The moving, riveting and immersive story of six Iranians who, together, lived the entire arc of modern Iranian history: the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by the Islamic mafia state and a people’s undying spirit of resistance.

Fuelled by Iranians’ dreams of social justice and political freedom, the 1979 revolution swept aside the shah’s ailing, repressive monarchy. But in its place the revolution’s leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his acolytes built a system that served his narrow Islamic fundamentalist faction and worsened every failing and brutality that had existed under the shah.

Award-winning journalists Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati tell the entwined stories of six Iranians, providing a powerful new lens on Iran’s recent history in all its bitter twists and stubborn hope:

• Mehdi Karroubi: a devotee of Khomeini, he rose to the heights of power on the wave of the revolution, before being cast out of its inner circle.
• Hila Sedighi: a young activist, who gave voice through her poetry to her peers’ hopes during the reform years and ultimately immortalised their shattered dreams.
• Amir Moghadam: an ambitious government bureaucrat, who witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth.
• Said Rahmani: a successful global tech entrepreneur who returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country, and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself.
• Rozhin Yousefzadeh and Kosar Eftekhari: both born in the 1990s, they escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran, where they joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price.

Through vivid and original reporting, Stolen Revolution offers a compulsively readable new story of Iran, centring ordinary Iranians’ lives, whilst providing a visceral understanding of how life is actually lived under a modern authoritarian state. This is a harrowing story of power, corruption and greed – and those brave individuals who fought back.

Thirty years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a fateful decision: to allow newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations to compete in the marketplace instead of being financed exclusively by the government. The political and social implications of that decision are still unfolding as the Chinese government, media, and public adapt to the new information environment.
Edited by Susan Shirk, one of America's leading experts on contemporary China, this collection of essays brings together a who's who of experts--Chinese and American--writing about all aspects of the changing media landscape in China. In detailed case studies, the authors describe how the media is reshaping itself from a propaganda mouthpiece into an agent of watchdog journalism, how politicians are reacting to increased scrutiny from the media, and how television, newspapers, magazines, and Web-based news sites navigate the cross-currents between the open marketplace and the CCP censors. China has over 360 million Internet users, more than any other country, and an astounding 162 million bloggers. The growth of Internet access has dramatically increased the information available, the variety and timeliness of the news, and its national and international reach. But China is still far from having a free press. As of 2008, the international NGO Freedom House ranked China 181 worst out of 195 countries in terms of press restrictions, and Chinese journalists have been aptly described as "dancing in shackles." The recent controversy over China's censorship of Google highlights the CCP's deep ambivalence toward information freedom.
Covering everything from the rise of business media and online public opinion polling to environmental journalism and the effect of media on foreign policy, Changing Media, Changing China reveals how the most populous nation on the planet is reacting to demands for real news.

The Economics of Immigration summarizes the best social science studying the actual impact of immigration, which is found to be at odds with popular fears. Greater flows of immigration have the potential to substantially increase world income and reduce extreme poverty. Existing evidence indicates that immigration slightly enhances the wealth of natives born in destination countries while doing little to harm the job prospects or reduce the wages of most of the native-born population. Similarly, although a matter of debate, most credible scholarly estimates of the net fiscal impact of current migration find only small positive or negative impacts. Importantly, current generations of immigrants do not appear to be assimilating more slowly than prior waves. Although the range of debate on the consequences of immigration is much narrower in scholarly circles than in the general public, that does not mean that all social scientists agree on what a desirable immigration policy embodies. The second half of this book contains three chapters, each by a social scientist who is knowledgeable of the scholarship summarized in the first half of the book, which argue for very different policy immigration policies. One proposes to significantly cut current levels of immigration. Another suggests an auction market for immigration permits. The third proposes open borders. The final chapter surveys the policy opinions of other immigration experts and explores the factors that lead reasonable social scientists to disagree on matters of immigration policy.

This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions. It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas, social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between history, politics, and religion.
The individual contributions, written by a new generation of scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the processes of translation and globalization of historically specific concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion and secularism as modern concepts.

