Political Science and International Studies

This book aims to establish a dialogue around the various “urban sanctuary” policies and other formal or informal practices of hospitality toward migrants that have emerged or been strengthened in cities in the Americas in the last decade. The authors articulate local governance initiatives in migrant protection with a larger range of social and political actors and places them within a broader context of migrations in the Western Hemisphere (including case studies of Toronto, New York, Austin, Mexico City, and Lima, among others). The book analyzes in particular the limits of local efforts to protect migrants and to identify the latitude of action at the disposal of local actors. It examines the efforts of municipal governments and also considers the role taken by cities from a larger perspective, including the actions of immigrant rights associations, churches, NGOs, and other actors in protecting vulnerable migrants.

This book examines the nexus between City Networks, multilevel governance and migration policy. Examining several City Networks operating in the European Union and the United States of America’s multilevel political settings, it brings migration research into conversation with both policy studies and political science. One of the first comparative studies of City Networks and migration, the book argues that multilevel governance is the result of a contingent process of converging interests and views between leaders in network organisations and national governments, the latter continuing to play a key gatekeeping role on this topical issue even in the supranational EU system.

Far from displaying a uniform pattern, European integration varies significantly across policy areas and individual countries. Why do some member states choose to opt out of specific EU policies? Why are some policies deeply integrated whereas others remain intergovernmental? In this updated second edition, the authors introduce the most important theoretical approaches to European integration and apply these to the trajectories of key EU policy areas. Arguing that no single theory offers a completely convincing explanation of integration and differentiation in the EU, this thought-provoking book provides a new synthesis of integration theory and an original way of thinking about what the EU is and how it works.

Forgiveness is important in international politics because it can save thousands of lives. Its opposite, vengefulness, has played a significant part in various wars of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. These conflicts are examined in this book, showing how forgiveness could have avoided the tremendous ensuing bloodshed.

Despite its importance, in the context of international relations, forgiveness as a means of preventing the outbreak of war (as opposed to facilitating reconciliation after conflicts) has largely been neglected as a subject of study. Indeed, it has also been ignored by politicians, as a result of which there are few examples of forgiveness to study compared with those of revenge. This book reflects this reality, but also seeks to change it by raising public awareness of the importance of forgiveness in international affairs and the need to demand that political leaders explore this avenue.

Why has global governance largely failed to effectively tackle some of the most pressing global environmental challenges of our time? What are the obstacles to effective global and planetary problem-solving? And which solutions and responses have global governance actors come up with to confront these challenges? This textbook teases out the tragic entanglements between dominant global governance dynamics and the global environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, showing how international and global cooperation mechanisms that evolved over the last two hundred years are deeply implicated in exacerbating many of today’s global environmental challenges. The book focuses on several global environmental challenges which are intrinsically interconnected, threatening to destabilise the entire Earth-system with serious consequences for human societies across the world. These global environmental challenges include infectious disease outbreaks, global food production processes, the pollution of freshwater resources, energy consumption patterns, deforestation and CO₂ emissions. At the same time, the book also presents several alternative governance examples based on more democratic, citizen-based and holistic approaches to the global climate crisis, which point the way towards a new understanding of global governance in the age of the Anthropocene. This textbook is for undergraduate and postgraduate students of global governance, environmental politics and international relations.

This book adopts a regional approach to understanding 2020 presidential election outcomes, taking into account the tribalism that has come to define contemporary US politics and building a path to 270 Electoral College votes. The authors employ qualitative and quantitative methods to examine electoral outcomes in the Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast, enriching contextual understandings of the national results and illuminating nuances in public opinion, voter behavior, and party politics. From this foundation, the book offers a comprehensive assessment of prominent issues in the 2020 campaign, which fundamentally shaped and reshaped the nature of the election. Scholars examine seven key issues, including multiple crises that unfolded during the campaign, to understand how these issues affected public opinion and the 2020 campaign.

This open access book is about mismanagement of public agencies as a threat to life and limb. Collapsing bridges and buildings kill people and often leave many more injured. Such disasters do not happen out of the blue nor are they purely technical in nature since construction and maintenance are subject to safety regulation and enforcement by governmental agencies. This book analyses four relevant cases from Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Germany. Arguing that, while preventing disaster through public oversight is essentially easy, the difficult part for public officials and private contractors and consultants alike is to resist incentives that threaten professional skills and standards. Rather than stressing well-known pathologies of bureaucracy as a potential source of disaster, this book argues, learning for the sake of prevention should aim at neutralizing threats to integrity and strengthening a sense of responsibility among public officials.

This book considers the impact that the increasing number of LGBQ politicians in Canada has had on the political representation of LGBTQ people and communities. Based on analysis of parliamentary speeches and interviews with 28 out LGBQ parliamentarians in Canada between 2017 and 2020, Tremblay shows how out LGBQ MLAs and MPs take advantage of their intermediary position between the LGBTQ movement and the state to represent LGBTQ people and communities. For example, the politicians in this study introduce pro-LGBTQ bills, lobby cabinet ministers, act as a bridge between LGBTQ groups and the civil service, and give talks in schools about their identities. Most importantly, they act as role models for LGBTQ people (particularly children and teens) and contribute to lifting the social stigma around sexuality and gender identity. This latest volume in our Sustainable Development Goals series underlines that SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) can only be accomplished with political representation for the LGBTQ community and minority groups in general.

This book examines the progress of institutionalisation of evaluation in American countries from various perspectives. It presents prior developments and current states of evaluation in 11 American countries and three transnational organisations, focusing on three dimensions, namely the political, social and professional systems. These detailed country reports, which have been written by selected researchers and authors of the respective countries, lead to a concluding comparison and synthesis. This is the second of four volumes of the compendium The Institutionalisation of Evaluation. The first volume on Europe was published in 2020. It will be followed by two more volumes on Asia Pacific, and Africa. The overall aim is to provide an interdisciplinary audience with cross-country learning to enable them to better understand the institutionalisation of evaluation in different nations, world regions and sectors. 

This open access book gives insights into feminist methodologies in theory and practice. By foregrounding the experiential and embodied nature of doing feminist research, this book offers valuable tools for feminist research as a continuous praxis. Emerging from a rich collective learning process, the collection offers in-depth reflections on how feminists shape research questions, understand positionality, share research results beyond academe and produce feminist intersectional knowledges. This book reveals how the authors navigate theory and practice, candidly exploring the difficulty of producing knowledge on the edge of academia and activism. From different points of view, places and disciplinary positions, artistic and creative experiments and collaborations, the book provides a multi-layered analysis. This book will be a valuable resource and asset to early career researchers and interdisciplinary feminist students who can learn more about the doing of feminist researchfrom realistic, accessible, and practical methodological tools and knowledge.

This book examines the phenomenon of sexual harassment in the UK Parliament and efforts to tackle it. The volume’s in-depth research unveils a political culture where sexual transgressions thrive. Its intersectional feminist perspective furthermore highlights multiple systems of gendered oppression perpetuating inequality. Britain’s experience is viewed against the global #MeToo movement and Hollywood’s Weinstein sex scandal. The book identifies ways to redress the status quo and challenges ahead, including a gender power gap, misuse of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims, and misogynistic organisational cultures.

Hateful thoughts and words can lead to harmful actions like the March 2019 terrorist attack on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In free, open and democratic societies, governments cannot justifiably regulate what citizens think, feel, believe or value, but do have a duty to protect citizens from harmful communication that incites discrimination, active hostility and violence.

Written by a public policy advisor for fellow practitioners in politics and public life, this book discusses significant practical and moral challenges regarding internet governance and freedom of speech, particularly when responding to content that is legal but harmful. Policy makers and professionals working for governmental institutions need to strike a fair balance between protecting from harm and preserving the right to freedom of expression. And because merely passing laws does not solve complex social problems, governments need to invest, not just regulate. Governments, big tech and the private sector, civil society, individual citizens and the fourth estate all have roles to play, and counter-speech is everyone’s responsibility.

This book tackles hard questions about internet governance, hate speech, cancel culture and the loss of civility, and illustrates principled pragmatism applied to perplexing policy problems. Furthermore, it presents counter-speech strategies as alternatives and complements to censorship and criminalisation.

This textbook provides students of US Politics with an informed scholarly analysis of recent developments in the American political environment, using historical background to contextualize contemporary issues. As the ninth edition, this book reviews a time of political controversy in the United States, touching on topics such as gender, economic policy, gun control, immigration, the media, healthcare, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widespread social protests against police brutality. The book looks both backwards to Trump's presidency and forward to Biden's. Ultimately, the editors and contributors evaluate the significance of these events on the future of American politics, providing a perspective that is at once broad and meticulous.

Trade unions in Europe face a range of cross-cutting challenges. This includes the near-universal contraction in union membership; the related decline of traditionally highly unionised blue-collar industries; and the rise of automation, microprocessing, and digitalisation, which can make it cheaper for employers to invest in machines than to pay humans to work. The breakdown of the standard contract of employment and increasing rates of precarious work have further transformed the world of work. Taken together, this makes any collectivist vision of society, and the notion of solidarity upon which trade unionism is built, difficult to sustain.

