EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book The Janus Face of International Politics

Download or read book The Janus Face of International Politics written by Willem Gravett and published by Ethics International Press. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work investigates the ‘Janus face’ of international relations, refracted through the prism of the duality of Jan Christian Smuts, as it manifested in his contribution to the League of Nations and his struggle against the emerging peace treaty. A predominant characteristic of international relations is its requirement to face two different ways at the same time - its Janus face. States profess their adherence to lofty ideals for humanity alongside the pursuit of their own immediate self-interest. This phenomenon in the behaviour of states has been referred to as the distance between vision and reality, and the gap between rhetoric and reality. International relations is, and is likely to remain, suspended between these two extremes: on the one hand, the pursuit of utopian ideals for the world, and, on the other, a defence of narrow self-interest, often prompted by the dictates of the realpolitik of the moment. How, then, are the values that underlie the founding of the first cornerstone of the current international order — the League of Nations — to be understood? An under-explored case study in understanding the complex framework of international relations is that of the visionary and controversial South African, Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950). On the one hand, Smuts was one of the principal authors of the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the person directly responsible for the recognition of human rights as a founding value of the Charter of the United Nations. On the other, the Premier of racially segregated South Africa.

Book The Double Facing Constitution

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jacco Bomhoff
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2020-01-30
  • ISBN : 1108485480
  • Pages : 443 pages

Download or read book The Double Facing Constitution written by Jacco Bomhoff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how constitutional orders engage with and are shaped by their exteriors.

Book The Faces of Janus

Download or read book The Faces of Janus written by Anthony James Gregor and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempting to understand the catalogue of horrors that has characterized much of twentieth-century history, Western scholars generally distinguish between violent revolutions of the "right" and the "left". Fascist regimes are assigned to the evil right, Marxist-Leninist regimes to the benign left. But this distinction has left us without a coherent understanding of the revolutionary history of the twentieth century, contends A. James Gregor in this insightful book. He traces the evolution of Marxist theory from the 1920s through the 1990s and argues that the ideology of Marxism-Leninism devolved into fascism. Fascist regimes and Communist regimes -- both anti-democratic ideocracies -- are far more closely related than has been recognized.Employing wide-ranging primary source materials in Italian, German, Russian, and Chinese, the book opens with an examination of the first standard Marxist interpretation of Mussolini's fascism in the early 1920s and proceeds through the emergence of fascist phenomena in post-Communist Russia. A clearer understanding of the relation between fascism and communism provides a sharper lens through which to view twentieth-century history as well as the present and future politics of Russia, Communist China, and other non-democratic states, Gregor concludes.

Book Rights in Exile

    Book Details:
  • Author : Guglielmo Verdirame
  • Publisher : Berghahn Books
  • Release : 2005
  • ISBN : 9781845451035
  • Pages : 422 pages

Download or read book Rights in Exile written by Guglielmo Verdirame and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the estimated 12 million refugees in the world, more than 7 million have been confined to camps, effectively "warehoused," in some cases, for 10 years or more. Holding refugees in camps was anathema to the founders of the refugee protection regime. Today, with most refugees encamped in the less developed parts of the world, the humanitarian apparatus has been transformed into a custodial regime for innocent people. Based on rich ethnographic data, Rights in Exile exposes the gap between human rights norms and the mandates of international organisations, on the one hand, and the reality on the ground, on the other. It will be of wide interest to social scientists, and to human rights and international law scholars. Policy makers, donor governments and humanitarian organizations, especially those adopting a "rights-based" approach, will also find it an invaluable resource. But it is the refugees themselves who could benefit the most if these actors absorb its lessons and apply them. Guglielmo Verdirame is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He is also the author of a forthcoming book on the accountability of the United Nations. Barbara Harrell-Bond, Founding director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, has, after retirement, been Visiting Professor at Makerere University and at the American University in Cairo. In 1996, she received the Distinguished Service Award of the American Anthropological Association. She is the author of Imposing Aid (Oxford, 1986).

Book Theory of International Politics

Download or read book Theory of International Politics written by Kenneth Neal Waltz and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages. This book was released on 1979 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forfatterens mål med denne bog er: 1) Analyse af de gældende teorier for international politik og hvad der heri er lagt størst vægt på. 2) Konstruktion af en teori for international politik som kan kan råde bod på de mangler, der er i de nu gældende. 3) Afprøvning af den rekonstruerede teori på faktiske hændelsesforløb.

