Oxford University political theorist Stein Ringen offers a thought-provoking meditation on the art of democratic rule: how does a government persuade the people to accept its authority? Every government must make unpopular demands of its citizens, from levying taxes to enforcing laws and monitoring compliance to regulations. The challenge, Ringen argues, is that power is not enough; the populace must also be willing to be led. Ringen addresses this political conundrum unabashedly, using th...

In this new and revised edition, Knowles explores new materials relating to multiculturalism and immigration.Immigrants and immigration have always been central to Canadians’ perception of themselves as a country and a society. In this crisply written history, Valerie Knowles describes the different kinds of immigrants who have settled in Canada, and the immigration policies that have helped define the character of Canadian immigrants over the centuries. Key policy...

Where did we lose our idealism and why and at what cost?' In these conversations with people of a younger generation Mamphela Ramphele responds to the growing despair among young South Africans about the cracks that are appearing in our system of governance and threatening the idealism of the country that reinvented itself with the dawn of democracy in 1994. She shows incisively how successive post-apartheid ANC governments have betrayed the nation for a culture of impunity among those clo...

To face the future, Canada needs more Canadians. But why and how many?Canada’s population has always grown slowly, when it has grown at all. That wasn’t by accident. For centuries before Confederation and a century after, colonial economic policies and an inward-facing world view isolated this country, attracting few of the people and building few of the institutions needed to sustain a sovereign nation. In fact, during most years before 1967, a greater number of p...

For 30 years, the African National Congress, led by Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, was the core of opposition to the white supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa. After organizing strikes and founding the armed military wing of the ANC, Mandela spent 27 years in jail before emerging as a worldwide symbol of human freedom.

A manifesto for a new world order.Having made a hugely significant contribution to the increasingly irrefutable, if alarming, diagnosis of the ills of early 21st century consumerist culture and its free-market myths, George Monbiot sets out now with this book to offer something more constructive, a set of proposals – political, democratic, economic, environmental – that might affect the cultural change that many in the West (not to mention those on the outside of the West looking i...

In a manner that reflects his long-time academic and practitioner’s association with conservative politics and ideas in Canada, Hugh Segal traces the deep historical roots of Canadian conservatism and the themes that unite its pre- and post-confederation reality with today’s challenges and issues. The Right Balance connects the historical roots and exclusive intellectual principles of Canadian conservatism to the fundamental idea of Canada with a ...

The Hill Times: Best Books of 2017What if it is not our political system that is broken, but our understanding of it?Everybody thinks that it’s the system that’s broken in politics; but what if it’s not the system that’s broken but rather our understanding of it? What if everyone’s proposals to make the system “more democratic” only wind up making things worse, and weaken our systems of accountability so much as to make them meaningless? What if it...

Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big TopicsIn the first title of an exciting new series one of the world's leading political scientists asks the big questions about politics: what is it, why we do we need it and where, in these turbulent times, is it heading? From the gap between rich and poor to the impact of social media, via Machiavelli, Hobbes and Weber, Runciman's comprehensive short introduction is invaluable to those studying politics or those who wa...

From the author of Day of Reckoning, the acclaimed critique of Ronald Reagan’s economic policy (“Every citizen should read it,” said The New York Times): a persuasive, wide-ranging argument that economic growth provides far more than material benefits.In clear-cut prose, Benjamin M. Friedman examines the political and social histories of the large Western democracies–particularly of the United States since the Civil War–to demonstrate the fact that incomes on the ...

“The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it. A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen; a fib, an excuse, a piece of flattery. Next thing you know its smell is in your nose. There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke.”England. A century ago, give or take a few years.An England where people who are wicked in thought or deed are marked by the Smoke that pours forth from their bodies, a sign of their fallen ...

Daniel Hannan, a British Conservative Member of the European Parliament, calls on Americans to avoid Europe's future. He traces the common roots of British and American liberty, and describes how both countries are losing their inheritance as government crowds out the private sphere. He calls for a renewed commitment to the Anglosphere: the alliance of free, English-speaking nations which has preserved freedom in our time.