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History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by John Hanson Thomas McPherson is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of John Hanson Thomas McPherson then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

I am a Man of the Right
Bobbio spelled out in detail what it means to be a leftist or a rightist.
Ever since I was fifteen I realized that there is difference between higher human beings and the oi polloi("the many"), the "great unwashed," il popolo bue, the "others." The difference is this: these mahatmas, or great souls, lead lifestyles that are pure, intense, and centered on ultimate concerns. I was privileged enough to encounter a few people like that, and as a result I resolved that even though I am an "illustrious nobody," I WANT my life to approximate theirs, even if it is only to a tiny degree. I also developed an intense dislike of "people," because of their focus on what I unapologetically regard as penultimate and even irrelevant concerns. Therefore, I consider myself a man of the Right according to Norberto Bobbio's insight developed in his book. Bobbio argues that the Right is an attitude, a mindset, a "profound intention" stemming from the conviction that human beings are naturally dissimilar and un-equal, and that their duties and rights should reflect such inequality. The opposite stance about equality is reflected in the works of Rousseau and Nietzsche. It goes without saying that I reflexively side with Nietzsche's views.

Two sides explained
Norberto Bobbio wrote this book during the first half of the 90's, while Italy was going through an unprecedented election whose winner was Berlusconi.
Back then, and I would say that ten years later it's still the same, the difference between left and right was not very clear for most of the people.
With this in mind, Bobbio starts his analysis by studying the political spectrum implications in society. He points out that the main distinction between left and right are related mainly to the notions of equality and inequality. He also explains why the extreme versions of both are more likely to come together as it happened during World War 2.
I think the book is very useful to understand the ideologies behind the political parties. However, it might not be 100% applicable to explain US politics.

Two axis: equality and inequality, liberty and authority...
Norberto Bobbio (1909 - 2004) was a very well-known political philosopher that delved into a lot of subjects, and led a very interesting life. "Left and Right : The Significance of a Political Distinction" is one of the many books Bobbio wrote. Truth to be told, I have many of those books, and this isn't my favourite: that honor belongs to "Teoría de las Formas de Gobierno en la historia".

Despite that, I like this book a lot. The reason is simple: it throws light on a very important issue, the difference between left and right. Basically, Bobbio points out that that distinction is still valid, and that it is possible to understand it through an analysis of politics, made taking into account two fundamental axis, equality and inequality, liberty and authority.

Thanks to those two axis we can divide the different political groups into five categories (extreme left, moderate left, center, moderate right, and extreme right), and understand how the concepts of left and right change. Bobbio says that those concepts vary depending on time and place, but that there is something that is more or less permanent: attitudes regarding equality and inequality. Those in the left think that inequality can (and should) be avoided, whereas those in the right consider inequality normal.

On the whole, I think that this book will be useful to you, due to the fact that it explains the basic differences between left and right quite well, and gives valuable examples. That is the reason why I highly recommend it to you...