What meaning can be found in calamity and suffering? This question is in some sense perennial, reverberating through the canons of theology, philosophy, and literature. Today, The Politics of Consolation reveals, it is also a significant part of American political leadership. Faced with uncertainty, shock, or despair, Americans frequently look to political leaders for symbolic and existential guidance, for narratives that bring meaning to the confrontation with suffering, loss, and finitude. Politicians, in turn, increasingly recognize consolation as a cultural expectation, and they often work hard to fulfill it. The events of September 11, 2001 raised these questions of meaning powerfully. How were Americans to make sense of the violence that unfolded on that sunny Tuesday morning? This book examines how political leaders drew upon a long tradition of consolation discourse in their effort to interpret September 11, arguing that the day's events were mediated through memories of past suffering in decisive ways. It then traces how the struggle to define the meaning of September 11 has continued in foreign policy discourse, commemorative ceremonies, and the contentious redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan.

This book provides a pragmatic analysis of presidential language. Pragmatics is concerned with "meaning in context," or the relationship between what we say and what we mean. John Wilson explores the various ways in which U.S. Presidents have used language within specific social contexts to achieve specific objectives. This includes obfuscation, misdirection, the use of metaphor or ambiguity, or in some cases simply lying. He focuses on six presidents: John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald W. Reagan, William F. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack H. Obama. These presidents cover most of the last half of the twentieth century, and the first decade of the twenty first century, and each has been associated with a specific linguistic quality. John F. Kennedy was famed for his quality of oratory, Nixon for his manipulative use of language, Reagan for his gift of telling stories, Clinton for his ability to engage the public and to linguistically turn arguments and descriptions in particular directions. Bush, on the other hand, was famed for his inability to use language appropriately, and Obama returns us to the rhetorical flourishes of early Kennedy. In the case of each president, a range of specific examples are explored in order to highlight the ways in which a pragmatic analysis may provide an insight into presidential language. In many cases, what the president says is not necessarily what the president means.

The unique political history of the Southern United States is rooted in the fact that it is the only region to have ever taken up arms against the national government. While the resources of the North prevailed after the four bloody years of the Civil War, the consequences of the practice of slavery and the bitter loss experienced by the South continue to shape southern politics a century and a half later. The twenty-three essays included in The Oxford Handbook of Southern Politics present a definitive view of the factors that contribute to this region's distinctive politics, examining these factors in the context of the South's political development since World War II. Following an introductory essay by editors Charles S. Bullock III and Mark J. Rozell, five chapters survey the past seventy-five years of the region's political history, looking in particular at the Civil Rights Movement, urbanization of the South, and the area's economy and changing demographics. Four chapters will then take a closer look at the influence of particular demographics, including religious conservatives, women, and Latinos. This will be followed by chapters on the rise of the Republican Party, southern political attitudes, and political and economic development in the Southern Black Belt. Subsequent chapters will examine political parties, voting and elections, including party organizations and activists, the mainstreaming of the Republican Party, realignment, party building, and Deep South politics. The five chapters of the final section will look at the South's impact on national politics, at the executive and congressional levels, legislatively and on the nation more generally.

The era of economic liberalization, spanning 1978 to 2008, is often regarded as a period in which government was simply dismantled. In fact, government was reconstructed to meet the needs of a globalized economy. Central banking, fiscal control, tax collection, regulation, port and airport management, infrastructure development-in all of these areas, radical reforms were made to the architecture of government.
A common philosophy shaped all of these reforms: the logic of discipline. It was premised on deep skepticism about the ability of democratic processes to make sensible policy choices. It sought to impose constraints on elected officials and citizens, often by shifting power to technocrat-guardians who were shielded from political influence. It placed great faith in the power of legal changes--new laws, treaties, and contracts--to produce significant alterations in the performance of governmental systems. Even before the global economic crisis of 2007-2009, the logic of discipline was under assault. Faced with many failed reform projects, advocates of discipline realized that they had underestimated the complexity of governmental change. Opponents of discipline emphasized the damage to democratic values that followed from the empowerment of new groups of technocrat-guardians.
The financial crisis did further damage to the logic of discipline, as governments modified their attitudes about central bank independence and fiscal control, and global financial and trade flows declined. It was the market that now appeared to behave myopically and erratically--and which now insisted that governments should abandon precepts about the role of government that it had once insisted were inviolable.
A sweeping account of neoliberal governmental restructuring across the world, The Logic of Discipline offers a powerful analysis of how this undemocratic model is unraveling in the face of a monumental--and ongoing--failure of the market.

