Research Library

2017
Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

Disorder erupted in Ukraine in 2014, involving the overthrow of a sitting government, the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and a violent insurrection, supported by Moscow, in the east of the country.

This Adelphi book argues that the crisis has yielded a ruinous outcome, in which all the parties are worse off and international security has deteriorated. This negative-sum scenario resulted from years of zero-sum behaviour on the part of Russia and the West in post-Soviet Eurasia, which the authors rigorously analyse. The rivalry was manageable in the early period after the Cold War, only to become entrenched and bitter a decade later. The upshot has been systematic losses for Russia, the West and the countries caught in between.

All the governments involved must recognise that long-standing policies aimed at achieving one-sided advantage have reached a dead end, Charap and Colton argue, and commit to finding mutually acceptable alternatives through patient negotiation.

The Nation as Mother And Other Visions of Nationhood
'History matters in contemporary debates on nationalism,' Sugata Bose contends in The Nation as Mother. In this interconnected set of deeply researched and powerfully argued essays and speeches Bose explores the relationship between nation, reason, and religion in Indian political thought and practice. Offering a subtle interpretation of the ways of imagining the nation as mother, the book illuminates different visions of India as a free and flexible federal union that have acquired renewed salience today. Breaking out of the false dichotomy between secular nationalism and religious communalism, the author provides incisive analyses of the political legacies of Tagore and Gandhi, Nehru and Bose, Aurobindo and Jinnah, and a range of other thinkers and leaders of the anticolonial movement. The essays question assumptions about any necessary contradiction between cosmopolitanism and patriotism and the tendency among religious majoritarians and secularists alike to confuse uniformity with unity. The speeches in Parliament draw on a rich historical repertoire to offer valuable lessons in political ethics. In arguing against the dangers of an intolerant religious majoritarianism, this book makes a case for concepts of layered and shared sovereignty that might enable an overarching sense of Indian nationhood to coexist with multiple identities of the country's diverse populace. The Nation as Mother delves into history on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of freedom to evoke an alternative future of a new India based on cultural intimacy among its different communities.
The Development Dilemma: Security, Prosperity, and a Return to History
Bates, Robert H. 2017. The Development Dilemma: Security, Prosperity, and a Return to History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Today’s developing nations emerged from the rubble of the Second World War. Only a handful of these countries have subsequently attained a level of prosperity and security comparable to that of the advanced industrial world. The implication is clear: those who study the developing world in order to learn how development can be achieved lack the data to do so.

In The Development Dilemma, Robert Bates responds to this challenge by turning to history, focusing on England and France. By the end of the eighteenth century, England stood poised to enter “the great transformation.” France by contrast verged on state failure, and life and property were insecure. Probing the histories of these countries, Bates uncovers a powerful tension between prosperity and security: both may be necessary for development, he argues, but efforts to achieve the one threaten the achievement of the other. A fundamental tension pervades the political economy of development.

Bates also argues that while the creation of a central hierarchy—a state—may be necessary to the achievement of development, it is not sufficient. What matters is how the power of the state is used. France and England teach us that in some settings the seizure and redistribution of wealth—not its safeguarding and fostering—is a winning political strategy. These countries also suggest the features that mark those settings—features that appear in nations throughout the developing world.

Returning to the present, Bates applies these insights to the world today. Drawing on fieldwork in Zambia and Kenya, and data from around the globe, he demonstrates how the past can help us to understand the performance of nations in today’s developing world.

Almaliky, Muhamed H. 2017. “Is There Hope for Iraq?” The Cairo Review of Global Affairs. Publisher's Version
Norris, Pippa. 2017. Strengthening Electoral Integrity.. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2016
Philosphies of Multiculturalism
May, Paul. 2016. Philosphies of Multiculturalism. Paris: Sciences Po Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Multiculturalism has been a constant topic in the media, an idea that underlies much sociological analysis of phenomena, ranging from the waves of migration in Europe to educational programs in the US, to the question of Islam in Western democracies. It is central to critical concerns in today’s globalized world—immigration, social cohesion and the development of the nation-state, among others.

Even today, however, multiculturalism is poorly understood as a social theory: What are its philosophical origins and current trends? What criticism has it drawn among political philosophers?
 
In this work, Paul May surveys the importance of Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka and James Tully and others who have developed, criticized, and discussed the idea of multiculturalism.

Available in the original French, this work is an indispensable guide for students, researchers, and citizens alike.

