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Drawing on more than 150 interviews with former IRA, INLA, UVF and UFF prisoners, this book is a major analysis of why Northern Ireland has seen a transition from war to peace. Most accounts of the peace process are ‘top-down’, relying upon the views of political elites. This book is ‘bottom-up’, analysing the voices of those who actually ‘fought the war’. What made them fight, why did they stop and what are the lessons for other conflict zones? Using unrivalled access to members of the armed groups, the book offers a critical appraisal of one-dimensional accounts of the onset of peace, grounded in ‘mutually hurting stalemate’ and ‘ripeness’, which downgrade the political and economic aspects of conflict. Military stalemate had been evident since the early 1970s and offers little in explaining the timing of the peace process. Moreover, republicans and loyalists based their ceasefires upon very different perceptions of transformation or victory. Based on a Leverhulme Trust project, the book offers an analysis based on subtle interplays of military, political, economic and personal changes and experiences. Combined, these allowed combatants to move from violence to peace whilst retaining core ideological beliefs and maintaining long-term constitutional visions. Former prisoners now act as ambassadors for peace in Northern Ireland. Knowledge of why and how combatants switched to peaceful methodologies amid widespread skepticism over prospects for peace is essential to our understanding of the management of global peace processes.

This is a book which aims to overturn existing understandings of the origins and futures of the War on Terror for the purposes of International Relations theory. As the book shows, this is not a war in defence of the integrity of human life against an enemy defined simply by a contradictory will for the destruction of human life as commonly supposed by its liberal advocates. It is a war over the political constitution of life in which the limitations of liberal accounts of humanity are being put to the test if not rejected outright.

This book explores the development, character and legacy of the ideology of liberal internationalism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Liberal internationalism provided a powerful way of theorising and imagining international relations, and it dominated well-informed political discourse at a time when Britain was the most powerful country in the world. Its proponents focused on securing progress, generating order and enacting justice in international affairs, and it united a diverse group of intellectuals and public figures, leaving a lasting legacy in the twentieth century. The book elucidates the roots, trajectory and diversity of liberal internationalism, focusing in particular on three intellectual languages – international law, philosophy and history – through which it was promulgated, before tracing the impact of these ideas across the defining moment of the First World War. The liberal internationalist vision of the late nineteenth century remained popular well into the twentieth century and forms an important backdrop to the development of the academic study of International Relations in Britain.

Originally released by Basil Blackwell in 1986, and then re-released by Manchester University Press in 1998, Casino capitalism is a cutting-edge discussion of international financial markets, the way they behave and the power they wield. It examines money's power for good as well as its terrible disruptive, destructive power for evil. Money is seen as being far too important to leave to bankers and economists to do with as they think best. The raison d'être of Casino Capitalism is to expose the development of a financial system that has increasingly escaped the calming influences of democratic control. This new edition includes a powerful new introduction provided by Matthew Watson that puts the book it in its proper historical context, as well as identifying its relevance for the modern world. It will have a wide reaching audience, appealing both to academics and students of economics and globalization as well as the general reader with interests in capitalism and economic history.

Scholars of political thought have given a great deal of attention to the relationship between European political ideas and colonialism, especially to whether prominent thinkers supported or opposed colonialism. But little attention has so far been given to the reactions of those in the colonies to European ideas, where intellectuals actively sought to transform those ideas, deploying them strategically or adopting them as their own. A full reckoning of colonialism's effects requires attention to their intellectual choices and the political efforts that accompanied them, which sometimes produced surprising political successes. The contributors to this volume include a mix of political theorists and intellectual historians who seek to grapple with specific thinkers or contexts. Contributors focus on colonised societies including India, Haiti, the Philippines, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, and the settler countries of North America and Oceana, in times ranging from the French Revolution to the modern day.