Book Civilization and Empire

Download or read book Civilization and Empire written by Shogo Suzuki and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-02-02 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines the influence of International Society on East Asia, and how its attempts to introduce ‘civilization’ to ‘barbarous’ polities contributed to conflict between China and Japan. Challenging existing works that have presented the expansion of (European) International Society as a progressive, linear process, this book contends that imperialism – along with an ideology premised on ‘civilising’ ‘barbarous’ peoples – played a central role in its historic development. Considering how these elements of International Society affected China and Japan’s entry into it, Shogo Suzuki contends that such states envisaged a Janus-faced International Society, which simultaneously aimed for cooperative relations among its ‘civilized’ members and for the introduction of ‘civilization’ towards non-European polities, often by coercive means. By examining the complex process by which China and Japan engaged with this dualism, this book highlights a darker side of China and Japan’s socialization into International Society which previous studies have failed to acknowledge. Drawing on Chinese and Japanese primary sources seldom utilized in International Relations, this book makes a compelling case for revising our understandings of International Society and its expansion. This book will be of strong interest to students and researcher of international relations, international history, European studies and Asian Studies.

Book The Politics of Immigration

Download or read book The Politics of Immigration written by James Hampshire and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immigration is one of the most contested issues on the political agenda of liberal states across Europe and North America. While these states can be open and inclusive to newcomers, they are also often restrictive and exclusionary. The Politics of Immigration examines the sources of these apparently contradictory stances, locating answers in the nature of the liberal state itself. The book shows how four defining facets of the liberal state - representative democracy, constitutionalism, capitalism, and nationhood - generate conflicting imperatives for immigration policymaking, which in turn gives rise to paradoxical, even contradictory, policies. The first few chapters of the book outline this framework, setting out the various actors, institutions and ideas associated with each facet. Subsequent chapters consider its implications for different elements of the immigration policy field, including policies towards economic and humanitarian immigration, as well as citizenship and integration. Throughout, the argument is illustrated with data and examples from the major immigrant-receiving countries of Europe and North America. This book will be essential reading for students and researchers in migration studies, politics and international relations, and all those interested in understanding why immigration remains one of the most controversial and intractable policy issues in the Western world.

Book Interests  Institutions  and Information

Download or read book Interests Institutions and Information written by Helen V. Milner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly scholars of international relations are rallying around the idea that "domestic politics matters." Few, however, have articulated precisely how or why it matters. In this significant book, Helen Milner lays out the first fully developed theory of domestic politics, showing exactly how domestic politics affects international outcomes. In developing this rational-choice theory, Milner argues that any explanation that treats states as unitary actors is ultimately misleading. She describes all states as polyarchic, where decision-making power is shared between two or more actors (such as a legislature and an executive). Milner constructs a new model based on two-level game theory, reflecting the political activity at both the domestic and international levels. She illustrates this model by taking up the critical question of cooperation among nations. Milner examines the central factors that influence the strategic game of domestic politics. She shows that it is the outcome of this internal game--not fears of other countries' relative gains or the likelihood of cheating--that ultimately shapes how the international game is played out and therefore the extent of cooperative endeavors. The interaction of the domestic actors' preferences, given their political institutions and levels of information, defines when international cooperation is possible and what its terms will be. Several test cases examine how this argument explains the phases of a cooperative attempt: the initiation, the negotiations at the international level, and the eventual domestic ratification. The book reaches the surprising conclusion that theorists--neo-Institutionalists and Realists alike--have overestimated the likelihood of cooperation among states.