This interdisciplinary volume includes contributions that consider the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the EU level by researchers coming from a range of disciplines and backgrounds. The volume should especially appeal to researchers and practitioners working in the fields of political science, sociology, law, and business studies.

This book explores why and how Thomas  Hobbes – the 17th century founder of political science -- contributed to the modern marginalisation of ‘friendship’, a concept that stood in the foreground of ancient moral and political thought  and that is  currently undergoing a revival. The study shows that Hobbes did not question the occurrence of friendship; rather, he rejected friendship as an explanatory and normative principle of peace and cooperation. Hobbes’s stance was influential because it captured the spirit of modernity- its individualism, nominalism, practical scepticism, and materialism. Hobbes’s legacy has a bearing on contemporary debates about civic, international and global friendship.  

This book examines the geostrategic alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA regions. It analyzes how these alliances transcend stereotyped political and cultural prototypes throughout western Eurasia as the outcome of shifting regional power balances. The authors explain how this development has its foundation mostly in the United States' ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy, resulting in a lower priority ranking of the Middle East for Washington, but also in the emergence of China’s economic incursion on the wider region.

The book looks into and presents different reasons for this paradigm shift: First and foremost, the historical ambitions and conflicting assertions of sovereignty in the region. Then, competition over control of hydrocarbons reserves and pipeline politics, civil wars, and political chaos in certain littoral states. US retrenchment and Russia’s naval base expansion in Syria, as well as Turkish expansion in Libya, NATO allies divisions and, not to reckon with, waves of migration and refugees. Yet some internal and external factors could lead to some changes in these trends, including the need to engage in energy transitions due to climate change consequences in the region.

Therefore, this book is a must-read for scholars, students, policy-makers, and practitioners interested in a better understanding of the political development in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA regions, as well as of International Relations in general. 

This book bridges the gap between academic researchers and policymaking experts working on the Western Balkans and those dealing with the Baltic States. Within the frame of a comparative and cross-regional approach, Vassilis Petsinis generates new insights in subjects as diverse as: how geopolitics shape the management of ethnic relations; the variants of Euroscepticism; opposition to immigration and LGBTQI rights; the patterns of multi-ethnic cohabitation; as well as the endeavour by parties of the populist and radical right to embed their platforms into the longer trajectories of ethno-nationalism in the countries and societies studied (Estonia and Latvia from the Baltic States; Croatia and Serbia from the Western Balkans). This work also assesses the extent to which the centrality of ethnic cleavages can be contested, temporarily effaced, or ultimately transformed by the increasing significance of the economy (social welfare and transparency) in multi-ethnic societies. The book adds a sound contribution towards updating and upgrading the study of ethnopolitics not solely across Central and Eastern Europe, but as a whole.

This book focuses on critical approaches to the state and state theory in the Global South. In light of the reemergence of the post-colonial and peripheral state as a crucial institution and actor in the 21st century’s capitalist world-system, the book examines the nature, functions and development dynamics of the state in the periphery, as well as its constituting interests and struggles. Drawing on the works of Poulantzas and Gramsci, dependency and world-systems theory, as well as the regulation school and the German Ableitungsdebatte, stategraphy and critical realism, it analyzes the development of different theoretical perspectives on the state, elaborates on their theoretical, ontological and epistemological presuppositions, and illustrates their methodological, practical and ethical implications.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which provides an overview of recent global capitalist developments and challenges for state theory andlays the theoretical, ontological and hermeneutic foundation for studies of the state and statehood in the Global South. In turn, the second part introduces readers to different schools of state theory, including critical theory and materialism, as well as approaches derived from postcolonial, anthropological, and feminist thought. Lastly, the third part presents various empirical studies, highlighting concrete methodological and practical experiences of conducting critical state theory.

This is an open access book.

This book broadly analyzes the displacement or forced relocation of Adivasis Indigenous peoples from the Narmada Valley in India due to the construction and execution of a large development project, the Sardar Sarovar project, which has substantially transformed Adivasi lives, roles, practices, and autonomy, and increased their dependence on capital, market, unsustainable farming practices and urban jobs. Globally, Indigenous communities live within a legacy of environmental dispossession due to economic development that dismantles their mental and physical well-being and a land-based way of life. Appropriation, dispossession, and accumulation is historical and contemporary. Stories of Adivasi people illustrate the horrors of systematic marginalization, in general, and Adivasi women’s reduced autonomy and economic sufficiency, in particular. Key to mention here is that decades of resistance, protests, counter-struggles, marches, direct action did not overturn bureaucraticregressions or structural and direct violence towards marginalized or resettled Adivasi people, but enabled networks of solidarity arguing their rights and access. The book does not attest to state or corporate power, but validates Adivasi agency and autonomy.

This book provides an original analysis of the trajectory of health policy reform in the United Kingdom from the beginning of the ‘Thatcher reforms’ in the 1980s right up to the latest changes in England in 2022. Rooted in political science and health policy analysis, it tackles key arguments around the ‘new integration’ of the NHS since 2015, what the new and emerging NHS structure represents, the UK’s poor response to the Covid-19 crisis, and the future threat to a comprehensive public NHS. It includes significant new material on what has happened since 2015, such as the politics of the Covid-19 pandemic, the effects of Brexit, and the conundrum of ‘social care’. The book is a scholarly and polemical analysis from an expert who has studied the politics of health services for more than forty years. It will be a key resource for students, academics and policy makers.

This book provides a new theory for how democracy can materialize in the Middle East, and the broader Muslim world. It shows that one pathway to democratization lays not in resolving important, but often irreconcilable, debates about the role of religion in politics. Rather, it requires that Islamists and their secular opponents focus on the concerns of pragmatic survival—that is, compromise through pacting, rather than battling through difficult philosophical issues about faith. This is the only book-length treatment of this topic, and one that aims to redefine the boundaries of an urgent problem that continues to haunt struggles for democracy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

This book conceives federalism not as a static institutional architecture, but as a dynamic formation always in flux. This may entail processes of federalization, but in some cases also lead to de-federalization. It looks at emerging federal structures worldwide and analyses federal structures: their emergence, operation and categorization. The contributors highlight that the “emergence” of these federal structures has multiple facets, from the recognition of ethnic diversity to the use of federalism as a tool of conflict resolution. Identifying and categorizing processes of federalization and defederalization in a variety of cases, the book provides much needed empirical and theoretical discussion on emerging federal structures and the changing nature of federalism in the post-Cold War era.

The 21^st century has witnessed a considerable and increasing number of political revolutions around the world. This contradicts the popular belief of many experts in the 1970s that revolutions occurred mainly in monarchies and empires. Instead, the revolutions of this century have several new characteristics, which call for a renewed analysis of the subject.

This handbook offers a comparative perspective on the new wave of revolutions of the last decade. Presenting case studies on the color revolutions, the Arab revolutions of 2010–2011, and the global wave of revolutions in 2013–2018 that spanned regions ranging from Africa to the Caucasus, it offers a better understanding of the varied forms, features, and historical backgrounds of revolutions, as well as their causes. Accordingly, it highlights recent revolutions in their historical and world-systems contexts.

"Once again, this volume demonstrates the kind of open-minded, systematic analysis that the field of revolutionary studies requires." (Prof. George Lawson, Department of International Relations, Australian National University Canberra)

This book analyses international relations between the USA, China, and Russia and provides an overview of how the US-China-Russia triangle has evolved over time. Based on a forensic examination of primary documentation from US archives, the author illustrates how the US strategic perspectives on Chinese–Russian relations have developed since the late-19th century. The author demonstrates how US relations with the Russian and Chinese empires began expanding into greater sophistication and complexity in the 19th century, reflecting changing US concerns, priorities, and preferences vis-à-vis Sino-Russian dynamics which themselves, too, were evolving in parallel and, in some instances, in an interactive fashion. The book analyses US perceptions of Sino-Russian interactions in ways which, from the US perspective, affected US interests, either positively or negatively.

This open access book examines Russia-China relations across a variety of civilian and military areas of cooperation. Leading experts in the field present empirical case studies covering a wide range of strategic cooperation areas between Russia and China, such as technological, military, economic and political cooperation. The contributing authors shed new light on Chinese and Russian strategic goals, external push and pull factors, and mutual perception shifts, and discuss the options for Western countries to influence this development.

This book analyses the evolution of the relationship since the watershed moment of the Crimean crisis in 2014, and whether or not a full-blown military alliance, as hinted in late 2020 by President Putin, is indeed a realistic scenario for which NATO will have to prepare. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, political decision-makers, as well as anyone interested in Eurasian politics and the potential military-strategic impact of a Russian-Chinese alliance for NATO.

