![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government
Empires at War, 1911-1923 offers a new perspective on the history of the Great War, looking at the war beyond the generally-accepted 1914-1918 timeline, and as a global war between empires, rather than a European war between nation-states. The volume expands the story of the war both in time and space to include the violent conflicts that preceded and followed World War I, from the 1911 Italian invasion of Libya to the massive violence that followed the collapse of the Ottoman, Russian, and Austrian empires until 1923. It argues that the traditional focus on the period between August 1914 and November 1918 makes more sense for the victorious western front powers (notably Britain and France), than it does for much of central-eastern and south-eastern Europe or for those colonial troops whose demobilization did not begin in November 1918. The paroxysm of 1914-18 has to be seen in the wider context of armed imperial conflict that began in 1911 and did not end until 1923. If we take the Great War seriously as a world war, we must, a century after the event, adopt a perspective that does justice more fully to the millions of imperial subjects called upon to defend their imperial governments' interest, to theatres of war that lay far beyond Europe including in Asia and Africa and, more generally, to the wartime roles and experiences of innumerable peoples from outside the European continent. Empires at War also tells the story of the broad, global mobilizations that saw African soldiers and Chinese labourers in the trenches of the Western front, Indian troops in Jerusalem, and the Japanese military occupying Chinese territory. Finally, the volume shows how the war set the stage for the collapse not only of specific empires but of the imperial world order.
The Cold War was a distinct and crucial period in Hong Kong's evolution and in its relations with China and the rest of the world. Hong Kong was a window through which the West could monitor what was happening in China and an outlet that China could use to keep in touch with the outside world. Exploring the many complexities of Cold War politics from a global and interdisciplinary perspective, Hong Kong in the Cold War shows how Hong Kong attained and honed a pragmatic tradition that bridged the abyss between such opposite ideas as capitalism and communism, thus maintaining a compromise between China and the rest of the world. The chapters are written by nine leading international scholars and address issues of diplomacy and politics, finance and economics, intelligence and propaganda, refugees and humanitarianism, tourism and popular culture, and their lasting impact on Hong Kong. Far from simply describing a historical period, these essays show that Hong Kong's unique Cold War experience may provide a viable blueprint for modern-day China to develop a similar model of good governance and may in fact hold the key to the successful implementation of the One Country Two Systems idea.
The Hong Kong Basic Law is the constitutional document which sets out the general policies and system of government for Hong Kong under the "one country, two systems" formula. It promises Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, seeks to preserve a separate common law system with an independent judiciary, and guarantees a long list of rights and freedoms. The only introductory text on this topic, Introduction to the Hong Kong Basic Law provides a highly readable starting point to understanding the important issues shaping Hong Kong's future. This book traces the origins of the Hong Kong Basic Law and analyzes its content, especially in relation to Hong Kong's political system, the judiciary, and human rights. It is required reading for students on a wide range of courses in law, politics, and other disciplines, from sub-degree through to undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as professional examinations. The book also appeals to a wider audience, enabling general interest readers with no prior knowledge of the subject to easily understand how Hong Kong is being run under Chinese sovereignty. The second edition has been updated thoroughly to discuss important new developments, including the implications of the mass street protests known as the Umbrella Movement, and adds a new concluding chapter on the future of "one country, two systems".
Throughout the 1980s Mrs Thatcher dominated political life in the UK and Thatcherism became the shorthand for a series of political initiatives all over the world. Most accounts of these years have concentrated on the economics of free markets and privatization. This book takes a different stance through a detailed analysis of the responses of NALGO (The National and Local Government Officers Association) members, activists, leaders, and officials to the government's public sector reform and restructuring programme. Employees in health, local government, and education faced cuts in funding, compulsory competitive tendering, internal markets, and new management practices associated with HRM and TQM. Others in the gas, water, electricity, and transport industries faced wholesale privatization. This unique account of the period written from the evidence and perspective of those involved will be an important source for researchers, teachers, and practitioners in politics, industrial relations, public administration, and management concerned with the events and lessons of the 1980s.
