February New Political Science books

• Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550
  
  Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550: CB351 .S83 v.63
  Author(s): Cary J. Nedermann, Bettina Koch
  Kalamazoo : Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University [2018]
  
  One of the most challenging problems in the history of Western ideas stems from the emergence of Modernity out of the preceding period of the Latin Middle Ages. This volume develops and extends the insights of the noted scholar Thomas M. Izbicki into the so-called medieval/modern divide. The contributors include a wide array of eminent international scholars from the fields of History, Theology, Philosophy, and Political Science, all of whom explore how medieval ideas framed and shaped the thought of later centuries. This sometimes involved the evolution of intellectual principles associated with the definition and imposition of religious orthodoxy. Also addressed is the Great Schism in the Roman Church that set into question the foundations of ecclesiology. In the same era, philosophical and theoretical innovations reexamined conventional beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology and political life, perhaps best encapsulated by the fifteenth-century philosopher, theologian and political theorist Nicholas of Cusa.
  
  
• Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome: Ad 270-535
  
  Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome: Ad 270-535: DG311 .M33 2019
  Author(s): Carlos Machado
  Oxford ; Oxford University Press 2019.
  
  Between 270 and 535 AD the city of Rome experienced dramatic changes. The once glorious imperial capital was transformed into the much humbler centre of western Christendom in a process that redefined its political importance, size, and identity. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome examines these transformations by focusing on the city's powerful elite, the senatorial aristocracy, and exploring their involvement in a process of urban change that would mark the end of the ancient world and the birth of the Middle Ages in the eyes of contemporaries and modern scholars. It argues that the late antique history of Rome cannot be described as merely a product of decline; instead, it was a product of the dynamic social and cultural forces that made the city relevant at a time of unprecedented historical changes. Combining the city's unique literary, epigraphic, and archaeological record, the volume offers a detailed examination of aspects of city life as diverse as its administration, public building, rituals, housing, and religious life to show how the late Roman aristocracy gave a new shape and meaning to urban space, identifying itself with the largest city in the Mediterranean world to an extent unparalleled since the end of the Republican period.
  
  
• Friedrich Engels and Modern Social and Political Theory
  
  Friedrich Engels and Modern Social and Political Theory: HX276.E6 B55 2019
  Author(s): Paul Blackledge
  Albany : State University of New York Press [2019]
  
  Offers a powerful new interpretation of Engels’s contributions to modern social and political theory. In this comprehensive overview of Friedrich Engels’s writings, Paul Blackledge critically explores Engels’s contributions to modern social and political theory generally and Marxism specifically. Through a careful examination both of Engels’s role in the forging of Marxism in the 1840s, and his contributions to the further deepening and expansion of this worldview over the next half century, Blackledge offers a closely argued and balanced assessment of his thought. This book challenges the long-standing attempt among academic Marxologists to denigrate Engels as Marx’s greatest mistake, and concludes that Engels was a profound thinker whose ideas continue to resonate to this day. “This is an excellent intellectual and political biography, which provides a highly readable account of its subject and a vigorous defense of his ideas. It is likely to become a standard work on Engels’s ideas and politics.” — Sean Sayers, author of Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes “Paul Blackledge’s new book has no equal as a contemporary assessment of Engels’s political thought. It provides a strong refutation of the ‘divergence thesis,’ whereby Engels is said to have systematically diverged from Marx’s analysis. Appearing on the 200th anniversary of Engels’s birth, it should be widely read.” — John Bellamy Foster, author of Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature “Clear, balanced, and comprehensive, Blackledge’s book is the best introduction to Engels that I know. It does full justice to the many areas in which Engels displayed his prodigious talents.” — David McLellan, author of Karl Marx: A Biography “Paul Blackledge has brought us a remarkable political and intellectual portrait of Friedrich Engels. This book is a masterful tour, taking the reader through Engels’s contributions to philosophy, dialectics, political economy, revolution, reform, strategy and tactics, military theory and history, the origins of women’s oppression and the state, natural science, and more. All of the great controversies are here; you will find all of the rich traditions of classical Marxism compiled together, plus a few surprises even for the most seasoned reader.” — David Laibman, editor, Science & Society
  
  
• America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It
  
  America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It: JA84.U5 T478 2019
  Author(s): C. Bradley Thompson
  New York : Encounter Books 2019.
  
