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Active Citizenship: What Could it Achieve and How?

Bernard Crick and Andrew Lockyer (eds)

This book gathers a group of political actors and academics who believe that a radically more active citizenship is a worthy aim. They spell out how it can be achieved in their particular area of ... More

This book gathers a group of political actors and academics who believe that a radically more active citizenship is a worthy aim. They spell out how it can be achieved in their particular area of concern, looking at the obstacles and how they might be overcome. Together, they show us how we can realise the dream of a citizen culture and the benefits that it would bring for democracy in the United Kingdom. The first and final chapters set the tone, respectively, on civic republicanism today and political identity. Other chapters consider active citizenship in relation to: Labour government policy; Scottish devolution; public services; gender equality; schools; multiculturalism; integrating immigrants; lifelong learning; Europe and international understanding; young people and Scottish independence.Less

African, American and European Trajectories of Modernity: Past Oppression, Future Justice?

Peter Wagner (ed.)

This book asks why, from some moment onwards, ‘Europe’ and ‘the rest of the world’ entered into a particular relationship. This relationship was not merely one of domination but one that was ... More

This book asks why, from some moment onwards, ‘Europe’ and ‘the rest of the world’ entered into a particular relationship. This relationship was not merely one of domination but one that was conceived as a kind of superiority; more specifically, as an ‘advance’ in historical time. Toward this end, the book first analyses the emergence of this Atlantic modernity, then proceeds to compare aspects of contemporary Southern modernity, focusing on Brazil, Chile and South Africa. Finally, it explores the dynamics of contemporary modernity worldwide, looking at the relationship between past oppression and injustice and expectations for future freedom and justice. The book firmly links the history of Europe to world history, situating European modernity in its global context.Less

Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence

John Lechte and Saul Newman

Most commentators agree that human rights today are in crisis. Virtually everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation and oppression, which human rights norms – prominent as they are in the ... More

Most commentators agree that human rights today are in crisis. Virtually everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation and oppression, which human rights norms – prominent as they are in the global order – seem powerless to prevent. This book investigates the roots of the current crisis through the thought of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. While Agamben is critical of human rights, he nevertheless opens up crucial thresholds and lines of enquiry – biopolitics, the sovereign state of exception, and ‘bare life’ – which human rights theory and practice must come to grips with. The authors contend that any renewal of the human rights project today must involve breaking decisively with the traditional coordinates of Western political thought, which has come to see politics in terms of the activity of sovereign states and law-making – and as confined to the public domain. Instead, it must affirm an alternative political ontology based around notions of statelessness, inoperativeness, and the realization of the freedom and community that we already live. This alternative politics of human rights is developed through innovative approaches to language, gesture, and the image, and through key encounters with not only with Agamben, but also Arendt, Esposito, Bataille, Nancy and Benjamin.Less

Ambiguous Citizenship in an Age of Global Migration

Aoileann Ní Mhurchú

Citizenship is widely understood in binary statist terms: inclusion/exclusion, past/present, particularism/universalism, with the emphasis on how globalisation brings such binaries into sharp focus ... More

Citizenship is widely understood in binary statist terms: inclusion/exclusion, past/present, particularism/universalism, with the emphasis on how globalisation brings such binaries into sharp focus and exacerbates them. This book highlights the limitations of this position and of current debate, and explores the possibility that citizenship is being reconfigured in contemporary political life beyond binary state-oriented categories. Aoileann Ní Mhurchú uses critical resources found in poststructural, psychoanalytic and postcolonial thought to think in new ways about citizenship-subjectivity in a globalized world, drawing on a range of thinkers including Julia Kristeva, Homi Bhabha and Michel Foucault. Using the 2004 Irish Citizenship Referendum as a lens and focusing on experiences of intergenerational migrants (the children born to migrants), she highlights the necessity of a more sophisticated understanding of citizenship which takes into account how some people get caught between state-sovereign categories, and provides a robust theoretical discussion about how citizenship increasingly involves overlapping, ambiguous traces of us and them, inclusion and exclusion, particularism and universalism which confound easy categorisation. In doing so it raises questions about how citizenship is understood in time and space. In this way Ambiguous Citizenship in an Age of Global Migration contributes to the growing and dynamic interdisciplinary field of critical citizenship studies (CCS), which explores new forms of political identity and belonging in a globalising world.Less

