Download or read book Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation written by Diane E. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-13 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Existing models of state formation are derived primarily from early Western European experience, and are misleading when applied to nation-states struggling to consolidate their dominion in the present period. In this volume, scholars suggest that the Western European model of armies waging war on behalf of sovereign states does not hold universally. The importance of 'irregular' armed forces - militias, guerrillas, paramilitaries, mercenaries, bandits, vigilantes, police, and so on - has been seriously neglected in the literature on this subject. The case studies in this book suggest, among other things, that the creation of the nation-state as a secure political entity rests as much on 'irregular' as regular armed forces. For most of the 'developing' world, the state's legitimacy has been difficult to achieve, constantly eroding or challenged by irregular armed forces within a country's borders. No account of modern state formation can be considered complete without attending to irregular forces.
Download or read book Contention and Trust in Cities and States written by Michael Hanagan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-04-15 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The catalyst for this book is the fact that noted sociologist Charles Tilly, upon his death in 2008, left one completed chapter of an unfinished manuscript entitled “Cities, States, and Trust Networks,” examining the relationships between cities and nation-states over the sweep of history, and in particular the role of trust networks in mediating this relationship. Though this was the catalyst, the book serves a broader purpose: to survey recent frontier work on cities, nation-states, and the relations between the two in historical and contemporary perspective. Essays in the book will address four main themes: city-state relations, trust networks and commitment, democracy and inequality, and the importance of historical legacies in shaping state structures, practices, and capacities. They will be global in scope, with research on the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa; a number of the pieces will be comparative. They will also be interdisciplinary, including works of geography, history, political science, sociology, urban planning. The book addresses several confluent needs of readers. One is to simply update themes addressed in earlier edited work such as Bringing the State Back In (1985). A second is to bring together current thinking about cities on the one hand and nation-states on the other, literatures that are often segregated from each other. A third is to perform those two purposes in a way that is global in scope and combines both historical and current analyses, to pull together insights from the full range of human experience.
Download or read book On Guerrilla Warfare written by Mao Tse-tung and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first documented, systematic study of a truly revolutionary subject, this 1937 text remains the definitive guide to guerrilla warfare. It concisely explains unorthodox strategies that transform disadvantages into benefits.
Download or read book The Military and Democracy in Indonesia written by Angel Rabasa and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2002-12-13 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The military is one of the few institutions that cut across the divides of Indonesian society. As it continues to play a critical part in determining Indonesia's future, the military itself is undergoing profound change. The authors of this book examine the role of the military in politics and society since the fall of President Suharto in 1998. They present several strategic scenarios for Indonesia, which have important implications for U.S.-Indonesian relations, and propose goals for Indonesian military reform and elements of a U.S. engagement policy.
Download or read book Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy written by Colin S. Gray and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author offers a detailed comparison between the character of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal enduring features of "the American way." He concludes that there is a serious mismatch between that "way" and the kind of behavior that is most effective in countering irregular foes. The author poses the question, Can the American way of war adapt to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies? He suggests that the answer is "perhaps, but only with difficulty."
Download or read book Divided Armies written by Jason Lyall and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do armies fight and what makes them victorious on the modern battlefield? In Divided Armies, Jason Lyall challenges long-standing answers to this classic question by linking the fate of armies to their levels of inequality. Introducing the concept of military inequality, Lyall demonstrates how a state's prewar choices about the citizenship status of ethnic groups within its population determine subsequent battlefield performance. Treating certain ethnic groups as second-class citizens, either by subjecting them to state-sanctioned discrimination or, worse, violence, undermines interethnic trust, fuels grievances, and leads victimized soldiers to subvert military authorities once war begins. The higher an army's inequality, Lyall finds, the greater its rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and use of coercion to force soldiers to fight. In a sweeping historical investigation, Lyall draws on Project Mars, a new dataset of 250 conventional wars fought since 1800, to test this argument. Project Mars breaks with prior efforts by including overlooked non-Western wars while cataloguing new patterns of inequality and wartime conduct across hundreds of belligerents. Combining historical comparisons and statistical analysis, Lyall also marshals evidence from nine wars, ranging from the Eastern Fronts of World Wars I and II to less familiar wars in Africa and Central Asia, to illustrate inequality's effects. Sounding the alarm on the dangers of inequality for battlefield performance, Divided Armies offers important lessons about warfare over the past two centuries—and for wars still to come.
Download or read book Embattled Glory written by Neil J. Diamant and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-01-16 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book examines the treatment of veterans of the People's Liberation Army and military families as an illuminating window into Chinese patriotism, citizenship, and legitimacy. Using a wealth of recently declassified archival documents and employing a wide comparative perspective, Neil J. Diamant presents the first large-scale study of these groups in comparison to similar populations in other parts of Asia and in the West. He offers an unprecedented look at the "everyday interactions" among veterans, military families, state officials, and ordinary citizens as they attempted to secure urban residence, jobs, spouses, medical care, and respect. Often celebrated by the government for their glorious and patriotic service, veterans and military families were the beneficiaries of many policies, such as affirmative action in hiring and access to political power. But, the author asks, if veteran and military families were heroic, why did many of them compare their situation to "donkeys slaughtered after grinding the wheat" and "tossed-away dirty socks?" And what explains the thousands of suicides among veterans, rampant discrimination, and ongoing protests against the government? By comparing veterans in China to their counterparts in the United States, the Soviet Union, Israel, and elsewhere, this book provides important answers to the larger question of what circumstances lead to better or worse treatment of veterans, and what this treatment tells us about patriotism, legitimacy, and respect for military service.
