Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order


Robert Kagan - 2003
    Robert Kagan, a leading scholar of American foreign policy, forces both sides to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Europe, he argues, has moved beyond power into a self-contained world of laws, rules, and negotiation, while America operates in a “Hobbesian” world where rules and laws are unreliable and military force is often necessary.Tracing how this state of affairs came into being over the past fifty years and fearlessly exploring its ramifications for the future, Kagan reveals the shape of the new transatlantic relationship. The result is a book that promises to be as enduringly influential as Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations.

Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics


Joseph S. Nye Jr. - 2004
    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.

Globalization and its Discontents


Joseph E. Stiglitz - 2002
    Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank. Particularly concerned with the plight of the developing nations, he became increasingly disillusioned as he saw the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions put the interests of Wall Street and the financial community ahead of the poorer nations. Those seeking to understand why globalization has engendered the hostility of protesters in Seattle and Genoa will find the reasons here. While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that will provoke debate for years to come. Rarely do we get such an insider's analysis of the major institutions of globalization as in this penetrating book. With a new foreword for this paperback edition.

Perception and Misperception in International Politics


Robert Jervis - 1976
    The New York Times called it, in an article published nearly ten years after the book's appearance, the seminal statement of principles underlying political psychology.The perspective established by Jervis remains an important counterpoint to structural explanations of international politics, and from it has developed a large literature on the psychology of leaders and the problems of decision making under conditions of incomplete information, stress, and cognitive bias.Jervis begins by describing the process of perception (for example, how decision makers learn from history) and then explores common forms of misperception (such as overestimating one's influence). Finally, he tests his ideas through a number of important events in international relations from nineteenth- and twentieth-century European history.In a contemporary application of Jervis's ideas, some argue that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 in part because he misread the signals of American leaders with regard to the independence of Kuwait. Also, leaders of the United States and Iraq in the run-up to the most recent Gulf War might have been operating under cognitive biases that made them value certain kinds of information more than others, whether or not the information was true. Jervis proved that, once a leader believed something, that perception would influence the way the leader perceived all other relevant information.

Arms and Influence


Thomas C. Schelling - 1967
    Schelling considers the ways in which military capabilities—real or imagined—are used as bargaining power.  This edition contains a new foreword by the author where he considers the book’s relevance over forty years after its first publication.  Included as an afterword is the text of Professor Schelling’s Nobel acceptance speech in which he reflects upon the global taboo that has emerged against nuclear weapons since Hiroshima."This is a brilliant and hardheaded book.  It will frighten those who prefer not to dwell on the unthinkable and infuriate those who have taken refuge in stereotypes and moral attitudinizing."—Gordon A. Craig, New York Times Book ReviewThomas C. Schelling is Distinguished University Professor, Department of Economics and School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, Harvard University. He is co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics. The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series

Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty


Jeffrey Tucker - 2017
    Most people of the current generation lack a sense of the historical sweep of the intellectual side of the right-wing collectivist position. Jeffrey Tucker, in this collection written between 2015 and 2017, argues that this movement represents the revival of a tradition of interwar collectivist thought that might at first seem like a hybrid but was distinctly mainstream between the two world wars. It is anti-communist but not for the reasons that were conventional during the Cold War, that is, because communism opposed freedom in the liberal tradition.Right-collectivism also opposes traditional liberalism. It opposes free trade, freedom of association, free migration, and capitalism understood as a laissez-faire free market. It rallies around nation and state as the organizing principles of the social order—and trends in the direction of favoring one-man rule—but positions itself as opposed to leftism traditionally understood.We know about certain fascist leaders from the mid-20th century, but not the ideological orientation that led to them or the ideas they left on the table to be picked up generations later. For the most part, and until recently, it seemed to have dropped from history. Meanwhile, the prospects for social democratic ideology are fading, and something else is coming to fill that vacuum. What is it? Where does it come from? Where is it leading?This book seeks to fill the knowledge gap, to explain what this movement is about and why anyone who genuinely loves and longs for liberty classically understood needs to develop a nose and instinct for spotting the opposite when it comes in an unfamiliar form. We need to learn to recognize the language, the thinkers, the themes, the goals of a political ethos that is properly identified as fascist."Jeffrey Tucker in his brilliant book calls right-wing populism what it actually is, namely, fascism, or, in its German form national socialism, nazism. You need Tucker’s book. You need to worry. If you are a real liberal, you need to know where the new national socialism comes from, the better to call it out and shame it back into the shadows. Now."— Deirdre McCloskey

The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy


Susan Strange - 1996
    Big businesses, drug barons, insurers, accountants and international bureaucrats all encroach on the so-called sovereignty of the state. Professor Strange examines the implications of this rivalry and points to some new directions for research in international relations, international business and economics.