American Grand Strategy under Obama: Competing Discourses

Georg Löfflmann

The book explores the breakdown of the elite consensus on America's role in the world. By emphasising military restraint and 'leading from behind' President Obama challenged the Washington foreign ... More

The book explores the breakdown of the elite consensus on America's role in the world. By emphasising military restraint and 'leading from behind' President Obama challenged the Washington foreign policy establishment and its strategic vision of liberal hegemony from within.Highlighting the identity performing function and discursive construction of grand strategy, the book demonstrates how the geopolitical identity of American exceptionalism is linked to the conduct of an activist and interventionist foreign policy, resulting in a dominant grand strategy of American primacy and global military pre-eminence. An intertextual framework of analysis is used to examine the political performance and validity of this dominant identity-policy link, and the success of countering discourses of cooperative engagement and restraint under the Obama presidency. The nexus of geopolitical identity and national security is traced through a multidimensional perspective that considers the common sense status of popular culture and media, the expertise of Washington think tanks and foreign policy experts, and the political decisions taken in the White House and the Pentagon.From an in-depth analysis of various competing discourses of national security and foreign policy, the book concludes that American grand strategy under Obama no longer represented a coherent and consistent equation of material resources and political ends, but a contested discursive space, where identity and policy no longer matched. This resulted in the conflicted and contradictory nature of the Obama Doctrine.Less

The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

Only the right has recognized the potency of the American left. The book explains why others have underestimated the left in the USA, citing the relative absence of a free press in America, the ... More

Only the right has recognized the potency of the American left. The book explains why others have underestimated the left in the USA, citing the relative absence of a free press in America, the disposition of the left to deny its own existence in the name of pragmatism, and the left’s fallacy that the right is always wrong, and thus in error in pointing to the left’s impact. The book sets forth the achievements of the left. These achievements include the welfare state, critiques of and sometimes effective opposition to militarism, the reshaping of American culture, crusades for black rights and civil liberties, the awakening of America to the dangers of fascism, and great public enterprizes such as the New York and New Jersey Port Authority. The book shows how the socialists of the Old Left gave way by the 1960s to the anti-war militants of the New Left, and how they in turn gave way to a “Newer Left” that advocated a host of additional causes such as gay rights and multiculturalism. Final chapters show how the post-2000 Bush administration succumbed to the “socialist” nationalization it professed to condemn, and how Barack Obama was a president for the left.Less

The Arab World and Western Intelligence: Analysing the Middle East, 1956-1981

Dina Rezk

This book addresses a critical question embedded within a heated debate about the ‘failure’ of American intelligence in a post 9/11 age: have Western experts in some fundamental way failed to ... More

This book addresses a critical question embedded within a heated debate about the ‘failure’ of American intelligence in a post 9/11 age: have Western experts in some fundamental way failed to understand the dynamics, leaders and culture of the Middle East? Looking back in recent history through a series of seminal case studies culminating in Sadat’s dramatic assassination, this monograph explores whether, how and why the most knowledgeable and powerful intelligence agencies in the world have been so notoriously caught off guard in this region. The story begins after the tripartite invasion of the Suez Canal in 1956 which triggered a ripple of ideological and geopolitical transformations that continue to shape the politics and borders of the modern Middle East. Revolutions swept across Syria, Iraq and Yemen; the three devastating Arab-Israeli wars ravaged the holy lands; and finally, a fraught and contested bilateral treaty bound Egypt and Israel to uneasy peace. The West and the Soviet Union vied for control over the Middle East’s destiny through its political centre, Egypt. The transition from Gamal Abdel Nasser to Anwar el Sadat witnessed the decline of an ardently anti-imperialist Arab nationalism, supplanted by a radical quest to realign Egypt’s identity towards the Western world. As revolutionary turmoil and conflict continue to unfold throughout the Middle East today, The Arab World and Western Intelligence is the untold story of how the British and American intelligence services have anticipated and reacted to crisis and upheaval in the region’s recent history.Less

The Arsenal of Democracy: Aircraft Supply and the Evolution of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1938-1942

Gavin J. Bailey

Through a series of case studies, this book reveals new details of how Britain used American aircraft and integrates this with broader British statecraft and strategy. It challenges conceptions that ... More