Belen Alcat

A grood introduction to an old division
Bobbio's book is an instrumental introduction to what divides the left and the right, in a time when there are suggestions that their division is overcome. Analyzing each claim, he concludes they are groundless. Twoopposite outlooks stand in the division: the one that considers men equaland the other that considers them unequal. For as long as these outlooksexist, and it appears they will continue to exist, there will be a left,and consequently, a right, and vice versa. There are also other insights orinterpretations of both contemporary thinking and of the patterns ofthought that make the book interesting. The analysis of why the dyad existsin form, compared to all attacks on it as a scheme, for example, is wellargued and put. Bobbio is a refined thinker, so, the fame he has in Italyas probably that country's foremost modern political philosopher, stands instrong arguments. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An important book whose author was denied tenure by Harvard
As the 1997-8 academic year starts, Bonnie Honig is no longer at Harvard. She is now a tenured professor of political theory at Northwestern University. This is the sad end of a story that made national headlines in the spring of 1997: Despite being recommended by both her department and an external review board, Harvard's President, Neil Rudenstine, decided not to extend Assosicate Profeesor Bonnie Honig a tenure offer. The reasons are still unclear and will probably remain so. The case is perplexing because of the quality and quantity of Honig's work, and because it is not clear why would President Rudenstine, who is known to be nice, and liberal, overturn the tenure commitees. Honig told the press that she guessed they thought of her as a "girl". Indeed, fifteen Harvard women profeesors, including Honig's colleague Seyla Benhabib, wrote Prof. Rudenstine and brought up the gender issue. It is probably not the case the Honig was denied tenure because she is (biologicaly) a woman. But how about the fact that she is considered a feminist? That her work is considered non-traditional. That according to some of Harvard's old guard, women cannot produce good political philosophy? (Believe me, I've heard it from some of them when I was there, in open classroom). Well, Honig is of to Northwestern, and Harvard students will have from now on to settle on reading her work. "Political Theory and the Displacments of Politics" is indeed where they, and others interested in her work, should start. When I read this book, in a rather late stage of working on my dissertation at Harvard, I was totally overwhelmed. So much of political theory recently was about critiquing Rawlsian liberalism. But so much of it was, in my opinion, leading into a cul-de-sac, esp. liberalism's big contender in the 1980's: communitarian political theory. But here was, finally, the best critique of Rawls I have ever read. Why, I wondered, is everyone discussing Sandel's communitarian critique, when Honig's work is so much more interesting. Moreover, Honig also offers an excellent critique of Sandel himself, and shows that liberalism and communitarian theory actually have much in common. In a nutshell, Honig's argument is against the versions of political theory which try to displace conflicts. She contrasts them to theories that see politics as a disruptive practice that resists the consolidations and closure of juridical setllement for the sake of the perpetuity of political contest. She advocates bringing back "politics" into political theory. Politics, she says, consists of settlement *and* unsettlement, of disruption *and* administration. "To accept and embrace the perpetuity of contests", she says, "is to reject the dream of displacement, the fantasy that the right laws or constitution might some day free us from the responsiblity for (and, indeed, the burden of ) politics". Although Honig's work is not yet as canonized as that of some other contemporary political theory, I think that any student or scholar of this area will be missing out a lot if s/he didn't read Honig's book. As for Harvard's decision: if I can pull my act together maybe I'll write an alumni letter of protest to the President. But I think that at this stage I can do Honig a more important service by encouraging you to read this important and even fascinating book. ... Read more

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Shows the range and power of experimental methods in political science.
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A complete resource for writing an effective paper, Diane Schmidt’s latest edition of Writing in Political Science gives students a practical guide for writing and arguing about political events, ideas, passions and agendas.  A collection of actual student essays shows you how to write your way to a better grade.  After reading Writing in Political Science students will know how to:

• Choose and narrow a research topic
• Formulate a research agenda
• Quickly locate reputable information online
• Execute a study and write about your findings
• Use the vocabulary of political science discourse
• Follow the criteria used to evaluate student assignments when writing
• Apply your writing skills to an internship, civic engagement project, or work-study program
• Manage and preserve achievements for career development

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential for PoliSci students
Simple easy-to-read, easy to follow format. Wish this was the 1st book I ever read for Political Science. So helpful! ... Read more

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"A significant and thoughtful discussion of key issues in the philosophy of social science, one designed to encourage a richer variety of methodological work in political science."
—Kristen Renwick Monroe, editor of Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science

Making Political Science Matter brings together a number of prominent scholars to discuss the state of the field of Political Science. In particular, these scholars are interested in ways to reinvigorate the discipline by connecting it to present day political struggles. Uniformly well-written and steeped in a strong sense of history, the contributors consider such important topics as: the usefulness of rational choice theory; the ethical limits of pluralism; the use (and misuse) of empirical research in political science; the present-day divorce between political theory and empirical science; the connection between political science scholarship and political struggles, and the future of the discipline. This volume builds on the debate in the discipline over the significance of the work of Bent Flyvbjerg, whose book Making Social Science Matter has been characterized as a manifesto for the Perestroika Movement that has roiled the field in recent years.