Nepal has a non-neutral history. As an imperial and expansionist power in the Himalayas from the days of its unification in 1769 AD to the Anglo-Nepal war of 1815, Nepal never remained neutral. Also, during the period of Colonialism in South Asia, and particularly after losing the war with the British in 1816, Nepal never exercised the policy of neutrality. Rather, Nepal was raiding Tibet; assisting British India in Sepoy Mutiny; and stood by Britain in the two world wars. Besides, Nepal militarily backed independent India in 1948 over Hyderabad question. But why Nepal suddenly had to take a refuge in neutrality after the political change of 1950? Was it because of Nepal’s internal politics, or an attempt to cope with new arrangements in regional security? Nepal’s fascination with neutrality was so swifter and inadvertent that Kathmandu, hitherto, has never initiated any policy debates over the all-weather choice. Power elites in Nepal still misperceive neutrality as non-alignment. The aim of the book, however, is not only limited to distinguishing neutrality with non-alignment in the Nepali context but weighs Nepal’s claim to neutrality through the Indian and Chinese perceptions to underline the presence of ambiguity and uncertainty in Nepal’s claim to neutrality. Illustrating Nepal’s attempt to neutrality as a mere survival strategy, this study is less hopeful about Nepal’s foreign policy institutions abandoning their Cold War worldview by embracing the strategy of sustenance in today’s interdependent and globalized world. Because, as the book suggests, power elites in Kathmandu are customarily lured by the ephemeral yet sporadic geopolitical ambitions, either through discourses or deeds.

A key message is that effective policy advising is less about cycles, stages and steps, and more about relationships, integrity and communication. Policy making is incremental social problem solving. Policy advising is mostly learned on the job, like an apprenticeship. It starts with careful listening, knowing one’s place in the constitutional scheme of things, winning the confidence of decision makers, skillfully communicating what they need to hear and not only what they want to hear, and learning to lead from behind, scheme virtuously and play nicely with others.

The author introduces a public value approach to policy advising that uses collective thinking to address complex policy problems, evidence-informed policy analysis that also factors in emotions and values, and the practice of “gifting and gaining” (rather than “trade-offs”) in the long-term public interest. Theory is illustrated by personal anecdote and each chapter offers practical processes, tools, techniques and questions for reflection, to help readers master the art and craft of policy advising.

This book describes and analyzes the conceptual ambiguity of vulnerability, in an effort to understand its particular applications for legal and political protection when relating to groups. Group vulnerability has become a common concept within legal and political scholarship but remains largely undertheorized as a phenomenon itself. At the same time, in academia and within legal circles, vulnerability is primarily understood as a phenomenon affecting individuals, and the attempts to identify vulnerable groups are discredited as essentialist and stereotypical. In contrast, this book demonstrates that a conception of group vulnerability is not only theoretically possible, but also politically and legally necessary. Two conceptions of group vulnerability are discussed: one focuses on systemic violence or oppression directed toward several individuals, while another requires a common positioning of individuals within a given context that conditions their agency, ability to cope with risks and uncertainties, and manage their consequences. By comparing these two definitions of group vulnerability and their implications, Macioce seeks a more precise delineation of the theoretical boundaries of the concept of group vulnerability.

This open access book provides insights into challenges, threats and opportunities of urban development in Africa. It discusses how and why African cities need localised urban planning concepts and theories to deal with challenges and threats of rapid urbanisation and climate change. The book delivers an in-depth view of the nature and gaps of the framework on which current planning practice and education in Africa are based. With that, it discusses the potentials of African cities to mobilise local knowledge, resources and capacity building for sustained and resilient urban growth.

This work is addressed to educationists and practitioners in the field of urban development management, climate change adaptation and urban resilience.  Specifically, such audiences include researchers, spatial planners, graduate students and member of civil societies working on urban development management.

This edited collection evaluates the relationship between Marxism and religion in two ways: Marxism’s treatment of religion and the religious aspects of Marxism. Its aim is to complicate the superficial understanding of Marxism as a simple rejection of religion both in theory and practice. Divided into two parts (Theory and Praxis), this book brings together the three different themes of Marxism, religion, and emancipation for the first time. The first part explores the more theoretical discussions regarding the relationship between Marxism and various themes (or currents) within religious thought, to highlight points of compatibility as well as incompatibilities/conflicts. The studies in the second part of the collection refer to how Marxist ideas are received in different parts of the world. They show that as soon as Marxism arrives in a new place, the theory interacts and bonds with a pre-existing stock of ideas, each changing the other reciprocally.

This book explores types of disruptions in defence and security, ways to assess disruptions triggered by technological advancements or the lack of legal frameworks; the consequent delays or disruptions to making decisions, creative idea generation and finally the innovative pathways to counter such disruptions. What do disruption, ideation and innovation have in common? How do disruptions, ideas and innovation coexist within defence and security? They all influence and impact decision-making. Disruptions drive decision-making. Ideation raises solutions to resolve the disruptions and innovation brings ideas into life. While disruptions may be common place in the business world, where disruptive technologies displace pre-existing ones; they are less prevalent in defence, even less so within the realm of security. For the last 10 years, there has been talk of disruptive technologies and even adoption of terms such as emerging and disruptive technologies by the largest military alliance—NATO, yet the means to assess these remain elusive. It offers researchers opportunities to assess different types of disruptions, ideate and innovate on scientific grounds to counter disruptions, thereby bolstering the defence and security community’s ability to make decisions better.

This book deals with the contemporary history of the imprisonment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons since 1967, and, since the 2000s, in Palestinian facilities. The prison experience is widely shared in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It endurably marks personal and collective stories. Since the Occupation of the Palestinian Territories in 1967, mass incarceration has spun a prison web, a kind of suspended detention. Approximately, 40 percent of the male population has been to prison. It shows how the judicial and prison practices applied to Palestinian residents of the OPT are major fractal devices of control contributing to the management of Israeli borders, and shape a specific bordering system based on a mobility regime: such borders are mobile, networked, and endless. This history of confinement is that of the prison web, and of the in-between political, social, and personal spaces people weave between Inside and Outside prison. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, oral and written sources, archives, and extensive institutional documentation, this political anthropology book deals with carceral citizenships and subjectivities. Over time, imprisonment has had profound effects on personal experiences: on masculinities, femininities, gender relations, parentality, and intimacy. Woven like a web, this story is built around places, moments, people, and their testimonies.

This edition of Canada Among Nations over the last year and projects forward into the year 2022. 2021 was a year of challenges for Canada and a watershed in its engagement with the global political economy. Beset by a pandemic, hemmed-in by an America-first administration in Washington and punitive recrimination from a Chinese government with global ambitions, the shrinking horizons of a foreign economic policy premised on liberal internationalism and multilateral institutionalism have sapped Canada’s global ambitions.

Will China–U.S. relations come back to the normal track? Does the confrontational approach work for China–US relations? This book argues that it is an unrealistic hope to bring China–US relations back to the so-called normal track because the great power competition will be a new normal of China–US relations and the USA will gain more from strategic competition than cooperation in the long run. This book shows that the strategy of “great power cooperation through competition” is more positive and constructive than the approaches of “peaceful coexist” and “maximum pressure.” This book does not intend to provide policy recommendations for governments to consider, but mainly to explain why the great power competition is inevitable and why it is necessary to continuously work with China in some areas through strategic competition. This book alarms the importance of understanding the nature of the Chinese Communist Party during the great power competition and aims to motivate both sides to revisit their foreign policy practice and come up with a better foreign policy strategy of handling China–US relations.

Europe’s future is contested between those who want to integrate further, those who prefer things to stay as they are, and those who would retreat into nationalism. These divisions impair the government of the European Union and weaken its ability to shoulder more responsibility for its unstable neighbourhood. 

This open access book analyses the EU’s evolving constitution, arguing that the lack of effective federal government lies at the heart of its problems. It recommends reforms for each EU institution, including those involving treaty change. It makes the case for a unified executive, a more legitimate legislature, and the introduction of a federal treasury and supreme court. It proposes a fresh category of affiliate membership underpinned by a new European security council that would overcome the historic division between the EU and NATO. 

This book examines the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for public-sector accounting and finance. It provides a holistic overview of government initiatives to navigate the pandemic, focusing on how government policies and related spending have affected the budgetary process, the disclosure of information and transparency, as well as the importance of accounting technologies and operating systems in times of crisis. The book shows how government economic interventions have been crucial in counteracting the financial consequences of the global pandemic, and emphasizes the importance of accountability. It will appeal to students and scholars of public policy, public administration and finance, as well as policymakers and public managers responsible for public sector financial and budgetary reporting of public administrations.

This book presents a comparative perspective on different government communication strategies to COVID-19 around the globe. Scholars from twenty parts of the world specialized in political and government communication analyze initiatives and methods of various governments' communicative responses to the pandemic. In their contributions to this volume, they examine a wide range of distinct attitudes and reactions facing the crisis.

Today’s omnidirectional contact allowed by social media, with its load of contradictory rumors and fake news, often obliterates the citizens' ability to comprehend reality. The book frames a broad canvas on how government communication may deal with that and manage similar crises — bound to happen as climate changes and war menaces are generating more and more worries about the future of humanity.

This makes this volume a must-read for scholars and students of political communication, health policies and communication, crisis marketing and communication. It will also be of utmost interest for practitioners and policy-makers from these fields willing to better understand government communication and its answer to global crises.