  America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the fifteen years before 1776. The Declaration is used here as an ideological road map by which to chart the intellectual and moral terrain traveled by American Revolutionaries as they searched for new moral principles to deal with the changed political circumstances of the 1760s and early 1770s. This volume identifies and analyzes the modes of reasoning, the patterns of thought, and the new moral and political principles that served American Revolutionaries first in their intellectual battle with Great Britain before 1776 and then in their attempt to create new Revolutionary societies after 1776. The book reconstructs what amounts to a near-unified system of thought—what Thomas Jefferson called an “American mind” or what I call “America’s Revolutionary mind.” This American mind was, I argue, united in its fealty to a common philosophy that was expressed in the Declaration and launched with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
  
  
• Raymond Aron and Liberal Thought in the Age of Extremes
  
  Raymond Aron and Liberal Thought in the Age of Extremes: JC261.A7 S74 2020
  Author(s): Iain Stewart
  Cambridge, United Kingdom ; Cambridge University Press 2020.
  
  The first historical account of Raymond Aron's role in the reconfiguration of liberal thought in the short twentieth century.
  
  
• Carl Schmitt: State and Society
  
  Carl Schmitt: State and Society: JC263.S34 R37 2019
  Author(s): William Rasch
  London ; Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd [2019]
  
  This important new book places Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberal political theory in a broader historical context than is usually done. His belief in the centrality of the European state since the seventeenth century derives from various sources, including medieval (Scholastic) theology and nineteenth century (post-Hegelian) social and political theory. Schmitt’s famed ‘political theology’ aims at justifying the necessity of a strong secular state as the safeguard of a political community against the encroachment of legally protected interest groups that shield themselves behind pre-political rights. William Rasch neither condemns nor champions Schmitt’s various attacks on liberalism, but does insist that the tension between ‘society’ as the realm of individual rights to pursue private pleasures and the ‘state’ as the placeholder for something traditionally called the common good is a conundrum that is as important now as it was during the Weimar era in Germany. Reappraisal of some of the pillars of liberal dogma are as much in order as are fears of their demise.
  
  
• Deepening Divides: How Physical Borders and Social Boundaries Delineate Our World
  
  Deepening Divides: How Physical Borders and Social Boundaries Delineate Our World: JC323 .D44 2020
  Author(s): Didier Fassin
  London : Pluto Press 2020.
  
  A non-Eurocentric, interdisciplinary collection arguing that boundaries and borders are best understood as overlapping categories.
  
  
• The Nation and Its Margins: Rethinking Community
  
  The Nation and Its Margins: Rethinking Community: JC327 .N38 2019
  Author(s): Vinita Chandra
  Newcastle upon Tyne, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2019.
  
  This volume questions the idea that the nation-state is the only available form of community, and challenges its hegemonic control over forms of socio-cultural belonging. The contributions here explore cross-cultural and transnational encounters which highlight narratives that escape the neat boundaries constructed by nationalities. They complicate our understanding of peoples and groups and the varying spaces they inhabit by allowing narratives that have been made invisible, due to hegemonic national control, to emerge. This volume throws light on moments of cultural encounters in the Global South, specifically South Asia, South-east Asia, West Asia, and Latin America, exploring what happens when diverse communities come together to challenge the notion that claiming national identity is the only acceptable mode of being, belonging, and existing in the world. In doing so, the book reveals other radically innovative forms of attaining cohesion and identity.
  
  
• The Art of Political Control in China
  
  The Art of Political Control in China: JC330.3 .M29 2020
  Author(s): Daniel C. Mattingly
  Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2020.
  
  When and why do people obey political authority when it runs against their own interests to do so? This book is about the channels beyond direct repression through which China's authoritarian state controls protest and implements ambitious policies from sweeping urbanization schemes that have displaced millions to family planning initiatives like the one-child policy. Daniel C. Mattingly argues that China's remarkable state capacity is not simply a product of coercive institutions such as the secret police or the military. Instead, the state uses local civil society groups as hidden but effective tools of informal control to suppress dissent and implement far-reaching policies. Drawing on evidence from qualitative case studies, experiments, and national surveys, the book challenges the conventional wisdom that a robust civil society strengthens political responsiveness. Surprisingly, it is communities that lack strong civil society groups that find it easiest to act collectively and spontaneously resist the state.
  