Book Politics and Strategy

Download or read book Politics and Strategy written by Peter Trubowitz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some national leaders pursue ambitious grand strategies and adventuresome foreign policies while others do not? When do leaders boldly confront foreign threats and when are they less assertive? Politics and Strategy shows that grand strategies are Janus-faced: their formulation has as much to do with a leader's ability to govern at home as it does with maintaining the nation's security abroad. Drawing on the American political experience, Peter Trubowitz reveals how variations in domestic party politics and international power have led presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama to pursue strategies that differ widely in international ambition and cost. He considers why some presidents overreach in foreign affairs while others fail to do enough. Trubowitz pushes the understanding of grand strategy beyond traditional approaches that stress only international forces or domestic interests. He provides insights into how past leaders responded to cross-pressures between geopolitics and party politics, and how similar issues continue to bedevil American statecraft today. He suggests that the trade-offs shaping American leaders' foreign policy choices are not unique--analogous trade-offs confront Chinese and Russian leaders as well. Combining innovative theory and historical analysis, Politics and Strategy answers classic questions of statecraft and offers new ideas for thinking about grand strategies and the leaders who make them.

Book The Military Balance 2022

Download or read book The Military Balance 2022 written by The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-02-14 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published each year since 1959, The Military Balance is an indispensable reference to the capabilities of armed forces across the globe. It is used by academia, the media, armed forces, the private sector and government. It is an open-source assessment of the military forces and equipment inventories of 171 countries, with accompanying defence economics and procurement data. Alongside detailed country data, The Military Balance assesses important defence issues, by region, as well as key global trends, such as in defence technology and equipment modernisation. This analysis is accompanied by full-colour graphics, including maps and illustrations. With extensive explanatory notes and reference information, The Military Balance is as straightforward to use as it is extensive. The 2022 edition is accompanied by a fullcolour wall chart illustrating security dynamics in the Arctic.

Book Grassroots Economies

Download or read book Grassroots Economies written by Susana Narotzky and published by Anthropology, Culture and Society. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative ethnography of the responses on the ground to austerity policies in Southern Europe

Book Soft Power

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joseph S Nye Jr
  • Publisher : PublicAffairs
  • Release : 2009-04-28
  • ISBN : 0786738960
  • Pages : 216 pages

Download or read book Soft Power written by Joseph S Nye Jr and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power" in the late 1980s. It is now used frequently—and often incorrectly—by political leaders, editorial writers, and academics around the world. So what is soft power? Soft power lies in the ability to attract and persuade. Whereas hard power—the ability to coerce—grows out of a country's military or economic might, soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies. Hard power remains crucial in a world of states trying to guard their independence and of non-state groups willing to turn to violence. It forms the core of the Bush administration's new national security strategy. But according to Nye, the neo-conservatives who advise the president are making a major miscalculation: They focus too heavily on using America's military power to force other nations to do our will, and they pay too little heed to our soft power. It is soft power that will help prevent terrorists from recruiting supporters from among the moderate majority. And it is soft power that will help us deal with critical global issues that require multilateral cooperation among states. That is why it is so essential that America better understands and applies our soft power. This book is our guide.

Book The Narrow Corridor

Download or read book The Narrow Corridor written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics and the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail "Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." —Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe’s early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos’s efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India’s caste system, Saudi Arabia’s suffocating cage of norms, and the “Paper Leviathan” of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

Book The Many Hands of the State

Download or read book The Many Hands of the State written by Kimberly J. Morgan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects.

Book The New Introduction to Geographical Economics

Download or read book The New Introduction to Geographical Economics written by Steven Brakman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-09 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised and updated introduction to geographical economics explains the who, why and where of the location of economic activity.

Book Locating the Proper Authorities

Download or read book Locating the Proper Authorities written by Daniel W. Drezner and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVExamines how international organizations are used as a means of bypassing domestic opposition to policy change /div

Book Two Faces of Globalization

Download or read book Two Faces of Globalization written by Dilip K. Das and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like the ancient Roman god Janus, globalization has two faces, one benign and the other malign. In this comprehensive and authoritative book, Dilip K. Das fills a gap in the literature by examining both aspects of the contemporary phase of economic globalization. Because globalization has had both welfare-enhancing, propitious consequences as well as detrimental ones, it has become an acutely contentious subject matter among both scholarly and public policy-making communities. Contemporary globalization cannot be studied without a balanced treatment of both facets. The author provides precisely that, covering large thematic areas of the global economy and globalization through the channels of trade, financial flows, attention to newly emerging trends as well as historical perspective. Neither overly technical nor highly model-oriented, this accessible book will be of great interest to scholars, students and other readers interested in a broad and balanced view of globalization.