In 1980, the newly independent and democratic Zimbabwe was a beacon of hope in a troubled region. Three decades later, Zimbabwe became the focus of international attention for very different reasons: ...acrimonious racial relations, controversial elections, economic hardship, and military intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mugabe and the Politics of Security in Zimbabwe argues that this unfortunate transition is intrinsically linked to the ways in which President Robert Mugabe used the politics of domestic and external security for his own gain. Abiodun Alao presents a comprehensive study of defense institutions, domestic security policy, and external use of military force during Mugabe's decades of rule. He identifies the role of personality in security and explains how the machinations of a self-perpetuating ruler shaped the economic and political dynamics of the struggling nation. He also provides analytical perspectives on Mugabe's transformations from a freedom fighter to a stable president of a relatively economically strong, independent country, and finally to an imprudent autocrat and international pariah. Nuanced, impassioned, and timely, Mugabe and the Politics of Security in Zimbabwe sheds new light on the effects of national security policy and develops a clear picture of the country's past, present, and future.
At the turn of the twentieth century, a concatenation of diverse social movements arose unexpectedly in Latin America, culminating in massive anti-free market demonstrations. These events ushered in ...governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela that advocated socialization and planning, challenging the consensus over neoliberal hegemony and the weakness of movements to oppose it. Eduardo Silva offers the first comprehensive comparative account of these extraordinary events, arguing that the shift was influenced by favorable political associational space, a reformist orientation to demands, economic crisis, and mechanisms that facilitated horizontal linkages among a wide variety of social movement organizations. His analysis applies Karl Polanyi's theory of the double movement of market society to these events, predicting the dawning of an era more supportive of government intervention in the economy and society.
During the 2016 election, a new term entered the mainstream American political lexicon: "alt-right," short for "alternative right." Despite the innocuous name, the alt-right is a white-nationalist ...movement. Yet it differs from earlier racist groups: it is youthful and tech savvy, obsessed with provocation and trolling, amorphous, predominantly online, and mostly anonymous. And it was energized by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. InMaking Sense of the Alt-Right, George Hawley provides an accessible introduction and gives vital perspective on the emergence of a group whose overt racism has confounded expectations for a more tolerant America.Hawley explains the movement's origins, evolution, methods, and core belief in white-identity politics. The book explores how the alt-right differs from traditional white nationalism, libertarianism, and other online illiberal ideologies such as neoreaction, as well as from mainstream Republicans and even Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. The alt-right's use of offensive humor and its trolling-driven approach, based in animosity to so-called political correctness, can make it difficult to determine true motivations. Yet through exclusive interviews and a careful study of the alt-right's influential texts, Hawley is able to paint a full picture of a movement that not only disagrees with liberalism but also fundamentally rejects most of the tenets of American conservatism. Hawley points to the alt-right's growing influence and makes a case for coming to a precise understanding of its beliefs without sensationalism or downplaying the movement's radicalism.
Provides a detailed treatment of an important topic that has received no scholarly attention: the surprising transformation of indigenous peoples' movements into viable political parties in the 1990s ...in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela) and their failure to succeed in two others (Argentina, Peru). The parties studied are crucial components of major trends in the region. By providing to voters clear programs for governing, and reaching out in particular to under-represented social groups, they have enhanced the quality of democracy and representative government. Based on extensive original research and detailed historical case studies, the book links historical institutional analysis and social movement theory to a study of the political systems in which the new ethnic cleavages emerged. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for democracy of the emergence of this phenomenon in the context of declining public support for parties.
Zimbabwe is a state that has undergone significant ruptures in its domestic and international politics in recent years. This book explores how Zimbabwean citizens have, under difficult circumstances, ...reconstructed ideas of their state by imagining the wider world. Unlike other work on international relations, which tends to focus on the state level, this book is based on the accounts of ordinary people. Drawing on interviews with more than two hundred Zimbabweans, collected over three years, Gallagher explores how citizens draw on emotional responses to the international to find and construct different 'others'. While this unique and compelling read will appeal to those researching Zimbabwe, Gallagher's wider conclusions will interest those studying and advancing the broader theoretical debates of international relations.
Why do strong opposition party organizations emerge in some democratizing countries, while those in others remain weak or quickly fragment on ethnic lines? This book offers an explanation for why ...opposition parties vary in organizational form, cohesion, and mobilizational reach. The book draws upon an in-depth analysis of three countries in Anglophone Africa: Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Kenya. Though these countries share similar institutional frameworks, including electoral rules, party development has taken a different route in each. The explanation emphasizes the ways in which historical legacies interact with strategic choices to produce different trajectories of party development. In terms of the role of history, the book argues that strong opposition parties are more likely where authoritarian states relied on alliances with corporate actors like labor. In these contexts, ruling parties armed their allies, providing them with mobilizing structures and political resources that could later be used to challenge the state. Secondly, opposition parties are more likely to maintain their organizational cohesion and the commitment of activists when they use strategies and appeals that escalate conflict and reorient social boundaries around the lines of partisan affiliation. Polarization forges stronger parties, but it also increases the likelihood of violence and authoritarian retrenchment. The book provides an explanation of why democratization in the hybrid regimes of the late Third Wave may prove more conflictual and more protracted than earlier transitions to democracy.
Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, the Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War offers a diplomatic history of the 1980 Olympic boycott. Broad in its focus, it looks at events in Washington, D.C., as well as ...the opposition to the boycott and how this attempted embargo affected the athletic contests in Moscow. Jimmy Carter based his foreign policy on assumptions that had fundamental flaws and reflected a superficial familiarity with the Olympic movement. These basic mistakes led to a campaign that failed to meet its basic mission objectives but did manage to insult the Soviets just enough to destroy détente and restart the Cold War. The book also includes a military history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which provoked the boycott, and an examination of the boycott's impact four years later at the Los Angeles Olympics, where the Soviet Union retaliated with its own boycott.
Political parties provide a crucial link between voters and politicians. This link takes a variety of forms in democratic regimes, from the organization of political machines built around ...clientelistic networks to the establishment of sophisticated programmatic parties. Latin American Party Systems provides a novel theoretical argument to account for differences in the degree to which political party systems in the region were programmatically structured at the end of the twentieth century. Based on a diverse array of indicators and surveys of party legislators and public opinion, the book argues that learning and adaptation through fundamental policy innovations are the main mechanisms by which politicians build programmatic parties. Marshalling extensive evidence, the book's analysis shows the limits of alternative explanations and substantiates a sanguine view of programmatic competition, nevertheless recognizing that this form of party system organization is far from ubiquitous and enduring in Latin America.
Praised by some as islands of efficiency in a sea of unprofessional, politicized and corrupt states, and criticized by others for removing wide areas of policy making from the democratic arena, ...technocrats have become prominent and controversial actors in Latin American politics. Nonelected state officials with advanced educations from top universities, technocrats achieve considerable autonomy from political and economic actors and exert great influence over their countries' fates. This finding poses an intriguing paradox. These experts lack an independent base of authority, such as popular election, and the tenure enjoyed by professional bureaucrats. What, then, explains the power of technocrats in democratic Latin America? Why do they enjoy and maintain greater policy influence in some areas than in others? Through analysis of economic and health policy in Colombia from 1958 to 2011 and in Peru from 1980 to 2011, Technocracy and Democracy in Latin America answers these and other questions about experts in Latin America.