  
• Federalism: A Very Short Introduction
  
  Federalism: A Very Short Introduction: JC355 .R69 2019
  Author(s): Mark J. Rozell, Clyde Wilcox
  New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press [2019]
  
  Early Americans were suspicious of centralized authority and executive power. Casting away the yoke of England and its king, the founding fathers shared in this distrust as they set out to pen the Constitution. Weighing a need for consolidated leadership with a demand for states' rights, they established a large federal republic with limited dominion over the states, leaving most of the governing responsibility with the former colonies. With this dual system of federalism, the national government held the powers of war, taxation, and commerce, and the ability to pass the laws necessary to uphold these functions. Although the federal role has grown substantially since then, states and local governments continue to perform most of the duties in civil and criminal law, business and professional licensing, the management of infrastructure and public services: roads, schools, libraries, sanitation, land use and development, and etc. Despite the critical roles of state and local governments, there is little awareness-or understanding-of the nature and operations of the federal system. This Very Short Introduction provides a concise overview of federalism, from its origins and evolution to the key events and constitutional decisions that have defined its framework. Although the primary focus is on the United States, other federal systems, including Brazil, Canada, India, Germany, Russia, South Africa, Switzerland, and the EU, are addressed.
  
  
• Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change
  
  Varieties of Democracy: Measuring Two Centuries of Political Change: JC421 .V3155 2020
  Author(s): Michael Coppedge, John Gerring, Adam Glynn, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jan Teorell
  Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press 2020.
  
  Varieties of Democracy is the essential user's guide to The Varieties of Democracy project (V-Dem), one of the most ambitious data collection efforts in comparative politics. This global research collaboration sparked a dramatic change in how we study the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy. This book is ambitious in scope: more than a reference guide, it raises standards for causal inferences in democratization research and introduces new, measurable, concepts of democracy and many political institutions. Varieties of Democracy enables anyone interested in democracy - teachers, students, journalists, activists, researchers and others - to analyze V-Dem data in new and exciting ways. This book creates opportunities for V-Dem data to be used in education, research, news analysis, advocacy, policy work, and elsewhere. V-Dem is rapidly becoming the preferred source for democracy data.
  
  
• 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less
  
  10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less: JC423 .J695 2020
  Author(s): Garett Jones
  Stanford, California : Stanford University Press [2020]
  
  Democracy is a matter of degree, and this book offers mainstream empirical evidence that shows how rich democracies would be better off with a few degrees less of it.
  
  
• No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War
  
  No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War: JC481 .L295 2019
  Author(s): Ariel Mae Lambe
  Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press [2019]
  
  Vividly recasting Cuba's politics in the 1930s as transnational, Ariel Mae Lambe has produced an unprecendented reimagining of Cuban activism during an era previously regarded as a lengthy, defeated lull. In this period, many Cuban activists began to look at their fight against strongman rule and neocolonial control at home as part of the international antifascism movement that exploded with the Spanish Civil War. Frustrated by multiple domestic setbacks, including Colonel Fulgencio Batista's violent crushing of a massive general strike, activists found strength in the face of repression by refusing to view their political goals as confined to the island. As individuals and in groups, Cubans from diverse backgrounds and political stances self-identified as antifascists and moved, both physically and symbolically, across borders and oceans, cultivating networks and building solidarity for a New Spain and a New Cuba. They believed that it was through these ostensibly foreign fights that they would achieve economic and social progress for their nation. Indeed, Cuban antifascism was such a strong movement, Lambe argues, that it helps to explain the surprisingly progressive turn that Batista and the Cuban government took at the end of the decade, including the establishment of a new constitution and presidential elections.
  
  
• The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism
  
  The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism: JC571 .W428 2019
  Author(s): Jessica Whyte
  London : Verso 2019.
  
  The fatal embrace of human rights and neoliberalism Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to "civilisation". Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.
  
