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A Theory of Disfunctionality: The European Micro-states as Disfunctional States in the International System explains the continuing survival of European micro-states as members of the international system. Micro-states are small sovereign states with populations of 1 million or less, of which there are 10 in Europe. The existence of micro-states raises a number of questions about the nature of statehood, the recognition of sovereignty, and the ability of such states to maintain a presence in international politics. This book establishes the 'theory of disfunctionality' in which a functional account of statehood is proposed. It is argued that the state has six functions-but the micro-states are so small that they 'contract out' some state functions to others in the international system. By doing this, the micro-states ensure their continuing survival in international politics.The book, which focuses on two case studies-Monaco and Luxembourg-, will be of particular interest to those involved in small state studies including scholars, students, practitioners and policy-makers, as well as those researching International Relations and state theory.

Whether states balance against or bandwagon with threatening great powers remains an unsolved problem for international relations theory. One school argues that military power compels minor powers to accommodate threats, while another defends that it elicits balancing instead. With the emergence of potential hegemons in both Asia and Europe - namely China and Russia - understanding state alignment is more urgent than ever. This book shows that bandwagoning has been a rare choice in contemporary Asia and Europe. The only states that chose bandwagoning with China or Russia faced both conflicts with third rivals and low levels of U.S. assistance. Going further, I divide bandwagoning between full alignment, survival accommodation, and profit accommodation. Bandwagoners choose among these three options based on the severity of the threat posed by the potential hegemon, the intensity of third conflicts, and the level of U.S. assistance. I test this novel theory against three European (Armenia, Belarus, and Serbia) and four Asian (Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea, and Pakistan) cases. This study is the first to provide an exhaustive and compelling explanation of bandwagoning fully compatible with neorealism and adds to the balancing-bandwagoning debate. Beyond scholarly implications, this research's findings offer advice for policymakers concerned with the changing balance of power in Asia and Europe and how to counter China and Russia's influence.

'Political Messaging in Music and Entertainment Spaces across the Globe' uniquely expands the frontiers of political communication by simultaneously focusing on content (political messaging) and platform (music and entertainment). As a compendium of valuable research work, it provides rich insights into the construction of political messages and their dissemination outside of the traditional and mainstream structural, process and behavioral research focus in the discipline. Researchers, teachers, students and other interested parties in political communication, political science, journalism and mass communication, sociology, music, languages, linguistics and the performing arts, communication studies, law and history, will find this book refreshingly handy in their inquiry. Furthermore, this book was conceptualized from a globalist purview and offers readers practical insights into how political messaging through music and entertainment spaces actually work across nation-states, regions and continents. Its authenticity is also further enhanced by the fact that most chapter contributors are scholars who are natives of their areas of study, and who painstakingly situate their work in appropriate historical contexts.

The essays in "The Crisis of American Democracy: Essays on a Failing Institution" seek to answer central questions about American democracy, such as: if American democracy is failing, what are the causes of this failure? What are the consequences? And what can be done to fix it? These standalone essays present diverse perspectives on some of the impediments to achieving a true democracy in the present-day United States of America, as well as prescriptions for overcoming these obstacles. Leading academics from across North America, contribute their perspectives on this timely debate.

"Illusions of Location Theory: Consequences for Blue Economy in Africa" questions the relevance of 'location theory' in explaining the coastal-hinterland continuum and the implications for the utilization of blue economy ecosystem in such a contested space in Africa. It pays more attention to territorial contestations, maritime disputes, vulnerabilities of landlocked states, and expansionist policies as displayed through spatial organizational regimes. These areas of investigation have previously been largely studied from the narrow perspective of 'location', unduly focusing on comparative advantages of 'distance', while neglecting the influence of 'forces' such as technology, ideology, and the power of mental mapping in spatial decision making.This volume puts forward the argument that the harmonious relationship between states, and efficient exploitation of the blue economy ecosystem in ways that promote peace between states, lies not only in the structural transformation of markets, but also in bridging the spatial and social divide between the coastal and hinterland societies. Thus, this work proffers possibilities for a holistic regime for managing Africa's coastal-hinterland continuum through innovative strategies such as SMART blue economies and the infusion of the geopolitical dimension into the management of maritime and territorial diplomacy.The combination of theoretical and empirical analysis, buttressed by in-depth case studies of what works in the management of blue economy ecosystem and what does not work, make this volume ideal for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in African regional studies, African political economy, political geography, strategic military studies, governance of seas and oceans, and maritime science/diplomacy.

