The Causes and Consequences of Group Violence: From Bullies to Terrorists offers a transnational and transdisciplinary investigation of the causes and consequences of violence, ranging from bullying and hate crimes to revolutions, genocide, and acts of terrorism. Editors James Hawdon, John Ryan, and Mark Lucht bring together empirical investigations of these specific types of violence as well as theoretical discussions of the underlying similarities and differences among them. Focusing on ...

This volume contributes to the growing literature on women, conflict and peacebuilding by focusing on the moments after a peace accord, or some other official ending of a conflict, often denoted as ‘post-conflict’ or ‘post-war’. Such moments often herald great hope for holding to account those who committed grave wrongs during the conflict, and for a better life in the future. For many women, both of these hopes are often very quickly shattered in starkly different ways to the hopes of men...

Today it is usually not long before a problem gets expressed as a human rights issue. An appeal to human rights in the face of injustice can be a heartfelt and morally justified demand for some, while for others it remains merely an empty slogan. Taking an international perspective and focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, health and discrimination, this Very Short Introduction will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and comp...

Acclaimed scholar Kathryn Sikkink examines the important and controversial new trend of holding political leaders criminally accountable for human rights violations.Grawemeyer Award winner Kathryn Sikkink offers a landmark argument for human rights prosecutions as a powerful political tool. She shows how, in just three decades, state leaders in Latin America, Europe, and Africa have lost their immunity from any accountability for their human rights violations, beco...

Human rights is an important issue in contemporary politics, and the last few decades have also seen a remarkable increase in research and teaching on the subject. This book introduces students to the study of human rights and aims to build on their interest while simultaneously offering an alternative vision of the subject. Many texts focus on the theoretical and legal issues surrounding human rights. This book adopts a substantially different approach which uses empirical data derived fr...

Today a billion people, including about 340 million of the world's extreme poor, are estimated to live in 'fragile states'. This group of low-income countries are often trapped in cycles of conflict and poverty, which make them acutely vulnerable to a range of shocks and crises.This engaging book defines and clarifies what we mean by fragile states, examining their characteristics in relation to "weak" and "failed" states in the global system, and explaining their development from ...

Our inalienable human rights were enshrined over 50 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, what does that mean to someone who is tortured, denied education or work, or unable to find asylum?This No-Nonsense Guide looks at the theories of rights and universalism. It explores the difficult task of protecting human rights in times of war, the advances in international laws that have led to some rights abusers facing justice, and the conflicts that ca...

This stimulating and accessible introduction to comparative politics offers a fresh perspective on the fundamentals of political science. Its central theme is the enduring political significance of the modern state despite severe challenges to its sovereignty. There are three main sections to the book. The first traces the origins and meaning of the state and proceeds to explore its relationship to the practice of politics. The second examines how states are governed and compares patterns ...

A history of the successes of the human rights movement and a case for why human rights workEvidence for Hope makes the case that, yes, human rights work. Critics may counter that the movement is in serious jeopardy or even a questionable byproduct of Western imperialism. They point out that Guantánamo is still open, the Arab Spring protests have been crushed, and governments are cracking down on NGOs everywhere. But respected human rights expert Kathryn S...

By offering critical perspectives of normative developments within international law, this volume of essays unites academics from various disciplines to address concerns regarding the interpretation and application of international law in context. The authors present common challenges within international criminal law, human rights, environmental law and trade law, and point to unintended risks and consequences, in particular for vulnerable interests such as women and the environment. Omis...

Democracy identifies the general processes causing democratization and de-democratization at a national level across the world over the last few hundred years. It singles out integration of trust networks into public politics, insulation of public politics from categorical inequality, and suppression of autonomous coercive power centres as crucial processes. Through analytic narratives and comparisons of multiple regimes, mostly since World War II, this book makes the case for recasting cu...

This new edited collection illustrates the paradoxical power of social capital in creating and resolving conflict.This is the first book to bring the two faces of social capital together in a single volume, and includes previously unpublished case studies, statistical analyses, and theoretical essays. The book is divided into three sections. The first investigates the role of social capital in inciting and/or furthering violence; the second examines the contributions of social capi...