Bantu Holomisa is one of South Africa’s most respected and popular political figures. Born in the Transkei in 1955, he attended an elite school for the sons of chiefs and headmen. While other men his age were joining Umkhonto weSizwe, Holomisa enrolled in the Transkeian Defence Force and rose rapidly through the ranks.

As head of the Transkeian Defence Force, Holomisa led successive coups against the homeland regimes and then became the head of its military government. He turned the Transkei into a ‘liberated space’, giving shelter to ANC and PAC activists, and declared his intention of holding a referendum on the reincorporation of the Transkei into South Africa. These actions brought him immense popularity and the military dictator became a liberation hero for many South Africans.

When the unbanned ANC held its first election for its national executive in 1994, Holomisa, who had by now joined the party, received the most votes, beating long-time veterans and party stalwarts. He and Mandela developed a close relationship, and Holomisa served in Mandela’s cabinet as deputy minister for environmental affairs and tourism. As this biography reveals, the relationship with both Mandela and the ANC broke down after Holomisa testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, among other issues, that Stella Sigcau and her cabinet colleagues had accepted a bribe from Sol Kerzner.

After being expelled from the ANC, Holomisa formed his own party, the United Democratic Movement, with Roelf Meyer. As leader of the UDM, Holomisa has played a prominent role in building coalitions among opposition parties and in leading important challenges to the dominant party.

This biography, written in collaboration with Holomisa, presents an engaging and revealing account of a man who has made his mark as a game changer in South African politics.

In this illuminating examination of the Obama presidency, the contributors describe the policy directions followed, and the administration s level of success in achieving its objectives. Throughout the Obama administration, efforts were intended to alleviate the worst of the economic stress facing the nation, move the president closer to the center of the American political spectrum, and prepare for the upcoming reelection campaign, to be fought primarily on the same issues as the earlier one. The contributors present an analysis of the motivations and political thinking underlying the administration s action along with assessments of the policy consequences of the issue agenda favored and the public s reaction. The Obama Presidency is an in-depth account of one of the most intriguing and important presidencies at a time of economic crisis that goes a long way in explaining the policy decisions made and their political consequences, as well as the choices facing a nation in transition.

This A-Z encyclopedia provides carefully selected entries covering the people, events, and concepts relevant to Andrew Johnson's life. Andrew Johnson was-and is-an American paradox. He never attended school, yet fought for public education. He was a Southern slaveholder who opposed secession and enforced emancipation. Born into poverty, he became the 17th president of the United States-and the first U.S. president to be impeached. This new volume thoroughly examines the troubled career of our most unpopular president-not to resuscitate his reputation, but because his personal contradictions reflected those of his country: a democratic nation conceived in liberty, yet existing half slave and half free; an economy of yeoman farmers and independent artisans being swept into industrialization and a market system; a country fond of tradition, but caught up in social, economic, and political revolution. More than 350 entries cover the five decades of Andrew Johnson's successful career, from 1828-1875 Selected original documents include the Articles of Impeachment, speeches, proclamations, vetoes, and letters

Barely a week goes by without another government U-turn and with the cost of living crisis and rising mortgage rates we really need those in charge to get it right. In this timely book Cambridge Professor Dennis C. Grube explores the pitfalls, failures and successes of those in power around the world. 'A must-read' - Sebastian Payne 'Convincing' - David Lammy MP We live in an era when we really need governments to be effective - the economy, our health and the future of the planet are at stake - but so often they can seem clueless, and their decisions leave us confused. With insight and wit, Grube explains how governments can improve their decision-making and by examining fascinating case studies he highlights the key factors that make for effective government. With the stakes higher than ever before, this original and important book is an essential read for any concerned citizen who wants to understand why governments make the wrong decisions and, crucially, what can be done about it. 'Highly original and very entertaining' - Gavin Esler 'There is a real gap for this book' - Isabel Hardman

Although previous advocates of European Unity proposed the replacement of the "balance of power" model of international relations, Jean Monnet was the first to try to do so along Franco-German rather than Franco-British lines. He concluded that restrictions on national sovereignty were essential and that there were steps that could be taken prior to full federation. Through his Community method, Monnet hoped to create a French-led, continental federation within a Western association. His "United States of Europe" was aimed not only back at the Franco-German conflict, but also forward to the problem of Europe's place in the world. This study explores Jean Monnet's European project and the intentions behind it from World War I to the 1960s. Fransen relies on a close and comparative reading of Monnet's notes and documents, placed in their political and historical context. Most work on Monnet's contribution begins with his later presence as an elder statesman of the European movement and reads his later pronouncements back into his earlier work. This book takes the opposite approach and, by concentrating on his earlier work, is able to show a more complicated picture of Monnet's aspirations than has been presented to date.