One of the most debated topics in law and politics is the role that science should play in setting policy. What does it mean to demand that politicians and the People themselves "follow the science" if science deals with questions of fact, not matters of moral or political values? This long-standing controversy has roots ranging from Plato's philosopher-kings to Enlightenment skepticism to modern progressivism and the rise of the administrative state. 'Science and Liberty' explores the idea that a constitutional republic provides a fitting role for science while preserving the People's liberty and right to self-government. It examines this topic from five perspectives: American, Historical, Philosophical, Scientific, and Moral.Providing direct access to primary historical sources, 'Science and Liberty' contends that America's founders designed a constitution that was predicated on the Enlightenment theory that liberty precedes government and that presupposed the engagement of the People and their representatives at all levels of free debate. Early twentieth-century progressivism was openly hostile to these founding principles in its desire for efficient rule by scientific administrators.However, it is impossible to philosophically ground political and moral values in the findings of science, despite what modern theorists claim. Ultimately, the injunction to "follow the science" demands to substitute the values of "experts" for the values of the People themselves. By illustrating numerous examples from the hard and social sciences, ranging from physics to Biblical criticism to climate science, this book also explains that the People have a role to play in reasonably engaging with and critiquing modern science.'Science and Liberty' will appeal to those interested in a variety of subjects, including law, politics, philosophy, and intellectual history, as well as scientific criticism, particularly from an American perspective. It is written to be accessible for all ages while also engaging with complex issues and sources relevant for those with advanced degrees.

'The Corporate Overlords will be Kind' is a unique book in that it makes use of a multi-pronged approach - journalistic, legal, theoretical - to find, document, and explain instances in which well-known corporations such as Wal-Mart, Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Gillette, Nike and others have involved themselves, as 'artificial persons', in political and social debates involving aspects such as gender, racism, sexual minorities, and gun ownership. This book argues that these transnational, multi-billion-dollar corporations that thrive in the globalized world market are forced to take explicitly political stances by the very environment in which they activate and by the consumers whom they serve, taking on the latter's values and opinions and representing them to retain them as customers.'The Corporate Overlords will be Kind' advances that corporations are now - and will increasingly be - the loudest voices in the political market square of the United States, but that such a situation is not necessarily a cause for concern. This book thus departs from the traditional scholarly views of Citizens United (the 2010 landmark decision of the Supreme Court which granted free speech to corporations as persons) as a woe to democracy, and argues that the ageless, deathless, genderless, nationless corporations will be the political representatives of the futures, not political parties.This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students specializing in social sciences, particularly politics, history, sociology, and law. Political professionals and journalists may also be interested in the book, in addition to the general reader with interest in politics.

In Western Europe, populist radical right parties are calling for a return to Christian or Judeo-Christian values and identity. The growing electoral success of many of these parties may suggest that, after decades of secularisation, Western Europeans are returning to religion. Yet these parties do not tell their supporters to go to church, believe in God, or practise traditional Christian values. Instead, they claim that their respective national identities and cultures are the product of a Christian or Judeo-Christian tradition which either encompasses-or has produced-secular modernity.This book poses the question: if Western European politics is secular, why has religious identity become a core element of populist radical right discourse? To answer this question, Morieson examines the discursive use of religion by two of the most powerful and influential populist radical right parties: The French National Front and the Dutch Party for Freedom. Based on this examination, he argues that the populist radical right has capitalised on a cultural shift engendered by the increasing visibility of Islam in Europe. Western Europeans' encounter with Islam has revealed the non-universal nature of Western European secularism to Europeans, and demonstrated the secularisation of Christianity into Western European 'culture.' This, in turn, has allowed secular French and Dutch citizens to identify themselves-as well as their nation and, ultimately, Western civilisation-as Christian or Judeo-Christian.Seizing on this cultural shift, the author contends that the National Front and Party for Freedom have built successful and similar brands of reactionary politics based on the notion that contemporary secularism is a product of Europe's Christian heritage and values, and that therefore Muslim immigration is an existential threat to the core values of European politics, including the differentiation of politics and religion, and of church and state.'Religion and the Populist Radical Right: Secular Christianism and Populism in Western Europe' will be of interest to scholars and researchers working on the intersections of Political Science, Sociology, and Religion. It will also appeal to the general audience interested in the relationship between populism in Western Europe and religious identity as it is written in an accessible style.

