International relations Books

Transforming Socialist Economies: Lessons for Cuba and Beyond argues that countries with centrally-planned economies can pursue divergent paths towards market liberalization. The book reviews the reform processes of China, the Central Asian Republics,...

Soviet efforts to end the Cold War were intended to help revitalize the USSR. Instead, Nick Bisley argues, they contributed crucially to its collapse. Using historical-sociological theory, The End of the Cold War and the Causes of Soviet Collapse shows...

At a time of unprecedented turmoil in the transatlantic relationship, as America asserts its right to act unilaterally to defend itself against terrorism and Europeans are increasingly aggressive in promoting a multilateralist approach to security...

The South in World Politics is a timely analysis of the influence and effectiveness of developing states in shaping the international order from the politics of the Cold War and North-South confrontation to the contemporary challenges of globalization...

Bill Dunn considers and contests accounts of globalization and post-Fordism that see structural economic change in the late Twentieth-century as having fundamentally worsened the conditions and weakened the potential of labour. Including a comparative...

This book provides an account of systemic corruption within the context of post-Soviet economic and political transitions. Focusing on Armenia and Georgia, it shows how systemic corruption has developed since the fall of Soviet rule and how corruption...

From the UN Security Council and the European Union's Council of Ministers to obscure committees on food labelling or the scheduling of World Fairs, several thousand multilateral conferences are held each year. Why do governments deploy so much effort in...

This is a study in EU legitimacy from the perspective of EU citizens. Mather argues that legitimacy is empirical: 'legitimacy only exists if people feel that it does' and that the EU is a unique and dynamic institution, hence legitimating factors are...

O'Manique critically examines the evolution of the policy response to AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa through a feminist political economy lens, focusing on the relationship between neo-liberalism, the spread of AIDS and the hegemonic policy response. It...

The Asian crisis triggered ongoing controversy over the IMF's role in a 'new international financial architecture'. This book argues for a political approach to crisis and reform, placing current debates in the context of the politics of financial...

This edited volume brings together a number of well-known scholars and activists from various parts of the world to present critical perspectives on recent and long term trends in the economic, socio-cultural and political life of the people of Asia and...

This collection examines new developments in economic and security co-operation in the Asia-Pacific in relation to two recent 'shock' events that have significantly impacted upon the region, these being the 1997/98 East Asian financial crisis and the...

The Legacy of the Soviet Union offers a distillation by a group of eminent scholars of their experience of the post-Soviet years. Analysis of the post-Soviet landscape is accompanied by meditations on the impact of the post-Soviet transition on both...

The West, Civil Society and the Construction of Peace describes how the challenges of peacemaking following the First and Second World Wars defined the West. In turn, the difficulties in applying the Western recipe for peace to the new security...

Since the turn of the millennium, resistance to the liberal project of global governance has come to occupy centre stage in global and international politics. The Battle of Seattle, the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and the Bush...

What are the prospects of the liberal democratic form of state spreading throughout the world? Democracy and the Global System analyses the relationship between liberal democracy and the international system while developing a critique of liberal...

The European Union and Enlargement is about the EU's 'power of attraction' - an exploration of the potential for EU impact on conflicts within Europe - and the implications for the EU to influence the 'order' beyond its borders. It provides both a...

To what extent does domestic politics affect the agreement reached in an international trade negotiation? In order to address this question, Christopher C. Meyerson develops an approach to analyzing the relationship between domestic politics and...

James Busumtwi-Sam and Laurent Dobuzinskis have assembled a leading team of experts in the field to examine how phenomena associated with globalization impact on political economy in theory and in practice. The volume employs a variety of theoretical and...

This volume critically examines the promise of a global civil society. Exploring issues in cases of diverse social justice movements, the contributors show that a global civil society is still far from emerging and its promotion may even harm the...

Drawing on case-studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia, International Migration and Sending Countries demonstrates how sending countries are emerging as complex and significant actors in migration politics. It shows how a more nuanced...

Does the proliferation of security communities around the world presage a new era of competition between regions or an era of intensified global integration? This important new study assesses the relationship between security communities and their...

This collection examines change within the major regional organisations of the Asia Pacific: The Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)...

A scholarly perspective of a soldier's own challenges working in the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). This work examines how regional/cultural knowledge and language ability contribute to improved leadership in a UN operation, based on the...