International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity


Tim Dunne - 2007
    Arguing that theory is central to explaining the dynamics of world politics, editors Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith cover a wide variety of theoretical positions--from the historically dominant traditions to powerful critical voices since the 1980s. The editors have brought together a team of international contributors, each specializing in a different theory. The contributors explain the theoretical background to their positions before showing how and why their theories matter. The book opens up space for analysis and debate, allowing students to decide which theories they find most useful in explaining and understanding international relations. FEATURES * Brings together perspectives from leading authors * Combines theory and practice through extensive case study sections at the end of each chapter, providing students with the opportunity for debate and discussion * Provides an extensive range of pedagogical features throughout * Supplemented by a Companion Website (www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199548866) containing weblinks, a flashcard glossary, a revision guide, figures and tables from the textbook, and PowerPoint lecture slides NEW TO THIS EDITION * Thoroughly revised and updated to reflect new developments in the field * Brand-new chapter on Normative International Relations Theory (Chapter 2) * New "key text" boxes highlighting important topics covered within each chapter

When the Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada


Peter C. Newman - 2011
    Newman, Canada's most "cussed and discussed" political journalist, on the death spiral of the Liberal Party.The May 2, 2011 federal election turned Canadian governance upside down and inside out. In his newest and possibly most controversial book, bestselling author Peter C. Newman argues that the Harper majority will alter Canada so much that we may have to change the country's name. But the most lasting impact of the Tory win will be the demise of the Liberal Party, which ruled Canada for seven of the last ten decades and literally made the country what it is. Newman chronicles, in bloody detail, the de-construction of the Grits' once unassailable fortress and anatomizes the ways in which the arrogance embedded in the Liberal genetic code slowly poisoned the party's progressive impulses.When the Gods Changed is the saga of a political self-immolation unequalled in Canadian history. It took Michael Ignatieff to light the match.

Perpetual Peace


Immanuel Kant - 1795
    However, the idea did not become well known until the late 18th century. The term perpetual peace became acknowledged when German philosopher Immanuel Kant published his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.

The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics


Hedley Bull - 1977
    Originally published in 1977, it continues to define and shape the discipline of international relations. This edition has been updated with a new, interpretive foreword by Andrew Hurrell. Bull explores three fundamental questions: What is order in world politics? How is order maintained in the contemporary states system? What alternative paths to world order are desirable and feasible? Laws and institutions, Bull points out, shift and change over time. "The Anarchical Society" addresses the unwritten rules which have allowed international order to exist across the ages.

Conflict After the Cold War, Updated Edition


Richard K. Betts - 1993
    Professor Betts examines the arguments about what political, economic, social and military factors tend to cause war and whether such causes can be made obsolete.

Arguments for Socialism


Tony Benn - 1979
    

Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe


Juan J. Linz - 1996
    Linz and Alfred Stepan have increasingly focused on the questions of how, in the modern world, nondemocratic regimes can be eroded and democratic regimes crafted. In Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, they break new ground in numerous areas. They reconceptualize the major types of modern nondemocratic regimes and point out for each type the available paths to democratic transition and the tasks of democratic consolidation. They argue that, although "nation-state" and "democracy" often have conflicting logics, multiple and complementary political identities are feasible under a common roof of state-guaranteed rights. They also illustrate how, without an effective state, there can be neither effective citizenship nor successful privatization. Further, they provide criteria and evidence for politicians and scholars alike to distinguish between democratic consolidation and pseudo-democratization, and they present conceptually driven survey data for the fourteen countries studied.Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation contains the first systematic comparative analysis of the process of democratic consolidation in southern Europe and the southern cone of South America, and it is the first book to ground post-Communist Europe within the literature of comparative politics and democratic theory.

Political Theory: An Introduction


Rajeev Bhargava - 2008
    It innovatively embeds Indian cases and contexts in the theoretical discussions and involves students in applying theories to current issues. Without oversimplifying concepts, this textbook uses the conversational, context-specific style of a good teacher and recreates the flavour of the classroom inside its covers. Some of its special features are: an outline for each chapter highlighting its main elements, an introductory section discussing the concept, and rationale of chapter organization, cross-referencing of important terms, points for discussion and a detailed reading list.