This book presents a new view of American policymaking, focusing on networks of actors responsible for policymaking. Policy change is not easily predictable from election results or public opinion because compromise and coalitions among individual actors make a difference in all three branches of government. The amount of government action, the issue content of policy changes, and the ideological direction of policy all depend on the joint actions of executive officials, legislators, and interest group leaders. The patterns of cooperation among policymakers and activists make each issue area and time period different from the others and undermine attempts to build an unchanging unified model of American policymaking. In Artists of the Possible, Matt Grossman undertakes a rigorous content analysis of 268 books and articles on the history of 14 different major policy areas over 60 years, compiling and integrates these findings to assess the factors that drive policymaking. His findings-which collectively uncover the 790 most significant policy enactments of the federal government and credit 1,306 specific actors for their role in policy change, along with more than 60 circumstantial factors-overturn established theories of policymaking. First, significant policy change does not follow from the issue agenda of the electorate or policymakers. Second, neither changes in public opinion nor the ideology or partisanship of government officials reliably influence the amount or content of policy change. Instead, the patterns of cooperation and compromise among political elites drive the productivity and ideological direction of policymaking. Third, the policymaking roles of public opinion, media coverage, research, and international factors are all limited. Fourth, no typology can explain differences in policymaking across issue areas because the policy process is broadly similar except for a few idiosyncratic differences associated with each issue area.

The Other Civil War offers historian and activist Howard Zinn's view of the social and civil background of the American Civil War--a view that is rarely provided in standard historical texts. Drawn from his New York Times bestseller A People's History of the United States, this set of essays recounts the history of American labor, free and not free, in the years leading up to and during the Civil War. He offers an alternative yet necessary account of that terrible nation-defining epoch.

The Oxford Handbook of the U.S. Constitution offers a comprehensive overview and introduction to the U.S. Constitution from the perspectives of history, political science, law, rights, and constitutional themes, while focusing on its development, structures, rights, and role in the U.S. political system and culture. This Handbook enables readers within and beyond the U.S. to develop a critical comprehension of the literature on the Constitution, along with accessible and up-to-date analysis. The historical essays included in this Handbook cover the Constitution from 1620 right through the Reagan Revolution to the present. Essays on political science detail how contemporary citizens in the United States rely extensively on political parties, interest groups, and bureaucrats to operate a constitution designed to prevent the rise of parties, interest-group politics and an entrenched bureaucracy. The essays on law explore how contemporary citizens appear to expect and accept the exertions of power by a Supreme Court, whose members are increasingly disconnected from the world of practical politics. Essays on rights discuss how contemporary citizens living in a diverse multi-racial society seek guidance on the meaning of liberty and equality, from a Constitution designed for a society in which all politically relevant persons shared the same race, gender, religion and ethnicity. Lastly, the essays on themes explain how in a "globalized" world, people living in the United States can continue to be governed by a constitution originally meant for a society geographically separated from the rest of the "civilized world." Whether a return to the pristine constitutional institutions of the founding or a translation of these constitutional norms in the present is possible remains the central challenge of U.S. constitutionalism today.