The Curse of Cash
Rogoff, Kenneth S. 2016. The Curse of Cash. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

The world is drowning in cash—and it's making us poorer and less safe. In The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff, one of the world’s leading economists, makes a persuasive and fascinating case for an idea that until recently would have seemed outlandish: getting rid of most paper money.

Even as people in advanced economies are using less paper money, there is more cash in circulation—a record $1.4 trillion in U.S. dollars alone, or $4,200 for every American, mostly in $100 bills. And the United States is hardly exceptional. So what is all that cash being used for? The answer is simple: a large part is feeding tax evasion, corruption, terrorism, the drug trade, human trafficking, and the rest of a massive global underground economy.

As Rogoff shows, paper money can also cripple monetary policy. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, central banks have been unable to stimulate growth and inflation by cutting interest rates significantly below zero for fear that it would drive investors to abandon treasury bills and stockpile cash. This constraint has paralyzed monetary policy in virtually every advanced economy, and is likely to be a recurring problem in the future.

The Curse of Cash offers a plan for phasing out most paper money—while leaving small-denomination bills and coins in circulation indefinitely—and addresses the issues the transition will pose, ranging from fears about privacy and price stability to the need to provide subsidized debit cards for the poor.

While phasing out the bulk of paper money will hardly solve the world’s problems, it would be a significant step toward addressing a surprising number of very big ones. Provocative, engaging, and backed by compelling original arguments and evidence, The Curse of Cash is certain to spark widespread debate.

 

Empowering Global Citizens: A World Course
Reimers, Fernando M., Vidur Chopra, Connie K. Chung, Julia Higdon, and E. B. O'Donnell. 2016. Empowering Global Citizens: A World Course. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Publisher's Version Abstract

How do we help students work effectively with others from diverse cultural backgrounds? How do we help them understand the world? How do we prepare them for work and life in an era of globalization, volatility, and uncertainty? Empowering Global Citizens offers educators and parents compelling answers to those questions.

This book presents The World Course, a curriculum on global citizenship education designed to equip students with the competencies they need to thrive and contribute to sustainable development in an era of globalization. Drawing on curriculum mapping this book offers a coherent and rigorous set of instructional units to support deep learning of twenty-first-century competencies that develop agency, imagination, confidence, and the skills to navigate the complexity of our times.

Drawing on a rich conceptual framework of global education, The World Course scaffolds the development of global competency drawing on project-based learning and other pedagogies that support personalization. The course expands children’s horizons, helping them understand the world in which they live in all its complexity from kindergarten to high school. This is done through learning activities at the zone for proximal development for each age group, with activities that foster student agency and a growth mindset.

 

Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging since 1500

Throughout history, human societies have been organized preeminently as territories—politically bounded regions whose borders define the jurisdiction of laws and the movement of peoples. At a time when the technologies of globalization are eroding barriers to communication, transportation, and trade, Once Within Borders explores the fitful evolution of territorial organization as a worldwide practice of human societies. Master historian Charles S. Maier tracks the epochal changes that have defined territories over five centuries and draws attention to ideas and technologies that contribute to territoriality’s remarkable resilience.

Territorial boundaries transform geography into history by providing a framework for organizing political and economic life. But properties of territory—their meanings and applications—have changed considerably across space and time. In the West, modern territoriality developed in tandem with ideas of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Sovereign rulers took steps to fortify their borders, map and privatize the land, and centralize their sway over the populations and resources within their domain. The arrival of railroads and the telegraph enabled territorial expansion at home and abroad as well as the extension of control over large spaces. By the late nineteenth century, the extent of a nation’s territory had become an index of its power, with overseas colonial possessions augmenting prestige and wealth and redefining territoriality.

Turning to the geopolitical crises of the twentieth century, Maier pays close attention to our present moment, asking in what ways modern nations and economies still live within borders and to what degree our societies have moved toward a post-territiorial world.

 

Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America
Levitsky, Steven, James Loxton, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Domínguez, ed. 2016. Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Nearly four decades since the onset of the third wave, political parties remain weak in Latin America: parties have collapsed in much of the region, and most new party-building efforts have failed. Why do some new parties succeed while most fail? This book challenges the widespread belief that democracy and elections naturally give rise to strong parties and argues that successful party-building is more likely to occur under conditions of intense conflict than under routine democracy. Periods of revolution, civil war, populist mobilization, or authoritarian repression crystallize partisan attachments, create incentives for organization-building, and generate a 'higher cause' that attracts committed activists. Empirically rich chapters cover diverse cases from across Latin America, including both successful and failed cases.