The Communist Party appeared a hundred years ago on the French political and social scene. According to opinions and moments, it has been the party of Moscow, of those shot, of the working class, of the union of the left, the party of the foreigner or that of the nation. It has been underground, in government, in town halls, in factories or in the streets. Some considered it too revolutionary, others not enough. More than others, it aroused passions, positive or negative. It attracted many and repelled just as many. After the fall of the USSR, it decided to remain a communist party, while many others gave it up. But it no longer has the place it once had, in reality as in the imagination. This book does not intend to judge, but to provide keys to understanding. It is based on a considerable number of archives that are now available and is an ordered and distanced look at an object that is not lacking in complexity and no doubt even in mystery. 

This book has been translated from French to English thanks to a financial help from the Gabriel Péri Foundation and the LIR3S UMR Cnrs 7366 of Dijon.

For millennia, humans waged war on land and sea. The 20th century opened the skies and the stars, introducing air and space as warfare domains. Now, the 21st century has revealed perhaps the most insidious domain of all: cyberspace, the fifth domain. A realm free of physical boundaries, cyberspace lies at the intersection of technology and psychology, where one cannot see one’s enemy, and the most potent weapon is information.

The third book in the Great Power Competition series, Cyberspace: The Fifth Domain, explores the emergence of cyberspace as a vector for espionage, sabotage, crime, and war. It examines how cyberspace rapidly evolved from a novelty to a weapon capable of influencing global economics and overthrowing regimes, wielded by nation-states and religious ideologies to stunning effect.

Cyberspace: The Fifth Domain offers a candid look at the United States’ role in cyberspace, offering realistic prescriptions for responding to international cyber threats on the tactical, strategic, and doctrinal levels, answering the questions of how can we respond to these threats versus how should we respond? What are the obstacles to and consequences of strategic and tactical response options? What technological solutions are on the horizon? Should the U.S. adopt a more multi-domain offensive posture that eschews the dominant “cyber vs. cyber” paradigm? To answer these questions, experts examine the technological threats to critical infrastructure; cyber operations strategy, tactics, and doctrine; information influence operations; the weaponization of social media; and much more.

This book examines three cases of democratic transitions by self-transformation of the non-democratic regimes in Southern Europe—the Spanish reforma pactada-ruptura pactada of 1976-77, the Greek “Markezinis experiment” of 1973, and the Turkish democratic transition of 1983—in a comparative perspective. The author argues that a democratic transition initiated by the regime elites is, in contrast to widely held assumptions and notwithstanding some reservations on whether democracy can be (re-)introduced by non-democrats, worth viewing as a “window of opportunity” for democratisation. It is up to the democratic counter-elites to respond to it, using the civil society and the international factor as allies to achieve their goal of acquiring more concessions from the regime.

This book analyzes the transformations and consistencies of American leadership during the past few years and situates recent American foreign policy in a longer time frame, following the 2020 presidential election and after a full year of the Biden Administration. This longer and broader view by European and American academics and experts considers both shifting American policies, notably during Trump’s presidency, and underlying trends that have often gone ignored compared to the more dramatic antics of the 45th president. It helps decode recent American policy and permits us to consider possible new directions and likely continuities under Democratic leadership.

There is an emerging consensus that what is projected as democratic governance and justice in Africa requires a re-calibration, in particular, in relation to the constitutive demos, human rights, the realisation of commitments at various governance levels and the convergence between these ideations. The post-colonial narrative on democracy has unveiled some crevices in rule of law, political equality, political participation, political culture and freedom of the press. Aside from the fact that these notions are threatened by some existing institutional structures, these notions are increasingly being negotiated across political spaces. Evident in the prevalent narrative is an imperative for Africa to assert its place on the global scene of democratic governance and justice. However, if this will be accomplished, it is important to understand some of the issues that need to be worked through in this transition.

This volume offers systematic research on regionalism in Africa and explores the role and impact of external partners on the dynamics, institutional design, and performance of regional integration projects. It acknowledges and elaborates the multilevel and multidimensional nature of regionalism, with its variety of cooperative institutions and policy areas, while closely considering uneven relationships to external actors in African regional organizations. The book’s two comprehensive mapping studies examine patterns of asymmetric inter-dependence between regionalism in Africa and external partners in Europe, with a focus on trade and donor funding, and highlight structural imbalances and (un)intended consequences. Five additional case studies provide in-depth analyses of a variety of African regional organizations, mainly with a focus on security regionalism, and elaborate how external partners influence and affect integration processes and projects. Although regionalism in Africabenefitted from external relations and partnerships with Europe, contributions in this volume question this positive impression, highlighting some of the major undermining factors and actors.

This book takes a fresh and much needed perspective on the challenges of trade policy and explores possible futures for trade policy development. By taking the perspective of business studies, the book does not only focus on the economic, policy, or legislative perspectives, but views trade policy as a part of international business environment. The purpose of this book is to bring forward discussions on trade policy development and future development needs and offers a comprehensive read for international business researchers, practitioners and policymakers regarding the interconnections of trade policy and international business.

This book offers the first realist reconstruction of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Reading Marx through a realist lens enables us to make sense of the connections between (1) Marx’s positive concept of freedom, rooted in a theory of human development, (2) his understanding of alienation as diagnosing capitalist unfreedom, and (3) his conceptions of democracy and socialism, respectively, as the cures for this unfreedom. Along the way, it discusses and responds to some of Marx’s most insightful critics, such as Max Weber and Friedrich Hayek. This clarifies Marx’s ideas for a new generation of political thinkers; explains the challenge they pose to contemporary debates about freedom, democracy, and future economic institutions; and demonstrates that these ideas remain both defensible and compelling.

This book offers a systematic inquiry into how, why, and with what consequences media affects governments and the standing of prime ministers. It aims at an understanding of how media has caused institutional effects in government, as well as at advancing a unified theory of government communication. The author develops a logic of centralization and applies it to one case, Sweden. Government communication has been institutionalized, tightened and centralized with the prime minister and has changed irreversibly. Analysis of how the government communication system has evolved, mainly in its institutional structures, suggests that the shift to centralization arose more out of necessity than choice. For prime ministers most of this is about finding ways to ensure that the entire government respond to media uniformly. As governments face a set of functional demands from media, different kinds of media, uniformity has been a paramount objective. Nevertheless, thisdevelopment involves shifting dynamics of intra-executive relations and a shift of power away from ministries to the prime minister’s office; the apex of political power. The prime minister has been empowered at the expense of ministers through the concentration of power and resources to the executive centre. That is partly because of media, which reinforces political hierarchies. That and the centralized control of government news in turn raises further questions about democratic governance and the nature of modern-day governing. 

Procurement is a critical government activity, yet very little scholarly attention is devoted to procurement fraud in public policy, public management, or public financial management research. While many publications focus on the stages of the procurement process and appropriate protocols to follow for successful procurements, the opportunities for exploitation of the process have not been as widely studied. Procurement fraud is similarly understudied in the white-collar crime literature, where attention has primarily been placed on corporate crime or political corruption. This book extends criminal justice and white-collar crime scholarship by using these literatures to frame public procurement fraud. Additionally, organizational behavior approaches are applied to public procurement fraud to explain possible motivations for this type of occupational crime. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide insights into the characteristics of individuals who abuse the procurement process for personal gain, and it offers some strategies for detecting and preventing further abuse. Original research is also presented and compares the offender-based and offense-based characteristics of the perpetrators of public procurement fraud with those of street and white-collar criminals. The intention of this book is to elevate the issue of public procurement fraud and to align it with criminal justice and white-collar crime scholarship.

This book offers a comparative perspective on the new wave of revolutions in the MENA region. Recently, a new wave of revolutions has swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, comparable in some respects to the events of the Arab Spring. Revolutionary events have significantly changed the political regimes in Sudan, Algeria and Mali, while Lebanon and Iraq have also witnessed serious revolutionary episodes. Further, a new quality of protests has manifested in Iran, Egypt, Morocco and Jordan. 

This book analyses why the Ukrainian state established asylum laws and policies in the thirty years since 1991, even though the number of asylum seekers was very low. International and non-governmental organisations transferred international asylum norms to Ukraine. Various state and non-state actors participated in this process, translating, spreading, and resisting those norms. In many cases, legislative adoption was driven by domestic politicians’ pursuit of recognition by international organisations, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, and by their desire to meet conditionality requirements. NGOs sought to influence administrative practices, alternating between confrontational and conciliatory, formal and informal approaches, and often relying on personal contacts. Actors used and shifted between scales in order to transfer norms or resist transfer. In the process, they produced, renegotiated, and confirmed those scales. For instance, NGOs resorting to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent refoulement placed the European scale above the national scale. This book offers a new multi-actor and multi-scalar analysis of policy transfer.

While the CFSP depends on the contribution of EU member states, their role in shaping the CFSP towards China has not been researched yet, and this book fills the gap.

This book eulogises a personality that has constructed a formidable scholarly and personal legacy that future generations of legal practitioners and socio-legal scholars in Africa should look to for guidance and inspiration. Divided into three parts, the book deals with a longstanding legal practice and scholarship on the role of international law and institutions. Additionally, the book discussed roles of an African scholar and practitioner to advance socio-economic and cultural rights across the continent, through contextualised, progressive adjudication and from a gendered perspective. Finally, the book examined the importance of early-childhood education and legal education alike, the role of the courts in redressing these concerns and the need for greater inclusion of Afro and queer-sensitive pedagogies and perspectives. Contributors to the book address the role of schools in redressing systemic marginalisation—including stigmatisation based on disability—and efforts to translate their rights as prescribed in national constitutions and international legal instruments. The methodology encompasses a TWAIL approach and the call to revisit orthodox approaches to legal scholarship.

