independence. Rather Scots are
looking to renegotiate union to find a new place in the Isles, in
Europe, and in the world.
There are few legal, constitutional or political obstacles to
Scottish independence, but an independent Scotland would need to
forge a new social and economic project as a small nation in the
global market-place, and there has been little serious thinking
about the implications of this. Short of independence, there is a
range of constitutional options for renegotiating the Union to
allow more Scottish self-government on the lines that public
opinion seems to favor. The limits are posed not by constitutional
principles but by the unwillingness of English opinion to abandon
their unitary conception of the state. The end of the United
Kingdom may be provoked, not by Scottish nationalism, but by
English unionism.
This groundbreaking book offers a comprehensive documentary history
of children whose parents were identified as enemies of the Soviet
regime from its inception through Joseph Stalin's death. When
parents were arrested, executed, or sent to the Gulag, their
children also suffered. Millions of children, labeled "socially
dangerous," lost parents, homes, and siblings. Co-edited by Cathy
A. Frierson, a senior American scholar, and Semyon S. Vilensky,
Gulag survivor and compiler of the Russian documents, the book
offers documentary and personal perspectives. The editors present
top-secret documents in translation from the Russian state
archives, memoirs, and interviews with child survivors. The
editors' narrative reveals how such prolonged child victimization
could occur, who knew about it, and who tried to intervene on the
children's behalf. The editors show how the emotions from childhood
trauma persist into the twenty-first century, passing from victims
to their children and grandchildren. Interviews with child
survivors also display their resilient ability to fashion
productive lives despite family destruction and stigma.
This critical edition of Admiral Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton
is to bring together the important letters of Nelson to Lady
Hamilton that have only been published in parts over the last 200
years. Only by bringing the letters of Nelson to Lady Hamilton
together is it possible to assess their relationship and to present
certain insights into Nelson's personality that are not revealed in
his official correspondence. Thorough research into this side of
Nelson's personality and into the nature of his notorious and
unconventional relationship with Lady Hamilton has been hampered in
the past by a desire not to look too closely at Nelson's personal
morality. To a considerable extent their relationship was regarded
as a challenge to traditional gender roles and it indeed did not
conform to stereotypes that are usually attributed to men and women
in a heterosexual relationship. Lady Hamilton was so obviously
lacking in the subservience and passivity expected from women in
that era that authors over the course of time started to exclude
her in their accounts of the public sphere by reducing her to a
private weakness of Nelson's, who could be successful at sea, where
he was far away from the enthralling influence of a manipulating
woman. The letters in this edition testify how Admiral Nelson's
life at sea was not exclusively public nor was Lady Hamilton's life
ashore solely private. It also shows how the two supposedly
separate spheres of male and female lives were connected. A fresh
approach and a thorough discussion of this important and neglected
aspect not only of Nelson's life, but of gender history, demands
this exact and scholarly edition of the primary material, which
consists of about 400 letters that Nelson wrote to Lady Hamilton
over the course of the last seven years of his life and about a
dozen letters of her to him that have survived.
In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill
approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the
most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating
the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and
inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil
and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely
because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this
bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his
incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently
declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony
collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that
spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the
developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist
system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal
extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of
Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.
First published in 1980. This book covers areas of policy interest
viewed from a social democratic perspective and each chapter takes
a specific issue which would have been of concern to Labour in the
1980s, including some of the more controversial areas. The study
reviews various problem areas and suggests policies which are
realistic and applicable in the conditions of the 1980s. This title
will be of interests to scholars and students of history and
politics.
Socialist planning played an enormous role in the economic and
political history of the twentieth century. Beginning in the USSR
it spread round the world. It influenced economic institutions and
economic policy in countries as varied as Bulgaria, USA, China,
Japan, India, Poland and France. How did it work? What were its
weaknesses and strengths? What is its legacy for the twenty-first
century? Now in its third edition, this textbook is fully updated
to cover the findings of the period since the collapse of the USSR.
