Everyone should know the life story of Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest leaders of all time, the first black president of South Africa, the most famous African, and a major world statesman. His inspiring life receives a fresh retelling in this new biography written especially for students and general readers. This volume is an enjoyable, authoritative, and balanced way to not only understand a great man, but also to understand a critical time in world history and race relations. Mandela's quest for racial justice for black South Africans as a leader of the African National Congress led to twenty-seven years of imprisonment. South African Apartheid consumed the attention of the world, coming to a head in the 1980s. With intense international pressure on the Apartheid government, Mandela was finally freed in 1990. Through the landmark presidency of South Africa and post Nobel Peace Prize years up until today, he has continued as a peacemaker and agent for change. Chapter 1 covers his birth into a strong Xhosa family and clan, with cultural, historical, and geographical context, and the next chapter follows his elite education path, taking into consideration the forces and people who helped shape the future leader. Chapter 3 discusses his law practice, African National Congress work, and his first wife. Chapters 4-6 continue with his growing political involvement and family. Chapter 7 and 8 deal with the long imprisonment and then freedom. The final chapters discuss his presidency and Nobel Peace Prize and life today. A timeline, photo essay, and selected bibliography complement the narrative.

The primary objective of Maguire's study is to consider the evolution of women's role in the Conservative Party since the time of Disraeli and try to assess whether it has always been one of progress. To do this she examines not only the attitude of women to the party and the official attitude of the party towards women but also the degree of acceptance that Conservative men have shown towards women members. It considers women at all levels, from that of the voter to the grassroots organization to national politics.

Drawing upon the expertise of a team of established researchers, The Conservatives under David Cameron provides a detailed analysis and evaluation of the ideas, policies and electoral strategy developed during the tenure of David Cameron as Conservative Party leader. For students of developments in British politics, the book provides the essential guide to key domestic and foreign policy choices, including the Conservative Party's agenda for economic policy, reform of the public services, welfare reform, law, order and immigration, the environment, constitutional reform, foreign affairs and defence, the European Union, and international development. These choices are placed in historical context by an introduction which also includes a detailed analysis of Conservative Party ideology.

Alastair Thompson here challenges the view of German Liberalism as the helpless victim of mass mobilization and political polarization in Wilhelmine Germany. He reveals the influence of a party that was the third largest in German politics by 1914 and which effectively wrote the Weimar Constitution. His study is central to understanding increasing Left Liberal support on the eve of war, and why liberal values could not be consolidated after 1918.

This book offers an innovative framework for understanding the role of civil society in regional and global policymaking. Using political economy analysis, Gerard demonstrates that ASEAN's people-oriented agenda builds legitimacy, while sidelining its detractors.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, author Tim Schilke knew that his concerns about some generally accepted suburban truths were often left unanswered. He later learned that a carefully crafted Red-suburban version of reality isolated him from nearly everything real.

"Red truth" was a strange morph of God, Patriotism, and Republicans. When this uniquely Red-suburban mentality played a role in winning President George W. Bush a second term in late 2004, Schilke began an investigation into the driving factors behind his Red upbringing, which still persist and thrive today in suburban and rural America.

From carefully-guarded moral relativism, to the Army's questionable recruiting techniques; from Major League Baseball's tainted home run records, to the myth of the Ownership Society; Schilke maps these current events back into the perspective of his Red upbringing.

Why does Red-suburban middle-America consistently vote against its own interests in election after election? "Growing Up Red" attempts to show that, in Red America, it is simply the patriotic thing to do. In Red America, raw Faith trumps Knowledge. Carefully-tweaked irrational fear drives never-ending consumption. A Republican President marches arm-in-arm with God down Main Street every Fourth of July.

What happens when actual reality starts to bleed through the carefully-protected fences of suburbia? Find out in "Growing Up Red."

In For the People: Left Populism in Spain and the US Jorge Tamames offers a stimulating comparative study of Spain's Podemos and the Bernie Sanders movement in the US. Left populism emerges as a potential powerful antidote to rising inequality in both Europe and America. Recent years have witnessed dramatic challenges to established politics across Europe and America. Opposition to business-as-usual has not been limited to the radical right: left populist movements with transformative agendas offer a very different - if equally radical - response to the status quo. Focusing on left populist movements in the contrasting political landscapes of Spain and the US, For the People brings together insights from Karl Polanyi, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to offer a bold new explanatory framework for today's left populism. The book will be a key text for activists, students of politics, and anyone interested in the current political landscape of Europe and America. It grounds its insights in a careful excavation of recent political history in the two countries, tracing the emergence and advance of left parties and movements from the early days of neoliberalism in the 1970s, through the political landslides that followed the 2008 financial crisis and the post2011 protest cycle, up to the present day. In the age of Trump and Brexit, For the People offers an indispensable mix of theoretical, historical and practical insights for all those interested in and inspired by the radical potentials of left populism.