Election campaigns ought to be serious occasions in the life of a
democratic polity. For citizens of a democracy, an election is a
time to take stock-to reexamine our beliefs; to review our
understanding of our own interests; to ponder the place of those
interests in the larger social order; and to contemplate, and if
necessary to revise, our understanding of how our commitments are
best translated into governmental policy-or so we profess to
believe.
The Chinese system is like no other known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving. Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, Stein Ringen concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping. China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe. By analyzing the leadership of Xi Jinping, the meaning of "socialist market economy," corruption, the party-state apparatus, the reach of the party, the mechanisms of repression, taxation and public services, and state-society relations, The Perfect Dictatorship broadens the field of China studies, as well as the fields of political economy, comparative politics, development, and welfare state studies.
During the Civil War, Northerners fought each other in elections
with almost as much zeal as they fought Southern rebels on the
battlefield. Yet politicians and voters alike claimed that
partisanship was dangerous in a time of national crisis.
From all outward appearances, the American policymaking process has been revolutionized in the last half century. Beginning in the 1970s, new safeguards were put in place to prevent the kind of free-wheeling and sometimes reckless policymaking environment of earlier periods. These changes-including the creation of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office-were widely hailed as ushering in a new era of accountability in Washington and putting an end to the days when cagey political operatives could rush major legislation through Congress without any real consideration of the economic costs. But what if the supposedly new and improved policymaking process that resulted from these 'good government' reforms is every bit as prone to manipulation as the one it replaced? As Robert Saldin shows in When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics, that has unfortunately been the case. As in the past, the new politics of the policymaking process encourage savvy political actors to game the system. The very rules that were designed to thwart financially irresponsible legislation now incentivize the development of fundamentally flawed and unworkable policies. To uncover the pathologies of the American policymaking process, Saldin traces the sad tale of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. While few outside the beltway are aware of it, it was a major piece of legislation that played a central role in the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the most important social policy law since the 1960s. The CLASS Act targeted an intractable problem: the ever-increasing demand for costly long-term care services. For decades, both Republicans and Democrats have recognized the problem as a major one, so the question has not been whether we should tackle it. Rather, the debate centered on how we should do it-that is, how we should pay for it. The problem was always that the costs were staggering, and there was little political will to fund such a program (Medicare did not fund it). Long term care advocates realized this, and therefore focused on passing a law that effectively ignored the economic costs. They finally shuttled it into the larger Affordable Care Act, which was passed into law in 2010. Saldin traces the process, showing how an array of perverse incentives allowed such a flawed law to come into being. In fact, Kathleen Sibelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced in late 2011 that the administration would no longer try to put the law into effect because of its basic unworkability. Saldin's book is ostensibly about this one piece of legislation, but it's about much more than this: the near-impossibility of passing 'clean' laws that are not doctored by special interests adept at gaming the system. Essential reading for anyone interested in the policymaking process, the book establishes that our current policymaking environment produces outcomes that are just as perverse as the ones enacted by the old system.
How do men's and women's paths to political office differ? Once in
office, are women's powers more constrained that those of men?
In the years immediately following the 2006 "Surge" of American troops in Iraq, observers of America's counterinsurgency war there regarded the defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in Anbar Province as one of the strategy's signature victories. With the assistance of American troops, the fractious tribal sheiks in that province united in an "Awakening" that ultimately led to the defeat of the legendarily brutal AQI. The success of the Awakening convinced many that smart, properly resourced counterinsurgency strategies could in fact work. Even more, the episode showed that victory could be snatched from the jaws of defeat. A decade later, the situation in Anbar Province is dramatically different. Beginning in 2014, much of the province fell to the AQI's successor organization, ISIS, which swept through the region with shocking ease. ISIS quickly took Ramadi, the province's main city and the locus of the 2006 Awakening. In The Shadow of Anbar, Carter Malkasian looks at the wreckage to explain why Americans' initial optimism was misplaced and why victory was not sustainable. Malkasian begins by tracing the origins of the Awakening of the sheiks against AQI, which by 2005 dominated the province. Capitalizing on the feuding among traditional sheik leaders, AQI used Islam as a unifying ideology and initiated a reign of terror that cowed opponents into submission. With some help from the US, the sheiks rebounded by unifying against AQI through the Awakening movement. That, coupled with an increased American troop presence beginning in 2006, ultimately led to the defeat of AQI. After chronicling how this transpired, Malkasian turns his attention to what happened in its wake. The US left, and in a naked power play the Shiite government in Baghdad sidelined Sunni leaders throughout the country. AQI, brought back to life by the Syrian civil war as ISIS, expanded into northern and western Iraq in 2014 and quickly found a receptive audience among marginalized Sunnis. In short order, all of the progress that resulted from the Awakening evaporated. Malkasian draws many lessons from what is clearly now a failed experiment at nation building, but a few stand out. US counterinsurgency techniques, no matter how adept, cannot substantially change foreign societies and cultures, particularly ones that have existed for centuries. The American people will not tolerate a long-term US military presence in foreign lands, and what the US builds while there is likely to be temporary. Finally, the debacle reminds us that US military intervention always has a strong potential to generate instability and harm. Ultimately, the US invasion upended society and let sectarian, tribal, and religious dynamics run their course. As The Shadow of Anbar shows, the people of Anbar Province would have been better off if the United States had never invaded Iraq in the first place. Sadly, the residents there are living with the terrible fallout of the 2003 invasion to this day.