Through a series of case studies, this book reveals new details of how Britain used American aircraft and integrates this with broader British statecraft and strategy. It challenges conceptions that Britain was strategically reliant on the United States and reveals a complicated, asymmetrical dependency between the wartime allies. Aircraft were at the heart of British supply diplomacy with the United States in the Second World War and were at the forefront of the Roosevelt administration's policy of aiding the Anglo-French alliance against Germany. They were the largest item in British purchasing in the United States in 1940, a key consideration in the Lend-Lease of 1941 and a major component of several wartime conferences between Churchill and Roosevelt.Less

Assessing the George W. Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms

Andrew Wroe and Jon Herbert (eds)

In one of the first volumes assessing the full two terms of the George W. Bush presidency, this book has gathered the work of leading American and European scholars. In fifteen chapters, authorities ... More

In one of the first volumes assessing the full two terms of the George W. Bush presidency, this book has gathered the work of leading American and European scholars. In fifteen chapters, authorities offer assessments of the Bush administration's successes and failures. Extensive attention is paid to Bush's foreign policy, including ‘The War on Terror’, but the focus is broadened to absorb not only the Bush Doctrine and its repercussions, but also his trade and homeland security policies. The president's domestic leadership in economics and social policy is investigated, as are his dealings as president with the other institutions of the U.S. political system.Less

The Biopolitics of Stalinism: Ideology and Life in Soviet Socialism

Sergei Prozorov

The Biopolitics of Stalinism is the first book to investigate Soviet socialism from a biopolitical perspective. While canonical theories of biopolitics of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto ... More

The Biopolitics of Stalinism is the first book to investigate Soviet socialism from a biopolitical perspective. While canonical theories of biopolitics of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have focused on liberal and fascist rationalities of biopolitics, the case of Stalinism exemplifies an alternative mode of biopolitics, oriented less towards protecting life than towards transforming it in accordance with a transcendent ideal of communism. The book reconstructs this rationality in the early Stalinist project of the Great Break (1928-1932) and its subsequent modifications during the High Stalinist period. It then addresses the question of biopolitics on the level of the subject, tracing the way how the ‘new Soviet person’ was to be constructed in governmental practices and the role violence and terror played in this construction. On the basis of this reconstruction of the Stalinist rationality of biopolitics, this book also contributes to the theoretical debate on affirmative biopolitics, advancing a new interpretation of the relation between ideas and lives in political practice. Bringing the fields of biopolitics and Soviet studies together, this book will be of interest to a wide readership in political theory, history, sociology and cultural studies.Less

Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power

Nick Vaughan-Williams

This book presents a distinctive theoretical approach to the problem of borders in the study of global politics. It turns from current debates about the presence or absence of borders between states ... More

This book presents a distinctive theoretical approach to the problem of borders in the study of global politics. It turns from current debates about the presence or absence of borders between states to consider the possibility that the concept of the border of the state is being reconfigured in contemporary political life. The author uses critical resources found in poststructuralist thought to think in new ways about the relationship between borders, security and sovereign power, drawing on a range of thinkers including Agamben, Derrida and Foucault. He highlights the necessity of a more pluralised and radicalised view of what borders arel, and where they might be found, and uses the problem of borders to critically explore the innovations and limits of poststructuralist scholarship.Less

British Multiculturalism and the Politics of Representation

Lasse Thomassen

What is the connection between inclusion, exclusion and identity? This book argues that the politics of inclusion and identity should be studied as struggles over the representations of the ... More

What is the connection between inclusion, exclusion and identity? This book argues that the politics of inclusion and identity should be studied as struggles over the representations of the identities involved. The book engages with a range of debates and themes including Britishness, race, the nature and role of Islam in British society, homelessness and social justice, and it adopts a post-structuralist approach to the theoretical and practical issues surrounding inclusion, exclusion and identity. The argument is developed through careful analyses of cases from the last four decades of British multiculturalism. Each chapter deals with a concept and practice of inclusion: equality, recognition, tolerance and hospitality. Each chapter also deals with one or more cases: Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s different versions of Britishness, the legal case Mandla; the debate between Bhikhu Parekh and Brian Barry; newspaper coverage and debates about Begum, X v Y, Playfoot and Watkins-Singh, which all concerned school uniforms and religious symbols and clothing; and Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good. The book makes a contribution to empirical debates about the nature of British multiculturalism as well as theoretical debates about inclusion, identity and representation. It is informed by post-structuralist political theory, particularly Ernesto Laclau’s theory of discourse and hegemony and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction.Less

