This is the must-have introduction to the European Union. Offering a primer on the EU's history, institutions, and politics, this concise textbook also covers the various challenges and opportunities faced by the EU, from the democratic deficit and the potential of future enlargement to the spread of nationalism and crises such as Brexit and the impact of the global pandemic. Understanding the European Union is now more crucial than ever, and this text provides a succinct but nuanced account of its development and how it works. This book will be the ideal guide for all undergraduate and postgraduate courses in political science, global affairs and European studies. It is also a suitable starting point for anyone seeking to learn more about the EU. New to this Edition: - A number of key themes and issues run throughout the book, including past and ongoing crises facing the EU, the EU's place within the broader international system, a focus on the EU's comparative political, social, and economic context, the confederal qualities of the EU, and Brexit. - Addresses the early impact of the global pandemic on the EU. - Greater use of maps, figures, tables and boxes where useful to inform the analysis, accompanied by up-to-date further reading. - Informed throughout by sophisticated yet accessible treatment of theory, including post-functionalism and critical perspectives. - Cutting-edge coverage of Brexit and negotiations around withdrawal.

When President Vladimir Putin ascended to the Kremlin at the end of the 1990s, he had to struggle with the after-effects of Boris Yeltsin's political agenda: outrageous corruption, endless social injustice, and deeply entrenched interests dating back to Gorbachev and beyond. From the outset, Putin saw his task as leveling out the political scenery. Discontent had been building up among ordinary Russians on these consequences of the dramatically unstable 1990s. Stabilization of the political system and cleaning up the widespread corruption were Putin's aims, and the Russian people supported him wholeheartedly. Many observers in the West were quick to condemn Putin and depict him as an authoritarian, dishonest leader who was still linked to the KGB. When asked why Russians were supporting the new Kremlin, many experts explained that it was a paradox that combined the country's supposed history of tyranny and its people's inclination towards it. These explanations shaped the West's understanding of modern Russia and they appear to be unshakeable in cultural circles today.Bruno Sergi argues, in this new study, that the way to know the complete story behind how Putin's presidency has been viewed in Russia, is to examine closely the hard realities that conditioned Putin's policies and responses. Misinterpreting Modern "Russia" Western Views of Putin and his Presidency" looks beyond the stereotypes to the hard logic of the 1990s, and asks a range of provocative questions about the disintegration of the old Soviet empire and the extraordinary riches that have caused so much opportunity and turmoil in recent years.>

The Khoesan were the first people in Africa to undergo the full rigours of European colonisation. By the early nineteenth century, they had largely been brought under colonial rule, dispossessed of their land and stock, and forced to work as labourers for farmers of European descent. Nevertheless, a portion of them were able to regain a degree of freedom and maintain their independence by taking refuge in the mission stations of the Western and Eastern Cape, most notably in the Kat River valley. For much of the nineteenth century, these Khoesan people kept up a steady commentary on, and intervention in, the course of politics in the Cape Colony. Through petitions, speeches at meetings, letters to the newspapers and correspondence between themselves, the Cape Khoesan articulated a continuous critique of the oppressions of colonialism, always stressing the need for equality before the law, as well as their opposition to attempts to limit their freedom of movement through vagrancy legislation and related measures. This was accompanied by a well-grounded distrust, in particular, of the British settlers of the Eastern Cape and a concomitant hope, rarely realised, in the benevolence of the British government in London. Comprising 98 of these texts, These Oppressions Won't Cease - an utterance expressed by Willem Uithaalder, commander of Khoe rebel forces in the war of 1850-3 - contains the essential documents of Khoesan political thought in the nineteenth century. These texts of the Khoesan provide a history of resistance to colonial oppression which has largely faded from view. Robert Ross, the eminent historian of precolonial South Africa, brings back their voices from the annals of the archive, voices which were formative in the establishment of black nationalism in South Africa, but which have long been silenced.

Challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism.

BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance.

The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance.

While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.