Over the past decade, states and international organizations have shifted a surprising range of foreign policy functions to private contractors. But who is accountable when the employees of foreign private firms do violence or create harm? This timely book describes the services that are now delivered by private contractors and the threat this trend poses to core public values of human rights, democratic accountability, and transparency. The author offers a series of concrete reforms that are necessary to expand traditional legal accountability, construct better mechanisms of public participation, and alter the organizational structure and institutional culture of contractor firms. The result is a pragmatic, nuanced, and comprehensive set of responses to the problem of foreign affairs privatization.

Edited by two preeminent scholars, this book provides coverage of the policy issues related to the increasingly diverse treatments, practices, and applications of psychedelics. Hallucinogenic substances like LSD, mescaline, peyote, MDMA, and ayahuasca have a reputation as harmful substances that are enjoyed only by recreational users committing criminal acts. But leading international researchers and scholars who contributed to this book hold that the use of psychedelic substances for health, religious, intellectual, and artistic purposes is a Constitutional right-and a human right. Based on that conclusion, these scholars focus on policy issues that regulate the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, religion, personal life, and higher education, arguing that existing regulations should match current and anticipated future uses. This volume has two parts. The first surveys research on the use of psychedelic drugs in medicine, religion, and truth-seeking, following these topics through history and contemporary practice. The second section treats government policices that regulate the psychological, physiological, biochemical, and spiritual aspects of research and experience in these fields. The Psychedelic Policy Quagmire: Health, Law, Freedom, and Society challenges medical and legal policy experts, ethicists, scientists, and scholars with the question: How can we formulate policies that reduce the dangers of psychedelics' misuse and at the same time maximize the emerging diverse benefits? Covers history, law, social use, intellectual and sacramental practice, and current medical research, bringing the debate about psychedelic drugs up to date for the 21st century Summarizes evidence regarding the positive therapeutic effects of psychoactive drugs to show why regulations need to be changed Encompasses the work of the leading international researchers in the field Includes personal observations, vignettes, and narratives

What form should Europe take? Should it be based on 'nation states' or 'states of nations'? On what basis should European unification proceed? Should it be an elite undertaking pioneered by statesmen elected to democratic government offices, or should true unification also demand a significant European cultural forum open to spokesmen and -women representing the continent's nationality groups? Was the League of Nations really such a thing? Or was it a League of States? All these questions were posed by Ewald Ammende and his fellow minority associates during the 1920s. Coming to terms with the consequences of collapsed empires and at least four years of conflict, they were forced to consider how best to re-build their continent as if it were a tabula rasa. In the process, they provided intelligent, perceptive analyses of the national and international affairs of the day, particularly as they affected Central and Eastern Europe. Their voices, reflecting their status as national minorities and a geographical location beyond the borders of the post-war Great Powers, deserve to be written more thoroughly into the history of the interwar years. Their ideas still provide food for thought even today.

Within literature, history, politics, philosophy and theology, the interpretation of utopian ideals has evolved constantly. Juxtaposing historical views on utopian diagnoses, prescriptions and on the character and value of utopian thought with more modern interpretations, this volume explores how our ideal utopia has transformed over time. Challenging long-held interpretations, the contributors turn a fresh eye to canonical texts, and open them up to a twenty-first century audience. From Moore's Utopia to Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Utopian Moments puts forward a lively and accessible debate on the nature and significance of utopian thought and tradition. Each essay focuses on a key passage from the selected work using it to encourage both the specialist and the reader new to the field to read afresh. Written by an international team of leading scholars, the essays range from the sixteenth century to the present day and are designed to be both stimulating and accessible.

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aThompson . . . has put together a book of essays that seeks to aconfronta this news conservatism and lay bare its inner workings. The collection brings together commentators on contemporary American politics. . . . The group has an unabashedly progressive bent and their stated objective is to bury the new conservatism even as they enviously praise its successes.a
--"Popmatters"

aA useful resource that will enable the careful reader to understand the similarities and differences among these multiple ideologies.a--"Choice"

aArguing that American conservatism today is not only a rejoinder to liberalism but a reflection of at least some of its values, Confronting the New Conservatism subjects the neo-conservative and Christian conservative movements to thoughtful scrutiny and original scholarly analysis. While animated by progressive politics, this collection offers students and citizens alike a deeper look at the intellectual and ideological foundations of the American right in ways that will encourage understanding as well as a more effective liberal response.a
--Benjamin R. Barber, author of "Jihad vs. McWorld"

aThompson has assembled an exciting collection of essays written by a high quality group of scholars. The essays are sharp and academically rigorous, but also highly engaging and readable."
--Judith Grant, author of "Fundamental Feminism"