Nabih Berri has been a key figure in the Lebanese and Shi'ite politics for the last three decades. As the leader of the Shi'ite Amal movement since 1980 and as the Lebanese Speaker since 1992, Berri has played a major role in all political events and processes in Lebanon in the last thirty years. This is the first book to describe and analyze Nabih Berri's ideology, pragmatism, and general political performance in multiple arenas.

Kwame Nkrumah remains a towering figure in African history. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent campaign of civil disobedience, he led what is now the nation of Ghana to independence in 1957. Nkrumah made Ghana a beacon of hope for not only Ghanaians but also people of African descent throughout the world. Perhaps no other African leader of the 1950s and 1960s personified the dreams, principles, and aspirations of this era. This thoroughgoing analysis of Nkrumah's political, social, and economic thought centers on his own writings, and reexamines his life and thought by focusing on the political discourses and controversies surrounding him.

The towering figure who remade American politics--the champion of the ordinary citizen and the scourge of entrenched privilege
The Founding Fathers espoused a republican government, but they were distrustful of the common people, having designed a constitutional system that would temper popular passions. But as the revolutionary generation passed from the scene in the 1820s, a new movement, based on the principle of broader democracy, gathered force and united behind Andrew Jackson, the charismatic general who had defeated the British at New Orleans and who embodied the hopes of ordinary Americans. Raising his voice against the artificial inequalities fostered by birth, station, monied power, and political privilege, Jackson brought American politics into a new age.
Sean Wilentz, one of America's leading historians of the nineteenth century, recounts the fiery career of this larger-than-life figure, a man whose high ideals were matched in equal measure by his failures and moral blind spots, a man who is remembered for the accomplishments of his eight years in office and for the bitter enemies he made. It was in Jackson's time that the great conflicts of American politics--urban versus rural, federal versus state, free versus slave--crystallized, and Jackson was not shy about taking a vigorous stand. It was under Jackson that modern American politics began, and his legacy continues to inform our debates to the present day.

The behaviour of politicians and public servants often strikes outside observers as erratic, inconsistent and sometimes foolish. One way of understanding their behaviour is political anthropology. This book focuses on the everyday life of ministers and senior public servants in different countries, describing their world through their eyes. It analyses how such practices are embedded in political and administrative traditions. It explores how their beliefs, practices and traditions create meaning in politics and public policy making. It provides unique data on the everyday life government elites and practical advice on how to conduct such fieldwork.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal challenged President Clinton's political credibility. Robert Busby identifies and analyzes the damage limitation strategies adopted by the Clinton administration to contend with the Lewinsky scandal, and explains how and why Clinton survived the most serious Constitutional crisis since Watergate.

This book is concerned with a large question in one small, but highly problematic case: how can a prime minister establish control and coordination across his or her government? The Greek system of government sustains a 'paradox of power' at its very core. The Constitution provides the prime minister with extensive and often unchecked powers. Yet, the operational structures, processes and resources around the prime minister undermine their power to manage the government. Through a study of all main premierships between 1974 and 2009, Prime Ministers in Greece argues that the Greek prime minister has been 'an emperor without clothes'. The costs of this paradox included the inability to achieve key policy objectives under successive governments and a fragmented system of governance that provided the backdrop to Greece's economic meltdown in 2010. Building on an unprecedented range of interviews and archival material, Featherstone and Papadimitriou set out to explore how this paradox has been sustained. They conclude with the Greek system meeting its 'nemesis': the arrival of the close supervision of its government by the 'Troika' - the representatives of Greece's creditors. The debt crisis challenged taboos and forced a self-reflection. It remains unclear, however, whether either the external strategy or the domestic response is likely to be sufficient to make the Greek system of governance 'fit for purpose'.

