Born out of the Israeli occupation of the South of Lebanon, the political armed group Hizbullah is a powerful player within both Lebanon and the wider Middle East. Understanding how Hizbullah has, since the 1980s, developed its own reading of the nature of the Lebanese state, national identity and historical narrative is central to grasping the political trajectory of the country. By examining the ideological production of Hizbullah, especially its underground newspaper Al Ahd, Bashir Saade offers an account of the intellectual continuity between the early phases of Hizbullah's emergence onto the political stage and its present day organization. Saade argues here that this early intellectual activity, involving an elaborate understanding of the past and history had a long lasting impact on later cultural production, one in which the notion and practice of Resistance has been central in developing national imaginaries.

The Age of Sail has long fascinated readers, writers, and the general public. Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Jack London et al. treated ships at sea as microcosms; Petri dishes in which larger themes of authority, conflict and order emerge. In this fascinating book, Pfaff and Hechter explore mutiny as a manifestation of collective action and contentious politics. The authors use narrative evidence and statistical analysis to trace the processes by which governance failed, social order decayed, and seamen mobilized. Their findings highlight the complexities of governance, showing that it was not mere deprivation, but how seamen interpreted that deprivation, which stoked the grievances that motivated rebellion. Using the Age of Sail as a lens to examine topics still relevant today - what motivates people to rebel against deprivation and poor governance - The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance, and Mutiny in the Age of Sail helps us understand the emergence of populism and rejection of the establishment.

This book examines the culture of the French diplomatic corps from 1789 to 1799. It analyzes how the French revolutionaries attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to transform the diplomatic culture of the old regime, notably in etiquette, language and dress and how the ideology and dynamic of the Revolution affected certain aspects of international affairs.

Offering the first in-depth analysis of the relationship between populism and political meritocracy, this book asks why states with meritocratic systems such as Singapore and China have not faced the populist challenge to the extent that liberal-democratic states have. Is political meritocracy immune to populism? Or does it fan its flames? Exploring this puzzle, the authors argue that political meritocracies are simultaneously immune and susceptible to populism. The book maintains that political meritocracy's focus on the intellect, social skills, and most importantly virtue of political leaders can reduce the likelihood of populist actors rising to power; that meritocracy's promise of upward mobility for the masses can work against elitism; and that rule by the 'meritorious' can help avoid crises, diminishing the political opening for populism. However, it also shows that meritocracy does little to eliminate grievances around political, cultural, and social inequality, instead entrenching a hierarchy - an allegedly 'just' one. The book ultimately argues that the more established the system of political meritocracy becomes, the more it opens the door to populist resentment and revolt. Pitched primarily to scholars and postgraduate students in political theory, comparative politics, Asian studies, and political sociology, this book fills an important scholarly gap.

Movements like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party embody some of our deepest intuitions about popular politics and 'the power of the people'. They also expose tensions and shortcomings in our understanding of these ideals. We typically see 'the people' as having a special, sovereign power. Despite the centrality of this idea in our thinking, we have little understanding of why it has such importance. Imagined Sovereignties probes the considerable force that 'the people' exercises on our thought and practice. Like the imagined communities described by Benedict Anderson, popular politics is formed around shared, imaginary constructs rooted in our collective imagination. This book investigates these 'imagined sovereignties' in a genealogy traversing the French Enlightenment, the Haitian Revolution, and nineteenth-century Haitian constitutionalism. It problematizes taken-for-granted ideas about popular politics and provokes new ways of imagining the power of the people.

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork on The State and Revolution . . . This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Immediately established as a standard text, it was selectively cited by leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev in support of programmes which differed in important ways. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.

Alan Wood provides a concise introduction to the Russian Revolution and its origins dating back to the emancipation of the Russian peasant serfs in 1861. The third edition of this successful pamphlet brings the historiography up to date to include the multitude of research in the last ten years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of the archives.

Benjamin Constant distinguished two kinds of government: unlawful government based on violence, and legitimate government based on the general will. In Europe monarchy was for over a thousand years considered the natural form of legitimate government. The sources of its legitimacy were the dynastic principle, religion, and the ability to protect against foreign aggression. At the end of the eighteenth century the revolutions in America and France called into question the traditional legitimacy of monarchy, but Volker Sellin shows that in response to this challenge monarchy opened up new sources of legitimacy by concluding alliances with constitutionalism, nationalism, and social reform. In some cases the age of revolution brought on a new type of leader, basing his claim to power on charisma.