William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, George F. Will, and Dick Cheney. These are today's neoconservatives--confident, clear-cut, and a political force to be reckoned with. But how should we define this new conservatism? What is new about it?In this volume, some of today's top political scholars take on the charge of explaining, defining, and confronting the new conservatism of the last twenty-five years. The authors examine the ideas, policies and roots of this ideological movement showing that contemporary neoconservatism has been able to blend many of the aspects of social conservatism--such as religious populism and nationalism--with economic liberalism and the rhetoric of equality of opportunity and individualism. With their emphasis on dismantling the welfare state and a rhetorical return to economic laissez faire and individual rights, neoconservatives have been able to harness populist sentiment in terms of both economics and cultural issues. And with their belief in moral and cultural "simplicity," their turn away from science, their conviction in American superiority on the global stage, and their embrace of "anti-government" rhetoric, they have effectively changed the nature of the American political landscape.

The contributors to Confronting the New Conservatism offer a trenchant analysis and substantive critique of the neoconservative ethos, arguing that it is an ideology that needs to be better understood if change is to be had.

Contributors: Stanley Aronowitz, Chip Berlet, Stephen Eric Bronner, Lawrence Davidson, Greg Grandin, Philip Green, Diana M. Judd, Thomas M. Keck, Charles Noble, R. Claire Snyder, Michael J. Thompson, and Nicholas Xenos.

Organized around five key themes, this accessible introduction offers a thorough survey of the affective turn in contemporary political science. "Politics and the Emotions" is a unique collection of essays that reflects the affective turn in the analysis of today's political world. Contributed by both prominent and younger scholars from Europe, US, and Australia, the book aims to advance the debate on the relation between politics and the emotions. To do so, essays are organized around five key thematic areas: emotion, antagonism and deliberation, the politics of fear, the affective dimension of political mobilization, the politics of reparation, and politics and the triumph of the therapeutic. In addition, each chapter includes a case study to demonstrate the application of concepts to practical issues, from the war on terror in the UK and the AIDS activist organization ACT UP in the US to women's liberation movement in New Zealand and Dutch policy experiments. "Politics and the Emotions" provides an accessible introduction to a rapidly developing field that will appeal to students in political theory, public and social policy, as well as the theory and practice of democracy.

A growing number of political philosophers favor a view called liberal perfectionism. According to this view, liberal political morality is characterized by a commitment to helping individuals lead autonomous lives and making other valuable choices. In this book Jonathan Quong rejects this widely held view and offers an alternative account of liberal political morality. Quong argues that the liberal state should not be engaged in determining what constitutes a valuable or worthwhile life nor trying to make sure that individuals live up to this ideal. Instead, it should remain neutral on the issue of the good life, and restrict itself to establishing the fair terms within which individuals can pursue their own beliefs about what gives value to their lives. Liberalism without Perfection thus defends a position known as political liberalism.
In the first part of the book, Quong subjects the liberal perfectionist position to critical scrutiny, advancing three major objections that raise serious doubts about the liberal perfectionist position with regard to autonomy, paternalism, and political legitimacy. In the second part of the book, Quong presents and defends a distinctive version of political liberalism. In particular, he clarifies and develops political liberalism's central thesis: that political principles, in order to be legitimate, must be publicly justifiable to reasonable people. Drawing on the work of John Rawls, Liberalism without Perfection offers its own interpretation of this idea, and rebuts some of the main objections that have been pressed against it. In doing so, it provides novel arguments regarding the nature of an overlapping consensus, the structure of political justification, the idea of public reason, and the status of unreasonable persons.

This is the first book to examine the changes that have influenced republican identity since the beginning of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.Using a combination of empirical research and literature, the book addresses Northern Irish republican identity from three aspects: Catholicism, paramilitarism, and political transformation. It examines how they have shaped modern republicanism and how identity has shifted and adapted in relation to these specific areas of influence.The personal interviews conducted by the author with many republicans, including senior paramilitary and political figures make clear that Catholicism has helped shape republican paramilitary and political outlooks. This is a factor that is hardly discussed in republican literature, even though it strongly contributed to the development of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Thus this is the first book of its kind to trace the religious-paramilitary-political linkage, providing a context for rethinking republicanism.A unique work, "From Armed Struggle to Political Struggle "is essential for students and researchers in Irish politics, conflict resolution, and security studies.

This new volume on Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification brings together several of the most prominent social and political psychologists who are responsible for the resurgence of interest in the study of ideology, broadly defined. Leading scientists and scholars from several related disciplines, including psychology, sociology, political science, law, and organizational behavior present their cutting-edge theorizing and research. Topics include the social, personality, cognitive and motivational antecedents and consequences of adopting liberal versus conservative ideologies, the social and psychological functions served by political and religious ideologies, and the myriad ways in which people defend, bolster, and justify the social systems they inhabit. This book is the first of its kind, bringing together formerly independent lines of research on ideology and system justification.