This book explores the political economy of governance in Palestine. It makes a unique contribution to studies of governance and political economy using the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a case study, introducing and developing the concept of ‘dual rentierism’. The author uses primary research to chart the evolution of the fiscal sociology of the PA and explore how it has shaped the PA’s economic policies and the state–society relationship in the Palestinian Territories. The book adopts a critical political economy approach, making the case that external sources of PA income represent political rents that need to be disaggregated and studied concurrently. It further focuses on the drivers and constraints that have shaped the PA’s policy development and state-building associated with its dependence on external revenues. Ultimately, the book elaborates on how the need for fiscal survivability has thwarted the Palestinian quest for statehood. 

This book analyses the rapidly unfolding events that have impacted on the European energy dynamics, in the light of the way in Ukraine and the energy crisis that have reconfigured, since 2022, the European and the global geopolitical scene, dislocating not only crucial natural resources but also the pace of the energy transition and the continent’s existential security, its basic trust and sense of continuity. It introduces an innovative interpretation of the conflict and cooperation dynamics in Europe, by challenging the reader to look beyond the material aspects of energy security, related to supply and demand, consumption, production and prices dynamics, which I nonetheless explain in detail. Thus, it invites the audience to explore the deeper layer of motivations that underpin the actors’ decision to engage in conflict and cooperation, by exploring their cognitive and psychological considerations, in addition to the material ones. For this purpose, it presents a new conceptual tool, the conflict-cooperation perpetuum, in order to explain why the same players, in this case the EU, Russia and Turkey, may choose to simultaneously perceive each other as security threats and trade partners, engaging in both conflict and cooperation simultaneously with the same ‘Other’. In addition, it proposes to apply the framework of ontological security, in order to understand the responses of the EU, Russia and Turkey to the major existential crises that have affected them in past years, culminating with the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis of 2022.

This book explores the resilience of constitutional government in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, connecting and comparing perspectives from ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa to global trends.

In emergency situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a state has the right and duty under both international law and domestic constitutional law to take appropriate steps to protect the health and security of its population. Emergency regimes may allow for the suspension or limitation of normal constitutional government and even human rights. Those measures are not a license for authoritarian rule, but they must conform to legal standards of necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality that limit state action in ways appropriate to the maintenance of the rule of law in the context of a public health emergency. 

Bringing together established and emerging African scholars from ten countries, this book looks at the impact government emergency responses to the pandemic have on the functions of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, as well as the protection of human rights. It also considers whether and to what extent government emergency responses were consistent with international human rights law, in particular with the standards of legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination in the Siracusa Principles.

This book explores how revolutionary developments and convergence of the chemical, life and associated sciences are impacting contemporary toxin and bioregulator research, and examines the risks of such research being misused for malign purposes. Investigating illustrative cases of dual use research of potential concern in China, India, Iran, Russia, Syria and the USA, the authors discuss how states can ensure such research and related activities are not utilised in weapons development. Although toxins and bioregulators are, in theory, covered by both the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention, this apparent overlap in reality masks a dangerous regulatory gap – with neither Convention implemented effectively to address threats of weaponisation. This book highlights the potentially damaging consequences for international peace and security, and proposes realistic routes for action by states and the scientific community.  

As global warming progresses and efforts to mitigate and adapt intensify, living under a changing climate—or in a ‘new climate regime’ (Latour 2015)—increasingly appears as a central feature of ‘our’ new, and highly unequal, human condition in the Anthropocene. In other words, we firmly believe that climatization is here to stay. It is thus crucial to better understand this process, recognizing its problems and ambiguities, but also examining its transformative potential and identifying the conditions under which such potentials can be harnessed with a view to building a more effective and equitable climate politics. We think that the chapters in this book contribute to this endeavour.

This book focuses on Post-Soviet ethnic conflicts and Russia's involvement in them. In light of its significant importance for general ethnic conflict, specifically the post-Soviet Caucasus, along with the most recent war just fought over the area from September-November 2020, this book appropriately argues that it is time to reconsider Karabakh.

This project deals with the historical, social and political aspects of the Karabakh issue regarding its origins, development and the current status of the conflict subsequent to the war in the autumn of 2020.  Thus, the main themes will stress these points, as well as the importance of the Karabakh issue for the future, by considering its precedents and implications for other secessionist wars. This book also explores how such wars begin and end, the international legal precedents of self-determination versus territorial integrity, its implications for post-Soviet developments and conflicts, and the latest successful weaponsdevelopments lessons from the recent war involving drones, among others such as Azerbaijan’s rich oil reserves.

This book analyzes climate policy integration processes by investigating cause-effect relations in cases of integrating climate policy in energy and land-use sectors of Indonesia and Mexico, taking a novel comparative case study approach. The book identifies root causes for integration outside of the public administration, discussing decisive factors in the political economy of the energy and land-use sectors. Showing how policy windows may open for the successful integration of climate policies nevertheless, the book addresses the need to identify and properly use these windows to establish the administrative and institutional arrangements for effective climate policy implementation.

This book examines similarities and differences in 31 European governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe in early 2020. It spread across the continent during the Spring while anxious electorates were treated to news reports about health systems under duress and frustrated attempts by public procurement officials to obtain adequate supplies of medical and protective equipment. Over the next 15–18 months considered by this book, national responses exhibited both similarities and profound variations as the different endeavours to regulate social interactions constituted a stress test for political systems across Europe.

This book investigates the connection between tightening mobilization constraints and the use of PMSCs in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Drawing on neoclassical realism and institutionalist theory, it conceptualizes democracies’ use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) as an attempt to circumvent the tightening constraints on the mobilization of military power. The use of private military contractors is less subjected to parliamentary restrictions and less visible to public opinion than the deployment of soldiers. Rather than cheaper in financial terms, PMSCs are therefore politically cost-effective, as they enable decision-makers to minimize the institutional obstacles on conducting military operations and the electoral costs attached thereto. The need to reduce the ex ante hurdles and the ex post costs of military deployments fills the blind spots of alternative explanations for the use of PMSCs based on effectiveness, ideology, and organizational interests.

Each year, the Supreme Court of the United States announces new rulings with deep consequences for our lives. This fifth volume in Palgrave’s SCOTUS series describes, explains, and contextualizes the landmark cases of the US Supreme Court in the term ending 2022. With a close look at cases involving key issues and debates in American politics and society, SCOTUS 2022 tackles the Court’s rulings on abortion, guns, religion, environmental regulation, pandemic controls, immigration and more. Written by notable scholars in political science and law, the chapters in SCOTUS 2022 present the details of each ruling, its meaning for constitutional debate, and its impact on public policy or partisan politics. Finally, SCOTUS 2022 offers an analysis of the current ideological and interpretive divisions on the Court, including an analysis of the unprecedented leak of the Dobbs draft ruling.

This open access book explores the organization and evolution of Finland’s Cold War cultural diplomacy (1945-1975) as the basis for a reflection on the country’s foreign relations, the link between culture and politics, small states’ autonomy during the Cold War, and the porosity of the East-West divide.

The book offers a historical survey of the development of Finland’s cultural diplomacy as part of the Finnish state’s foreign activities. In its empirical parts, it focuses on archives drawn from the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education in order to explain Finland’s cultural diplomacy as the result of the country’s foreign policy orientations, interactions between domestic and foreign policy, and the expansion of state activities in the artistic, educational, and cultural sectors. Various reflections and reports on foreign cultural relations highlight the role of identity concerns, cultural relations, geopolitics and economic imperatives in the development of a specifically Finnish cultural diplomacy. Furthermore, the book focuses on specific aspects and events, considering for instance the organization and evolutions of Finland’s cultural relations with the USSR, the role of cultural treaties, academic exchanges and scientific cooperation, “cultural exports” and the marketization of culture, overlaps between cultural relations and high politics.

This book examines public-nonprofit collaborations in the context of federal homeless policy.  Communities across the U.S. are expected to create local homeless service networks, known as Continuums of Care (CoCs), in order to respond to their incidence of homelessness.  It leverages unique, original and national data and applies collaborative governance theories to develop a systematic understanding of network governance and leadership, health care services for those experiencing homelessness, and measuring impact of collaborative activities.  The book offers a connected and comprehensive understanding of public-nonprofit collaboration in a homeless policy field and management strategies to lead and assess cross-sector arrangements.

This textbook presents a detailed insight into the structures and processes of preparing students for Model United Nations (MUN) conferences and for attending Model United Nations conferences, subsequently. It serves as a handbook and practical guide for the implementation of MUN into courses and classes in educational institutions.