  
• Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence
  
  Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence: JC599.D44 T75 2020
  Author(s): Jessica Trisko Darden
  Stanford, California : Stanford University Press [2020]
  
  The United States is the world's leading foreign aid donor. Yet there has been little inquiry into how such assistance affects the politics and societies of recipient nations. Drawing on four decades of data on U.S. economic and military aid, Aiding and Abetting explores whether foreign aid does more harm than good. Jessica Trisko Darden challenges long-standing ideas about aid and its consequences, and highlights key patterns in the relationship between assistance and violence. She persuasively demonstrates that many of the foreign aid policy challenges the U.S. faced in the Cold War era, such as the propping up of dictators friendly to U.S. interests, remain salient today. Historical case studies of Indonesia, El Salvador, and South Korea illustrate how aid can uphold human freedoms or propagate human rights abuses. Aiding and Abetting encourages both advocates and critics of foreign assistance to reconsider its political and social consequences by focusing international aid efforts on the expansion of human freedom.
  
  
• Pahlavi Iran and the Politics of Occidentalism: The Shah and the Rastakhiz Party
  
  Pahlavi Iran and the Politics of Occidentalism: The Shah and the Rastakhiz Party: JC599.I65 S53 2020
  Author(s): Zhand Shakibi
  London ; IB Tauris Bloomsbury Publishing 2020.
  
  Zhand Shakibi presents a new interpretation of the political and social dynamics of the last decade of the Shah's rule that challenges the binary view of the westernizing Shah and the Islamist, anti-West Ayatollah by drawing attention to the Pahlavi state's reaction to societal backlash against cultural and moral Occidentalism in its last decade. Revising the dominant historiography of the Pahlavi ideological and discursive approach to the West, the book draws attention to the changes in the attitude of the Shah, the Empress and state intellectuals towards the authenticity of Iranian national culture and the position and imagery of the West in state conceptions of the authenticity of Iranian national culture and identity. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources sources, Shakibi presents the multi-faceted relationship of the Pahlavi state to the West and the institutions that were created to manage this such as the Rastakhiz Party. This study proposes forward that the Pahlavi state, having recognized this backlash, attempted to limit the threat to its legitimacy by reformulating intellectual discourses of anti-West Occidentalism and incorporating them into the ideology of the Rastakhiz Party. In doing so it played a critical role in exacerbating societal sensitivities about the spread of Western influences. This book also has a limited comparative aspect that examines and contrasns these trends in Romanov Russia and this enriches understandings of the evolving approaches of both polities to 'the West' within the framework of Occidentalism.
  
  
• Permanent Citizens' Assemblies: A New Model for Public Deliberation
  
  Permanent Citizens' Assemblies: A New Model for Public Deliberation: JF799 .P379 2020
  Author(s): Larry Patriquin
  London : Rowman & Littlefield International [2020]
  
  This book makes an important argument for the need to find improved methods of addressing the challenges facing contemporary democracies.
  
  
• Unbearable Life: A Genealogy of Political Erasure
  
  Unbearable Life: A Genealogy of Political Erasure: JF801 .B69 2019
  Author(s): Arthur Bradley
  New York : Columbia University Press [2019]
  
  In ancient Rome, any citizen who had brought disgrace upon the state could be subject to a judgment believed to be worse than death: damnatio memoriae, condemnation of memory. The Senate would decree that every trace of the citizen’s existence be removed from the city as if they had never existed in the first place. Once reserved for individuals, damnatio memoriae in different forms now extends to social classes, racial and ethnic groups, and even entire peoples. In modern times, the condemned go by different names—“enemies of the people;” the “missing,” the “disappeared,” “ghost” detainees in “black sites”—but they are subject to the same fate of political erasure. Arthur Bradley explores the power to render life unlived from ancient Rome through the War on Terror. He argues that sovereignty is the power to decide what counts as being alive and what does not: to make life “unbearable,” unrecognized as having lived or died. In readings of Augustine, Shakespeare, Hobbes, Robespierre, Schmitt, and Benjamin, Bradley asks: What is the “life” of this unbearable life? How does it change and endure across sovereign time and space, from empires to republics, from kings to presidents? To what extent can it be resisted or lived otherwise? A profoundly interdisciplinary and ambitious work, Unbearable Life rethinks sovereignty, biopolitics, and political theology to find the radical potential of a life that neither lives or dies.
  