Contributors include: Brian Caterino, Stewart Clegg, Bent Flyvbjerg, Mary Hawkesworth, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Gregory J. Kasza, David Kettler, David D. Laitin, Timothy W. Luke, Theodore R. Schatzki, Sanford F. Schram, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, Corey S. Shdaimah, Roland W. Stahl, and Leslie Paul Thiele.

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The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics offers a critical survey of the field of empirical political science through the collection of a set of chapters written by 48 top scholars in the discipline of comparative politics. Part I includes chapters surveying the key research methodologies employed in comparative politics (the comparative method; the use of history; the practice and status of case-study research; the contributions of field research) and assessing the possibility of constructing a science of comparative politics. Parts II to IV examine the foundations of political order: the origins of states and the extent to which they relate to war and to economic development; the sources of compliance or political obligation among citizens; democratic transitions, the role of civic culture; authoritarianism; revolutions; civil wars and contentious politics. Parts V and VI explore the mobilization, representation and coordination of political demands. Part V considers why parties emerge, the forms they take and the ways in which voters choose parties. It then includes chapters on collective action, social movements and political participation. Part VI opens up with essays on the mechanisms through which political demands are aggregated and coordinated. This sets the agenda to the systematic exploration of the workings and effects of particular institutions: electoral systems, federalism, legislative-executive relationships, the judiciary and bureaucracy. Finally, Part VII is organized around the burgeoning literature on macropolitical economy of the last two decades. ... Read more

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What does democracy expect of its citizens, and how do the citizenry match these expectations? This Oxford Handbook examines the role of the citizen in contemporary politics, based on essays from the world's leading scholars of political behavior research. The recent expansion of democracy has both given new rights and created new responsibilities for the citizenry. These political changes are paralleled by tremendous advances in our empirical knowledge of citizens and their behaviors through the institutionalization of systematic, comparative study of contemporary publics--ranging from the advanced industrial democracies to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, to new survey research on the developing world. These essays describe how citizens think about politics, how their values shape their behavior, the patterns of participation, the sources of vote choice, and how public opinion impacts on governing and public policy.

This is the most comprehensive review of the cross-national literature of citizen behavior and the relationship between citizens and their governments. It will become the first point of reference for scholars and students interested in these key issues. ... Read more

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Never HIGHLIGHT a Book Again!Virtually all testable terms, concepts, persons, places, and events are included. Cram101 Textbook Outlines gives all of the outlines, highlights, notes for your textbook with optional online practice tests. Only Cram101 Out ... Read more

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Formal political theory seeks to develop formal, mathematical models of political and economic processes. This book attempts to integrate the last twenty years of development in this field. Professor Ordeshook uses the modern developments in the theory of games (decision making with multiple, interactive decision makers) as the basis for the synthesis. Topics covered include models of elections and of committee processes, the demand and supply of public goods, and surveys of game theory and social-choice theory. Game Theory and Political Theory is designed as a textbook for graduate courses in formal political theory and political economy. ... Read more

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This substantially revised third edition of the leading text on political ideologies takes full account of the impact of the post-Cold War world order, the challenge of postmodernism, the advance of globalization, and the advent of global terrorism, and includes additional coverage of the prospects for ideologies in the 21st century.
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Customer Reviews (3)

