The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and ...misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.
Since 1990, 65 former heads of state or government have been legitimately prosecuted for serious human rights or financial crimes. Many of these leaders were brought to trial in reasonably free and ...fair judicial processes, and some served time in prison as a result. This book explores the reasons for the meteoric rise in trials of senior leaders and the motivations, public dramas, and intrigues that accompanied efforts to bring them to justice. Drawing on an analysis of the 65 cases, the book examines the emergence of regional trends in Europe and Latin America and contains case studies of high-profile trials of former government leaders: Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Alberto Fujimori (Peru), Slobodan Milosevic (former Yugoslavia), Charles Taylor (Liberia and Sierra Leone), and Saddam Hussein (Iraq) – studies written by experts who closely followed their cases and their impacts on wider societies. This is the only book that examines the rise in the number of domestic and international trials globally and tells the tales in readable prose and with fascinating details.
Abusive leaders are now held accountable for their crimes in a way that was unimaginable just a few decades ago. What are the consequences of this recent push for international justice? In The ...Justice Dilemma, Daniel Krcmaric explains why the "golden parachute" of exile is no longer an attractive retirement option for oppressive rulers. He argues that this is both a blessing and a curse: leaders culpable for atrocity crimes fight longer civil wars because they lack good exit options, but the threat of international prosecution deters some leaders from committing atrocities in the first place. The Justice Dilemma therefore diagnoses an inherent tension between conflict resolution and atrocity prevention, two of the signature goals of the international community. Krcmaric also sheds light on several important puzzles in world politics. Why do some rulers choose to fight until they are killed or captured? Why not simply save oneself by going into exile? Why do some civil conflicts last so much longer than others? Why has state-sponsored violence against civilians fallen in recent years? While exploring these questions, Krcmaric marshals statistical evidence on patterns of exile, civil war duration, and mass atrocity onset. He also reconstructs the decision-making processes of embattled leaders—including Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Charles Taylor of Liberia, and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso—to show how contemporary international justice both deters atrocities and prolongs conflicts.
No one in the twentieth century had a greater impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and ...legacy of China’s boldest strategist—the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China’s radical economic, technological, and social transformation.
Adolf Hitler is the greatest mystery of the 20th century, and the mystery surrounding him consists of two unanswered questions that have baffled biographers and historians. First, how did he ever ...rise to power? Second, who was he really? Hitler had the power to mesmerize crowds as the most dynamic orator of the modern age. Yet, his power was not in his ideas, which he collected from the gutter sheets of Vienna, nor was it in his personality; his biographers describe him as an "unperson" and his character as a "void" and a "black hole." What, then, was the source of his power? Was he a medium or a magician with paranormal powers, as many contemporaries thought? Or did he have a secret or method that has not yet been revealed? Ben Novak spent fourteen years searching for the secret of Hitler's political success and his power as a speaker. Hitler's most astute contemporary observer, Konrad Heiden, who wrote the first objective books on Hitler warning that this man was "the greatest massdisturber in world history," suggested that Hitler's secret lay in his use of "eine eigentiimliche art von Logik,"or a "peculiar form of logic." Beginning with this clue, Novak finds that there is a new form of logic in accordance with Heiden's description and examples that can explain Hitler's phenomenal political success. This new form of logic, called "abduction," was discovered by an American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who is rapidly becoming America's most well-known philosopher and logician. Abduction is a third form of logic, in addition to deduction and induction. Unlike the other forms of logic, abduction is based on instinct and has a power over emotions. Novak argues that Hitler was the first politician to apply the logic of abduction to politics. This book provides the first coherent account of Hitler's youth that ties together all the known facts, clearly showing the genesis of the strangest and most terrible man of the twentieth century while identifying the power he discovered that allowed him to break out into the world in such a terrifying way.