C. B. Macpherson and the Problem of Liberal Democracy

Jules Townshend

This sympathetic restatement of C. B. Macpherson's ideas provides an overview of Macpherson's theory of possessive individualism and critique of liberal democracy. The book suggests that criticism of ... More

This sympathetic restatement of C. B. Macpherson's ideas provides an overview of Macpherson's theory of possessive individualism and critique of liberal democracy. The book suggests that criticism of Macpherson has been misplaced and asks whether his theories should now be given more prominence by political theorists. This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the issues surrounding Macpherson's work; previous studies have used him as a point of departure rather than the focus of detailed analysis, and none have included an overall assessment of his thought.Less

Citizenship in Britain: A History

Derek Heater

This book is an historical introduction to the varieties of citizenship in Britain, starting in the Middle Ages and bringing the story right up to the present day. Both the status and understanding ... More

This book is an historical introduction to the varieties of citizenship in Britain, starting in the Middle Ages and bringing the story right up to the present day. Both the status and understanding of citizenship in practice and the theoretical and advisory writings on the subject are introduced, and their inter-relationships are explored. Among the key themes to be examined are: local and national strata; the issue of parliamentary suffrage; women excluded and included as citizens; the influence of classical ideas; nationhood and imperialism; the role of political and social theorists; interpretations by modern political parties; the role of education; environmental citizenship; multiculturalism; globalisation; and human rights. Organised chronologically, each chapter is divided into sections in order to present the reader with different themes in a manageable form. The book is unique in its historical coverage of citizenship in Britain — moving from the Middle Ages to the present day. It reveals the great complexity of the development of citizenship in Britain and demonstrates the importance of an historical perspective in understanding the issue of citizenship in Britain today.Less

Citizenship in Contemporary Europe

Michael Lister and Emily Pia

This book seeks to analyse the impact of globalisation, European integration, mass migration, changing patterns of political participation and welfare state provision upon citizenship in Europe. ... More

This book seeks to analyse the impact of globalisation, European integration, mass migration, changing patterns of political participation and welfare state provision upon citizenship in Europe. Uniting theory with empirical examples, the central theme of the book is that how we view such changes is dependent upon how we view citizenship theoretically. The authors analyse the three main theoretical approaches to citizenship: [1] classical positions (liberal, communitarian, and republican), primarily concerned with questions of rights and responsibilities; [2] multiculturalist and feminist theories, concerned with the question of difference; and [3] postnational or cosmopolitan theories which emphasise how citizen rights and behaviours are increasingly located beyond the nation state. Using these theoretical perspectives, the second section of the book assesses four key social, economic and political developments which pose challenges for citizenship in Europe: migration, political participation, the welfare state and European integration. These, it is argued, represent the most significant challenges to and for citizenship in contemporary Europe.Less

Cold War US Foreign Policy: Key Perspectives

Steven Hurst

This book provides a comprehensive description and critique of the six most important historical interpretations of US Cold War foreign policy: traditionalism, revisionism, post-revisionism, ... More

This book provides a comprehensive description and critique of the six most important historical interpretations of US Cold War foreign policy: traditionalism, revisionism, post-revisionism, corporatism, world systems theory, and post-structuralism. The book uses the ‘levels of analysis’ approach to demonstrate how each of these perspectives can be understood as an explanatory framework combining different types of factors located at different levels of the international system. This original way of explaining the work of the historians discussed helps the reader to see past the narrative and empirical elements of their writings and to grasp more clearly the underlying theoretical assumptions. In each chapter a description of the perspective's underlying theoretical framework and how it explains US foreign policy is followed by a critique of that theory and explanation. A central theme, developed throughout the book, is the difficulty of managing the constant tension between the explanatory power of theory and the historian's desire to encompass the complex totality of historical events. This critical companion can be read alongside the works of the historians themselves, showing how they have sought to explain US Cold War foreign policy and the key differences between their perspectives.Less

The Concept of the State in International Relations: Philosophy, Sovereignty and Cosmopolitanism

Peter M. R. Stirk

Robert Schuett (ed.)