The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy provides a comprehensive examination of both the concept and the practice of intra-party democracy (IPD). Acknowledging that IPD is now widely viewed, among both democratic practitioners and scholars, as a normative good, this volume suggests that there is no single, or uniformly preferred, form of IPD. Rather, each party's version of IPD results from a series of choices they make relating to the organization and division of power internally. These decisions reflect many variables including a party's democratic ethos, its electoral context, state regulation and whether or not it is in government. Individual chapters examine the relationship between party models and IPD, the decline in party membership and activism, the role of the state in regulating party democracy, issues relating to gender and party organization, norms of candidate and leadership recruitment and selection, party policy development and party finance. The analysis considers the principal issues that parties (and the state) must consider relating to IPD in each area of party activity, the range of options open to them, current trends in terms of paths chosen, what these choices tell us about parties and, most importantly, what the implications of these choices are. In doing so, we offer a common language and set of questions relating to IPD that enhance the ability for consistent evaluation of the state of internal party democracy. Through thorough analysis of associated costs and benefits, we also provide a framework to assist with considerations of IPD reforms -- particularly in terms of their scope, the range of options available and their implications.
Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, and Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia.

The collapse of the financial markets in 2008 and the resulting 'Great Recession' merely accelerated an already worrisome trend: the shift away from an employer-based social welfare system in the United States. Since the end of World War II, a substantial percentage of the costs of social provision--most notably, unemployment insurance and health insurance--has been borne by employers rather than the state. The US has long been unique among advanced economies in this regard, but in recent years, its social contract has become so frayed that is fast becoming unrecognizable. Despite Obama's election, the burdens of social provision are falling increasingly upon individual families, and the situation is worsening because of the unemployment crisis. How can we repair the American social welfare system so that workers and families receive adequate protection and, if necessary, provision from the ravages of the market?
In Shared Responsibility, Shared Risk, Jacob Hacker and Ann O'Leary have gathered a distinguished group of scholars on American social policy to address this most fundamental of problems. Collectively, they analyze how the 'privatization of risk' has increased hardships for American families and increased inequality. They also propose a series of solutions that would distribute the burdens of risks more broadly and expand the social safety net. The range of issues covered is broad: health care, homeownership, social security and aging, unemployment, wealth (as opposed to income) creation, education, and family-friendly policies. The book is also comparative, measuring US social policy against the policies of other advanced nations. Given the current crisis in America social policy and the concomitant paralysis within government, the book has the potential to make an important intervention in the current debate.

The present edition of The Book of Fallacies is the first that follows Bentham's own structure for the work, and includes a great deal of material, both in terms of the fallacies themselves and the illustrative matter, that previous versions of the work have omitted. The fallacies that concerned Bentham were not logical errors of the sort identified by Aristotle, or commonplace misunderstandings of matters of fact, but arguments deployed in political debate, in particular in the British Parliament, in order to prevent reform. Bentham not only identified, described, and criticized the fallacious arguments in question, which were all characterized by their irrelevancy, but explained the sinister interests that led politicians to employ them and their supporters to accept them. By exposing these political fallacies, Bentham hoped to prevent their employment in future, and thereby to place political debate on its only proper ground, namely considerations drawn from the principle of utility.

Since Illinois became a state in 1818, it has been a microcosm of the country at every stage of its development, from its status as a "free" state in antebellum America to a state rich in agriculture and industry whose goods and services now travel the world. Illinois' four state constitutions have reflected its changing values. Illinois is currently one of the few states that have adopted a new constitution since World War II. This 1970 constitution has become a model for countries in Central and Eastern Europe seeking examples of modern American constitutions.
The Illinois State Constitution traces the history of the state's constitution from its statehood in 1818 to the adoption of the state's fourth constitution in 1970. Ann M. Lousin, who has been involved in Illinois constitutional development and government for over four decades, provides provision-by-provision commentary and analysis of the state's current constitution, covering the Preamble, the Bill of Rights, and the various articles and amendments, including a survey of case law under each provision. Previously published by Greenwood, this title has been brought back in to circulation by Oxford University Press with new verve. Re-printed with standardization of content organization in order to facilitate research across the series, this title, as with all titles in the series, is set to join the dynamic revision cycle of The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States.

The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research.
Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.