Resolve in International Politics
Kertzer, Joshua D. 2016. Resolve in International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Why do some leaders and segments of the public display remarkable persistence in confrontations in international politics, while others cut and run? The answer given by policymakers, pundits, and political scientists usually relates to issues of resolve. Yet, though we rely on resolve to explain almost every phenomenon in international politics—from prevailing at the bargaining table to winning on the battlefield—we don't understand what it is, how it works, or where it comes from. Resolve in International Politics draws on a growing body of research in psychology and behavioral economics to explore the foundations of this important idea.

Joshua Kertzer argues that political will is more than just a metaphor or figure of speech: the same traits social scientists and decision-making scholars use to comprehend willpower in our daily lives also shape how we respond to the costs of war and conflict. Combining laboratory and survey experiments with studies of great power military interventions in the postwar era from 1946 to 2003, Kertzer shows how time and risk preferences, honor orientation, and self-control help explain the ways leaders and members of the public define the situations they face and weigh the trade-offs between the costs of fighting and the costs of backing down.

Offering a novel in-depth look at how willpower functions in international relations, Resolve in International Politics has critical implications for understanding political psychology, public opinion about foreign policy, leaders in military interventions, and international security.

 

Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies
Juma, Calestous. 2016. Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies. New York: Oxford University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

The rise of artificial intelligence has rekindled a long-standing debate regarding the impact of technology on employment. This is just one of many areas where exponential advances in technology signal both hope and fear, leading to public controversy. This book shows that many debates over new technologies are framed in the context of risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. But it argues that behind these legitimate concerns often lie deeper, but unacknowledged, socioeconomic considerations. Technological tensions are often heightened by perceptions that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society while the risks will be more widely distributed. Similarly, innovations that threaten to alter cultural identities tend to generate intense social concern. As such, societies that exhibit great economic and political inequities are likely to experience heightened technological controversies.

Drawing from nearly 600 years of technology history, Innovation and Its Enemies identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order, and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. It reveals the extent to which modern technological controversies grow out of distrust in public and private institutions. Using detailed case studies of coffee, the printing press, margarine, farm mechanization, electricity, mechanical refrigeration, recorded music, transgenic crops, and transgenic animals, it shows how new technologies emerge, take root, and create new institutional ecologies that favor their establishment in the marketplace. The book uses these lessons from history to contextualize contemporary debates surrounding technologies such as artificial intelligence, online learning, 3D printing, gene editing, robotics, drones, and renewable energy. It ultimately makes the case for shifting greater responsibility to public leaders to work with scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to manage technological change, make associated institutional adjustments, and expand public engagement on scientific and technological matters.

The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2016. The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Publisher's Version Abstract

We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end?

Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned scholar Sheila Jasanoff dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control.

Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights. Inventions like pesticides or GMOs can reduce hunger but can also cause unexpected harm to people and the environment. Often, as in the case of CFCs creating a hole in the ozone layer, it takes decades before we even realize that any damage has been done. Advances in biotechnology, from GMOs to gene editing, have given us tools to tinker with life itself, leading some to worry that human dignity and even human nature are under threat. But despite many reasons for caution, we continue to march heedlessly into ethically troubled waters.

As Jasanoff ranges across these and other themes, she challenges the common assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Technology, she masterfully demonstrates, can warp the meaning of democracy and citizenship unless we carefully consider how to direct its power rather than let ourselves be shaped by it. The Ethics of Invention makes a bold argument for a future in which societies work together—in open, democratic dialogue—to debate not only the perils but even more the promises of technology.

 

Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State
Hager, Sandy Brian. 2016. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State. Oakland: University of California Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Who are the dominant owners of U.S. public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of public debt give these bondholders power over our government? What do we make of the fact that foreign-owned debt has ballooned to nearly 50 percent today? Until now, we have not had any satisfactory answers to these questions. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power is the first comprehensive historical analysis of public debt ownership in the United States. It reveals that ownership of federal bonds has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent over the last three decades. Based on extensive and original research, Public Debt, Inequality, and Power will shock and enlighten.

