No Church is monolithic—this is the preliminary premise of this volume on the public place of religion in a representative number of post-communist countries. The studies confirm that within any religious organization we can expect to find fissures, factions, theological or ideological quarrels, and perhaps even competing interest groups, such as missionary workers, regular clergy versus secu…
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is among the most enigmatic and influential figures of the twentieth century. While his life and work are crucial to any understanding of modern history and the socialist movement, generations of writers on the left and the right have seen fit to embalm him endlessly with superficial analysis or dreary dogma. Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union and “actually-existing…
In A Very Short Introduction to Politics, Kenneth Minogue begins with a discussion of issues arising from a historical account of politics, and goes on to offer chapters dealing with the Ancient Greeks and the idea of citizenship; Roman law; medieval Christianity and individualism; freedom since Machiavelli and Hobbes; the challenge of ideologies; democracy, oligarchy, and bureaucracy; power an…
Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex p…
osef Stalin exercised supreme power in the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953. During that quarter-century, by Oleg Khlevniuk’s estimate, he caused the imprisonment and execution of no fewer than a million Soviet citizens per year. Millions more were victims of famine directly resulting from Stalin's policies. What drove him toward such ruthlessness? This essential biography, by t…
King George III of Great Britain and Ireland’s opening parliamentary address emphasized his personal connection to the country and commit-ment to the “excellent constitution” that laid out ties between the monar-chy and legislature.1 While the king and parliament held different ideas for governance, both seats of power agreed that Britain’s colonies should fall unde…
The new and updated edition of Political Islam, World Politics and Europe focusses on the shift within political Islam, in light of 9/11 and the events of the Arab Spring, from a jihadist struggle, to institutional Islamism. Refuting what has often been referred to by commentators as the ‘moderation,’ of Islamism, the second edition of this book introduces the concept of ‘institutional…
Muslim Democracy explores the relationship between politics and religion in forty-seven Muslim-majority countries, focusing especially on those with democratic experience, such as Indonesia and Turkey, and drawing comparisons with their regional, non-Islamic counterparts.? Unlike most studies of political Islam, this is a politically-focused book, more concerned with governing realties than ide…
What configuration of institutions and policies is most conducive to human flourishing? The historical and comparative evidence suggests that the answer is social democratic capitalism — a democratic political system, a capitalist economy, good elementary and secondary schooling, a big welfare state, pro-employment public services, and moderate regulation of product and labor markets. Lane Ke…
Political demography, or the systematic study of population changeand politics, public policies and polities, sees population dynamics (struc-ture and change) as one of the main drivers of politics at the meso-and macro-level. As an approach, it can be defined as the study of thedynamics in the size, composition and distribution of populations andtheir effects on political and policy processes.…