Situating the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context, Jill C. Bender traces its ramifications across the four different colonial sites of Ireland, New Zealand, Jamaica, and southern Africa. Bender argues that the 1857 uprising shaped colonial Britons' perceptions of their own empire, revealing the possibilities of an integrated empire that could provide the resources to generate and 'justify' British power. In response to the uprising, Britons throughout the Empire debated colonial responsibility, methods of counter-insurrection, military recruiting practices, and colonial governance. Even after the rebellion had been suppressed, the violence of 1857 continued to have a lasting effect. The fears generated by the uprising transformed how the British understood their relationship with the 'colonized' and shaped their own expectations of themselves as 'colonizer'. Placing the 1857 Indian uprising within an imperial context reminds us that British power was neither natural nor inevitable, but had to be constructed.

The book interprets the Cuban revolutionary movement from 1868 to 1959 as a continuous process that sought political independence and social and economic transformation of colonial and neocolonial structures. Cuba is a symbol of hope for the Third World. The Cuban Revolution took power from a national elite subordinate to foreign capital, and placed it in the hands of the people; and it subsequently developed alternative structures of popular democracy that have functioned to keep delegates of the people in power. While Cuba has persisted, the peoples of the Third World, knocked down by the neoliberal project, have found social movement and political life, a renewal that is especially evident in Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement. At the same time, the capitalist world-economy increasingly reveals its unsustainability, and the global elite demonstrate its incapacity to respond to a multifaceted and sustained global crisis. These dynamics establish conditions for popular democratic socialist revolutions in the North.

This book explores Sartre's engagement with the Cuban Revolution. In early 1960 Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir accepted the invitation to visit Cuba and to report on the revolution. They arrived during the carnival in a land bursting with revolutionary activity. They visited Che Guevara, head of the National Bank. They toured the island with Fidel Castro. They met ministers, journalists, students, writers, artists, dockers and agricultural workers. Sartre spoke at the University of Havana. Sartre later published his Cuba reports in France-Soir. Sartre endorsed the Cuban Revolution. He made clear his political identification. He opposed colonialism. He saw the US as colonial in Cuban affairs from 1898. He supported Fidel Castro. He supported the agrarian reform. He supported the revolution. His Cuba accounts have been maligned, ignored and understudied. They have been denounced as blind praise of Castro, 'unabashed propaganda.' They have been criticised for 'cliches,' 'panegyric' and 'analytical superficiality.' They have been called 'crazy' and 'incomprehensible.' Sartre was called naive. He was rebuked as a fellow traveller. He was, in the words of Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante, duped by 'Chic Guevara.' This book explores these accusations. Were Sartre's Cuba texts propaganda? Are they blind praise? Was he naive? Had he been deceived by Castro? Had he deceived his readers? Was he obligated to Castro or to the Revolution? He later buried the reports, and abandoned a separate Cuba book. His relationship with Castro later turned sour. What is the impact of Cuba on Sartre and of Sartre on Cuba?

Since the 1970s, the Egyptian state has embarked on a far-reaching and destabilizing project of economic liberalization, reneging on its commitments to social welfare. Despite widespread socioeconomic grievances stemming from these policies, class politics and battles over wealth redistribution have largely been sidelined from elite-led national politics. Instead, conflicts over identity have raged, as Islamist movements became increasingly prominent political players. Classless Politics offers a counterintuitive account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of "more identity, less class." Hesham Sallam examines why Islamist movements have gained support at the expense of the left, even amid conflicts over the costs of economic reforms. Rather than highlighting the stagnancy of the left or the agility of Islamists, he pinpoints the historical legacies of authoritarian survival strategies. As the regime resorted to economic liberalization in the 1970s, it tacitly opened political space for Islamist movements to marginalize its leftist opponents. In the long run, this policy led to the fragmentation of opponents of economic reform, the increased salience of cultural conflicts within the left, and the restructuring of political life around questions of national and religious identity. Historically rich and theoretically insightful, this book demonstrates how the participation of Islamist groups shapes the politics of neoliberal reform and addresses why economic liberalization since the 1970s has contributed to the surge in culture wars around the world today.