This book tells the story of the emergence of the concept of crimes against humanity. It examines its origins, the ethical assumptions underpinning it, its legal and philosophical boundaries and some of the controversies connected with it. A brief historical introduction is followed by an exploration of the various meanings of the term ‘crimes against humanity’ that have been suggested; a definition is proposed linking it to the idea of basic human rights. The book looks at some problems with the boundaries of the concept, the threshold for its proper application and the related issue of humanitarian intervention. It concludes with a discussion of the prospects for the further development of crimes-against-humanity law.

This book describes how human rights have given rise to a vision of benevolent governance that, if fully realised, would be antithetical to individual freedom. It shows that contemporary human rights practice is increasingly managerial in nature, interested above all in measuring and improving human rights performance. This has the effect of shifting the focus of human rights from the individual rights-holder to the activities of the duty-bearer: the state, international organisation, or business. The result is a preoccupation with achieving measured improvements within abstract groups such as the population or ‘stakeholders’, with the individual rights-holder being relevant only insofar as he or she is a datapoint in a larger grouping. The book then analyses this trend and its consequences. It describes human rights’ evolution into a grand but nebulous project, rooted in compassion, with the overarching aim of improving universal welfare by defining the conditions of human well-being and imposing obligations on the state and other actors to realise them. The ultimate result is the ‘governmentalisation’ of a pastoral form of global human rights governance, in which power is exercised for the general good, moulded by a complex regulatory sphere which shapes the field of action for the individual at every turn. The conclusion is that it is unsurprising that this alienating discourse has failed to capture the popular imagination – and that if the human rights movement is to succeed it may be necessary for it to do less rather than more.

This is a book about the risk politics of food safety. Food-related risks regularly grab the headlines in ways that threaten reasoned debate and obstruct sensible policy making. This book explains why this is the case, and goes on to make the case for a properly informed and fully open public debate about food safety issues. It argues that this is the true antidote to the politics of scare, scandal, and crisis. The book weaves together the many different threads of food safety and risk politics.

From Virtue to Venality examines the problem of corruption in British urban society and politics between 1930 and 1995. It is not a conventional study of the politics of local government since it seeks to place corruption in urban societies in a wider cultural context. It reclaims the study of corruption from political scientists and sociologists for historians but provides theoretical explanations of the causes of corruption testing them against real cases. The legacy of the municipal gospel, public service ideals and ethical principles are analysed to show how public virtues were eroded over time. It argues that the key counterweight against corruption is a strong civil society but that British civil society became detached from the city and urban society allowing corrupt politicians and business men licence to further their own ambitions by corrupt means. Britain’s imperial past deflected political leaders from the evidence before them contributing to their failure to develop reforms. The accounts of corruption in Glasgow – a British Chicago – as well as the major corruption scandals of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith show how Labour controlled towns and cities were especially vulnerable to corrupt dealings. The case of Dame Shirley Porter in the City of Westminster in the late 1980s reveals that Conservative controlled councils were also vulnerable since in London the stakes of the political struggle were especially intense.

This is a book-length study of compulsory voting. About a quarter of all democracies in the contemporary world legally oblige their citizens to vote, making this an important aspect of electoral systems in many settings. Moreover, numerous commentators and policy-makers in voluntary voting states are coming to see mandatory attendance at the polls as an attractive option in the context of declining turnout. Yet, we know relatively little about this practice beyond its effects on rates of electoral participation; there has been a dearth of systematic examination of the way in which compulsory voting shapes attitudes, behaviour and outcomes in the political process. This book seeks to fill that gap by providing a comprehensive description, analysis and evaluation of compulsory voting as it is practiced throughout the world. Specifically, the study systematically examines the history of the institution, the normative arguments for and against it, and the influence it has on a range of political phenomena. These include electoral campaigns, political attitudes, electoral integrity and legitimacy, policy outcomes and turnout. The book also considers the feasibility of introducing compulsory voting in a contemporary democracy, as well as variations on the institution designed to broaden its appeal.