Dissects the politics of commemoration of soldiers, veterans, and relatives from WWI The United States lost thousands of troops during World War I, and the government gave next-of-kin a choice about what to do with their fallen loved ones: ship them home for burial or leave them permanently in Europe, in makeshift graves that would be eventually transformed into cemeteries in France, Belgium, and England. World War I marked the first war in which the United States government and military took full responsibility for the identification, burial, and memorialization of those killed in battle, and as a result, the process of burying and remembering the dead became intensely political. The government and military attempted to create a patriotic consensus on the historical memory of World War I in which war dead were not only honored but used as a symbol to legitimize America's participation in a war not fully supported by all citizens. The saga of American soldiers killed in World War I and the efforts of the living to honor them is a neglected component of United States military history, and in this fascinating yet often macabre account, Lisa M. Budreau unpacks the politics and processes of the competing interest groups involved in the three core components of commemoration: repatriation, remembrance, and return. She also describes how relatives of the fallen made pilgrimages to French battlefields, attended largely by American Legionnaires and the Gold Star Mothers, a group formed by mothers of sons killed in World War I, which exists to this day. Throughout, and with sensitivity to issues of race and gender, Bodies of War emphasizes the inherent tensions in the politics of memorialization and explores how those interests often conflicted with the needs of veterans and relatives.

The Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94) was a founding father of social science. He believed that what he called the moral sciences could be studied by the same exacting methods as the natural sciences, and he developed many of the tools for doing so. Condorcet has had two quite unconnected reputations: as the doomed and foolish Enlightenment scholar, writing about the perfectibility of mankind while in hiding from the Terror that would shortly claim his own life; and as the incomprehensible founder of social choice, whose Essai of 1785 was not understood until the 1950s. This book shows that he was not so foolish, nor so incomprehensible, as even sympathetic treatments have made him sound. A long introduction uses the latest French and English sources to put his work into context, explains the unity of his thought and explicates his difficult arguments in probability theory and social choice. The extracts from Condorcet's work that follow are in two parts. Part I, 'The Theory of Voting', includes some extracts from the notorious Essai of 1785 but also later work which is more accessible and makes new points. Part II, 'Human Rights', shows Condorcet the passionate campaigner for rights for slaves and for women, and the American constitutionalist. His poignant 'Advice to his daughter' and 'Testament' show the spirit of a man who knew he was almost certain to be killed, and would never see his daughter again. Most of the works translated here have never appeared in English before. They will be an essential reference source for everybody working in social choice, the history of mathematics and human rights, and the Enlightenment.

Brent Waters examines the historical roots and contemporary implications of the virtual disappearance of the family in late liberal and Christian social and political thought. Waters argues that the principal cause of this disappearance is late liberalism's fixation on individual autonomy, which renders familial bonds unintelligible. He traces the history of this emphasis, from its origin in Hobbes and Locke, through Kant, to such contemporary theorists as Rawls and Okin. In response, Waters offers an alternative normative account of the family's role in social and political ordering, drawing upon the work of Althusius, Grotius, Dooyeweerd, and O'Donovan.

Representative democracy has long been problematic and subject to erosion through the introduction of components of direct democracy (referenda, voter initiatives and systems of recall). Following the increase of direct action across the world, through the Occupy movement and the rise of new populist parties championing greater citizen inclusion in decision making, many are considering whether the hierarchical system of political control might have had its day. But what might be the alternative, next democracy? This book considers the viability of a populist conception of democratic organization, which puts power into the hands of ordinary citizens. Examining contemporary and classic theory to contextualize the critique of existing systems, the book goes on to explore alternative arrangements tested out by activists, eco-protestors and anti-capitalists - from the recent Occupy agenda to Gandhi's experiments in alternative living. Milligan confronts the practical challenges posed by these systems of direct democracy and discusses the considerable difficulties of scaling up and sustaining them in state-level contexts. Whilst the book concedes that such concerns are genuine, it argues that a theory of generalized direct democracy can shake off its utopian aspirations and become a legitimate alternative for the future.