African American candidates for state and federal office in the United States face unique challenges, given the nation's complicated racial dynamics. To date, there have been only two elected African American governors in the country, the first elected in Virginia in 1989 and the second in Massachusetts in 2006. While Black candidates running statewide have been elected in increasing numbers in many areas of the country, there have been fewer successes in the US South. The relative lack of success in the South for Black candidates is puzzling given that, as a percentage of the population, the South has the highest concentration of African American citizens. This book examines the campaigns of Black statewide candidates in the South to untangle the factors that led to their electoral successes as well as the factors that continue to stymie positive electoral results. Looking at broader regional demographic and political trends, the authors project that the South is on the threshold of a major breakthrough for African American statewide candidates, who will have a substantial role in not only fundamentally changing the political dynamics of the region, but the nation as well. This change will be driven not only by Black candidates and voters, but a rising regional coalition of racial minority and white voters who are increasingly willing to vote for Black candidates.

The number of women elected to Latin American legislatures has grown significantly over the past thirty years. This increase in the number of women elected to national office is due, in large part, to gender-friendly electoral rules such as gender quotas and proportional electoral systems, and it has, in turn, fostered constituent support for representative democracy. Still, this book argues that women are gaining political voice and bringing women's issues to state agendas, but they are not gaining political power. Women are marginalized by the male majority in office and relegated to the least powerful committees and leadership posts, hindering progress toward real political equality.
In Political Power and Women's Representation in Latin America, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer examines the causes and consequences of women's representation in Latin America. She does so by asking a series of politically relevant and theoretically challenging questions, including why the numbers of women in office have increased in some countries but vary across others; what the presence of women in office means for the way representatives legislate; and what consequences the election of women bears for representative democracy more generally.
Schwindt-Bayer articulates a comprehensive theory of women's representation that analyzes and connects trends in relation to four facets of political representation: formal, descriptive, substantive and symbolic. She then tests this theory empirically using aggregate data from all eighteen Latin American democracies and original fieldwork in Argentina, Colombia and Costa Rica. Ultimately, this book communicates the complex and often incomplete nature of women's political representation in Latin America.

Over the years, numerous tragic events serve as a reminder of the extraordinary power of extremism, both on a religious and secular level. As extremism confronts society on a daily basis, it is essential to analyze, comprehend, and define it. It is also essential to define extremism narrowly in order to avoid the danger of recklessly castigating for mere thoughts alone. Tolerating Intolerance provides readers with a focused definition of extremism, and articulates the tensions faced in casting an arbitrary, capricious net in an effort to protect society, while offering mechanisms to resolve its seemingly intractable conundrum. Professor Guiora examines extremism in six different countries: Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States through interviews with a wide range of individuals including academics, policy makers, faith leaders, public commentators, national security and law enforcement officials. This enables both an in-depth discussion of extremism in each country, and facilitates a comparative analysis regarding both religious and secular extremism.

The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics provides a comprehensive look at the political life of one of Europe's most exciting and turbulent democracies. Under the hegemonic influence of Christian Democracy in the early post-World War II decades, Italy went through a period of rapid growth and political transformation. In part this resulted in tumult and a crisis of governability; however, it also gave rise to innovation in the form of Eurocommunism and new forms of political accommodation. The great strength of Italy lay in its constitution; its great weakness lay in certain legacies of the past. Organized crime - popularly but not exclusively associated with the mafia - is one example. A self-contained and well entrenched 'caste' of political and economic elites is another. These weaknesses became apparent in the breakdown of political order in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This ushered in a combination of populist political mobilization and experimentation with electoral systems design, and the result has been more evolutionary than transformative. Italian politics today is different from what it was during the immediate post-World War II period, but it still shows many of the influences of the past.