  
• Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field
  
  Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field: JK1726 .B79 2020
  Author(s): Howard Bryant
  Boston : Beacon Press [2020]
  
  A bold and impassioned meditation on injustice in our country that punctures the illusion of a postracial America and reveals it as a place where authoritarianism looms large. Whether the issues are protest, labor, patriotism, or class division, it is clear that professional sports are no longer simply fun and games. Rather, the industry is a hotbed of fractures and inequities that reflect and even drive some of the most divisive issues in our country. The nine provocative and deeply personal essays in Full Dissidence confront the dangerous narratives that are shaping the current dialogue in sports and mainstream culture. The book is a reflection on a culture where African Americans continue to navigate the sharp edges of whiteness--as citizens who are always at risk of being told, often directly from the White House, to go back to where they came from. The topics Howard Bryant takes on include the player-owner relationship, the militarization of sports, the myth of integration, the erasure of black identity as a condition of success, and the kleptocracy that has forced America to ask itself if its beliefs of freedom and democracy are more than just words. In a time when authoritarianism is creeping into our lives and is being embraced in our politics, Full Dissidence will make us question the strength of the bonds we think we have with our fellow citizens, and it shows us why we must break from the malignant behaviors that have become normalized in everyday life.
  
  
• One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
  
  One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy: JK1924 .A54 2018
  Author(s): Carol Anderson
  New York, NY : Bloomsbury Publishing 2018.
  
  Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction Named one of the Best Books of the Year by: Washington Post * Boston Globe * NPR* Bustle * BookRiot * New York Public Library From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling--and timely--history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin. In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans.
  
  
• The Politics of Congressional Elections
  
  The Politics of Congressional Elections: JK1976 .J27 2020
  Author(s): Gary C. Jacobson, Jamie L. Carson
  Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield [2020]
  
  Pairing historical data analysis and original research with fundamental concepts of representation and responsibility, The Politics of Congressional Elections presents students with the tools to evaluate representative government, as well as their own role in the electoral process.
  
  
• Historical Dictionary of United States Political Parties
  
  Historical Dictionary of United States Political Parties: JK2261 .B345 2020
  Author(s): Harold F. Bass Jr.
  Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers [2020]
  
  For over two centuries, political parties have competed in encouraging, organizing, and directing political activity in the United States. This volume compiles the key concepts, terms, labels, and individuals central to identifying and comprehending these key roles political parties have played in American political life. The dictionary contains brief biographies of party leaders: major party presidential tickets; noteworthy minor party presidential nominees; congressional party leaders, including Speakers of the House of Representatives presidents pro tempore of the Senate, and floor leaders for both the majority and minority parties in each chamber; and chairs of the national party committees of the Democratic and Republican Parties. In addition to party leaders it also address the institutional offices they occupy and represent. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of United States Political Parties contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on concepts, terms, labels, and individuals central to identifying and comprehending the key roles political parties have played in American political life. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about United States Political Parties.
  
  
• The Communist Party on the American Waterfront: Revolution, Reform, and the Quest for Power
  
  The Communist Party on the American Waterfront: Revolution, Reform, and the Quest for Power: JK2391.C5 P39 2020
  Author(s): Vernon L. Pedersen
  Lanham : Lexington Books [2020]
  
  This study examines the Marine Workers Industrial Union, which had a highly visible and influential impact among Depression-era American seamen. The author utilizes several collections at the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History to show the Party's primary goal of acquiring institutional power.
  
  
• Europe's Burden: Promoting Good Governance across Borders
  
  Europe's Burden: Promoting Good Governance across Borders: JN30 .M867 2020
  Author(s): Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
  Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press 2020.
  
  The EU is many things: a civilization ideal to emulate, an anchor of geopolitical stabilization, a generous donor and a historical lesson on cooperation across nations. A fixer of national governance problems, however, it is not. In this book, Mungiu-Pippidi investigates the efficacy of the European Union's promotion of good governance through its funding and conditionalities both within EU proper and in the developing world. The evidence assembled shows that the idea of European power to transform the quality of governance is largely a myth. From Greece to Egypt and from Kosovo to Turkey, EU interventions in favour of good governance and anti-corruption policy have failed so far to trigger the domestic political dynamic needed to ensure sustainable change. Mungiu-Pippidi explores how we can better bridge the gap between the Europe of treaties and the reality of governance in Europe and beyond. This book will interest students and scholars of comparative politics, European politics, and development studies, particularly those examining governance and corruption.
  