Every Thursday morning in a living room in Iran, over tea and pastries, eight women meet in secret to discuss forbidden works of Western literature. As they lose themselves in the worlds of Lolita, The Great Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice, gradually they come to share their own stories, dreams and hopes with each other, and, for a few hours, taste freedom. Azar Nafisi's bestselling memoir is a moving, passionate testament to the transformative power of books, the magic of words and the search for beauty in life's darkest moments.

The first half of the 19th century in France was marked by political change and reaction. The book examines this dramatic period of revolution and counter-revolution, from the end of the Napoleonic rule and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1815 to the proclamation of the Second Republic and the rise of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. The author sets this account of political developments against the background of the dominant revolutionary, republican and Napoleonic traditions. He concludes by asking to what extent the establishment of the Second Empire reversed the events of 1815.

This volume examines the French Revolution's relationship with and impact on religious communities and religion in a transnational perspective. It challenges the traditional secular narrative of the French Revolution, exploring religious experience and representation during the Revolution, as well as the religious legacies that spanned from the eighteenth century to the present. Contributors explore the myriad ways that individuals, communities, and nation-states reshaped religion in France, Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, and around the world.

This book examines the ways in which Cuba's revolutions of 1933 and 1959 became touchstones for border-crossing endeavors of radical politics and cultural experimentation over the mid-twentieth century. It argues that new networks of solidarity building between US and Cuban allies also brought with them perils and pitfalls that could not be separated from the longer history of US empire in Cuba. As US and Cuban subjects struggled together towards common aspirations of racial and gender equality, fairer distribution of wealth, and anti-imperialism, they created a unique index of cultural work that widens our understanding of the transition between hemispheric modernism and postmodernism. Canvassing poetry, music, journalism, photographs, and other cultural expressions around themes of revolution, this book seeks new understanding of how race, gender, and nationhood could shift in meaning and materialization when traveling across the Florida Straits.

This is the first book to examine and compare how rebels govern civilians during civil wars in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Drawing from a variety of disciplinary traditions, including political science, sociology, and anthropology, the book provides in-depth case studies of specific conflicts as well as comparative studies of multiple conflicts. Among other themes, the book examines why and how some rebels establish both structures and practices of rule, the role of ideology, cultural, and material factors affecting rebel governance strategies, the impact of governance on the rebel/civilian relationship, civilian responses to rebel rule, the comparison between modes of state and non-state governance to rebel attempts to establish political order, the political economy of rebel governance, and the decline and demise of rebel governance attempts.

The Dynamics of Military Revolution bridges a major gap in the emerging literature on revolutions in military affairs. It suggests that two very different phenomena have been at work over the past centuries: "military revolutions," which are driven by vast social and political changes, and "revolutions in military affairs," which military institutions have directed, although usually with great difficulty and ambiguous results. MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray provide a conceptual framework and historical context for understanding the patterns of change, innovation, and adaptation that have marked war in the Western world since the fourteenth century--beginning with Edward III's revolution in medieval warfare, through the development of modern military institutions in seventeenth-century France, to the military impact of mass politics in the French Revolution, the cataclysmic military-industrial struggle of 1914-1918, and the German Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. Case studies and a conceptual overview offer an indispensible introduction to revolutionary military change,--which is as inevitable as it is difficult to predict. Macgregor Knox is the Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Common Destiny (Cambridge, 2000) and Hitler's Italian Allies (Cambridge, 2000). Knox and Murray are co-editors of Making of Strategy (Cambridge, 1996). Willamson Murray is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defense Analysis. He is the co-editor of Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, 1996) and author of A War to Be Won (Harvard University Press, 2000).

This volume examines Lebanon's post-2011 security dilemmas and the tenuous civil-military relations. The Syrian civil war has strained the Lebanese Armed Forces' (LAF) cohesion and threatens its neutrality - its most valued assets in a divided society. The spill-over from the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah's military engagement has magnified the security challenges facing the Army, making it a target. Massive foreign grants have sought to strengthen its military capability, stabilize the country and contain the Syria crisis. However, as this volume demonstrates, the real weakness of the LAF is not its lack of sophisticated armoury, but the fragile civil-military relations that compromise its fighting power, cripple its neutrality and expose it to accusations of partisanship and political bias. This testifies to both the importance of and the challenges facing multi-confessional armies in deeply divided countries.

