This authoritative survey of the new radical left forming across Europe offers "ammo for the struggles ahead, not to be ignored" (Susan Weissman, award-winning journalist and editor of Victor Serge).In Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, the debt crisis that began with the 2008 global recession helped trigger severe austerity measures. These policies, intended to address government debts, only worsened economic conditions.In response, something h...

What’s happening in global politics, and is there a thread that ties it all together?There is, and it’s called populism.What is populism? And why have populist parties and candidates suddenly sprung up and even gained power in the United States and Western Europe? The emergence of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, France's Marine LePen, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and the Alternative for Germany are signs that an older consensus abou...

What would the world look like if America were to reduce its role as a global leader in order to focus all its energies on solving its problems at home? And is America really in decline? Robert Kagan, New York Times best-selling author and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, paints a vivid, alarming picture of what the world might look like if the United States were truly to let its influence wane.Although Kagan asserts that much of the current pessim...

The United Nations has been called everything from "the best hope of mankind" to "irrelevant" and "obsolete." With this much-needed introduction to the UN, Jussi Hanhimäki engages the current debate over the organizations effectiveness as he provides a clear understanding of how it was originally conceived, how it has come to its present form, and how it must confront new challenges in a rapidly changing world. After a brief history of the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of ...

With Britain leaving the EU, now is the time for an obituary for the EU as an institution. In this short, rigorously argued book, updated after Brexit, John R. Gillingham tells the history of an idea that has soured and withered away.He reveals the failures from its postwar origins to set out what the EU was; the role that Delors played in creating the neoliberal monster it is today, and the contemporary - crises; refugees, Brexit, the Euro - that the current institution fails to d...

In the first book to distill the entire history of the United Nations into one accessible volume, Maggie Black explains how this complex organization works and explores its successes, failings, and current limitations. The book includes the creation of the UN and its early history, how it is structured, and whether it is well constituted in its functions. Black also considers possibilities for reform to make it more democratic, effective, and fit for its purpose.Maggie Blac...

Africa is playing a more important role in world affairs than ever before. Yet the most common images of Africa in the American mind are ones of poverty, starvation, and violent conflict. But while these problems are real, that does not mean that Africa is a lost cause. Instead, as Stephen Ellis explains in Season of Rains, we need to rethink Africa’s place in time if we are to understand it in all its complexity—it is a region where growth and prosperity coexist with failed state...

At a time when diplomatic practices and the demands imposed on diplomats are changing quite radically, and many foreign ministries feel they are being left behind, there is a need to understand the various forces that are affecting the profession. Diplomacy remains a salient activity in today's world in which the basic authoritative actor is still the state. At the same time, in some respects the practice of diplomacy is undergoing significant, even radical, changes to the context, tools, ...

Nationalism has generated violence, bloodshed, and genocide, as well as patriotic sentiments that encourage people to help fellow citizens and place public responsibilities above personal interests. This study explores the contradictory character of African nationalism as it unfolded over decades of Tanzanian history in conflicts over public policies concerning the rights of citizens, foreigners, and the nation's Asian racial minority. These policy debates reflected a history of racial opp...

Bureaucratic labor unions are under assault. Most unions have surrendered the achievements of the mid-twentieth century, when the working class was a militant force for change throughout the world. Now trade unions seem incapable of defending, let alone advancing, workers’ interests.As unions implode and weaken, workers are independently forming their own unions, drawing on the tradition of syndicalism and autonomism—a resurgence of self-directed action that augurs a new period of ...

In 1994, the first non-racial elections in South Africa brought Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress to office; elections since have confirmed the ANC's hold, both popular and legitimate, on power. Yet, at the same time, South Africa has one of the highest rates of protest and dissent in the world - underscored by the police shooting of 34 striking miners at Marikana in 2012 - regions of deep poverty and environmental degradation, rising inequality and high unemployment rates. ...

Touching on the laws and practices of a wide array of countries around the globe, this book examines the extent to which refugees and asylum-seekers’ right to work is protected by international human rights law. The book examines a number of key international treaties, national constitutions and some foundational cases from national courts in order to make the case that the practise of restricting refugees and asylum-seekers access to the labour market is illegal. In so doing, the author e...