From the 494 B.C. plebeians' march out of Rome to gain improved status, to Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns in India, to the liberation of Poland and the Baltic nations, and the revolutions in North Africa, nonviolent struggles have played pivotal roles in world events for centuries. Sharp'sDictionary of Power and Struggle is a groundbreaking reference work on this topic by the "godfather of nonviolent resistance." In nearly 1,000 entries, the Dictionary defines those ideologies, political systems, strategies, methods, and concepts that form the core of nonviolent action as it has occurred throughout history and across the globe, providing much-needed clarification of language that is often mired in confusion. Entries discuss everything from militarization to censorship, guerrilla theater, pacifism, secret agents, and protest songs. In addition, the dictionary features a foreword by Sir Adam Roberts, President of the British Academy; an introduction by Gene Sharp; an essay on power and realism; case studies of conflicts in Serbia and Tunisia; and a guide for further reading. Sharp's Dictionary of Power and Struggle is an invaluable resource for activists, educators and anyone else curious about nonviolent alternatives to both passivity and violent conflict.
"Gene Sharp is perhaps the most influential proponent of nonviolent action alive."--The Progressive
"Sharp has had broad influence on international events over the past two decades, helping to advance a global democratic awakening."--The Wall Street Journal
" Sharp's] work has served as the template for taking on authoritarian regimes from Burma to Belgrade."--The Christian Science Monitor

This volume is the third in the "Perspectives from The Review of Politics" series, following The Crisis of Modern Times, edited by A. James McAdams (2007), and War, Peace, and International Political Realism, edited by Keir Lieber (2009). In A Liberalism Safe for Catholicism?, editors Daniel Philpott and Ryan Anderson chronicle the relationship between the Catholic Church and American liberalism as told through twenty-seven essays selected from the history of the Review of Politics, dating back to the journal's founding in 1939. The primary subject addressed in these essays is the development of a Catholic political liberalism in response to the democratic environment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Works by Jacques Maritain, Heinrich Rommen, and Yves R. Simon forge the case for the compatibility of Catholicism and American liberal institutions, including the civic right of religious freedom. The conversation continues through recent decades, when a number of Catholic philosophers called into question the partnership between Christianity and American liberalism and were debated by others who rejoined with a strenuous defense of the partnership. The book also covers a wide range of other topics, including democracy, free market economics, the common good, human rights, international politics, and the thought of John Henry Newman, John Courtney Murray, and Alasdair MacIntyre, as well as some of the most prominent Catholic thinkers of the last century, among them John Finnis, Michael Novak, and William T. Cavanaugh. This book will be of special interest to students and scholars of political science, journalists and policymakers, church leaders, and everyday Catholics trying to make sense of Christianity in modern society. Contributors: Daniel Philpott, Ryan T. Anderson, Jacques Maritain, Alvan S. Ryan, Heinrich Rommen, Josef Pieper, Yves R. Simon, Ernest L. Fortin, John Finnis, Paul E. Sigmund, David C. Leege, Thomas R. Rourke, Michael Novak, Michael J. Baxter, David L. Schindler , Joseph A. Komonchak, John Courtney Murray, Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Francis J. Connell, Carson Holloway, James V. Schall, Gary D. Glenn, John Stack, Glenn Tinder, Clarke E. Cochran, William A. Barbieri, Jr., Thomas S. Hibbs, Paul S. Rowe, and William T. Cavanaugh.

Winds of Change examines the global development of the wind energy industry from a political, social movements-based perspective. It argues the wind energy industry developed successfully in certain regions and countries in large part because the environmental movement influenced its growth. Vasi then defines and analyses the three main pathways through which the environmental movement has contributed to industry growth: it has influenced the adoption and implementation of renewable energy policies, it has created consumer demand for clean energy, and it has changed the institutional logics of the energy sector. The book uses quantitative analysis to present the big picture of the global development of the wind energy industry, then draws on qualitative analyses to understand why countries such as Germany, Denmark, or Spain are world leaders in wind energy, while other countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada have a somewhat underdeveloped wind power industry. It also analyzes how the environmental movement contributed to the recent growth of the market for renewable energy certificates in the United States. The book also examines the remarkable transformation of the electricity sector in different countries, showing how environmentalists in Germany, Denmark, United States and United Kingdom contributed to wind turbine manufacturing by becoming entrepreneurs, innovators, and/or advocates, and, furthermore, how environmental groups and activists formed new companies that specialize in wind-farm development and operation, and pressured utility companies to invest in renewable energy by using tactics such as protests, lawsuits, and lobbying for stricter regulation. In conclusion, Vasi presents the main implications for future studies on industry development and social movement outcomes, as well as for the future growth of the renewable energy sector.