Download or read book Empires and Indigenes written by Wayne Lee and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early modern period (c. 1500OCo1800) of world history is characterized by the establishment and aggressive expansion of European empires, and warfare between imperial powers and indigenous peoples was a central component of the quest for global dominance. From the Portuguese in Africa to the Russians and Ottomans in Central Asia, empire builders could not avoid military interactions with native populations, and many discovered that imperial expansion was impossible without the cooperation, and, in some cases, alliances with the natives they encountered in the new worlds they sought to rule. Empires and Indigenes is a sweeping examination of how intercultural interactions between Europeans and indigenous people influenced military choices and strategic action. Ranging from the Muscovites on the western steppe to the French and English in North America, it analyzes how diplomatic and military systems were designed to accommodate the demands and expectations of local peoples, who aided the imperial powers even as they often became subordinated to them. Contributors take on the analytical problem from a variety of levels, from the detailed case studies of the different ways indigenous peoples could be employed, to more comprehensive syntheses and theoretical examinations of diplomatic processes, ethnic soldier mobilization, and the interaction of culture and military technology. Warfare and Culture series. Contributors: Virginia Aksan, David R. Jones, Marjoleine Kars, Wayne E. Lee, Mark Meuwese, Douglas M. Peers, Geoffrey Plank, Jenny Hale Pulsipher, and John K. Thornton
Download or read book Containing Balkan Nationalism written by Denis Vovchenko and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-18 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing Balkan Nationalism focuses on the implications of the Bulgarian national movement that developed in the context of Ottoman modernization and of European imperialism in the Near East. The movement aimed to achieve the status of an independent Bulgarian Orthodox church, removing ethnic Bulgarians from the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This independent church status meant legal and cultural autonomy within the Islamic structure of the Ottoman Empire, which recognized religious minorities rather than ethnic ones. Denis Vovchenko shows how Russian policymakers, intellectuals, and prelates worked together with the Ottoman government, Balkan and other diplomats, and rival churches, to contain and defuse ethnic conflict among Ottoman Christians through the promotion of supraethnic religious institutions and identities. The envisioned arrangements were often inspired by modern visions of a political and cultural union of Orthodox Slavs and Greeks. Whether realized or not, they demonstrated the strength and flexibility of supranational identities and institutions on the eve of the First World War. The book encourages contemporary analysts and policymakers to explore the potential of such traditional loyalties to defuse current ethnic tensions and serve as organic alternatives to generic models of power-sharing and federation.
Download or read book Nonstate Warfare written by Stephen Biddle and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How nonstate military strategies overturn traditional perspectives on warfare Since September 11th, 2001, armed nonstate actors have received increased attention and discussion from scholars, policymakers, and the military. Underlying debates about nonstate warfare and how it should be countered is one crucial assumption: that state and nonstate actors fight very differently. In Nonstate Warfare, Stephen Biddle upturns this distinction, arguing that there is actually nothing intrinsic separating state or nonstate military behavior. Through an in-depth look at nonstate military conduct, Biddle shows that many nonstate armies now fight more "conventionally" than many state armies, and that the internal politics of nonstate actors—their institutional maturity and wartime stakes rather than their material weapons or equipment—determines tactics and strategies. Biddle frames nonstate and state methods along a continuum, spanning Fabian-style irregular warfare to Napoleonic-style warfare involving massed armies, and he presents a systematic theory to explain any given nonstate actor’s position on this spectrum. Showing that most warfare for at least a century has kept to the blended middle of the spectrum, Biddle argues that material and tribal culture explanations for nonstate warfare methods do not adequately explain observed patterns of warmaking. Investigating a range of historical examples from Lebanon and Iraq to Somalia, Croatia, and the Vietcong, Biddle demonstrates that viewing state and nonstate warfighting as mutually exclusive can lead to errors in policy and scholarship. A comprehensive account of combat methods and military rationale, Nonstate Warfare offers a new understanding for wartime military behavior.