This study deals with the phenomenon of genocide denialism, and in particular how it operates in the context of the genocide against the Tutsi. The term genocide denialism denotes that we are not dealing with a single act or type of (genocide) denial but with a more elaborate process of denial that involves a variety of denialist and denial-like acts that are part of the process of genocide. From this study it becomes clear that the process of genocide thrives on a more elaborate denial dynamic than recognized in expert literature until now. This study consists of three parts. The first theoretical part analyses what the elements of denial and genocide entail and how they are (inter)related. The exploration results in a typology of genocide denialism. This model clarifies the different functions denial performs throughout the process of genocide. It furthermore explains how actors engage in denial and on which rhetorical devices speech acts of denial rely. The second part of the study focuses on denial in practice and it analyses how denial operates in the particular case of the genocide against the Tutsi. The analysis reveals a complex denial dynamic: not only those who perpetrated the genocide are involved in its denial, but also certain Western scholars, journalists, lawyers, etc. The latter were originally not involved in the genocide but recycle (elements of) the denial discourse of the perpetrators. The study addresses the implications of such recycling and discusses whether these actors actually have become involved in the genocidal process. This sheds light on the complex relationship between genocide and denial. The insights gained throughout the first two parts of this study have significant implications for many other actors that through their actions engage with the flow of meaning concerning the specific events in Rwanda or genocide in general. The final part of this study critically reflects on the actions of a variety of actors and their significance in terms of genocide denialism. These actors include scholars from various fields, human rights organisations, the ICTR, and the government of Rwanda. On a more fundamental level this study critically highlights how the revisionist scientific climate, in which knowledge and truth claims are constantly questioned, is favourable to genocide denialism and how the post-modern turn in academia has exacerbated this climate. Ultimately, this study reveals that the phenomenon of genocide denial involves more than perpetrators denying their genocidal crimes and the scope of actors and actions relevant in terms of genocide denialism is much broader than generally assumed.
According to conventional international relations theory, states or groups make war and, in doing so, kill and injure people that other states are charged with protecting. While it sees the perpetrators of violence as rational actors, it views those who are either protected or killed by this violence as mere bodies: ahistorical humans who breathe, suffer and die but have no particular political agency. In its rationalist variants, IR theory only sees bodies as inert objects. Constructivist theory argues that subjects are formed through social relations, but leaves the bodies of subjects outside of politics, as "brute facts." According to Wilcox, such limited thinking about bodies and violence is not just wrong, but also limits the capacity of IR to theorize the meaning of political violence. By contrast to rationalist and constructivist theory, feminist theory sees subjectivity and the body as inextricably linked. This book argues that IR needs to rethink its approach to bodies as having particular political meaning in their own right. For example, bodies both direct violent acts (violence in drone warfare, for example) and are constituted by practices that manage violence (for example, scrutiny of persons as bodies through biometric technologies and body scanners). The book also argues that violence is more than a strategic action of rational actors (as in rationalist theories) or a destructive violation of community laws and norms (as in liberal and constructivist theories). Because IR theorizes bodies as outside of politics, it cannot see how violence can be understood as a creative force for shaping the limits of how we understand ourselves as political subjects, as well as forming the boundaries of our political communities. By engaging with feminist theories of embodiment and violence, Bodies of Violence provides a more nuanced treatment of the nexus of bodies, subjects and violence than currently exists in the field of international relations.