  
• Cameron: The politics of modernisation and manipulation
  
  Cameron: The politics of modernisation and manipulation: JN238 .H47 2020
  Author(s): Timothy Heppell
  Manchester : Manchester University Press 2020.
  
  This book provides a new and distinctive interpretation of the political strategy of Prime Minister David Cameron via the themes of political modernisation and political manipulation. In terms of modernisation, the book will examine how Cameron attempted to detoxify the negative image of the Conservatives; how he sought to delegitimise Labour as a party of government by deflecting the blame on austerity onto the legacy of Labour in office, and how he used the Big Society narrative as a means of reducing the perceived responsibilities of the state. In terms of manipulation, the book will evaluate Cameronism in relation to the exploitation of their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, alongside examining the referendums on electoral reform and Scottish independence. The book will examine the end of Cameronism, and why he offered and then lost the referendum on continued European Union membership.
  
  
• Warring Fictions: Left Populism and Its Defining Myths
  
  Warring Fictions: Left Populism and Its Defining Myths: JN1129.L32 C53 2019
  Author(s): Christopher Clarke
  London ; Rowman & Littlefield International [2019]
  
  Combative but constructive, Warring Fictions makes the case for pluralism and questions the premise of Corbynism.
  
  
• The People's Flag and the Union Jack: An Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party
  
  The People's Flag and the Union Jack: An Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party: JN1129.L32 H355 2019
  Author(s): Gerry Hassan, Eric Shaw
  London : Biteback Publishing 2019.
  
  The British Labour Party has been one of the key UK political institutions for the advancement of social change in the past century. Yet one critical aspect of its makeup has always been misunderstood, underplayed or misrepresented: its Britishness. Throughout the party's history, its Britishness has been an integral part of how it has governed, and done politics. Moreover, over the past decade or so, a new mobilising form of national identity has emerged, one that has become increasingly problematic for Labour: that of Englishness. Indeed, there is some evidence that 'Englishness' is now displacing working-class identity as the major pull of loyalty and allegiance. The People's Flag and the Union Jack argues that Labour's Britishness and its ambiguous relationship with issues of national identity matter more today than ever before, and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future, when the UK is in fundamental crisis and its place in the world, and very existence, open to doubt.
  
  
• The Nordic Civil Sphere
  
  The Nordic Civil Sphere: JN7011 .A54 2019
  Author(s): Jeffrey C. Alexander, Anna Lund, Andrea Voyer
  Cambridge, UK ; Polity Press 2019.
  
  The civil sphere is a distinctively democratic field in modern societies, one that sustains universalizing cultural aspirations and organizational structures and that has tense and uncertain boundaries with other spheres of social life, like the economy, religion, family, and state. Unlike the latter, which are more particularistic and hierarchical in character, the civil sphere defines itself in terms of solidarity – the feeling of being connected with every other person in the collectivity. The utopian ideals of democratic solidarity shape every modern society, even if they are often compromised by the messy realities of social life. This volume uses the theory of the civil sphere to shed new light on Nordic societies, while at the same time drawing on the distinctive experiences of the Nordic nations to reflect on and advance the theory of the civil sphere. Nordic societies have long been admired for creating a distinctive form of social democracy, but this admirable achievement has not been well conceptualized theoretically. Most attempts to explain Nordic social democracy focus on material and organizational factors. This volume, by contrast, emphasizes the cultural foundations and characteristics of social democracy, demonstrating how civil sensibilities are necessary for the creation of an egalitarian and democratic state. Nordic civil spheres, however, are not only pro-civil but also white in color, European in ethnicity, secular in character and gender-equal in a subtly restrictive manner. Such primordialization of state civility is vividly on display in the sometime tense relationships that develop among natives and “foreigners” in Nordic countries, relationships that expose the primordial undersides of the social democratic codes and civil values that constitute the Nordic civil sphere. A major contribution to the theory of the civil sphere and to our understanding of the cultural and normative underpinnings of social and political life, this volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of sociology and politics.
  