Download or read book Violence and Crime in Latin America written by Gema Santamaría and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to media reports, Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world—a distinction it held throughout the twentieth century. The authors of Violence and Crime in Latin America contend that perceptions and representations of violence and crime directly impact such behaviors, creating profound consequences for the political and social fabric of Latin American nations. Written by distinguished scholars of Latin American history, sociology, anthropology, and political science, the essays in this volume range from Mexico and Argentina to Colombia and Brazil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, addressing such issues as extralegal violence in Mexico, the myth of indigenous criminality in Guatemala, and governments’ selective blindness to violent crime in Brazil and Jamaica. The authors in this collection examine not only the social construction and political visibility of violence and crime in Latin America, but the justifications for them as well. Analytically and historically, these essays show how Latin American citizens have sanctioned criminal and violent practices and incorporated them into social relations, everyday practices, and institutional settings. At the same time, the authors explore the power struggles that inform distinctions between illegitimate versus legitimate violence. Violence and Crime in Latin America makes a substantive contribution to understanding a key problem facing Latin America today. In its historical depth and ethnographic reach, this original and thought-provoking volume enhances our understanding of crime and violence throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Download or read book Strategic Alliances written by Nella Van Dyke, Holly J. McCammon and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Law s Impunity written by Hin-Yan Liu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When faced with those who act with impunity, we seek the protection of law. We rely upon the legal system for justice, from international human rights law that establishes common standards of protection, to international criminal law that spearheads efforts to end impunity for the most heinous atrocities. While legal processes are perceived to combat impunity, and despite the ready availability of the law, accountability often remains elusive. What if the law itself enables impunity? Law's Impunity asks this question in the context of the modern Private Military Company (PMC), examining the relationship between law and the concepts of responsibility and impunity. This book proposes that ordinary legal processes do not neutralise, but rather legalise impunity. This radical idea is applied to the abysmal record of human rights violations perpetrated by the modern PMC and the shocking absence of accountability. This book demonstrates how the law organises, rather than overcomes, impunity by detailing how the modern PMC exploits ordinary legal processes to systematically exclude itself from legal responsibility. Thus, Law's Impunity offers an alternative to conventional thinking about the law, providing an innovative approach to assess and refine the rigour of legal processes in the ongoing quest to end impunity.
Download or read book International Encyclopedia of Political Science written by Bertrand Badie and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 4511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With entries from leading international scholars from around the world, this eight-volume encyclopedia offers the widest possible coverage of key areas both regionally and globally. The International Encyclopedia of Political Science provides a definitive, comprehensive picture of all aspects of political life, recognizing the theoretical and cultural pluralism of our approaches and including findings from the far corners of the world. The eight volumes cover every field of politics, from political theory and methodology to political sociology, comparative politics, public policies, and international relations. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order, and a list of entries by subject area appears in the front of each volume for ease of use. The encyclopedia contains a detailed index as well as extensive bibliographical references. Filling the need for an exhaustive overview of the empirical findings and reflections on politics, this reference resource is suited for undergraduate or graduate students who wish to be informed effectively and quickly on their field of study, for scholars seeking information on relevant research findings in their area of specialization or in related fields, and for lay readers who may lack a formal background in political science but have an interest in the field nonetheless. The International Encyclopedia of Political Science provides an essential, authoritative guide to the state of political science at the start of the 21st century and for decades to come, making it an invaluable resource for a global readership, including researchers, students, citizens, and policy makers. The encyclopedia was developed in partnership with the International Political Science Association. Key Themes: Case and Area Studies Comparative Politics, Theory, and Methods Democracy and Democratization Economics Epistemological Foundations Equality and Inequality Gender and Race/Ethnicity International Relations Local Government Peace, War, and Conflict Resolution People and Organizations Political Economy Political Parties Political Sociology Public Policy and Administration Qualitative Methods Quantitative Methods Religion
Download or read book The Unfinished History of the Iran Iraq War written by Annie Tracy Samuel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), founded after the Iranian revolution in 1979, is one of the most powerful and prominent but least understood organizations in Iran. In this book, Annie Tracy Samuel presents an innovative and compelling history of this organization and, by using the Iran-Iraq War as a focal point, analyzes the links between war and revolution. Tracy Samuel provides an internal view of the IRGC by examining how the Revolutionary Guards have recorded and assessed the history of the war in the massive volume of Persian language publications produced by the organization's top members and units. This not only enhances our comprehension of the IRGC's roles and power in contemporary Iran, but also demonstrates how the history of the Iran-Iraq War has immense bearing on the Islamic Republic's present and future. In doing so, the book reveals how analyzing Iran's history provides the critical tools for understanding its actions today.
Download or read book Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean written by Leonidas Mylonakis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-29 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did British, French and Russian gunboats pacify the notoriously corsair-infested waters of the Eastern Mediterranean? This book charts the changing rates and nature of piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century. Using Ottoman, Greek and other archival sources, it shows that far from ending with the introduction European powers to the region, piracy continued unabated. The book shows that political reforms and changes in the regional economy caused by the accelerated integration of the Mediterranean into the expanding global economy during the third quarter of the century played a large role in ongoing piracy. It also considers imperial power struggles, ecological phenomena, shifting maritime trade routes, revisions in international maritime law, and changes in the regional and world economy to explain the fluctuations in violence at sea.
Download or read book Governing Security After War written by Louis-Alexandre Berg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores the political dilemmas around security forces in war-torn countries. Well-governed military and police forces are central to sustained peace after civil war, and efforts to restructure security forces are major components of peacebuilding and stabilization efforts. As international actors have attempted to strengthen oversight and curb abuse, however, they have run into thorny political obstacles. Varied outcomes have raised questions about the value of international assistance for strengthening state institutions"--