This is an account of how one Labour Party politician, after suffering the biggest setback of his political career, used the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in Grosvenor Square, the battle over trade union reform and the troubles in Northern Ireland to propel himself to Number 10.

A critical assessment of the "New Labour" phenomena. It assesses the impact of Labour's "modernizers" in three crucial areas: changes within the Labour party itself; the reformation of the British state; and the influence on particular areas of policy. The essays do not seek to provide unequivocal answers to the questions raised by the arrival of New Labour and their initial period in office, but provide a debate between the contributors over the nature and significance of these changes. The book is a wide ranging and accessible account of the political phenomena which will lead Britain into the 21st century.

An updated and revised edition of a lively account of British Conservativism, illuminated throughout by a concentration upon the men, and woman, who have led the Conservative party.This book is written by a big name author with trade acumen and a lively and engaging writing style. It offers detailed history and analysis from 1830 to the present day, including a new chapter on David Cameron's leadership. It provides revisionist accounts of Peel, Disraeli and Churchill.The second edition of this successful text has been thoroughly updated to take into account recent research, and now begins at 1830. Charmley examines the history of the party and takes the story through the recent 'wilderness years' following the 1997 election fiasco, right up to David Cameron's leadership.

This book offers an in-depth examination of party finance and political corruption in a variety of political contexts. Its central focus is on the relationship between different forms of raising party finance and the consequent implications for improper influence over policy making and implementations. It presents both a general discussion of the issues and a set of case studies which illuminate the particular experiences of Britain, the United States, Russia, Italy, Germany and Southeast Asia.

This book looks at the organization and strategy of state-wide parties from across some of the most important multi-layered countries in Western Europe. The volume provides the first systematic attempt to study the strategy of state-wide parties on the basis of the comparative literature on issue voting.

The "Dictionary of Labour Biography" has an outstanding reputation as a reference work for the study of nineteenth and twentieth-century British history. Volume XII maintains this standard of original and thorough scholarship. Each entry draws on primary sources, engages with the most recent historiography and is supported by an appropriate bibliography. The coverage emphasizes the ethnic and national diversity of British labor, the contribution of women, and neglected political traditions including Trotskyism. Special notes on Keep Left and the Nenni Telegram offer new insights into the politics of the 1940s.

The Republican Party currently enjoys an edge. The advantage can be seen in Congress, state politics, judicial rulings, foreign and domestic policy, party finances, the media, public attitudes, and economic and demographic developments. Yet the Republicans do not seem capable of translating this into a durable electoral majority. Conditions now exist within American politics that will facilitate the establishment of Republican rule. Many of these conditions have ripened during the past decade. They include rules governing elections and campaign finance, shifts in core political values among the public that are consistent with Republican philosophy, and fundamental social and economic changes in American society that are likely to increase the ranks of Republican voters. The author explains in lucid, engaging terms how Republicans have taken control of both houses of Congress and experienced a remarkable resurgence at the state level. He explores how conservatives are utilizing the courts to simultaneously move policy rightward and mobilize sympathetic parts of the electorate. He also examines social and economic changes to show how racial politics, religiosity, and the nature of work and wealth benefit today's Republican Party. Republican rule should not be confused with Republican realignment. These conditions will advantage Republicans in future elections and bring about consistent Republican control of government at all levels—federal, state, and local, executive, legislative, and judicial. However, current conditions do not guarantee the kind of enduring Republican majority many journalists and strategists have predicted. Taylor explains the factors that will prohibit the Republicans from fully exploiting their advantages and dominating American politics the way the Democrats did in the 30 years following the New Deal. These factors include internal and intractable tensions within the Republican Party, the parties' sophisticated political information gathering strategies, and the innate risk aversion of the campaign industry.

Political culture and institutions may cause the development of authoritarian party organizations. Yet, what constitutes their structure and what explains their changing patterns across time and space? Conducting a comparative case study among four parties in the Turkish political system and utilizing the principal-agent approach to party governance, this study shows how the variance in interest configurations and the power resources of local party activists constitute these changing patterns. Musil argues that exit from intra-party authoritarianism is always a possibility not only because the party leaders choose to do so, but because the local party activists can challenge the existing structures by cultivating their own power resources.