History is not just a study of past events, but a product and an idea for the modernisation and consolidation of the nation. 'The Use of History in Putin's Russia' examines how the past is perceived in contemporary Russia and analyses the ways in which the Russian state uses history to create a broad coalition of consensus and forge a new national identity. Central to issues of governance and national identity, the Russian state utilises history for the purpose of state-building and reviving Russia's national consciousness in the twenty-first century.Assessing how history mediates the complex relationship between state and population, this book analyses the selection process of constructing and recycling a preferred historical narrative to create loyal, patriotic citizens, ultimately aiding its modernisation. Different historical spheres of Russian life are analysed in-depth including areas of culture, politics, education, and anniversaries. The past is not just a state matter, a socio-political issue linked to the modernisation process, containing many paradoxes. This book has wide-ranging appeal, not only for professors and students specialising in Russia and the former Soviet Space in the fields of History and Memory, International Relations, Educational Studies, and Intercultural Communication but also for policymakers and think-tanks.

Deciding in Unison: Themes in Consensual Democracy in Africa is an edited volume that both scholars and students of African philosophy and politics will find interesting. The chapters trace the current state of the debate as well as the idea that the advancement of consensus democracy as unanimity democracy is no longer valid, and a democracy of compromise is suggested as an alternative for advancing consensus democracy. The collection also contains chapters dealing with Wiredu's consensual proposal for the building of resistance movements as well as his views about the relativity of truth and the way we should handle it. However, there are also chapters that explore the non-party system Wiredu proposes as not applicable in practice. Furthermore, the issues related to transferring consensus-supporting values like communism into the contemporary Africa setting are also examined. Also discussed in the book is how current presentations of African epistemology cannot pass for epistemology, and how we could begin to think of fashioning an African epistemology from deliberation aimed at consensus.

This book argues that the mainstream definitions of corruption, and the key expectations they embed concerning the relationship between corruption, democracy, and the process of democratization, require reexamination. Even critics who did not consider stable institutions and legal clarity of veteran democracies as a cure-all, assumed that the process of widening the influence on government decision making and implementation allows non-elites to defend their interests, define the acceptable sources and uses of wealth, and demand government accountability. This had proved correct, especially insofar as 'petty corruption' is involved. But the assumption that corruption necessarily involves the evasion of democratic principles and a 'market approach' in which the corrupt seek to maximize profit does not exhaust the possible incentives for corruption, the types of behaviors involved (for obvious reasons, the tendency in the literature is to focus on bribery), or the range of situations that 'permit' corruption in democracies. In the effort to identify some of the problems that require recognition, and to offer a more exhaustive alternative, the chapters in this book focus on corruption in democratic settings (including NGOs and the United Nations which were largely so far ignored), while focusing mainly on behaviors other than bribery.

Activists have long claimed that "the personal is political", but this book posits the converse: that the political is personal.The United States today is bitterly divided. It is less an aspirational melting pot of immigrants and more a salad bowl made up of distinct, often clashing flavors. The successive elections of two divisive presidents-one committed to the perennial leftist dream of "fundamental change" and the other to a conservative vision of "Making America Great Again"-have exacerbated what is arguably the greatest rift in politics since the election of Abraham Lincoln. Taking inspiration from Coleridge's belief that all humans are temperamentally destined to follow the path of Plato the Idealist or Aristotle the Realist, this book examines the political divide in terms of these temperamental differences.Liberals' and conservatives' views of human nature have a large bearing on the political policies they espouse, but their temperaments and personalities have the most significant impact. This book analyses the personality traits of liberals and conservatives in terms of the "Big Five" model-openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Conservatives are found in almost all studies to be more conscientious, agreeable, and extroverted, while liberals are found to be more open to new experience and neurotic. The political divisions I explore in this book are all essentially fueled by personality differences.There is a deepening divide between liberals and conservatives in the battle for America's soul: one side seeks to steer the nation sharply to the left into socialist selfdom, whereas the other side desires a wealthy and free America under the watchful eye of God's providence. A preponderance of academic texts belongs to the liberal tradition. Conservatives have long lacked a comparable intellectual tradition of their own, although an incipient one is now beginning to form. This book, while maintaining a measure of scholarly distance, is unashamedly written from a conservative point of view.