Written by a Faculty Advisor, and offering additional insights from an experienced award-winning MUN delegate, the book provides a particularly exceptional insightful, and well-rounded approach. The author explains how a MUN course can be taught, presents exercises to prepare students for the conference, and discusses how the MUN delegation and trip to the conference can be organized. This comprehensive guide offers insights into a broad range of topics, including debates with peers, diplomacy to solve international crises, and learning about the system of the United Nations (UN) organization through simulation. Further, it covers the development of soft skills and communication at the conferences and building international friendships, while it additionally allows learning more about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the process.

With tips, tricks, and bonus material this book will serve as an anchor throughout the students' first MUN experience, as well as provide valuable help for more advanced participants. The book, therefore, is a must-read for both academic staff teaching MUN, as well as students attending MUN courses and planning to attend MUN conferences.

This open access edited book brings together a closer examination of European and Asian responses to the escalating rivalry between the US and China. As the new Cold War has surfaced as a perceivable reality in the post-COVID era, the topic itself is of great importance to policymakers, academic researchers, and the interested public. Furthermore, this manuscript makes a valuable contribution to an under-studied and increasingly important phenomenon in international relations: the impact of the growing strategic competition between the United States and China on third parties, such as small and middle powers in the two arguably most affected regions of the world: Europe and East Asia. The European side has been under-studied and explicitly comparative work on Europe and East Asia is extremely rare. Given that the manuscript focuses heavily on recent developments—and because many of these developments have been quite dramatic—there are very few publications that cover the same topics.

This book focuses on processes of bordering and governmentality around the Greek border islands from the declaration of a ‘refugee crisis’ in the summer of 2015 up until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The chapters trace the implementation of the EU migration hotspot approach across space and time, from the maritime Aegean border to the islands (Lesvos and Samos) and from the islands to the Greek mainland. They do so through the lenses of peoples’ refusal to succumb to categories that get reified as identities through the hotspot approach, such as that of the ‘deserving refugee’, the ‘undeserving economic migrant’, the ‘translator’, the ‘volunteer’, the ‘tourist’ and the ‘researcher’. This book explores how ‘migration management’ in Greece from 2015-2020, along with the reshaping of space and time, reconfigured peoples’ relationships with one another and ultimately with one’s self.

This book focuses on Arab youth marginalization along intersectional lines of gender, ethnicity and social class in four cities: Jerusalem, Amman, Cairo, and Tunis. The author explores how the political and economic climates in each city influence the life prospects of youth and uncovers their narratives around their aspirations, disappointments and life choices. Providing an interdisciplinary approach, the project will interest a wide range of audiences including graduate students, scholars, and policy makers in the fields of the Middle Eastern studies, political science, urban studies, and education. 

This book deals with a central aspect of Marx’s critique of society that is usually not examined further since it is taken as a matter of course: its scientific claim of being true. But what concept of truth underlies his way of reasoning which attempts to comprehend the social and political circumstances in terms of the possibility of their practical upheaval? In three studies focusing specifically on the development of Marx’s scientific critique of capitalist society, his journalistic commentaries on European politics, and his reflections on the organisation of revolutionary subjectivity, the authors carve out the immanent relation between the scientifically substantiated claim to truth and the revolutionary perspective in Marxʼs writings. They argue that Marx does not grasp the world ‘as it is’ but conceives it as an inverted state which cannot remain what it is but generates the means by which it can eventually be overcome. This is not something to be taken lightly: Such a concept has theoretical, political and even violent consequences—consequences that nevertheless derive neither from a subjective error nor a contamination of an otherwise ‘pure’ science. By analyzing Marx’s concept of truth the authors also attempt to shed light on a pivotal problematique of any modern critique of society that raises a reasoned claim of being true.

This book advances North Atlantic Treaty Organization (henceforth, NATO) burden analysis through a decomposition of the political, financial, social, and defense burdens members take on for the institution. The overemphasis of committing a minimum of 2% of member state Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defense spending, as a proxy indicator of alliance commitment does not properly reflect how commitments reduce risks should Article V be invoked through attack (i.e., 2% is a political & symbolic target adopted by Defense Ministers in 2006 at Riga). Considering defense burdens multi-dimensionally explains why some members overcontribute, as well as, why burden sharing negotiations cause friction among 30 diverse members with differing threats and risks. In creating a comprehensive institutional burden management model and focusing on risks to members, the book explores the weaknesses of major theories on the study and division of collective burdens andinstitutional assets. It argues that member risks and threats are essential to understanding how burdens are distributed across a set of overlapping institutions within NATO’s structure providing its central goods. The importance of the USA, as a defense underwriter for some, affects negotiations despite its absence from research empirically; new data permit testing the argument (Kavanaugh 2014). This book contributes conceptual innovation and theoretical analysis to advance student, researcher, and policymaker understanding of burden management, strategic bargaining, and defense cooperation. The contribution is a generalizable risk management model of IO burden sharing using NATO as the case for scientific study due to its prominence.

Using Marxist and Polanyian frameworks, this book examines the structural and discursive transformation that can explain the polarization of migration debates and within the rise of nationalist anti-migrant discourses in Europe with a special attention to Eastern Europe and Hungary. It goes beyond the mainstream explanations of these phenomena that uses nationalist propaganda as causal factors and instead argues that the rise of anti-immigration currents cannot be understood without a dialectical and historical analysis of the material and discursive transformations, most importantly marketization and related reification. Drawing from thinkers such as Lukács, Polanyi, and Gramsci as well as diverse empirical sources including demographic studies, historical modelling, and discourse analyses, Migration Turn and Eastern Europe is a unique and rigorous study of one of the most pressing and puzzling political and sociological questions of ourtime.

This is an open access book.

This book uses several fantasy movies or movie series and television series to explain political and international relations (IR) concepts and theories. It begins with an overview of the importance of fantasy in literature, film and television, and its increasing impact on the field of International Relations. It then presents the political, IR, and social issues in each franchise, and in five chapters uses these tales’ key story arcs or plot points to illustrate major political and IR themes. The volume pays particular attention to such fantasy franchises as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the Harry Potter films, recent fairytale and children’s stories, and female-led fantasy projects.

This book, which is aimed at scholars, practitioners, advanced under-graduate and post-graduate students, seeks to contribute to the understanding of the EU as an international negotiator by analysing a number of external policy areas where the EU to a great extent engages internationally through negotiations, including development, trade, enlargement, and withdrawal.

This monograph discusses the role of political parties in Paraguay’s legislature. Using Paraguay as a case study, the author analyzes the phenomenon of legislative chaos. While chaos has been expected to exist in legislatures since at least 1785 (Arrow 1951; Condorcet 1785), this phenomenon has not been observable in real-world legislatures for much of history (Tullock 1967; Tullock and Brennan 1981). By showing that chaos exists in Paraguay, and by then proposing a way to incorporate chaos into existing legislative theories, this volume creates a model that is more generalizable to different legislative contexts than what currently exists. Providing a robust theoretical contribution to the study of both legislative politics and Paraguay’s political system, this book will appeal to researchers and students studying legislative behavior and Latin American politics. 

This book provides a pre-history of Russia's war on Ukraine and Europe’s relations to it, illuminating the deep roots of the EU’s neighbourhood crisis as well as the migration crises the Union created in the last decade. To do so, the book employs a new and innovative framework that allows for a comprehensive, yet nuanced analysis of borders and a more cogent interpretation of their socio-political consequences.

Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship the book analytically examines the key common elements of borderscapes and links them in related arrays to allow for nuanced evaluation of both their particular and cumulative effects, as well as interpretation of their overall consequences, particularly for issues of identities and orders. The book offers a significant conceptual and theoretical advance, providing a transferable conceptualization of borderscapes to guide research, analysis, and interpretation. Drawing on the author’s experience in policy, practice and academia, it also makes a methodological contribution by pushing the boundaries of reflexivity in interpretive International Relations (IR) research. 

Analyzing three main sites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the book challenges conventional critical wisdom on EU bordering in the Schengen zone, at its external frontiers, and in its Eastern neighborhood. In so doing, it sheds new light on the politics of post-communist transitions as well as the contemporary politics of CEE. It also shows how EU bordering and its relations to identities and orders created great benefits for many Europeans, but also hindered the lives of many others and became self-defeating. This book is a must-read for scholars, students, and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of Critical Border Studies (CBS) in particular, and International Relations in general. It will also appeal to anyone interested in CEE or wishing to get a deeper understanding of Russia’s warand the fight for Europe’s future.

This second edition explores the relationship between politics and media, with a particular emphasis on the significant disruptive changes to media and technology that have faced journalists, campaigners, and the public in recent years. The first edition, in 2014, described the earliest elements of social and online media: Web 2.0, the ‘information economy,’ and the changes from traditional broadcast media to the early online world. With the rise of TikTok, the ‘fake news’ claims of Donald Trump, the decline of local news, and the anti-democratic impulses that drove the January 6, 2021 coup attempts, the last decade has provided a rich and sometimes confounding set of disruptions to political communication that deserve attention. Technology has disrupted political communication in the online environment exceptionally quickly over the last decade, and this book provides a framework for understanding the intersections of these disruptions and their effect on an already-fragile democratic circumstance in the United States.