Why do some countries construct strong systems of social protection, while others leave workers exposed to market forces? In the past three decades, scholars have developed an extensive literature theorizing how hegemonic social democratic parties working in tandem with a closely-allied trade union movement constructed models of welfare capitalism. Indeed, among the most robust findings of the comparative political economy literature is the claim that the more political resources controlled by the left, the more likely a country is to have a generous, universal system of social protection. The Left Divided takes as its starting point the curious fact that, despite this conventional wisdom, very little of the world actually approximates the conditions identified by mainstream scholarship for creating universal, generous welfare states. In most countries outside of northern Europe, divisions within the left-within the labor movement, among left parties, as well as between left parties and a divided union movement-are a defining feature of politics. The Left Divided, in contrast, focuses on the far more common and deeply consequential situation where intra-left divisions shape the development of social protection. Arguing that the strength and position taken by the far left is an important and overlooked determinant of social protection outcomes, the book presents a framework for distinguishing between different types of left movements, and analyzes how the distribution of resources within the left shapes party strategies for expanding social protection in theoretically unanticipated ways. To demonstrate the counterintuitive effects of having the far-left control significant political resources, Watson combines in-depth case studies of Iberia with cross-national analysis of OECD countries and qualitative comparative analyses of other divided lefts.
Americans love to hate their government, and a long tradition of
anti-government suspicion reaches back to debates among the
founders of the nation. But the election of Barack Obama has
created a backlash rivaled only by the anti-government hysteria
that preceded the Civil War.
Along with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights serves as the main watchdog for the promotion and protection of fundamental rights in the Americas. Drawing on the case law of the Court, this volume analyses crucial developments over the years on both procedural and substantive issues before the Inter-American Court. The book discusses access to legal aid, third party interventions, positive obligations and provisional measures, the evaluation of evidence and the use of external referencing by the Court, the protection of vulnerable groups, including indigenous peoples, migrants, women and children. It also explores other contemporary issues such as coerced statements, medical negligence, the use of force, amnesties, forced disappearances, the right to water, judicial protection in times of emergency, the relation of the Inter-American Court with national courts and with other international jurisdictions like the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court, and with national courts, reparations and revisions of cases by the Inter-American Court, and present-day challenges to the Inter-American system of human rights. Due to its multifaceted and comprehensive character, this scholarly volume is an essential reference work for both legal scholars and practitioners working with regional human rights systems in general and with the Inter-American human rights system in particular.
By the late 1960s, in a Europe divided by the Cold War and challenged by global revolution in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, thousands of young people threw themselves into activism to change both the world and themselves. This new and exciting study of "Europe's 1968" is based on the rich oral histories of nearly 500 former activists collected by an international team of historians across fourteen countries. Activists' own voices reflect on how they were drawn into activism, how they worked and struggled together, how they combined the political and the personal in their lives, and the pride or regret with which they look back on those momentous years. Themes explored include generational revolt and activists' relationship with their families, the meanings of revolution, transnational encounters and spaces of revolt, faith and radicalism, dropping out, gender and sexuality, and revolutionary violence. Focussing on the way in which the activists themselves made sense of their revolt, this work makes a major contribution to both oral history and memory studies. This ambitious study ranges widely across Europe from Franco's Spain to the Soviet Union, and from the two Germanys to Greece, and throws new light on moments and movements which both united and divided the activists of Europe's 1968.
In the face of ongoing religious conflicts and unending culture
wars, what are we to make of liberalism's promise that it alone can
arbitrate between church and state? In this wide-ranging study,
John Perry examines the roots of our thinking on religion and
politics, placing the early-modern founders of liberalism in
conversation with today's theologians and political philosophers.