A definitive new volume of the retirement papers of Thomas JeffersonThis volume's 601 documents show Jefferson dealing with various challenges. He is injured in a fall at Monticello, and his arm is ...still in a sling months later when he narrowly escapes drowning during a solitary horseback ride. Jefferson obtains temporary financial relief by transferring a $20,000 debt from the Bank of the United States to the College of William and Mary.Aided by a review of expenditures by the University of Virginia that uncovers no serious discrepancies, Jefferson and the Board of Visitors obtain a further $60,000 loan that permits construction to begin on the Rotunda.Jefferson drafts but apparently does not send John Adams a revealing letter on religion. He exchanges long letters discussing the Supreme Court with Justice William Johnson, and he writes to friends about France's 1823 invasion of Spain. Jefferson also helps prepare a list of recommended books for the Albemarle Library Society.In November 1822, Jefferson's grandson Francis Eppes marries Mary Elizabeth Randolph. He gives the newlyweds his mansion at Poplar Forest and visits it for the last time the following May. In a letter to James Monroe, Jefferson writes and then cancels "my race is near it's term, and not nearer, I assure you, than I wish."
Dominant history would have us believe that colonialism belongs to a previous era that has long come to an end. But as Native people become mobile, reservation lands become overcrowded and the state ...seeks to enforce means of containment, closing its borders to incoming, often indigenous, immigrants.
InMark My Words, Mishuana Goeman traces settler colonialism as an enduring form of gendered spatial violence, demonstrating how it persists in the contemporary context of neoliberal globalization. The book argues that it is vital to refocus the efforts of Native nations beyond replicating settler models of territory, jurisdiction, and race. Through an examination of twentieth-century Native women's poetry and prose, Goeman illuminates how these works can serve to remap settler geographies and center Native knowledges. She positions Native women as pivotal to how our nations, both tribal and nontribal, have been imagined and mapped, and how these women play an ongoing role in decolonization.
In a strong and lucid voice, Goeman provides close readings of literary texts, including those of E. Pauline Johnson, Esther Belin, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Heid Erdrich. In addition, she places these works in the framework of U.S. and Canadian Indian law and policy. Her charting of women's struggles to define themselves and their communities reveals the significant power in all of our stories.
This paper uses the vocabulary of 'medical populism' to identify and analyse the political constructions of (and responses to) the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, the Philippines, and the United States ...from January to mid-July 2020, particularly by the countries' heads of state: Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, and Donald Trump. In all three countries, the leaders' responses to the outbreak can be characterised by the following features: simplifying the pandemic by downplaying its impacts or touting easy solutions or treatments, spectacularizing their responses to crisis, forging divisions between the 'people' and dangerous 'others', and making medical knowledge claims to support the above. Taken together, the case studies illuminate the role of individual political actors in defining public health crises, suggesting that medical populism is not an exceptional, but a familiar response to them. This paper concludes by offering recommendations for global health in anticipating and responding to pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks.
In Alan Bennett’s play ‘A Question of Attribution’, Queen Elizabeth II complains that whenever she meets anybody, they are always on their best behaviour, ‘And when one is on one’s best behaviour, ...one isn’t always at one’s best’. The UK’s capital was certainly on its best behaviour over the Coronation weekend. The Metropolitan Police had apparently been primed to come down hard on signs of dissent. Graham Smith, the director of the campaigning group Republic, was arrested and detained along with a number of his colleagues in the process of unloading anti-monarchist placards. It was all a reminder that, although British representatives are apt to take the moral high ground on these issues in Commonwealth gatherings, defending freedom of speech and protest really should begin at home. The Coronation was also a reminder of the way in which the Commonwealth has changed out of all recognition in the 70 years since the previous monarch was crowned. In 1953, there were only eight members, and all but one of them (India) were Realms. Now there are 56, in only 15 of which (including the UK) King Charles remains the sovereign. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, one senses that everyone was a bit more relaxed about matters of protocol and precedence this time around. The Coronation of Elizabeth II was the last great piece of Imperial theatre in the UK, designed in part to project an impression of control over an Empire in which hierarchy was essential to the exercise of power. In that respect, the 1953 crowning mattered to the UK in a way that its 2023 counterpart never could. That’s not to say there were not tensions behind the scenes. In case there were any questions about how dignitaries from Africa should be treated, on 29 April Kenyan president William Ruto complained publicly that he and some of his fellow African representatives at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral the previous September had been ‘loaded into buses like school kids’, whereas Western heads of state had been driven in private cars. Ruto was duly accorded full VIP treatment when he arrived in London just hours before the Coronation was due to begin. But this was relatively small beer compared with some of the jostling for position that accompanied the preparations for the 1953 Coronation.
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