This edited volume discusses digital democracy at the local level in Europe. Contrasting the political discourse surrounding participatory digital democracy with actual experiences of implementation, the book provides a wholistic view of digital democracy across Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. The book is divided into three parts. Chapters in Part I analyze discourses about participatory democracy in Europe. Chapters in Part II provide case studies of digital democracy practices at the local level in the EU. Chapters in Part III discuss the risks and challenges associated with digital democracy. Written by a panel of international, interdisciplinary experts, this volume will be of interest to researchers, students, and practitioners across public administration, political science, economics, management, and sociology.

The book is devoted to the subject of Venezuela's politics and the different dimensions of its longstanding crisis, with various researchers exchanging ideas on the current problems affecting the country. It is the first comprehensive overview on the dimensions of Venezuela’s current crisis written in English, thus filling an important research gap. Especially the participation of international, well-known scholars make it a global enterprise.

The book covers historical and theoretical facts surrounding the case of Venezuela and also focuses on the parties and actors that play decisive roles in the conflict. Subjects include the military, public administration, ideology, the opposition, the party landscape along with its crisis and Venezuela's oil policy. Furthermore the book touches upon international and regional aspects: Venezuela's diplomatic relations with the EU, the USA, Cuba and Colombia, respectively. 

Against a backcloth of tumultuous events in Europe, the EU faces once again the fateful question of moving towards federal union or let flexible integration guide the Union. The sixth volume in Interdisciplinary European Studies explores the coexistence of deepening political integration and flexible patterns of integration in the EU. The book brings together scholars from economics, law, and political science to provide insights into issues with a bearing on the future of the EU: the crisis of rule of law and political values, the move towards a European defence union, the power of the new European public prosecutor’s office, the prospects of financial stability through the Recovery and Resilience facility, and the state of European parliamentary democracy. The chapters are based on up-to-date research findings and succinct assessments of the current state of affairs and ongoing debates. They conclude with policy recommendations for decision-makers on European and national levels.

This book provides a state-of-the-art analysis of India’s foreign and security policies, examining e.g. the country’s security, economic and trade ties and interactions with Pakistan, China, the United States, Japan, the Middle East and ASEAN. Furthermore, the contributors provide the reader with an overview and analysis of the quality and challenges of India’s regional and global trade and investment policies. While in the past India has been a reluctant and not particularly prominent foreign and security policy actor in East and Southeast Asia as well as globally, China’s resurgence and its assertive and increasingly aggressive regional security policies have led India’s policymakers to reconsider the country’s decades-old non-alignment policies and opt for expanding security and defence ties with the United States, Japan and others. The Indian-Chinese border clashes in 2020 and China’s unlawful occupation of disputed territories along the Indian-Chinese border in the Himalayas have convinced Delhi’s policymakers and the country’s security and defence elites that India is well advised to join and contribute to US-led China containment policies. The expansion of India’s security and defence ties with Japan over recent years in particular will continue to be instrumental to keeping Beijing’s territorial expansionism in Southeast and South Asia in check.

This volume analyses India’s involvement and engagement in regional and global trade and investment structures and flows in great detail. Written by a team of prolific European and Indian scholars, the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of international relations and security studies, as well as policymakers at governmental or international organizations.

This edited volume analyzes the experiences learned in practice especially among small holder farmers to eradicate poverty. In other words, it discusses practical solutions which small scale farmers can use to alleviate poverty and reduce inequality. This addresses the issue of inclusive and sustainability of projects leading to the notion of not leaving anyone behind. The book provides insights that can be translated into policy with potential to inform practice. It also has the potential to address the issue of rural urban migration by providing knowledge that is usable by small scale farmers, policy makers and entrepreneurs alike. The volume is written by authors from different countries, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, indicating the commonality of the problems of poverty and inequality. It contains insights from all these countries assembled together into an amalgam of practices ready to use and implement informed by evidence from the field as most of the chapters are based onempirical data.

This open access book brings into dialogue emerging and seasoned migration and religion scholars with spiritual leaders and representatives of faith-based organizations assisting refugees. Violent conflicts, social unrest, and other humanitarian crises around the world have led to growing numbers of people seeking refuge both in the North and in the South. Migrating and seeking refuge have always been part and parcel of spiritual development. However, the current 'refugee crisis' in Europe and elsewhere in the world has brought to the fore fervent discussions regarding the role of religion in defining difference, linking the ‘refugee crisis’ with Islam, and fear of the ‘Other.’ Many religious institutions, spiritual leaders, and politicians invoke religious values and call for strict border controls to resolve the ‘refugee crisis.’ However, equally many humanitarian organizations and refugee advocates use religious values to inform their call to action to welcome refugees and migrants, provide them with assistance, and facilitate integration processes. This book includes three distinct but inter-related parts focusing, respectively, on politics, values, and discourses mobilized by religious beliefs; lived experiences of religion, with a particular emphasis on identity and belonging among various refugee groups; and faith and faith actors and their responses to forced migration.

US Environmental Policy in Action provides a comprehensive look at the creation, implementation, and evaluation of environmental policy, which is of particular importance in our current era of congressional gridlock, partisanship and polarization, and escalating debates about federal/state relations. With a continued focus on the front lines of environmental policy, Rinfret and Pautz take into account the major changes in the practice of US environmental policy during the Trump and Biden administrations. Providing real-life examples of how environmental policy works rather than solely discussing how congressional action produces environmental laws, this third edition of US Environmental Policy in Action offers a practical approach to understanding contemporary American environmental policy.

This book offers an analysis of how the Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW) regime has responded in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Coronavirus has highlighted the need to better protect modern societies from natural, accidental and deliberate disease affecting humans, animals and plants. Within that context preventing the deliberate hostile use of biological and chemical agents will be of increasing importance. Dando asks to what extent there has been a significant strengthening to the CBW non-proliferation regime in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic using an analysis focused on two proposals to strengthen the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention which aim to constrain advances in science and technology developments that could be misused. On this basis he concludes that it would be hard to argue that to date there has been a significant strengthening of the CBW regime.

This open access book provides an historical account of the ways in which community nursing services in England have been shaped by policy changes, from the inception of the NHS in 1948 to the present day. Focusing on policies regarding the organisation and provision of community nursing services, it offers an important assessment of how community nursing has evolved under successive governments. The book also provides reflections on how historic policies have influenced the service of today, and how lessons learnt from the past can inform organisation and delivery of current and future community nursing services. It is an important resource for those researching community nursing and health services, as well as practitioners and policy makers.

This book argues that American democracy is in crisis. The economic system is slowly subjecting Americans of nearly all income levels and backgrounds to enormous amounts of stress. The United States lacks the state capacity required to alleviate this stress, and politicians increasingly find that if they promise to solve economic problems, they are likely to disappoint voters. Instead, they encourage voters to blame each other. The crisis cannot be solved, the economy cannot be set right, and democracy cannot be saved. But American democracy cannot be killed, either. Americans can’t imagine any compelling alternative political systems. And so, American democracy continues on, in a deeply unsatisfying way. Americans invent ever-more elaborate coping mechanisms in a desperate bid to go on. But it becomes increasingly clear that the way is shut. The American political system was made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it.

This book examines the roles played by transnational actors to influence poverty reduction policies in Ghana. Whereas previous studies on anti-poverty policies have primarily focused on the ‘carrot and stick’ approach deployed by transnational actors – whereby developmental assistance is granted in return of certain conditions being met – this book demonstrates that there are several alternative strategies. Indeed, rather than adopting ‘hard’ means of shaping policy, many transnational actors in fact use a ‘soft’ approach characterized by collaboration. In order to demonstrate this, the book examines two poverty reduction programmes. Utilising research based on interviews with national policymakers, civil-society organizations and the media, it compares different approaches used by transnational actors and the attendant outcomes for national and international parties. Drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective, the book will appeal to scholars and students of public policy and international relations.

This book takes the transnational history of southern Africa’s liberation struggles in an innovative direction. It provides one of the first targeted studies of the manner in which the wider process of African decolonisation shaped the political struggle for control of Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe). It offers an in-depth survey of the repercussions of pan-African developments on national-level political thought amidst one of the most seminal moments of the continent’s history.

The book draws on over a year of fieldwork in southern Africa as well as archival collections in the USA and UK to explore the seismic re-alignments that occurred in the white settler dominated territory in southern Africa as self-determination became a widely accepted international principle virtually overnight. In particular, it focuses on the impact of decolonisation struggles and/or independence in Ghana, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Malawi on Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle.  In so doing, it also offers new context on the roots of contemporary repression in Zimbabwe.

Includes a foreword contributed by noted Zimbabwean activist and author Judith Todd.

This open access book responds to the urgent need to improve how we prevent and resolve conflict. It introduces Adaptive Peacebuilding through evidence-based research from eight case studies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. It also considers how China and Japan view and practice peacebuilding. The book focuses on how peacebuilders design, implement and evaluate programs to sustain peace, how interactions between external and local actors have facilitated or hindered peacemaking, and how adaptation to complexity and uncertainty occurred in each case study.

