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This edited collection tackles subjects that have arisen as a result of new capabilities to collect, analyse and use vast quantities of data using complex algorithms. Questions tackled include what is wrong with targeted advertising in political campaigns, whether echo chambers really are a matter of genuine concern, what is the impact of data collection through social media and other platforms on questions of trust in society and is there a problem of opacity as decision-making becomes increasingly automated? The contributors consider potential solutions to these challenges and discuss whether an ethical compass is available or even feasible in an ever more digitized and monitored world. The editors bring together original research on the philosophy of big data and democracy from leading international authors, with recent examples and case references – including the 2016 Brexit Referendum, the Leveson Inquiry and the Edward Snowden leaks – and combine them in one authoritative volume at time of great political turmoil.

Taking declassified and publicly available sources this book provides an insight into the evolution of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1947 to the Trump Presidency. Focusing on a mix of case studies historic case studies such as The Berlin Tunnel, and The Cuban Missile Crisis. As well as discussing the internal changes and evolution of the organisation from planning covert actions, to adapting to, using and developing technology to aid in intelligence collection and analysis. The book also talks to key individuals that have shaped the organisation at different points in its history as well as how different Presidents have used the Agency to deliver political decisions. The book is balanced in its presentation of successes and failures, the latter often times more well known: Iraq being perhaps the best known example. The use of declassified documentation elevates this from being another history of the Central Intelligence Agency, into an insightful window into a famous yet secret organisation with a global brand.

What does it mean to be a foreign-policy realist? Why is it important to get Hans Kelsen right? How can open society ideals be reconciled with the tragedies of world politics? It is widely acknowledged that the rules-based international order is under assault by visions of illiberal democracy at home and powerful autocracies abroad. The Schmittians old and new are making a comeback, and neorealists in particular continue to pit realism against liberalism: where there is only power or nothing, all else is scorned as naïve, including Kelsen. The book challenges the neorealist myth of power politics and conventional views of the Austrian-American jurist in international relations theory. Revisiting Kelsen’s life and thought through the prism of classical realism, the supposed Kantian idealist is presented as a calm yet bold, progressive political realist who has continued analytical and normative relevance in the study of politics and world order. The case is made that a synthesis of political realism and progressive policies is possible. No matter what the Schmittians say or do, what is in a liberal democracy’s so-called national interest is not a function of causality, necessity, or any other natural laws of impersonal forces or anarchical structures. Rather, what is willed, or not willed, on any given day in politics and international relations is the product of political imputation, moral choice, and individual and collective human agency.

This book focuses on the military and statebuilding components of the international project in Afghanistan since 2001. It posits and discusses the military-peace complex as a framework for understanding the international project in Afghanistan, pointing to the sliding together and collapse between military and peace actors, mandates, and ideational frameworks. Focusing on the role of gender as well as material and spatial entanglements, the author argues that military and peace work in the liberal mode cannot be logically separated but rather are co-constituted and operate in a dynamic relationship to each other with fluid and shifting boundaries. Based on original interviews and wider research, the book offers a holistic way of viewing the international project in Afghanistan, drawing attention to its under-noticed elements, and providing a new way of understanding its politics.

Japan’s post-Cold War security policy displays significant changes compared to the Cold War period. One critical change has been the incorporation of the Japanese military, known as the Self-Defence Force (SDF), as a legitimate and important tool of Japanese post-Cold War security policy practice. It has developed new roles both outside and within the US-Japan alliance to contribute to regional/international security. The question is how the Japanese security policymaking elite has been able to bring about this critical change to the security policy practice in light of the domestic social and legal constraints that have traditionally prevented the expansion of Japan’s security role, in military terms, in regional and international affairs. This research introduces external military crises as an important factor for change in Japanese security policy. It argues that the Japanese security policymaking elite achieved security policy expansion by utilizing external military crises as policy windows, inflating and deflating threat elements to circumvent the constraints and justify the implementation of security policy initiatives. This utility of external military crises to widen the role of the Self-Defence Force (SDF) in shaping Japan’s security priorities, as well as its proactive contribution to regional/ international security are outlined in four key case studies - international peacekeeping in 1992, regional defence in 1997-99, global missions in 2003-05, and collective self-defence in 2014-15.

David Torrance reassesses the relationship between ‘nationalism’ and ‘unionism’ in Scottish politics, challenging a binary reading of the two ideologies with the concept of ‘nationalist unionism’. Scottish nationalism did not begin with the SNP in 1934, nor was it confined to political parties that desired independent statehood. Rather, it was more dispersed, with the Liberal, Conservative and Labour parties all attempting to harness Scottish national identity and nationalism between 1884 and 2014, often with the paradoxical goal of strengthening rather than ending the Union. This book combines nationalist theory with empirical historical and archival research to argue that these conceptions of Scottish nationhood had much more in common with each other than is commonly accepted.

Examining the ongoing processes of migration in Europe and beyond, this book deals with the ongoing processes of migration and boundary-(re)making in the world. It takes stock of recent and hitherto unpublished research on the refugee crisis in Europe, migration dynamics in the Middle East and migration flows in Africa and Latin America, specifically in relation to their political, social and cultural framing. In particular, chapters in this collection focus on newer cases of transnational migration, their socio-political implications that in turn affect identity-making. Alongside the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe, which can be viewed as one of the most divisive political issues in recent European history, new patterns of migration and re-bordering can also be seen across Europe, the Middle East and beyond. These include both the rise of anti-immigration populism within the nation-states as well as different attempts to control and regulate tangible and intangible borders of the nation state to discourage migration at the regional level such as the EU.

This book examines the historical emergence of the council system in Russia and Germany by the end of the First World War, it reconstructs the intellectual history of council democracy in 20th century political theory and provides in-depth analysis of council democracy in the political thought of Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort and Hannah Arendt. The book argues that council democracy can productively be interpreted through the prism of constituent power: the form-giving power of the people to decide on their own institutional forms of political co-existence. Whereas other interpreters of constituent power claim an unbridgeable gap between constituent power and constituted power, this book asserts that council democracy discloses a historically grounded way of institutionalising the constituent power. Council democracy, in this interpretation, becomes a way of controlling the constituent power without completely exhausting it, thereby giving the citizenry continual access to the powers of self-transformation, co-creation and constituent freedom.

War in Space presents a theory of spacepower and considers the implications of space technology on strategy and international relations. The spectre of space warfare stalks the major powers as outer space increasingly defines geopolitical and military competition. As satellites have become essential for modern warfare, strategists are asking whether the next major war will begin or be decided in outer space. Only strategic theory can explore the decisiveness and effects of war in space on grand strategy and international relations. Bleddyn E. Bowen applies the wisdom of military strategy to outer space and presents a compelling new vision of Earth's orbit as a coastline, rather than an open ocean or an extension of airspace as many have assumed. Rooted in the classical military works of Clausewitz, Mahan and Castex, to name a few, Bowen puts forward new principles for strategic thought about space that explain the pervasive and inescapable influence of spacepower on strategy and the changing military balance of the 21st century.