Empires have returned as features of the international scene. With the Cold War's global ideological contest gone, alternative structures such as the War on Terror or the Clash of Civilizations losing credibility, and even the unipolar position of the USA no longer self-evident, the operations of competing empires, history's best known form of order imposed over territories and peoples, acquires renewed credibility. Empire and International Order presents a critical examination of how useful the concept of empire is for understanding varieties of international order across time and place. Original contributions from an international team of upcoming and distinguished scholars analyse a wealth of theoretical approaches alongside contemporary themes enabling the reader to understand the desire to shift the ground of analysis away from the current literature of immediate issue of the US towards the disciplines of international relations, politics, and political/sociological theory.

This edited collection formalises Critical Border Studies (CBS) as a distinctive approach within the interdisciplinary border studies literature. Although CBS represents a heterogeneous assemblage of thought, the hallmark of the approach is a basic dissatisfaction with the 'Line in the Sand' metaphor as an unexamined starting point for the study of borders. A headline feature of each contribution gathered here is a concerted effort to decentre the border. By 'decentring' we mean an effort to problematise the border not as taken-for-granted entity, but precisely as a site of investigation. On this view, the border is not something that straightforwardly presents itself in an unmediated way. It is never simply 'present', nor fully established, nor obviously accessible. Rather, it is manifold and in a constant state of becoming. Empirically, contributors examine the changing nature of the border in a range of cases, including: the Arctic Circle; German-Dutch borderlands; the India-Pakistan region; and the Mediterranean Sea. Theoretically, chapters draw on a range of critical thinkers in support of a new paradigm for border research. The volume will be of particular interest to border studies scholars in anthropology, human geography, international relations, and political science. Critical Border Studies was published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

An easy, convenient reference to the most important social and political ideas - and theorists - of the modern and post-modern age.KEY TOPICS:This book ranges widely through the social sciences to identify the thinkers with the greatest impact on modern social and political theory. Essays, biographies and bibliographies make these authors' works more accessible than ever. Some of the authors covered include: Arendt, Aron, de Beauvoir, Bell, Braudel, Burnham, Comte, Djilas, Durkheim, Dworkin, Fanon, Foucault, Freud, Friedan, Milton Friedman, Fuller, Galbraith, Gramsci, Habermas, Hayek, Illich, Jung, Keynes, Kuhn, Laing, Le Corbusier, Lenin, Levi-Strauss, Luxembourg, McLuhan, Marx, Mao Ze Dong, Marcuse, Mead, Mills, Nozick, Samuelson, Peter Singer, B.F. Skinner, Tillich, Toffler, Trotsky, Veblen and Weber.MARKET:Anyone interested in contemporary political and social theory.

These essays go beyond conventional studies of the institutions and parties of Europe to address Europe's democractic future more widely.
While the book does offer an analysis of the democratic institutions of European countries, identifying common features and differences, as the editors put it, "institutions cannot function alone, like machines to produce concensus." So the book focuses on the fundamentals of European democratic culture. The authors argue that European social life and scientific learning have been indispensable components in the growth of the shared values that democracy pursues. They also analyse the dynamic tension brought to the life of democractic institutions by law, the desire for freedom, and critical public debate.
With Europe engaged in perpetual self-examination, and rapid change, this book provides insights into its democractic past and prognosticates for its democratic future.