It provides an overview of socialist planning, explains the
underlying theory and its limitations, looks at its implementation
in various sectors of the economy, and places developments in their
historical context. A new chapter analyses how planning worked in
the defence-industrial complex. This book is an ideal text for
undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in comparative
economic systems and twentieth-century economic history.
'A brilliant and important book ... Five Stars!' Mark Dolan,
talkRADIO 'An important new book' Daily Express An alternative
history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever
told and how they've been used over time. Lincoln did not believe
all men were created equal. The Aztecs were not slaughtered by the
Spanish Conquistadors. And Churchill was not the man that people
love to remember. In this fascinating new book, journalist and
author Otto English takes ten great lies from history and shows how
our present continues to be manipulated by the fabrications of the
past. He looks at how so much of what we take to be historical fact
is, in fact, fiction. From the myths of WW2 to the adventures of
Columbus, and from the self-serving legends of 'great men' to the
origins of curry - fake history is everywhere and used ever more to
impact our modern world. Setting out to redress the balance,
English tears apart the lies propagated by politicians and think
tanks, the grand narratives spun by populists and the media, the
stories on your friend's Facebook feed and the tales you were told
in childhood. And, in doing so, reclaims the truth from those who
have perverted it. Fake History exposes everything you weren't told
in school and why you weren't taught it.
How and why do listeners come over time to 'feel the nation'
through particular musical works? This book develops a comparative
analysis of the relationship between western art music, nations and
nationalism. It explores the influence of emergent nations and
nationalism on the development of classical music in Europe and
North America and examines the distinctive themes, sounds and
resonances to be found in the repertory of each of the nations. Its
scope is broad, extending well beyond the period 1848-1914 when
national music flourished most conspicuously. The interplay of
music and nation encompasses the oratorios of Handel, the open-air
music of the French Revolution and the orchestral works of
Beethoven and Mendelssohn and extends into the mid-twentieth
century in the music of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Copland. The
book addresses the representation of the national community, the
incorporation of ethnic vernacular idioms into art music, the
national homeland in music, musical adaptations of national myths
and legends, the music of national commemoration and the
canonisation of national music. Bringing together insights from
nationalism studies, musicology and cultural history, it will be
essential reading not only for musicologists but for cultural
historians and historians of nationalism as well. MATTHEW RILEY is
Reader in Music at the University of Birmingham. The late ANTHONY
D. SMITH was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism andEthnicity at the
London School of Economics.
Historical archeology studies once relied upon a binary view of
colonialism: colonizers and colonized, the colonial period and the
postcolonial period. The international contributors to this volume
scrutinize imperialism and expansionism through an alternative lens
that looks beyond simple dualities to explore the variously
gendered, racialized, and occupied peoples of a multitude of
faiths, desires, associations, and constraints. Colonialism is not
a phase in the chronology of a people but a continuous phenomenon
that spans the Old and New Worlds. Most important, the contributors
argue that its impacts - and, in some instances, even the same
processes set in place by the likes of Columbus - are ongoing.
Inciting a critical study of the lasting consequences of ancient
and modern colonialism on descendant communities, this wideranging
volume includes essays on Roman Britain, slavery in Brazil, and
contemporary Native Americans. In its efforts to define the scope
of colonialism and the comparability of its features, this
collection challenges the field to go beyond familiar geographical
and historical boundaries and draws attention to unfolding
colonialfutures.
This book examines how the rulers in the Persian Gulf responded to
the British announcement of military withdrawal from the Gulf in
1968, ending 150 years of military supremacy in the region. The
British system in the Gulf was accepted for more than a century not
merely because the British were the dominant military power in the
region. The balance of power mattered, but so did the framework
within which the British exercised their power. The search for a
new political framework, which began when the British announced
withdrawal, was not simply a matter of which ruler would amass
enough military power to fill the void left by the British: it was
also a matter of the Gulf rulers - chiefly Iran, Saudi Arabia, and
the ruling shaykhs of the lower Gulf - coming to a shared
understanding of when and how the exercise of power would be viewed
as legitimate. This book explores what shaped the rulers' ideas and
actions in the region as the British system came to an end,
providing a much-needed political history of the region in the
lead-up to the independence of the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar in 1971.
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