Bringing fresh insights to the contemporary globalization debate, this text reveals the social and political contests that give ‘global’ its meaning, by examining the contested nature of globalization as it is expressed in the restructuring of work. The book rejects conventional explanations of globalization as a process that automatically leads to transformations in working lives, or as a project that is strategically designed to bring about lean and flexible forms of production, and advances an understanding of the social practices that constitute global change. Through case studies that span from the labour flexibility debates in Britain and Germany to the strategies and tactics of corporations and workers, it examines how globalization is interpreted and experienced in everyday life and argues that contestation has become a central feature of the practices that enable or confound global restructuring.

While in almost all competitive political systems parties are omnipotent at elections, in Ireland independents (non-party MPs) remain significant players. At the Irish general election in 2016, independents won 23 of the 157 contested seats, proportionally the highest level of elected independent representation in the national parliament of any established democracy since 1950, and more than the combined total in all other industrial democracies. Not only have independents in Ireland persisted, but they have also had a significant political impact. Regularly holding the balance of power as kingmakers in hung parliaments where no party or coalition has an overall majority, independents have been able to use this position to extract policy influence. The purpose of the book is to examine and explain this persistence of the independent phenomenon in a stable party democracy. With Ireland as the primary case, but also using comparative data, it assesses how and why independents can endure in a democracy that is one of the oldest surviving in Europe and has historically had one of the most stable party systems. The central premise is that it is due to the permissiveness of the Irish political system, in terms of a conducive political culture and institutions, electoral record and key relevance, which all combine to facilitate independents’ emergence.

This book arose out of a friendship between a political philosopher and an economic sociologist, and their recognition of an urgent political need to address the extreme inequalities of wealth and power in contemporary societies. The book provides a new analysis of what generates inequalities in rights to income, property and public goods in contemporary societies. It claims to move beyond Marx, both in its analysis of inequality and exploitation, and in its concept of just distribution. In order to do so, it critiques Marx’s foundational Labour Theory of Value and its closed-circuit conception of the economy. It points to the major historical transformations that create educational and knowledge inequalities, inequalities in rights to public goods that combine with those to private wealth. In two historical chapters, it argues that industrial capitalism introduced new forms of coerced labour in the metropolis alongside a huge expansion of slavery and indentured labour in the New World, with forms of bonded labour lasting well into the twentieth century. Only political struggles, rather than any economic logic of capitalism, achieved less punitive forms of employment. It is argued that these were only steps along a long road to challenge asymmetries of economic power and to realise just distribution of the wealth created in society.

In the last decade, Ireland's immigrant population grew to more than one in ten. Now in the midst of an economic crisis, the integration of immigrants has become a topical issue. This book offers a detailed account of how immigrants in Ireland are faring. Drawing extensively on demographic data and research on immigrant lives, immigrant participation in Irish politics and the experiences of immigrants living in deprived communities, it offers a thorough study of the immigrant experience in Ireland today. Chapters and case studies examine the effects of immigration on social cohesion, the role of social policy, the nature and extent of segregation in education, racism and discrimination in the labour market, and barriers faced by immigrants seeking Irish citizenship. The book contributes to the field of integration studies through its focus on the capabilities and abilities needed by immigrants to participate successfully in Irish society. It follows two previous books by the author for Manchester University Press: Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland (2002) and Immigration and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland (2007).

Universities are a part of society but insist on distance, detachment and autonomy. Universities are bankrolled by society but academics demand total freedom in the domains of study, research, and expression of opinion and criticism of whatever goes on in the funding society. These and other questions, issues, contradictions and dilemmas, which preoccupied Prof. Jacob Talmon (1916–80) for throughout his life, were most succinctly dealt with in a series of two articles entitled ‘The idea of the university’ for the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper (28 September and 5 October 1966). Throughout his long academic career, Talmon offered his original, often brilliant answers to these numerous questions in his books and articles. The university ideal, Judaism, intellectuals, politics, the Arab - Israeli conflict, the dynamics at work in these domains and the responses Talmon put forward in his various writings constitute the focus of this book. Talmon expressed notions and ideas which were wise, intelligent, and not least, controversial. Though his academic output began to be published as early as the 1940s, its relevance to the present is proving visionary. His work deserves to be recalled and studied. Using previously disregarded and un-translated Hebrew sources, this work attempts with caution and due modesty to follow the observation of Keith Thomas, the renowned Oxford historian, who noted that ‘much activity in the humanities is concerned to rediscover and re-interpret what once was known but has subsequently been forgotten. A better word for this is “scholarship”, with its emphasis less on new knowledge than on fresh understanding.‘