At a moment when the term "Democracy " is evoked to express inchoate aspirations for peace and social change or particular governmental systems that may or may not benefit more than a select minority of the population, this book examines attempts from ancient Mesopotemia to the democratic movements of the early twenty-first century to sustain and improve their own lives and those of outsiders who have migrated into territory they regard as their own. Democratic activists have formed organizations to regulate the distribution of water, to restore the environment, and to assure that they and their children will have a future. They have organized their relations with deities and those who held secular power, and they have created particular institutions that they hoped would help them shape a good, free, and creative life for themselves and those who follow. They have also created laws and representative bodies to serve their needs on a regular basis and have written about the difficulties those they have elected to office have maintaining their ties to those who brought them to power in the first place. Since early times, proponents of direct or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders of representative institutions that claim singular power over democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim the initiative to define what democracy should mean and who should manage it. Frequently people in small communities, trade unions, repressed, exploited, or denigrated racial, religious, political, or sexual groups have marched forward using the language of democracy to find space for themselves and their ideas at the center of political life. Sometimes they have re-interpreted the old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the major issues of their time. Whatever conclusions they come to, they are only temporary since changing times require new solutions, assuring that democracy can only survive as a continuous process. As such and as a system of beliefs, democracy has many flaws. But looking cross-culturally and trans-historically, it still seems like democracy still holds promise for improving the lives of all the world's people.

How is the adoption of digital media in the Arab world affecting the relationship between the state and its subjects? What new forms of online engagement and strategies of resistance have emerged from the aspirations of digitally empowered citizens? Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia tells the compelling story of the concurrent evolution of technology and society in the Middle East. It brings into focus the intricate relationship between Internet development, youth activism, cyber resistance, and political participation. Taking Tunisia - the birthplace of the Arab uprisings - as a case study, it offers an ethnographically nuanced and theoretically grounded analysis of the digital culture of contention that developed in an authoritarian context. It broadens the focus from narrow debates about the role that social media played in the Arab uprisings toward a fresh understanding of how changes in media affect existing power relations. Based on extensive fieldwork, in-depth interviews with Internet activists, and immersive analyses of online communication, this book redirects our attention from institutional politics to the informal politics of everyday life. An original contribution to the political sociology of Arab media, Networked Publics and Digital Contention provides a unique perspective on how networked Arab publics negotiate agency, reconfigure political action, and reimagine citizenship.

A major question for liberal politics and liberal political theory concerns the proper scope of government. Liberalism has always favored limited government, but there has been wide-ranging dispute among liberals about just how extensive the scope of government should be. Included in this dispute are questions about the extent of state ownership of the means of production, redistribution of wealth and income through the tax code and transfer programs, and the extent of government regulation.
One of N. Scott Arnold's goals is to give an accurate characterization of both modern liberalism and classical liberalism, explaining along the way why libertarianism is not the only form that classical liberalism can take. The main focus of Arnold's book, however, concerns regulation--specifically, the modern liberal regulatory agenda as it has taken shape in contemporary American society. This is the set of regulatory regimes favored by all modern liberals and opposed by all classical liberals. It includes contemporary employment law in all its manifestations, health and safety regulation, and land use regulation. The heart of the book consists of a systematic evaluation of arguments for and against all the items on this agenda. It turns out that there are good arguments on both sides for most of these regulatory regimes. Because of this, and because someone's vision of the proper scope of government will ultimately prevail, some procedural requirements that all liberals could agree to must be satisfied for one side to impose legitimately its values on the polity at large. These procedural requirements are identified, argued for, and then applied to the elements of the modern liberal regulatory agenda. Arnold argues that many, though not all, of these elements have been illegitimately imposed on American society.