Presents cutting edge theory about the consequences of social movements and protest while asking what kind of trade-offs protest movements face in trying to change the world around them. Many scholars have tried to figure out why some social movements have an impact and others do not. By looking inside movements at their component parts and recurrent strategic interactions, the authors of Gains and Losses show that movements usually produce a variety of effects, including recurring packages of gains and losses. They ask what kinds of trade-offs and dilemmas these packages reflect by looking at six empirical cases from around the world: Seattle's conflict over the $15 an hour minimum wage; the establishment of participatory budgeting in New York City; a democratic insurgency inside New York City's Transport Workers' Union; a communist party's struggle to gain votes and also protect citizen housing in Graz, Austria; the internal movement tensions that led to Hong Kong's umbrella occupation; and Russia's electoral reform movement embodied in Alexei Navalny. They not only examine the diverse players in these cases involved in politics and protest, but also the many strategic arenas in which they maneuver. While each of these movements made some remarkable gains, this book shows how many also suffered losses, especially in the longer run.
Access Points develops a new theory about how democratic institutions influence policy outcomes. Access Point Theory argues that the more points of access that institutions provide to interest groups, the cheaper lobbying will be, and, thus, the more lobbying will occur. This will lead to more complex policy, as policymakers insert specific provisions to benefit special interests, and, if one side of the debate has a lobbying advantage, to more biased policy, as the advantaged side is able to better take advantage of the cheaper lobbying. This book then uses Access Point Theory to explain why some countries have more protectionist and more complex trade policies than other; why some countries have stronger environmental and banking regulations than others; and why some countries have more complicated tax codes than others. In policy area after policy area, this book finds that more access points lead to more biased and more complex policy. Access Points provides scholars with a powerful tool to explain how political institutions matter and why countries implement the policies they do.
This is a study of Petrograd in the period immediately following the Russian Revolution. Formerly the imperial capital St. Petersburg, in the years after 1917 Petrograd became a revolutionary citadel. Mary McAuley's political and social history throws into relief the interplay of factors that contributed to the formation of the new Soviet state. Her detailed account of life in the city provides new insights into the progress of the Russian Revolution and the establishment, in 1921, of the Leninist political order. Bread and Justice is based on a wide array of original sources, including newspapers, pamphlets, posters, memoirs, and personal interviews. It paints a multi-dimensional picture of everyday life in post-Revolutionary Petrograd, exploring themes such as violence and unemployment, civic justice and bread rations, political ideas and cultural dreams. This is a book about the people of the city - Bolshevik commissars, imperial princesses, hungry schoolchildren, and theatre artists all make their appearance - and about the impact of the Russian Revolution on their lives. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the revolutionary process and the formation of the Soviet Union.
Many years after the United States initiated a military response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the nation continues to prosecute what it considers an armed conflict against transnational terrorist groups. Understanding how the law of armed conflict applies to and regulates military operations executed within the scope of this armed conflict against transnational non-state terrorist groups is as important today as it was in September 2001. In The War on Terror and the Laws of War seven legal scholars, each with experience as military officers, focus on how to strike an effective balance between the necessity of using armed violence to subdue a threat to the nation with the humanitarian interest of mitigating the suffering inevitably associated with that use. Each chapter addresses a specific operational issue, including the national right of self-defense, military targeting and the use of drones, detention, interrogation, trial by military commission of captured terrorist operatives, and the impact of battlefield perspectives on counter-terror military operations, while illustrating how the law of armed conflict influences resolution of that issue. This Second Edition carries on the critical mission of continuing the ongoing dialogue about the law from an unabashedly military perspective, bringing practical wisdom to the contentious topic of applying international law to the battlefield.
Plato is the best known and most widely studied of all the ancient
Greek philosophers. Malcolm Schofield, a leading scholar of ancient
philosophy, offers a lucid and accessible guide to Plato's
political thought, enormously influential and much discussed in the
modern world as well as the |
You may like...
Seabird Islands - Ecology, Invasion, and…
Christa P H Mulder, Wendy B Anderson, …
Hardcover
R1,753
Discovery Miles 17 530
Andean Cosmopolitans - Seeking Justice…
Jose Carlos De La Puente Luna
Paperback
Egyptian Coastal Lakes and Wetlands…
Abdelazim M. Negm, Mohamed Ali Bek, …
Hardcover
|