The book analyzes Brazil's Africa engagement as a rising power's strategy to gain global recognition, linking it to Brazil's broader foreign policy objectives and shedding light on the mechanisms of Brazilian status-seeking in Africa.

This study focuses on the field of security studies through the prism of migration. Using ethnographic methods to illustrate an experiential theory of security taken from the perspective of migrants and asylum seekers in Europe, it effectively offers a...

The author examines Brazil's emerging role as an important actor in various sectors of global governance. By exploring how Brazil's exercise of power developed over the last decade in the sectors of health, food security and bioenergy, this book sheds...

This volume examines Japanese and Korean politics from both Japanese and Korean angles, exploring why the two countries do not cooperate bilaterally or consult one another, despite their geographical closeness and a number of common features that are...

The author examines the rise of the BRICs and the supposed decline of the United States. Focusing on the boom years from 1992 to 2007, and the crisis years after 2008, he argues that there are limits to the rise of the former and that the extent of US...

Using a framework of norm diffusion to determine the EU's international actorness in the context of its relations with ASEAN, this book provides a timely and in-depth analysis of EU-ASEAN relations. By investigating three aspects of regionalism support...

With theoretically-rich contributions from an international group of political scientists, historians, and economists, this volume addresses the puzzle of why the Middle East has produced no single dominant and acknowledged regional power, despite...

The focus of the book is the cost of empire, particularly the cost in the American case - the internal burden of American global leadership. The book builds an argument about the propensity of external responsibilities to undermine the internal strength,...

This book explores and analyzes how the Arab Spring has affected the political and economic relationships between the West, the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the MENA (Middle Eastern and North African states). It locates...

The post-Cold War world allows space for less powerful states to develop influential roles in responding to specific international problems. Norway has focused on the persistent issue of violent ethno-political conflict. This book explains why Norway...

Public diplomacy has become one of the most discussed phrases in political science. This book examines the use of public diplomacy by China and Taiwan in Central America, where Taiwan continues to hold the majority of diplomatic relationships. Using...

Exploring bilateral narratives of identity at a socio-discursive level from 1990 onwards, this book provides a new approach to understanding how Chile and Australia imagine and discursively construct each other in light of the bilateral Free Trade...

This book is a historical and strategic analysis of the nuclear dimension of the US alliance with Australia, Australia's relationship with nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy, and US extended nuclear deterrence.

This book reviews bureau-type organizations delivering network goods, documenting how most global institutions greatly improved their effectiveness during the last few decades. In the current globalized world, the design and choice of appropriate...

Russia's new 'pivot to Asia' increases the global significance of Russia's Siberia and Far East. The contributors - recognized experts from Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, Norway and Singapore - analyze political, economic, social and geostrategic...

What are the implications of colonialism for a theory of global justice today? What does rectificatory justice mean in the light of colonialism? What does global rectificatory justice require in practice? The author seeks to answer these questions...

This book re-conceptualizes civil society engagement with global governance institutions in the field of development in terms of opposition. With an innovative theoretical framework, it maps and explains opposition strategies through detailed case...

This book draws upon theory and theology to consider how religious institutions engage with post-conflict statebuilding and why they would choose to lend their resources to the endeavour. Drawing from the theologies of Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam,...

The author tests the hypothesis that hubris and the Bathsheba syndrome tend to affect all top leaders, by zooming in on the best known and very highest executives of our own day and age, and examines the psychological forces tugging at the top level of...

The book investigates the substance of the European Union's (EU) democracy promotion policy. It focuses on elections, civil and political rights, horizontal accountability, effective power to govern, stateness, state administrative capacity, civil...

Recognition is a basic human need, but it is not a panacea to all societal ills. This volume assembles contributions from International Relations, Political Theory and International Law in order to show that recognition is a gradual process and an...

This book analyzes changes in Polish foreign policy in the context of the EU membership, exploring Poland's transition from a policy taker to policy-maker. It focuses on how Poland shapes EU policy towards the Eastern neighbors.

Korea's twin transitions - agrarian to industrial and industrial to post-industrial - transformed the country's political economy. Moving away from the traditional focus on aspects such as market, culture, and colonialism, the author argues that Korea's...

Through a unique collection of essays drawn from rich case studies, Authoritarianism in the Middle East provides important insights into the ongoing instabilities of the Middle East, and the authoritarianism and democratisation processes that have led to...