Political science and theory Books

Iran and the United States are on a collision course. David Barsamian presents the perspectives of four experts on Iran who discuss the 1953 CIA coup and the rise of the Islamic regime, Iran's internal dynamics and competing forces, relations with Iraq...

The attacks of 9/11 have renewed a hunger for ideas about how to effect change. The strategies and hard-won victories of dedicated activists from global justice and community struggles can provide vision and hope, and in this collection of 33 articles...

America Besieged deals with the underlying forces within U.S. society that deeply affect our lives. Showing how we are being misled and harmed by those who profess to have our interests at heart, Michael Parenti writes: "We are indeed a nation besieged,...

'The Hidden Form of Capital' presents evidence from several parts of the changing world about how the realm of the spirit affects the economy. Instead of adding to the theoretical speculation on the role of culture in economic progress, this book...

When leaders and citizens in the United States articulate their core political beliefs, they often do so in terms of parenthood and family. But while the motives might be admirable, the results of such thinking are often corrosive to our democratic goals...

Social researchers in the past have paid surprisingly little theoretical or empirical attention to movement alliances. Strategic Alliances provides a pioneering set of in-depth analyses of the circumstances leading to these organizational alliances...

For many philosophers, the rational cognitive (Cartesian) subject defines the human, or at least defines what humans should be. Yet some recent cognitive science, as well as the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, has called into question such...

Our Long Heritage was first published in 1955. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.This collection...

Victorian Critics of Democracy was first published in 1938. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

From Thomas Jefferson to John Rawls, justice has been at the center of America's self-image and national creed. At the same time, for many of its peoples-from African slaves and European immigrants to women and the poor-theAmerican experience has been...

Today India's middle class numbers more than 250 million people and is growing rapidly. Public reports have focused mainly on the emerging group's consumer potential, while global views of India's new economy range from excitement about market prospects...

This volume of essays explores the rise of parliament in the historical imagination of early modern England. The enduring controversy about the nature of parliament informs nearly all debates about the momentous religious, political and governmental...

Republic to restoration cuts across artificial divides between periods and disciplines,often imposed for reasons of convenience rather than reality. Challenging the traditional period divide of 1660, essays in this volume explore continuities with the...

Political realism has recently moved to the centre of debates in contemporary political theory. In this monograph, Matt Sleat presents the first comprehensive overview of the resurgence of interest in realist political theory and develops a unique and...

From Partition to Brexit is the first book to chart the political and ideological evolution of Irish government policy towards Northern Ireland from the partition of the country in 1921 to the present day. Based on extensive original research, this...

Jacob Talmon: Combining histories and presents is not the biography of a historian. Rather, it is a discourse on a mind tormented by fear of the masses as well as the mistakes of the leadership. Talmon often applied his views on contemporary events and...

The 1950s and 1960s were a transformative phase in modern Irish history. In these years, a conservative society dominated by the Catholic Church, and a state which was inward-looking and distrustful of novelty, gradually opened up to fresh ideas. This...

The crisis of theory tells the story of the political and intellectual adventures of E. P. Thompson, one of Britain's foremost twentieth-century thinkers. Drawing on extraordinary new unpublished documents, Scott Hamilton shows that all of Thompson's...

Constitutions and political theory is a concise textbook offering a omprehensive analysis of the principal-agent problematic inherent in all forms of politics. It shows how rule of law institutions come in two forms that restrain opportunism in politics...

Volumes of influence explores the work of a number of important books and key writers within the academic disciplines of politics and international relations. It revisits and re-evaluates some of the landmark or classic books in politics and...

Over thirty years later, the 'winter of discontent' of 1978-79 still resonates in British politics. On 22 January 1979, 1.5 million workers were on strike. Industrial unrest swept Britain in an Arctic winter. Militant shop stewards blocked medical...

The rhetoric of 'New Labour' has captured the centre ground of British politics and now frames the policy making agenda of all mainstream political parties. In linking this rhetoric to the impact of key New Labour policies on everyday life, this...

This book examines how and why Americans built an informal trading empire and why the British Empire needed to be removed before a Pax Americana could be built. The Pax Americana is a phenomenon of global significance, and this fascinating book offers a...