Through mapping the rights discourse and the transformations in transnational finance capitalism since the world wars, and interrogating the connections between the two, Radha D'Souza examines contemporary rights in theory and practice through the lens of the struggles of the people of the Third World, their experiences of national liberation and socialism and their aspirations for emancipation and freedom. Social movements demand rights to remedy wrongs and injustices in society. But why do organisations like the World Bank and IMF, the G7 states and the World Economic Forum want to promote rights? Activists and activist scholars are critical of human rights in their diagnosis of problems. But in their prognosis, they reinstate human rights and bring back through the backdoor what they dismiss through the front. Why are activists and activist scholars unable to 'let go' of human rights? Why do indigenous peoples find the need to invoke the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People to make their claims sound reasonable? Are rights in the 20th and 21st centuries the same as rights in the 17th and 18th centuries? This book examines what is entailed in reducing rights to 'human' rights and in the argument 'our understandings of rights are better than theirs' that is popular within social movements and in critical scholarship.

This book examines diverse encounters between the British community and the thousands of French individuals who sought haven in the British Isles as they left revolutionary and Imperial France. This painstaking research into the emigrant archival and memorial presence in Britain uncovers a wealth of underused and alternative sources on this controversial population displacement. These include open letters and classified advertisements published in British newspapers, insurance contracts, as well as lists of addresses and passports drawn up by local authorities. These sources question the construction by British loyalists and French emigre elites of a stereotyped emigrant figure and their use of the trauma of forced displacement to advance ideological agendas. In fact, public and private discourses on governmental systems, foreigners, political and religious dissent, and the economic survival of French emigrants, demonstrate the heterogeneity of the responses to emigration in Britain. Ultimately, this book narrates a story in which the emigrant community and its host have been often unnoticeably yet fundamentally transformed by their encounter, in both practical and ideological domains.

Seventeen million people have died in civil wars and rebel violence has disrupted the lives of millions more. In a fascinating contribution to the active literature on civil wars, this book finds that some contemporary rebel groups actually comply with international law amid the brutality of civil conflicts around the world. Rather than celebrating the existence of compliant rebels, the author traces the cause of this phenomenon and argues that compliant rebels emerge when rebel groups seek legitimacy in the eyes of domestic and international audiences that care about humanitarian consequences and human rights. By examining rebel groups' different behaviors such as civilian killing, child soldiering, and allowing access to detention centers, Compliant Rebels offers key messages and policy lessons about engaging rebel groups with an eye toward reducing civilian suffering in war zones.

In Gay Liberation after May '68, first published in France in 1974 and appearing here in English for the first time, Guy Hocquenghem details the rise of the militant gay liberation movement alongside the women's movement and other revolutionary organizing. Writing after the apparent failure and eventual selling out of the revolutionary dream of May 1968, Hocquenghem situates his theories of homosexual desire in the realm of revolutionary practice, arguing that revolutionary movements must be rethought through ideas of desire and sexuality that undo stable gender and sexual identities. Throughout, he persists in a radical vision of the world framed through a queerness that can dismantle the oppressions of capitalism and empire, the family, institutions, and, ultimately, civilization. The articles, communiques, and manifestos that compose the book give an archival glimpse at the issues queer revolutionaries faced while also speaking to today's radical queers as they look to transform their world.

Teacher, artist, trade unionist, Jewish South African socialist and anti-Zionist in Palestine, partner of Tony Cliff and founding member of the International Socialist tradition: now in her nineties, Chanie Rosenberg remains an active, committed revolutionary. Rosenberg's memoir also includes her illustrated pamphlet on the great Russian modernist artist, 'Malevich & Revolution'.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s hundreds of thousands of white middle-class American youths suddenly became hippies. This short overview of the hippie social movement in the United States examines the movement's beliefs and practices, including psychedelic drugs, casual sex, and rock music, as well as the phenomena of spiritual seeking, hostility to politics, and communes. W. J. Rorabaugh synthesizes how hippies strived for authenticity, expressed individualism, and yearned for community. Viewing the tumultuous Sixties from a new angle, Rorabaugh shows how the counterculture led to subsequent social and cultural changes in the United States with legacies including casual sex, natural foods, and even the personal computer.