This book examines law and governance implications in relation to maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS). Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, it focuses on a wide array of timely, topical and thorny issues, including naval warfare and security, seaworthiness and techno-regulatory assessments, global environmental change, autonomous passenger transportation, as well as liability and insurance. It also considers selected national and regional developments. The book provides an insight into the role of innovation-diplomacy as the driving force that could expedite the transition from automation to autonomy. After navigating through the complex law and governance landscape, it concludes by assessing critical findings for further consideration. The book will appeal to scholars and students of maritime technology, law and governance.

Chapter 11 and Chapter 18 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

In this book, the author attempts to debunk some myths about Western exceptionalism and to evaluate critically the characteristics that make the West superior to the Rest. The author suggests that the West does not represent a homogenous group of countries and that the most common characteristic of the core Western countries is imperialism. The author goes on to provide a detailed critique of the proclaimed characteristics of Western countries, including democracy, human rights, judicial independence, transparency, the rule of law, and exclusive contribution to science and technology. A critique is presented of the views expressed by Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and Niall Ferguson, arguing that they do not recognize the historical fact that civilizations rise and fall. It is argued that the Western economic system, which is based on neoliberalism, has adverse consequences for democracy, morality, and peace, as well as inequality, poverty, and homelessness. Written in a simple but powerful language, this book is a must read for those interested in international relations and anyone interested in current affairs.

This book offers a defense acquisition perspective that provides action orientations and decision making to increase the value-for-money (VFM) of public-private partnerships (PPPs) through public-private stewardship (PPS). The differing motives of the public and the private sector are not conducive to partnership that leads to optimal outcomes. PPS is offered to practitioners and academics as a solution to failures of PPPs by following the public stewardship tenets of fiduciary responsibility and advancing the public interest while factoring in the additional elements of the private sector. The public values of transparency, accountability, responsibility, responsiveness, efficiency, effectiveness, equity, diversity, inclusion, fairness, and security, among others, can be shared in success between the public and private partners. By establishing shared values aligning with each stakeholder’s measures for success, it is possible to devise value propositions for stakeholder decision making that supports inter-organizational strategy, operations, tactics, goals, and objectives. PPS practices can further ensue as the public-private steward utilizes tools of expertise and organizational capacity. The book provides seven portraits of practitioners in the practice of PPS to assist PPP stakeholders achieve VFM. PPS is illustrated using examples in the Department of Navy (DON) and Department of Defense (DOD).

This book provides the most comprehensive study of the Australian think-tank industry to date. Drawing on empirical evidence, it first assesses the structure of the industry, the methods think tanks use to persuade policymakers, and public perceptions of their effectiveness. The book then proceeds to examine three unique policy cases to analyse think tank influence on policymaking. It argues that whilst think tanks play important roles in Australia’s policy process, their impacts vary depending on their approach and objectives. The book also demonstrates that policymakers with contrasting ideological orientations diverge in their assessments of the utility and influence of think tanks. It will appeal to students and scholars of public policy, and practitioners in public administration and governance. 

This open access book compares the experiences of large-scale military procurement in Canada and Australia. Focusing on the recent frigate and jet-fighter programmes, it demonstrates how delays suffered in delivering weapons systems and platforms in these countries have been caused by misalignments between the strategic requirements set out by the armed forces and government defence policies. By bringing the insights of public management and administration to those of defence studies, the book presents policy options that will help improve the nature of future large-project military procurement. It will appeal to scholars and students of public administration, public management, and defence studies, as well as practitioners and policymakers.

The book dives into the socio-historical roots of the current ‘disintegration’ of the Yemeni state, proposing that it is the result of a long process of devaluation of the Yemeni economy through imperialistic means, in the historical era of Advanced American imperialism—starting in the 1970s—that is facing the rise of China since the 1980s. As the United States feels threatened by the blossoming of Chinese influence on the Red Sea and the strategic maritime straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb, it is of utmost importance to understand the centrality of the war on Yemen. The disintegration of the Yemeni state since 2015, involving the disintegration of Yemeni sovereignty (in part through the fragmentation of the country), is a means of creating political chaos in a strategic country. The goal is to limit the growth of Chinese influence in the region of the Arab world, which threatens the financial superstructure of the global economic system based on the US dollar.

This volume examines the origins, ideology, organisation, leadership, political alliances, electoral performance and institutional role of the right-wing party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, Fdl). FdI’s meteoric rise is only the latest in a series of shocks that have hit Italy’s unstable political system in recent years. However, it would be a mistake to brand FdI as yet another Italian anomaly. Indeed, the party stands at the crossroads between an established political tradition, that of the post-fascist and conservative right, and the more recent populist waves that have affected many mature democracies. By placing Giorgia Meloni’s party in a comparative analytical framework, the author shows that its success stems from a mix of past legacies and current developments seen in much of Europe (and beyond): the growing role of right-wing female leaders and their reliance on new media; the mainstreaming of the far right mixed with populist repertoires; the de-alignment and (partial) re-alignment of voters; the reconfiguration of electoral geographies; and ultimately the emergence of an illiberal model of democracy. In short, rather than being an exception, FdI can be seen as one of the most recent and advanced manifestations of a broader process of political change sweeping the West.

This book offers a reassessment politics against the predominating economicist approach to historical materialism within contemporary Marxism. Boito draws on the structural interpretation of Marxism inspired by Althusser’s works of the mid-1960s and, especially, by Poulantzas’ Political Power and Social Classes. The volume aims to demonstrate the role of the political dimension (together with the economy) and, to a further extent, to contribute to renew contemporary Marxist political theory. The chapters cover topics such as: the nature of political power; the structure and functions of the state; the role of politics in historical change; political crises; and the political formation of the working class. The book highlights the role of political structures and practices in the reproduction of economic and social relations and also in the process of historical change. The aim of the book is to contribute to the renewal of Marxist thought, breaking with the economicist conception that dominated it throughout the last century, and finally meeting the demands of the socialist struggle in the 21st century.

This comprehensively revised and updated edition offers an introduction to international organizations (IO) theory in the field of IR. It looks at the different ways in which IOs are studied and then applies these different modes to a variety of specific case studies.

At a time when political mobilisation is a symptom of social dissatisfaction, young people’s participation in political decision-making, practice and ideological change, make foregrounding and investigating their political practices a necessity. The title of this book, Young People Shaping Democratic Politics: Interrogating Inclusion, Mobilising Education clearly announces its intention, subject, and mission. This collection has been inspired by topical youth mobilisations that aim to address injustices and inequalities which are rooted in poverty, austerity, violence, increased surveillance, climate change, dislocation, xenophobia, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and a global turn to the political right. Whereas young people are politicised in moments of conflict and become symbolic conduits for the future of their nation, they represent a category most often relegated to the apolitical sphere before and after such moments of crisis. This edited collection seeks to expand our engagement with inclusion beyond educational institutions by situating young people at the centre of our inquiry, as agents of political processes that promote, problematise and re-imagine inclusive societies. The chapters engage in contemporary case-studies, which are mapped across a wide range of countries from Europe (Serbia, Spain and United Kingdom), North Africa (Egypt), South Africa, North America (United States), South-Asia (Bangladesh), and West Asia (Lebanon). 

This book shows that identity studies in the discipline of International Relations (IR) generally cohere around two discrete understandings of being, substantialism and correlationism, and that their analytical, theoretical, and epistemological orientations are split along those lines. This binary opposition makes it difficult for identity scholarship to meet the internal validity standard of coherence while unnecessarily narrowing the theoretical lenses of constructivism in IR. The author argues that the best way to step outside that binary is to re-ground identity in ontology of immanence. The book shows that immanent ontological thinking enables us to have a pluralist epistemology and methodology for the study of identity, including both positivist and interpretivist orientations, without yielding a logically inconsistent alignment.

Chapters 1 and 10 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

This book offers a fresh take on the dynamics of the 2021 Canadian federal election by focusing on elements pertinent to political marketing and branding rather than just the horse race and campaign dynamics. Chapters by leading and emerging political marketing academics from different disciplines, including communications, political science and political management, are included as well as contributions from practitioners in different fields related to political marketing such as pollsters. Some chapters are collaborations between leading academics and practitioners, which provide new insights into the dynamics of political marketing that enrich this edited volume. The book’s content takes our current understandings of Canadian political marketing in new directions.

This book provides an account of the reforms undertaken in German federalism throughout the 2000’s. It explores the consequences of the historic changes made to the German federal order through detailed analysis of a set of unique case study areas. It also evaluates the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic on German federalism, and the relationship between party politics and federalism in Germany. The authors investigate what happens when policy responsibility is decentralized. The reforms undertaken in Germany fundamentally altered the roles played by the federal and state-level governments in several policy fields, and the question as to what kind of impact this has for policy itself is a global one. In a world that sees an increasing trend towards the decentralization of political authority, this book offers insights and lessons that have a practical application on a global scale. It will find the interest of students and scholars in countries worldwide which are grappling with thenature of policy responsibility across levels of political authority. 

This Open Access textbook is a result of the work of ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network. It provides students with a comprehensive analysis of the different aspects and issues around the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA). The themes of each chapter have been selected to ensure a multi- and interdisciplinary overview of an emerging research field and show both in theory and in practice the possibilities of NTA in addressing cultural, ethnic, religious and language differences in contemporary societies.

This is an open access book.