WHAT SHOULD THE LEFT AIM TO ACHIEVE TODAY? This book addresses the challenges facing socialists and the recent shift from protest to politics. It examines the limits and possibilities for class, party and state transformation and the democratic and socialist insurgencies inside the Labour Party in Britain, and the Democratic Party in the USA. One of the most unexpected aspects of politics today is the coming to the fore of socialists at leadership level in the British Labour Party and the US Democratic Party. Their class-focused political discourse is directed against the power of capitalists, corporations and banks - and against the state policies which reflect and sustain that power. This is more than mere left populism - the focus is on addressing the dynamics, structure, inequalities, and contradictions in capitalism, confronting ruling class privilege and power, and the systemic core of neoliberal globalization. There is a new will: to build the power, cohesion, and capacities of the working class; to struggle for broader and deeper reforms. New socialist movements know that they must offer systematic political education to realise their great potential, and to overcome the barriers that they face. The authors provide essential historical, theoretical and critical perspective. They stress the need for renewing working-class politics through new kinds of socialist parties.

Contributors to this Hansard Society/Palgrave volume consider how British government and politics changed as Tony Blair gave way to Gordon Brown. "Gordon at the Helm" looks at a range of factors under Brown such as public opinion, party and opposition politics, British government and administration, public policy, local government and foreign policy.

Based on a unique series of surveys conducted during the 1990s, this book examines changes in the social backgrounds, attitudes, beliefs, and political activities of Labor party members. It addresses questions such as: What do Labor party members think of New Labor and its policies? How important are the members to the party? Are they becoming more or less active over time? Can the party dispense with its membership and still remain viable?

This volume, covering twenty-five populist parties in seventeen European states, presents the first comparative study of the impact of the Great Recession on populism. Based on a common analytical framework, chapters offer a highly differentiated view of how the interplay between economic and political crises helped produce patterns of populist development across Europe. Populism grew strongly in Southern and Central-Eastern Europe, particularly where an economic crisis developed in tandem with a political one. Nordic populism went also on the rise, but this region's populist parties have been surprisingly responsible. In Western Europe, populism actually contracted during the crisis - with the exception of France. As for the two Anglo-Celtic countries, while the UK has experienced the rise of a strong anti-European populist force, Ireland stands out as a rare case in which no such a party has risen in spite of the severity of its economic and political crises.

This book, newly available in paperback, is the first in the new series The Labour governments, 1964-70 and concentrates on Britain's domestic policy during Harold Wilson's tenure as Prime Minister. The book deals, in particular, with how the Labour government and Labour party as a whole tried to come to terms with the 1960s 'cultural revolution'. It is grounded in original research, takes unique account of responses from Labour's grass roots and from Wilson's ministerial colleagues, and constructs a 'total history' of the party at this critical moment in history. Steven Fielding situates Labour in its wider cultural context and focuses on how the party approached issues such as the apparent transformation of the class structure, the changing place of women, rising black immigration, the apparently widening generation gap and increasing calls for direct participation in politics. The book will be of interest to all those concerned with the development of contemporary British politics and society as well as those researching the 1960s. Together with the other books in the series, on international policy and economic policy, it provides an unrivalled insight into the development of Britain under Harold Wilson's government. -- .

Volume XIII of the Dictionary of Labour Biography maintains the standard of original and thorough scholarship for which the series has earned its outstanding reputation. A unique study of nineteenth and twentieth century British history, each entry is written by a specialist and engages with recent developments in the field of labour history.

"Aging Political Activists" is at once a series of political autobiographies, a set of personal narratives of social commitment, a model for qualitative research, and a challenge to current theory and practice in the social and behavioral sciences. It presents and examines the life stories of four individuals--close friends and former members of the Communist Party USA--revealing the ways they have developed and sustained their personal values and political outlook through a lifetime of involvement in movements for social change. Shuldiner approaches the interviews as a collaborative effort with his subjects who both describe their identities and experiences and critique the interview process, offering alternate readings of the content of their narratives or new directions for inquiry. These portraits of older activists challenge notions about the role of the personal in the development of political identity, while shifting the debate among gerontologists between activity versus disengagement in old age to a discussion of the dialectical relationship of these two aspects of human behavior throughout a lifespan.