Early in the morning of 4 March 2015, a fierce knock at the door heralded the start of a new chapter in Harvey Proctor's almost continuous relationship with the police and media, when officers from the Metropolitan Police raided his home in connection with Operation Midland, Scotland Yard's investigation into allegations of a historic Westminster paedophile ring.In Credible and True - words famously used by the police to describe the allegations of Proctor's traducer - the former Conservative MP talks frankly about his life in and out of Parliament, from the struggles and controversy surrounding his resignation in 1987 to the numerous homophobic attacks endured since - one of which, revealed here in horrific detail for the first time, was a very nearly successful attempt on his life.Finally, he speaks candidly about his most recent embroilment in Operation Midland, of being the victim of a 'homosexual witch-hunt' that has all but destroyed his reputation, adding to the topical debate about police lack of due process in the post-Savile world of 'guilty until proven innocent'.

Dirk Mudge publiseer op 87-jarige ouderdom sy langverwagte outobiografie. Hierdie besonderse man was vir 33 jaar voltyds betrokke by die politiek van Suidwes-Afrika en later Namibie. Hy betree die politiek in 1960 toe hy lid word van die wetgewende vergadering onder die Nasionale Party van Suidwes-Afrika. Mudge beskryf hoe hy aanvanklik die beginsels van die Nasionale Party onderskryf het, maar mettertyd tot ander insigte gekom het. Dit het onvermydelik tot sy uittrede uit die Nasionale Party gelei en tot die stigting van sy eie party: die Republikeinse Party. Hy het 'n persoonlike aandeel gehad in die skryf van die nuwe Grondwet vir die Republiek van Namibie en probeer in hierdie boek antwoorde verskaf op vrae soos waarom dit Namibie so lank geneem het om onafhanklikheid te bereik en wat die rol van Suid-Afrika en die internsionale gemeenskap daarin gespeel het.

John Kent has written the first full scholarly study of British and French policy in their West African colonies during the Second World War and its aftermath. His detailed analysis shows how the broader requirements of Anglo-French relations in Europe and the wider world shaped the formulation and execution of the two colonial powers' policy in Black Africa. He examines the guiding principles of the policy-makers in London and Paris and the problems experienced by the colonial administrators themselves. This is a genuinely comparative study, thoroughly grounded in both French and British archives, and it sheds new light on the development of Anglo-French co-operation in colonial matters in this period.

In recent years serious concerns emerged over the state of European democracy. Many democracy indices are reporting a year-on-year drift towards less liberal politics in the countries of the European Union. Polls regularly suggest that the voters are coming to question democratic norms more seriously than for many decades. Here, Richard Youngs assesses these risks as many analysts, journalists and politicians stressed the danger of Europe descending into an era of conflict, driven by xenophobic nationalism and nativist authoritarians slowly dismantling liberal democratic rights. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified these fears. There is another side of the democratic equation, however. Youngs argues that governments, EU institutions, political parties, citizens and civil society organisations have gradually begun to push back in defence of democracy. With each chapter, Youngs shows how many governmental, political and social actors have developed responses to Europe's democratic malaise at multiple levels. Europe's democracy problems have been grave and far-reaching. Yet, a spirit of democratic resistance has slowly taken shape. This book argues that the pro-democratic fightback may be belated, but it is real and has assumed significant traction with various types of democratic reform underway, including citizen initiatives, political-party changes, digital activism and EU-level responses.

What might COVID-19 mean for, and reveal about, China's place in the world? The coronavirus pandemic started in Wuhan, home to the leading lab studying the SARS virus and bats. Was that pure coincidence? This book explores what we know, and still don't know, about the origins of COVID-19, and how it was handled in China. We may never get all the answers, but much is already clear: China's record as the origin of earlier pandemics, and its struggle to bring contagious diseases under control; its history as both a victim of biological warfare and a developer of deadly bioweapons. When Covid broke out, Wuhan was building science parks to realise Beijing's ambitions in biotech research. Whoever achieves global leadership of the gene-editing industry stands to harvest great power and wealth. China has already challenged Western technological supremacy with 5G and in other industries. Yet this tiny, invisible virus has cruelly exposed a critical flaw in the Chinese political system: obsessive secrecy. The West wanted to trust the PRC, hoping that, as it prospered, it would become an open society. Made in China reveals how Beijing's leaders have betrayed that trust.

This book presents the most systematic and consistent study to date of the 'consequences of context' for the process through which citizens' decide on their electoral behaviour. It derives contextual variation from cross-national and within-country comparisons. The contextual dimensions investigated pertain to the political, economic and social domains, and their impact is investigated on the factors that drive citizens' decision to participate in an election and on their subsequent decision which party to vote for. The book thus focuses not on whether people vote and for which party, but instead on more fundamental questions about contextual effects on the determinants of electoral participation and the vote. The analyses are based on an integrated database of national election studies conducted in European countries and utilises an innovative multi-level logistic regression methodology. This methodology, elaborated in detail early on and subsequently applied in each of the following chapters, identifies the moderating effect, or the "consequences", of altogether nine classes of different context conditions on individual level determinants of electoral participation and party choice.

Security sector reform (SSR) is central to the democratic transitions currently unfolding across the globe, as a diverse range of countries grapple with how to transform militias, tribal forces, and dominant military, police, and intelligence agencies into democratically controlled and accountable security services. SSR will be a key element in shifts from authoritarian to democratic rule for the foreseeable future, since abuse of the security sector is a central technique of autocratic government. This edited collection advances solutions through a selection of case studies from around the world that cover a wide range of contexts.