This study is concerned with the ‘Old’ Labour right at a critical juncture of social democratic and Labour politics. It attempts to explain the complex transition from so-called ‘Old Right’ to ‘New Right’ or ‘New Labour’, and locates at least some of the roots of the latter in the complexity, tensions and fragmentation of the former during the ‘lean’ years of social democracy in the 1970s. The analysis addresses both the short- and long-term implications of the emerging ideological, organisational and political complexity and divisions of the parliamentary Labour right and Labour revisionism, previously concealed within the loosely adhesive post-war framework of Keynesian reformist social democracy, which have been neglected factors in explanations of Labour's subsequent shift leftwards, the longer-term gestation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the evolution of ‘New’ Labour. It establishes the extent to which ‘New’ Labour is a legatee of at least some elements of the disparate and discordant Labour right and tensions of social democratic revisionism in the 1970s. In so doing, the analysis advances our understanding of a key moment in the development of social democracy and the making of the contemporary British Labour Party. The book represents a significant departure in analyses and explanations of both the problems and demise of post-war social democracy and decline of ‘Old’ Labour and the origins and roots of ‘New’ Labour.

Events at the beginning of the twenty-first century have served to demonstrate to us the truth of the insight at the heart of the recent renewed interest in realist political theory that politics is characterized by inevitable and endemic disagreement and conflict. Yet much contemporary liberal political theory has taken place against the backdrop of an assumed widespread consensus on liberal values and principles. A central theoretical question for our day is therefore whether liberalism is a theory of politics consonant with the modern world or whether it is grounded in untenable theoretical presumptions and foundations. This monograph offers the first comprehensive overview of the resurgence of interest in realist political theory and develops a unique and urgent defense of liberal politics in realist terms. Through explorations of the work of a diverse range of thinkers, including Bernard Williams, John Rawls, Raymond Geuss, Judith Shklar, John Gray, Carl Schmitt and Max Weber, the author advances a theory of liberal realism that is consistent with the realist emphasis on disagreement and conflict yet still recognizably liberal in its concern with respecting individuals’ freedom and constraining political power. The result is a unique contribution to the ongoing debates surrounding realism and an original and timely re-imagining of liberal theory for the twenty-first century. This provocative work will be of interest to students and all concerned with the possibility of realizing liberalism and its moral aspirations in today's world.

In Marxism and America: New appraisals, an accomplished group of scholars reconsiders the relationship of the history, political culture, and political economy of the United States to the theoretical tradition derived from Karl Marx. A dozen essays (an introduction and eleven chapters) offer fresh considerations arcing from the nineteenth century, when Marx wrote for American newspapers, to the present, when a millennial socialism has emerged inspired by the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Contributors take up topics ranging from memory of the Civil War to feminist debates over sexuality and pornography. Along the way, they clarify the relationship of race and democracy, the promise and perils of the American political tradition, and the prospects for class politics in the twenty-first century. Marxism and America sheds new light on old questions, helping to explain why socialism has been so difficult to establish in the United States even as it has exerted a notable influence in American thought.

This book offers an analysis of the problem of the authority of the state in democracies. Unlike many discussions of democracy that treat authority as a problem primarily of domestic politics or normative values, it puts the international economy at the centre of the analysis. The book shows how changes in the international economy from the inter-war years to the end of the twentieth century impacted upon the success and failures of democracy. It makes the argument by considering a range of different cases, and traces the success and failure of democracies over the past century. The book includes detailed studies of democracies in both developed and developing countries, and offers a comparative analysis of their fate.