Dictators and Their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence
Greitens, Sheena Chestnut. 2016. Dictators and Their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

How do dictators stay in power? When, and how, do they use repression to do so? Dictators and their Secret Police explores the role of the coercive apparatus under authoritarian rule in Asia—how these secret organizations originated, how they operated, and how their violence affected ordinary citizens. Greitens argues that autocrats face a coercive dilemma: whether to create internal security forces designed to manage popular mobilization, or defend against potential coup. Violence against civilians, she suggests, is a byproduct of their attempt to resolve this dilemma. Drawing on a wealth of new historical evidence, this book challenges conventional wisdom on dictatorship: what autocrats are threatened by, how they respond, and how this affects the lives and security of the millions under their rule. It offers an unprecedented view into the use of surveillance, coercion, and violence, and sheds new light on the institutional and social foundations of authoritarian power.

 

On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-U.S. Migration
Garip, Filiz. 2016. On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-U.S. Migration. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

Why do Mexicans migrate to the United States? Is there a typical Mexican migrant? Beginning in the 1970s, survey data indicated that the average migrant was a young, unmarried man who was poor, undereducated, and in search of better employment opportunities. This is the general view that most Americans still hold of immigrants from Mexico. On the Move argues that not only does this view of Mexican migrants reinforce the stereotype of their undesirability, but it also fails to capture the true diversity of migrants from Mexico and their evolving migration patterns over time.

Using survey data from over 145,000 Mexicans and in-depth interviews with nearly 140 Mexicans, Filiz Garip reveals a more accurate picture of Mexico-U.S migration. In the last fifty years there have been four primary waves: a male-dominated migration from rural areas in the 1960s and '70s, a second migration of young men from socioeconomically more well-off families during the 1980s, a migration of women joining spouses already in the United States in the late 1980s and ’90s, and a generation of more educated, urban migrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For each of these four stages, Garip examines the changing variety of reasons for why people migrate and migrants’ perceptions of their opportunities in Mexico and the United States.

Looking at Mexico-U.S. migration during the last half century, On the Move uncovers the vast mechanisms underlying the flow of people moving between nations.

 

China's Urban Communities: Concepts, Contexts, and Well-Being
Forsyth, Ann, Peter G. Rowe, and Har Ye Kan. 2016. China's Urban Communities: Concepts, Contexts, and Well-Being. Berlin: DeGruyter. Publisher's Version Abstract

Cities in China are extremely dynamic and experience high pressure to grow, transform and adapt. But in what directions, on what basis and to which goals? The authors and their team have researched the intensive transformation processes of about twenty-five neighborhood communities that were created in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Suzhou in the last thirty years, ranging from inner-city to peripheral areas, starting from planning and leading up to user satisfaction studies. This in-depth overview on neighborhood typology and development in China follows the book Emergent Architectural Territories in East Asian Cities by Peter Rowe, who is among the world’s best scholars on urban transformation in East Asia, together with his colleagues Ann Forsyth and Har Ye Kan.

Rape during Civil War
Cohen, Dara Kay. 2016. Rape during Civil War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

 

Rape is common during wartime, but even within the context of the same war, some armed groups perpetrate rape on a massive scale while others never do. In Rape during Civil War Dara Kay Cohen examines variation in the severity and perpetrators of rape using an original dataset of reported rape during all major civil wars from 1980 to 2012. Cohen also conducted extensive fieldwork, including interviews with perpetrators of wartime rape, in three postconflict counties, finding that rape was widespread in the civil wars of the Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste but was far less common during El Salvador's civil war.

Cohen argues that armed groups that recruit their fighters through the random abduction of strangers use rape—and especially gang rape—to create bonds of loyalty and trust between soldiers. The statistical evidence confirms that armed groups that recruit using abduction are more likely to perpetrate rape than are groups that use voluntary methods, even controlling for other confounding factors. Important findings from the fieldwork—across cases—include that rape, even when it occurs on a massive scale, rarely seems to be directly ordered. Instead, former fighters describe participating in rape as a violent socialization practice that served to cut ties with fighters’ past lives and to signal their commitment to their new groups. Results from the book lay the groundwork for the systematic analysis of an understudied form of civilian abuse. The book will also be useful to policymakers and organizations seeking to understand and to mitigate the horrors of wartime rape.

 

Image of book cover of Global History, Globally
Beckert, Sven, and Seth Rockman, ed. 2016. Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Publisher's Version Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center. American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.

Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market. Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery's importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.

 

Lamont, Michèle, Matthew Clair, and Caitlin Daniel. 2016. “Destigmatization andHealth: Cultural Constructions and the Long-term Reduction of Stigma.” Social Science & Medicine 1 (10).

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