This book provides the most comprehensive analysis of the post-war political thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats to date. The rationale of the book stems from a belief that contemporary debate over the party's future ideological direction can...

The book examines the power of nationalism to solder nation-states back together rather than break them apart. In this innovative, cross-continental comparison of nation-building in Germany and Vietnam, the focus is on their shared experience of...

This book applies social and political theory to the field of environmental politics in Ireland. It offers both a substantive contribution to understanding environmental politics in this country and a test case of the application of theory within the...

This is the first comprehensive study of direct rule as the system of governance which operated in Northern Ireland for most of the period between 1972 and 2007. The major institutions of governance are described and examined in detail, including the...

This book examines the contribution of different Christian traditions to the waves of democratisation that have swept various parts of the world in recent decades. It offers a historical overview of Christianity's engagement with the development of...

Whether called pressure groups, NGOs, social movement organisations or organised civil society, the value of 'groups' to the policy process, to economic growth, to governance, to political representation and to democracy has always been contested...

Writing the war on terrorism examines the public language of the war on terrorism, and the way that rhetoric has been used to justify the global counter-terrorism offensive as a response to 9/11. It discusses how language has been used to deliberately...

In this book Kauppi develops a structural constructivist theory of the European Union and critically analyses, through French and Finnish empirical cases, the political practices that maintain the Union's 'democratic deficit'. Kauppi conceptualises the...

Available at last in paperback, Radical democracy brings together original contributions from established and emerging scholars. The contributors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the two dominant approaches to radical democracy:...

The book presents an integrated political analysis of Rousseau's educational, ethical, religious and political writings, and should be of value to students of politics, philosophy and the history of ideas.

By addressing these broad and increasingly important dimensions of think tank activity, this book should have considerable appeal among students of comparative politics, public policy and international affairs.

Since the Enlightenment, liberal democrat governments in Europe and North America have been compelled to secure the legitimacy of their authority by constructing rational states whose rationality is based on modern forms of law. The first serious...

This text offers a sophisticated analysis of political concepts in the light of recent debates in political theory. All political argument employs political concepts. They provide the building blocks needed to construct a case for or against a given...

Rich with analyses of concepts from deconstruction, systems theory, and post-Marxism, with critiques of fundamentalist thought and the war on terror, this volume argues for developing a philosophy of being in order to overcome the quandary of postmodern...

The political meaning of prophetic language in AmericaProphecy is the fundamental idiom of American politics-a biblical rhetoric about redeeming the crimes, suffering, and promise of a special people. Yet American prophecy and its great...

Why liberalism is all you need to lead a good, fun, worthy, and rewarding life and how you can become a better and happier person by taking your liberal beliefs more seriouslyWhere do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a...

How did Gorbachev and Yeltsin get away with transforming and replacing the Soviet system and its foreign relations? Why did they act as they did in pushing for such radical changes? And how will history evaluate their accomplishments? In this unique and...

A definitive new history of the origins, evolution, and scope of the ancient Greek city-stateThe Greek polis, or city-state, was a resilient and adaptable political institution founded on the principles of citizenship, freedom, and equality. Emerging...

A major new account of the post-Napoleonic Holy Alliance and the promise it held for liberalsThe Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In this book, Isaac Nakhimovsky reveals the Enlightenment origins of this...

Finalist, 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction Finalist, 2024 Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn't...

'Wade Davis is a true wayfinder, and these essays offer new insight into his visionary approach to culture, landscape, and the planet he loves as fiercely as any writer working today.' John Vaillant, author of Fire WeatherThe essays in...

A powerful case for why majority rule not representation is the defining feature of democratic politics.The idea that democratic governance rests on active self-rule by citizens plays surprisingly little part in current theories of democracy, which...

Mental health care and its radical possibilities reimagined in the context of its global development under capitalism.The contemporary world is oversaturated with psychiatric programs, methods, and reforms promising to address any number of "crises" in...

The book examines the intellectual history of the concept of sovereignty from a sociological perspective. Informed by the sociologists Max Weber and Niklas Luhmann, it addresses the concept as the centre of constitutional controversy and as a resource to...

A study of the domestic and external conditions that shaped the interaction between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s.The Cold War in the 1950s describes the domestic and external conditions that shaped the interaction between the...