This book aims to establish the bond between Friedrich Nietzsche and the anarchists, through the apparatus of "elective affinity", and to challenge the boundaries of several anarchist trends - especially "classical" and "post" anarchism - and "ideologies" like anarchism and libertarian Marxism. Moreover, it highlights the importance of reading Nietzsche politically, in a radical way, to understand his utility for the contemporary anarchist movement. The review of the literature concerning the Nietzsche-anarchy relationship shows the previously limited bibliography and stresses the possibility of exploring this connection, with the methodological help of Michael Löwy's concept of "elective affinity". The significance of this finding is that the relevant affinity may contribute to an alternative, to the dominant, perception of anarchism as an ideology. It may also designate its special features together with its weaknesses, meaning the objections of Nietzsche to certain aspects of the anarchist practices and worldview (violence, resentment, bad conscience), thus opening a whole new road of self-criticism for the anarchists of the twenty first century. In addition, the location and analysis of the elective affinity serves the debunking of the Nietzschean concepts used by conservative and right-wing readings in order to appropriate Nietzsche, and of the accusations that the German philosopher had unleashed against anarchists, which reveals his misunderstanding of anarchist politics.The final part of this book applies the whole analysis above on a Nietzschean reading of the December '08 revolt in Athens based on the "Of the Three Metamorphoses" discourse from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, offering an alternative view of the events that shook Greece and also had an important global impact.

The modern liberal idea of citizenship is constructed by a fixed notion of identity which gains meaning through a number of binary oppositions, such as we/ they, citizen/ foreigner, self/ other and so forth. Defined by these binaries, where the first term is perceived as dominant because it is considered to be derived from reason, the fixed notion of identity inevitably produces exclusion and marginalization. Importantly, the postmodern concept of citizenship stems from a critique of these essentialist and universalist conceptions of identity. Exploring European identity and European citizenship from a philosophical perspective, this book reveals the discursive construction of these two concepts whilst at the same time attempting to define them as either modernist or postmodernist categories. Dr. Ivic takes a hermeneutic approach in her interpretation of European citizenship and identity through a close reading of European treaties and other official documents. Through her detailed analysis, Dr. Ivic is able to present the reader with well-informed and concrete examples of modern and postmodern concepts of identity within Europe. Moreover, this book explores the impact that contemporary issues such as Brexit, the migration crisis in Europe, and the proliferation of nationalist discourses, have on European citizenship and identity. Where existing research literature has failed, this book offers a dynamic and textual analysis of citizenship that takes into account the complex philosophical, legal, political and theoretical background of Europe. Dealing with issues that have not yet been sufficiently explored, 'EU Citizenship' is an important contribution to the field of philosophical analysis. Aimed at university students, this book will also provide a baseline and set of reference points for researchers and practitioners of European studies that are working with projects that look at European citizenship.

The anthology explores the interrelationship between migration and a supposedly existent crisis of the modern nation state. The argument of such a crisis is mainly used by the New Right to stimulate nationalist feelings and provoke hate and aggression. We, in contrast to this perception, argue that from a historical and current perspective, migration is not endangering the nation state, but rather changing the idea of a nation itself by redefining it. In historical as well as current case studies, the authors determine the political dangers of right wing demagogues, while emphasizing the chances, immigration is offering the progress of the nation state.While it will be discussed how nationalism is impacting on the perception of migration, we also want to emphasize how it is perceived by the people in the specific regions, which are either confronted with migration or those which are not. The authors for the volume come from different fields, namely history and political sciences, and are consequently able to offer the reader a broad insight into the historical roots and the current consequences nationalism had or has on the perception and the local as well as global policies towards migration. The analysis of particular immigrant groups (e.g. North Koreans in post-war Korea, South Asians in the Emirates, Middle Eastern refugees in Europe, Hispanics in the United States) as well as a close reading of crisis related media (newspapers and other media in Europe and the US) will, all in all, establish a broad perspective, due to which the reader will be able to compare and connect the national events to a larger global picture.

Within the political sphere, a political actor is often judged by what he or she says, with their verbal performance often perceived as representative of the individual. Hearers accept that, as individuals, they possess a lifetime of experiences and actions which inform, but may also undermine, their aspirations in gaining political capital. Additionally, as representatives of a political party and its ideology, these actors do not exist in isolation; they are members and, at times, potential candidates of a particular party with its own agenda which may, in turn, cause them to modify their personal speech to align with espoused policies of the party. The various contributions contained in this volume examine the discourse of political actors through the lenses of positionality and stance. Throughout its chapters, clearly defined theoretical perspectives and specified social practices are employed, enabling the authors to elucidate how political actors can situate themselves, their party, and their opponents toward their ostensive public. This book successfully demonstrates how espoused perspectives relate to, or reflect on, the nature of the individual political actor and their truth, the party they represent and its ideology, and the pandering to popular public opinion to gain support and co-operation. This book will hold particular appeal for postgraduate students, researchers, and scholars of discourse studies, pragmatics, political science, as well as other areas in humanities and the social sciences.