This volume provides a collection of essays that, between them, offer a critical reassessment of the concepts of the state and sovereignty in international relations theory. Featuring contributions ... More

This volume provides a collection of essays that, between them, offer a critical reassessment of the concepts of the state and sovereignty in international relations theory. Featuring contributions from some of the most reputed theorists on the subject, this book provides a coherent and, at the same time, distinctively pluralist set of original reflections on the role and nature of the state. It considers the concept of sovereignty and the challenges of globalisation and cosmopolitanism. The collection highlights the fact that the concept of the state plays a central role in international relations, particularly in realist and neo-realist approaches. It also provides an important counterpoint to the general assumption that the meaning of the state is self-evident; something that is often taken for granted by both advocates of the sovereign state and its critics.Less

The Crisis of Social Democracy in Europe

Michael Keating and David McCrone (eds)

This book tackles a puzzle. Given the failings of neo-liberalism revealed by the economic crisis starting in 2008, why was social democracy not triumphant? After all, its political success over much ... More

This book tackles a puzzle. Given the failings of neo-liberalism revealed by the economic crisis starting in 2008, why was social democracy not triumphant? After all, its political success over much of the post-war period was bolstered by a particular representation of the inter-war years and a belief that governments had put the old economics behind them, while some social democrats had given early warnings about the follies being committed from the 1990s. Despite the caricature about social democratic governments being free spenders, they have tended in office to be rather fiscally responsible. Nor was there reason to believe that electors had rejected social democratic ideas about public services. Social democracy is in good health in some places, while elsewhere it is struggling to find its voice. One problem lies in the realm of ideas, where neo-liberalism has gained the ideological hegemony, to the extent that social democratic parties internalise it and seek to modify it only at the margins. Another is the inability to adapt to a more complex but still socially stratified and unequal society. A third lies in the decline of mass party politics and of the social institutions such as trade unions, which provided the means for social democrats to mobilise. The contributors do not present a single vision of social democracy but have been encouraged to interpret it in their own ways. The result is a complex picture, highlighting problems but showing that social democratic thought and practice are by no means dead.Less

Critique of Security

Mark Neocleous

The contemporary political imagination and social landscape are saturated by the idea of security and thoughts of insecurity. This saturation has been accompanied by the emergence of a minor industry ... More

The contemporary political imagination and social landscape are saturated by the idea of security and thoughts of insecurity. This saturation has been accompanied by the emergence of a minor industry generating ideas about how to define and redefine security, how to defend and improve it, how to widen and deepen it, how to civilise and democratise it. This book takes an entirely different approach and offers the first fully-fledged critique of security. Challenging the common assumption that treats security as an unquestionable good, Neocleous explores the ways in which security has been deployed towards a vision of social order in which state power and liberal subjectivity have been inscribed into human experience. Treating security as a political technology of liberal order-building, engaging with the work of a wide range of thinkers, and ranging provocatively across security studies and international political economy; history, law and political theory; international relations and historical sociology, Neocleous explores the ways in which individuals, classes and the state have been shaped and ordered according to a logic of security. In so doing he uncovers the violence which underlies the politics of security, the ideological circuit between security and emergency powers, and the security fetishism dominating modern politics.Less

Cultural Identity and Political Ethics

Paul Gilbert

This book is a reflection upon a contemporary world in which people's identities are increasingly invoked in support of political claims which often lead to acrimony and violence. It asks what ... More

This book is a reflection upon a contemporary world in which people's identities are increasingly invoked in support of political claims which often lead to acrimony and violence. It asks what cultural identity is and questions its political significance. Tracing the idea back to Herder and the now discredited notion of national character, the book argues that collective cultural identity is not a deep feature of individual psychology, as it is taken to be by Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor and others; nor, indeed, is it a uniform phenomenon. Instead, the book claims, various distinct types of cultural identity emerge in response to the different circumstances that people face and draw them together. Such identities are marked by merely surface features of appearance and behaviour, as in the female dress codes of Islam; and these have a principally aesthetic appeal to bearers of the culture, an appeal which is illustrated by reference to the literature and music of Ireland. In consequence, it is argued, cultural identities cannot provide the ethical support for political claims attributed to them, and their invocation is in many ways politically pernicious.Less