Global Political Transitions

In this book, ten substantive chapters examine how collisions between technological developments (globalizing forces) and thickening populist pressures (localizing dynamics) constantly keep reinventing the state in unforeseen and unpredictable ways. We learn of how international organizations have fared, and to what extent grass-roots grumbles have impacted big-picture developments in quite diverse parts of the world.

Just placing unfolding crises under the microscope cannot but generate policy-solving observations. Treated in corresponding order, these crises revolve around adjusting international institutions; absorbing current populist outbursts; shifting from peacekeeping to peacemaking; spying in the global south; absorbing displaced persons; Rwandan land reform; pandemic and RMG readjustments; Bangladesh’s democratic transition; Rohingyan-Syrian refugees; and Mexico’s 1990s liberalization. Though overarching, observations in the book accent state strength battling with state porosity; the downward spiraling of global order; and the simple lack of any controlling mechanism against globalizing/localizing dynamics in the trenches of everyday life being matched by continued uncertainty on the analytical plane. 

This book presents thirteen chapters which probe the “tales less told” and “pathways less traveled” in refugee camp living. Rohingya camps in Bangladesh since August 2017 supply these “tales” and “pathways”. They dwell upon/reflect camp violence, sexual/gender discrimination, intersectionality, justice, the sudden COVID camp entry, human security, children education, innovation, and relocation plans. Built largely upon field trips, these narratives interestingly interweave with both theoretical threads (hypotheses) and tapestries (net-effects), feeding into the security-driven pulls of political realism, or disseminating from humanitarian-driven socioeconomic pushes, but mostly combining them. Post-ethnic cleansing and post-exodus windows open up a murky future for Rohingya and global refugees. We learn of positive offshoots (of camp innovations exposing civil society relevance) and negative (like human and sex trafficking beyond Bangladeshi and Myanmar borders), as of navigating (a) local–global linkages of every dynamic and (b) fast-moving current circumstances against stoic historical leftovers. 

This book introduces the editors’ new concept of “Awkward Powers”. By undertaking a critical re-examination of the state of International Relations theorising on the changing nature of the global power hierarchy, it draws attention to a number of countries that fit awkwardly into existing but outdated categories such as “great power” and “middle power”. It argues that conceptual categories pertaining to the apex of the international hierarchy have become increasingly unsatisfactory, and that new approaches focusing on such “Awkward Powers” can both rectify shortcomings on power theorising whilst shining a much-needed theoretical spotlight on significant but understudied states. The book’s contributors examine a broad range of empirical case studies, including both established and rising powers across a global scale to illustrate our conceptual claims. Through such a novel process, we argue that a better appreciation of the de facto international power hierarchy in the 21st century can be achieved.

This book brings together a unique team of academics and practitioners to analyse interests, institutions, and issues affecting and affected by the transition from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific has emerged as the world’s economic and strategic centre of gravity, in which established and rising powers compete with each other. As a strategic space, the Indo-Pacific reflects the rise of geo-political and geo-economic designs and dynamics which have come to shape the region in the early twenty-first century. These new dynamics contrast with the (neo-)liberal ideas and the seemingly increasing globalisation for which the once dominant ‘Asia-Pacific’ regional label stood.

For the past decade and a half, the world has witnessed a precipitous decline of democratic countries and the consequent rise of autocrats. How Autocrats Rise: Sequences of Democratic Backsliding challenges the conventional wisdom and offers an institutional-ideological approach to understand the phenomenon, examines the steps of emergent autocrats, and analyzes the methods of legitimizing their rules. Employing the new framework, the book provides incisive analyses of four countries located in four different regions with dissimilar national features – Bangladesh, Bolivia, Hungary, and Turkey, and demonstrates that political developments in these countries have followed a similar, specific pattern resulting in various shades of autocracy. Theoretically enriched and empirically grounded, this exceptionally timely book makes significant contribution to the democratic backsliding literature while offering insights on how to forestall an autocratic era.

This book focuses on Islam in Indonesia, showcasing the wide range of Muslim organisations, belief systems and movements, together with an analysis of the political behaviour of Indonesian Muslims. It includes an investigation of the structure of groups, organizations, and societies, and how Muslims within the archipelago interact within these contexts. In doing so, it promotes a more nuanced understanding of Indonesian Muslim society by approaching it through the utilisation of scholarly frameworks. Theories related to religion and society are used, especially in characterising the transition of the Indonesian Muslim society from pre-New Order to post-New Order. Particularly significant is Abdullah Saeed's framework in understanding one’s attitude towards key and contemporary issues, originally used to understand one’s attitude towards the religious ‘other’. The authors thus adopt this framework in the book, as a method of categorising people in a diverse society which in turnhelps readers to understand the nuances of Islam and Muslims in a huge country like Indonesia.

This book offers a theory-driven and evidence-based approach to the study of South Asian borders and geopolitics. In the book, readers will be particularly interested to see the multiple meanings of borders and territoriality and their effects on border communities. The analyses found within chapters show how the statist and territorialist definitions of border and geopolitics have given way to the rise of liberal, humane, and gendered definitions of borders and geopolitics. Individual chapters in this volume employ a wide variety of qualitative research methods, with some adopting a mixed method approach by combining quantitative and qualitative data. The book would be a useful reference to academics and practitioners with a regional interest in South Asia.

This book advances the establishment of a contemporary New Zealand geopolitical tradition. It details and examines New Zealand’s geopolitical reality in an increasingly fractured global security (dis)order defined by interdependent strategic competition and emerging multipolarity. A centrepiece is the multidimensional US-China Great Power Competition that has the makings of a Second Cold War. This has immense implications for New Zealand’s greater region, the Indo-Pacific, and its immediate area, the South Pacific. The latter is of existential importance to New Zealand, becoming an active area of strategic competition as China projects its influence southwards, and New Zealand, Australia and the United States respond. In this context, New Zealand’s location is increasingly geopolitically relevant and the idea it occupies a ‘benign security environment’ has now been cast into the dustbin of history. The decisions it makes presently will determine the country’s prosperity and geostrategic security for decades.

Geopolitical theory, along with a detailed empirical account of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific and South Pacific, offers a clear exposition of the implications of US-China competition for New Zealand. This directs us to the nation’s material characteristics and imperatives that flow from it. The book also appraises the country’s strategic options and indicates how and why Wellington’s approach has shifted over time from hedging between the US and China to, increasingly, balancing against Beijing’s efforts to alter the global and regional status quo.

Through analysis and provocation, this book marks a major new contribution that will interest policymakers, academics, students and everyday citizens.