This lucid and original work argues for a new style of political leadership, one which pays deliberate and sophisticated attention to the emotional dynamics of the public. In exploring this basic idea of 'emotional governance', Barry Richards also examines the often unhelpful contributions of the news media to the 'emotional public sphere'. A case study of terrorism, as a highly emotional topic and as a key political issue in many liberal democracies, grounds the book's ideas in today's political landscape.

Though in recent months Putin s popularity has frayed at the edges, the dearth of comparably powerful and experienced political leaders leaves no doubt that he will continue to be a key political figure. During his tenure as Russia s President and subsequently as Prime Minister, Putin transcended politics, to become the country s major cultural icon. This book examines the nature of his iconic status. It explores his public persona as glamorous hero, endowed with vision, wisdom, moral and physical strength the man uniquely capable of restoring Russia s reputation as a global power. In analysing cultural representations of Putin, the book assesses the role of the media in constructing and disseminating this image and weighs the Russian populace s contribution to the extraordinary acclamation he enjoyed throughout the first decade of the new millennium, challenged only by a tiny minority.

In this lively, authoritative collection, Thomas J. McInerney presents famous and lesser-known speeches, letters, and other important documents from every U.S. president from George Washington to Barack Obama.

Whether printed in full or excerpted, these history-making documents are an invaluable resource as well as a fascinating browse. Including familiar documents such as the Emancipation Proclamation, to personal correspondence such as a letter from George H.W. Bush to his children, this collection brings together the famous statements that came to represent each administration with intimate glimpses into the thought processes of various presidential leaders.

Now in its second edition, "Presidential Documents "has been re-designed to increase its usefulness in the classroom. Part openers introduce each era of the American presidency with a concise political and historical overview, highlighting the challenges each leader faced, and placing the documents in context. Whether used as a complement to an American history survey text or as a collection of primary documents for courses on the American Presidency, "Presidential Documents" provides an engrossing look at the work of the leaders of the United States, in all their complexity.

The election of Barack Obama has brought worldwide attention not only to what his policies will be, but to what kind of First Lady Michelle Obama will be. Throughout the long campaign season, Michelle Robinson Obama garnered a good amount of attention, kudos and criticism about her words, actions, even her appearance, but few people know what kind of role she will play once she settles into the White House. One clue is to examine her words and statements of the past, and the proposed book "Michelle Obama In Her Own Words" will show readers who are eager to learn more about America's new history-making First Lady. "Michelle Obama In Her Own Words" will be a book that contains 200-250 quotations arranged in approximately 75 different categories. A short introduction and biography of the new First Lady will precede the quotes. Drawing on quotations from a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, transcripts, speeches, and TV interviews and profiles, the quotations date from Michelle's career as a high-powered corporate lawyer in Chicago and her high-powered executive jobs in the Chicago Mayor's office and at the University of Chicago, up through the election of November 5th, 2008. Rogak locates and organizes the funny, fascinating, inspiring (and occasionally controversial) words of our future First Lady, on topics such as:

- Abortion
- Affirmative Action
- Balancing career and family
- Barack's safety
- Being compared to Jackie Onassis
- Her childhood
- Her critics
- Her fashion sense
- Hillary Clinton
- Iraq
- Racism
- Rev. Jeremiah Wright
- Sarah Palin
- Terrorism
- The "elitist" tag
- The Presidential campaign
- The role of the First Lady
- Women who have influenced her

The unmissable inside story of the most dramatic general election campaign in modern history and Theresa May's battle for a Brexit deal, the greatest challenge for a prime minister since the Second World War. By the bestselling author of All Out War, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2017. This is the unmissable inside story of the most dramatic general election campaign in modern history and Theresa May's battle for a Brexit deal - the greatest challenge for a prime minister since the Second World War. Fall Out tells of how a leader famed for her caution battled her bitterly divided cabinet at home while facing duplicitous Brussels bureaucrats abroad. Of how she then took the biggest gamble of her career to strengthen her position - and promptly blew it. It is also a tale of treachery where - in the hour of her greatest weakness - one by one, May's colleagues began to plot against her. Inside this book you will find all the strategy, comedy, tragedy and farce of modern politics - where principle, passion and vaulting ambition collide in the corridors of power. It chronicles a civil war at the heart of the Conservative Party and a Labour Party back from the dead, led by Jeremy Corbyn, who defied the experts and the critics on his own side to mount an unlikely tilt at the top job. With access to all the key players, Tim Shipman has written a political history that reads like a thriller, exploring how and why the EU referendum result pitched Britain into a year of political mayhem.