  
• The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia
  
  The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia: JQ29.5 .P65 2019
  Author(s): Cheng Chen, Meredith L. Weiss
  Albany : State University of New York Press [2019]
  
  Examines the political dynamics behind anticorruption efforts in Asia. Focusing on Northeast and Southeast Asia—regions notable for political diversity, difficult environments for fighting corruption, and multifarious anticorruption outcomes—this book examines the political dynamics behind anticorruption efforts there. The contributors present case studies of the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and China that explore the varying roles anticorruption efforts play in solidifying or disputing democratic and nondemocratic institutions and legitimacy, as well as the broader political and economic contexts that gave rise to these efforts. Whether motivated by private interests, party loyalty, or political institutionalization, political actors shape the trajectories of anticorruption efforts by challenging their opponents over what constitutes corruption, what enables corruption, and how to combat corruption. Arguing that anticorruption strategy may be associated more closely with shifting bases of regime legitimacy than with regime type, the book sheds light on the divergent ways in which states control and respond to political elites and society at large, and on how citizens from across strata understand and engage with their states. “This book features excellent case studies rich in empirical detail, which provide robust pictures of the complex political contexts of anticorruption campaigns.” — Roselyn Hsueh, author of China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization
  
  
• The Return of the Past: State, Identity, and Society in thePost–Arab Spring Middle East
  
  The Return of the Past: State, Identity, and Society in thePost–Arab Spring Middle East: JQ1850.A91 R3413 2020
  Author(s): Uzi Rabi
  Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc [2020]
  
  This book argues that the Arab Spring brought to the forefront numerous societal, political, and historical problems in the Middle East that scholars and practitioners throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century have continually glossed over or reduced in their analysis and analytical frameworks when studying the Middle East. These include the prevalent and persistent impact of Islam on political life, an impact of transnational and subnational identities, including sect, tribe, and regional identity, as well as the overuse of the state as the fundamental unit of analysis when studying the region. As a result, this book asserts that primordial identities including religion, sect, and tribe have, and will continue to have, a significant impact on the conduct of politics in the Middle East.
  
  
• Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other
  
  Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other: JV241 .F37 2020
  Author(s): Farish A. Noor
  Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press [2020]
  
  Empire-building did not only involve the use of excessive violence against native communities, but also required the gathering of data about the native Other. This is a book about books, which looks at the writings of Western colonial administrators, company-men and map-makers who wrote about Southeast Asia in the 19th century. In the course of their information-gathering they had also framed the people of Southeast Asia in a manner that gave rise to Orientalist racial stereotypes that would be used again and again. Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other revisits the era of colonial data-collecting to demonstrate the workings of the imperial echo chamber, and how in the discourse of 19th century colonial-capitalism data was effectively weaponized to serve the interests of Empire.
  
  
• Migration and Integration: The Case for Liberalism with Borders
  
  Migration and Integration: The Case for Liberalism with Borders: JV6035 .F365 2020
  Author(s): Tom Farer
  Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press 2020.
  
  Clarifies, assesses and proposes answers for all of the politically toxic issues associated with large-scale migration of persons from the Global South to the Western liberal democracies.
  
  
• Turkey-West Relations: The Politics of Intra-alliance Opposition
  
  Turkey-West Relations: The Politics of Intra-alliance Opposition: JZ1649 .D87 2019
  Author(s): Oya Dursun-Özkanca
  Cambridge, UK ; Cambridge University Press 2019.
  
  This timely book fills an important gap in the literature of international relations, providing a thorough, up-to-date, empirically supported, and theoretically grounded analysis of how and why Turkish foreign policy has changed in recent years vis-...-vis the West. Presenting one of the first balancing studies that employs elite interviews as data, Turkey-West Relations develops a framework of intra-alliance opposition, classifying the tools of statecraft into three categories - boundary testing, boundary challenging, and boundary breaking. Six case studies are examined regarding Turkish foreign policy over the past nine years, exploring an array of topics including Turkey's foreign policy in relation to various nations and organizations, the refugee crisis, defense procurement, energy policies, and more. Dursun-Özkanca demonstrates how international, regional, issue-specific, and domestic factors may serve to explain Turkey's increasing boundary-breaking behavior. This book is crucial for anyone who seeks to understand the recent growing rifts between Turkey and the US, the EU, and NATO.
  