The Delphic Oracle on Europe brings together leading thinkers and policy-makers from different academic disciplines and policy-oriented backgrounds from all over Europe. The chapters reflect on ways forward for the European Union in a time of global crisis and profound change. Contributors debate the institutional and political consequences of the Lisbon Treaty, the reform of economic governance in light of the economic and financial crisis, and Europe's global role in a rapidly changing international and regional environment.
The volume is divided into three parts: Part I focuses on the Union's institutions and the question of leadership in an EU27+. Part II concentrates on the key elements of a new international socio-economic consensus. And Part III discusses the stakes in the agonising search for the EU's global role in a post-Lisbon and post-crisis world. A substantial concluding chapter pulls the themes of the volume together and looks to the future.
The list of contributors includes a number of leading thinkers and policy-makers: Josep Borrell Fontelles, Jonas Condomines Beraud, Olaf Cramme, Janis A. Emmanouilidis, Dieter Helm, Philippe Herzog, Jolyon Howorth, Zaki Laidi, Roger Liddle, Pier Carlo Padoan, Andre Sapir, and Loukas Tsoukalis.

A rethinking of American democracy that puts caring responsibilities at the center Americans now face a caring deficit: there are simply too many demands on people's time for us to care adequately for our children, elderly people, and ourselves.At the same time, political involvement in the United States is at an all-time low, and although political life should help us to care better, people see caring as unsupported by public life and deem the concerns of politics as remote from their lives. Caring Democracy argues that we need to rethink American democracy, as well as our fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. What it means to be a citizen is to be someone who takes up the challenge: how should we best allocate care responsibilities in society? Joan Tronto argues that we need to look again at how gender, race, class, and market forces misallocate caring responsibilities and think about freedom and equality from the standpoint of making caring more just. The idea that production and economic life are the most important political and human concerns ignores the reality that caring, for ourselves and others, should be the highest value that shapes how we view the economy, politics, and institutions such as schools and the family. Care is at the center of our human lives, but Tronto argues it is currently too far removed from the concerns of politics. Caring Democracy traces the reasons for this disconnection and argues for the need to make care, not economics, the central concern of democratic political life.

We are living in a time of inflationary media. While technological change has periodically altered and advanced the ways humans process and transmit knowledge, for the last 100 years the media with which we produce, transmit, and record ideas have multiplied in kind, speed, and power. Saturation in media is provoking a crisis in how we perceive and understand reality. Media become inflationary when the scope of their representation of the world outgrows the confines of their culture's prior grasp of reality. We call the resulting concept of reality that emerges the culture's medialogy. Medialogies offers a highly innovative approach to the contemporary construction of reality in cultural, political, and economic domains. Castillo and Egginton, both luminary scholars, combine a very accessible style with profound theoretical analysis, relying not only on works of philosophy and political theory but also on novels, Hollywood films, and mass media phenomena. The book invites us to reconsider the way reality is constructed, and how truth, sovereignty, agency, and authority are understood from the everyday, philosophical, and political points of view. A powerful analysis of actuality, with its roots in early modernity, this work is crucial to understanding reality in the information age.

William Petty (1623-1687) was a key figure in the English colonization of Ireland, the institutionalization of experimental natural philosophy, and the creation of social science.
Examining Petty's intellectual development and his invention of "political arithmetic" against the backdrop of the European scientific revolution and the political upheavals of Interregnum and Restoration England and Ireland, this book provides the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Petty based on a thorough examination not only of printed sources but also of Petty's extensive archive and pattern of manuscript circulation. It is also the first fully contextualized study of what political arithmetic--widely seen as an ancestor of modern social and economic analysis--was originally intended to do.
Ted McCormick traces Petty's education among French Jesuits and Dutch Cartesians, his early work with the "Hartlib Circle" of Baconian natural philosophers, inventors, and reformers in England, his involvement in the Cromwellian conquest and settlement of Ireland, and his engagement with both science and the politics of religion in the Restoration. He argues that Petty's crowning achievement, political arithmetic, was less a new way of analyzing economy or society than a new "instrument of government" that applied elements of the new science--a mechanical worldview, a corpuscularian theory of matter, and a Baconian stress on empirical method and the transformative purposes of natural philosophy--to the creation of industrious and loyal populations. Finally, he examines the transformation Petty's program of social engineering, after his death, into an apparently apolitical form of statistical reasoning.

This innovative book offers a critical history of the development of Soviet ideology, discussing its centrality to Soviet politics and the destructive effect that it had on the Gorbachev reforms.Neil Robinson analyses the nature and historical evolution of Soviet ideology between 1917 and 1985 to demonstrate the structural importance of Soviet ideological discourse and the uncertain place that it allocated to the communist party in the Soviet political system. On the basis of this analysis, Dr Robinson provides a fresh interpretation of Gorbachev's political reforms. He describes the ideological dynamic that underwrote the development of perestroika, how Gorbachev's ideas on democratization sent contradictory messages to the communist party, and how this stimulated opposition to perestroika from party cadres and Soviet society. Ideology and the Collapse of the Soviet System establishes the ideological roots of the crisis of Soviet power under Gorbachev and provides a convincing account of the Soviet system's inability to reform itself.