The untold story of Winston Churchill's precarious finances - and the most original and surprising book about Churchill to emerge for many years. The popular image of Churchill - grandson of a duke, drinking champagne and smoking a cigar - conjures up a man of wealth and substance. The reality is that Britain's most celebrated 20th-century statesman lived for most of his life on a financial cliff-edge. Only fragments of information about his finances, or their impact on his public life, have previously emerged. With the help of unprecedented access to Churchill's private records, David Lough creates the first fully researched narrative of Churchill's private finances and business affairs. As he reveals the scale of Churchill's financial risk-taking, combined with an ability to talk or write himself out of the tightest of corners, the links between the private man and public figure become clear.

The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide who still live under them, their freedoms violated, and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, corruption, ignorance, and injustice. What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany tells us that, as with any disease, to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.

New York Times bestselling author of Fire And Fury and Siege completes the trilogy on the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

We all witnessed some of the most shocking and confounding political events of our lifetime: the careening last stage of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign, the president’s audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of January 6, the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. But what was really going on in the inner sanctum of the White House during these calamitous events? What did the president and his dwindling cadre of loyalists actually believe? And what were they planning?

Michael Wolff pulled back the curtain on the Trump presidency with his 2 previous bestsellers and now he closes the door on the presidency with a final, astonishingly candid account.

Wolff embedded himself in the White House in 2017 and gave us a vivid picture of the chaos that had descended on Washington. Almost four years later, Wolff finds the Oval Office even more chaotic and bizarre, a kind of Star Wars bar scene. At all times of the day, Trump, behind the Resolute desk, is surrounded by schemers and unqualified sycophants who spoon-feed him the “alternative facts” he hungers to hear―about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, and, most of all, his chance of winning reelection. Once again, Wolff has gotten top-level access and takes us front row as Trump’s circle of plotters whittles down to the most enabling and the president reaches beyond the bounds of democracy as he entertains the idea of martial law and balks at calling off the insurrectionist mob that threatens the institution of democracy itself.

As the Trump presidency’s hold over the country spiraled out of control, an untold and human account of desperation, duplicity, and delusion was unfolding within the West Wing. Landslide is that story as only Michael Wolff can tell it.

Through a range of international case studies from the USA, UK, France, Germany and Italy, this text assesses the conditions necessary for effective leadership and emphasizes the part played by uncertainty and division amongst followers.

How George Washington survived so many close encounters with the Grim Reaper - in the wilderness frontier, on the battlefield, from serious illness, and in terrifying accidents - can be read only in the story of a steady succession of miracles. For the incredible fact that he survived all of these encounters (except of course the last) to live sixty-seven years is a consummation for which untold millions can be eternally grateful. For it was Washington who with the success of the Revolution and the leadership provided through two terms as President brought forth upon this continent an entirely new way of life. This society, governed as it now was by a spirited reverence for freedom and guaranteed by documents revolutionary in their principles, must have startled the Old World.

Contemporary observers of politics in America often reduce democracy to demography. Whatever portion of the vote not explained by the class, gender, race, and religious differences of voters is attributed to the candidates' positions on the issues of the day. But are these the only--or even the main--factors that determine the vote?
The Performance of Politics develops a new way of looking at democratic struggles for power, explaining what happened, and why, during the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States. Drawing on vivid examples taken from a range of media coverage, participant observation at a Camp Obama, and interviews with leading political journalists, Jeffrey Alexander argues that images, emotion, and performance are the central features of the battle for power. While these features have been largely overlooked by pundits, they are, in fact, the primary foci of politicians and their staff. Obama and McCain painstakingly constructed heroic self-images for their campaigns and the successful projections of those images suffused not only each candidate's actual rallies, and not only their media messages, but also the ground game. Money and organization facilitate the ground game, but they do not determine it. Emotion, images, and performance do. Though an untested senator and the underdog in his own party, Obama succeeded in casting himself as the hero--and McCain the anti-hero--and the only candidate fit to lead in challenging times.
Illuminating the drama of Obama's celebrity, the effect of Sarah Palin on the race, and the impact of the emerging financial crisis, Alexander's engaging narrative marries the immediacy and excitement of the final months of this historic presidential campaign with a new understanding of how politics work.