  
• Emergency Powers of International Organizations: Between Normalization and Containment
  
  Emergency Powers of International Organizations: Between Normalization and Containment: JZ4850 .K74 2019
  Author(s): Christian Kreuder-Sonnen
  Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press 2019.
  
  Emergency Powers of International Organizations explores emergency politics of international organizations (IOs). It studies cases in which, based on justifications of exceptional necessity, IOs expand their authority, increase executive discretion, and interfere with the rights of their rule-addressees. This ''IO exceptionalism'' is observable in crisis responses of a diverse set of institutions including the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and the World Health Organization. Through six in-depth case studies, the book analyzes the institutional dynamics unfolding in the wake of the assumption of emergency powers by IOs. Sometimes, the exceptional competencies become normalized in the IOs' authority structures (the ''ratchet effect"). In other cases, IO emergency powers provoke a backlash that eventually reverses or contains the expansions of authority (the "rollback effect"). To explain these variable outcomes, this book draws on sociological institutionalism to develop a proportionality theory of IO emergency powers. It contends that ratchets and rollbacks are a function of actors' ability to justify or contest emergency powers as (dis)proportionate. The claim that the distribution of rhetorical power is decisive for the institutional outcome is tested against alternative rational institutionalist explanations that focus on institutional design and the distribution of institutional power among states. The proportionality theory holds across the cases studied in this book and clearly outcompetes the alternative accounts. Against the background of the empirical analysis, the book moreover provides a critical normative reflection on the (anti) constitutional effects of IO exceptionalism and highlights a potential connection between authoritarian traits in global governance and the system's current legitimacy crisis.
  
  
• New Directions in Peacebuilding Evaluation
  
  New Directions in Peacebuilding Evaluation: JZ5538 .N487 2020
  Author(s): D'Estree Tamra Pearson
  Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield [2020]
  
  In this landmark collection, the voices of pathmakers and innovators in peacebuilding evaluation are assembled to provide new direction for the field. Stock is taken of the development and challenges of engaging in the real-time learning that evaluation requires. Best practices for overcoming challenges are discussed and critiqued, as well as some of the basic assumptions guiding the field. New means of gathering information and understanding conflict processes are offered and examined. To continue to evolve and strengthen peacebuilding practices and professionalism, multiple calls are issued for collaborative learning and a field-wide effort at community inquiry.
  
  
• Politics Now
  
  Politics Now: NC1759.R69 A4 2019
  Author(s): David Rowe
  Brunswick, Victoria : Scribe 2019.
  
  A riveting collection from Australia's finest and most instantly recognisable political cartoonist. This first and long-awaited collection throws us into the grotesque, malformed, and subterranean world that is Rowe's vision of politics now. Enter at your own risk. Featuring all the madness and downright stupidity of the past five years, Rowe's freakish burlesque includes the usual suspects- Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, and Bill Shorten, as well as a host of minor monstrosities who you would rather forget lest they haunt your dreams. Rowe is one of the few Australian cartoonists who pay close attention to international affairs. There are cartoons on China, Europe, the UK, and the slow-motion train wreck of Brexit, wars in the Middle East, terror, and the rise of authoritarians. And, of course, Donald Trump. No cartoonist in the world, and that includes those from the US, has laid bare the Donald and his debauched administration with such devastating insight and wit. If the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom, then David Rowe is indeed a wise man, for beneath the outrageous gothic menagerie of Rowe's imagination is a fierce intelligence and ethical sense combined with superb artistry. This essential collection features his finest political cartoons, caricatures, and sketches from the past five years. With an introduction by Laura Tingle, one of Australia's most respected journalists.
  
  

Other new Political Science books

• Election meltdown : dirty tricks, distrust, and the threat to American democracy / Hasen, Richard L. author.: JK1726 .H384 2020
• Umbruch und Aufbruch : parlamentarische Demokratie in Österreich / : JN2021.7 .U43 2019
• Le traite des examens : traduit de la Nouvelle histoire des T'ang (chap. XLIV, XLV) / Ouyang, Xiu, 1007-1072.: JQ1512.Z1 O815 1976
• La paz desde abajo : breve historia, impacto y participación de los movimientos sociales en Colombia / : JZ5584.C7 P39 2019eb
• France, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect / Staunton, Eglantine, author.: JZ6369 .S68 2020