A Must-Read For Anyone That Votes
I consider myself a modern Liberal: I espouse moderate Government regulation of commerce, limited Goverment influence of our private spaces and a moderately helpful welfare state. However, I am intrigued by Conservative ideology-- what's wrong with conserving things that are "good", thngs that "work"?I remember watching Fox News's Sean Hannity interviewing Peggy Noonan a few years ago. They, both conservatives, were contrasting modern conservatism to classical conservatism (emphasisizng the measured pragmatism of the latter and the mis-guided excesses of the former) and singing the praises of Edmund Burke whom I knew nothing about but have come to learn is the "thinking conservative's" patron saint. Well, I've also come to learn through this book, Political Ideolgies(PI), that all political ideologies have patron saints that express the tenets of their respective creeds in ways that can be understood, appreciated and articulated by even their ideational opponents. The power of PI is that it seems to objectively express the core, compelling fundaments of all the Western "isms" and most entertainingly shows how an "ism" of one era can morph into an "ism" with the same name in a later era, but contain radically different ideas!,e.g., the Liberalism of the 19th century is not the Liberalism of the 21st century, in fact, the former has become the conservatism of modern times-- free markets and small Government.A great book and possible game changer for anyone looking to get beyond watching very smart, well-meaning people on TV reduce nutritious political ideology to mass-appealing, nutritionless cotton candy.

Good Introduction to Political Thought
This book makes a nice introduction or review text to the world of political ideologies.The author gives a wealth of information on the history, key themes, and current status of each ideology discussed.Sidebars presenting brief biographical sketches of important names within each ideology are also helpful in providing a more complete picture of where ideas come from.My only complaint is that this book seems to have skipped past the editing process and has made it into print filled with glaring grammatical errors and typos.You can find at least two on any page (I've made a game out of it).Although the information is still valid, it is nevertheless annoying.

A great introduction to political philosophy
It was my Political Studies teacher at school who first showed me that life is about ideas.Different views of human nature, ways in which we believe society and the state should be organised, these are eternal debates that have enslaved and emancipated countless numbers over the centuries.Andrew Heywood's `Political Ideologies' served me well then at school and continues to do so - I recently went and bought a copy to read over again.The author manages to combine complexity of thought with simplicity of presentation that opens your eyes to why politicians can't ever seem to agree, even when the answer seems obvious to us.The new edition contains new sections that reflect the collapse of communism, the emergence of a global capitalist system, the rise of ethnic nationalism, religious fundamentalism and the advent of postmodernism.The only criticism that I can level at this textbook is that it isn't really designed for an international audience.The author is a British academic and so it isn't that surprising that, for example, the section on conservatism is more relevant to the UK Conservative Party than the GOP.But still, for anyone who cares about life and the way that people should be treated by the state, this is a great introduction that will open up a new world of political possibilities. ... Read more

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The conflict between politics and antipolitics has replayed throughout Western history and philosophical thought. From the beginning, Plato's quest for absolute certainty led him to denounce democracy, an anti-political position challenged by Aristotle. In his wide-ranging narrative, Dick Howard puts this dilemma into fresh perspective, proving our contemporary political problems are not as unique as we think.

Howard begins with democracy in ancient Greece and the rise and fall of republican politics in Rome. In the wake of Rome's collapse, political thought searched for a new medium, and the conflict between politics and antipolitics reemerged through the contrasting theories of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas. During the Renaissance and Reformation, the emergence of the modern individual again transformed the terrain of the political. Even so, politics vs. antipolitics dominated the period, frustrating even Machiavelli, who sought to reconceptualize the nature of political thought. Hobbes and Locke, theorists of the social contract, then reenacted the conflict, which Rousseau sought (in vain) to overcome. Adam Smith and the growth of modern economic liberalism, the radicalism of the French revolution, and the conservative reaction of Edmund Burke subsequently marked the triumph of antipolitics, while the American Revolution momentarily offered the potential for a renewal of politics. Taken together, these historical examples, viewed through the prism of philosophy, reveal the roots of today's political climate and the trajectory of battles yet to come.

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The philosophy of politics

This carefully selected compilation of the significant writings of the great political philosophers, scientists, and thinkers will be an invaluable guide to the general reader as well as to the serious student of history, political science, and government. Such essential forces as Revolution, Romanticism, Marxism, Anarchy, Utilitarianism, Theology, Idealism, and Nationalism are examined in detail and expounded by their leading exponents. Professor Curtis has written running commentary that places the extracts and their authors in the sequence of modern history.

And newly added for this edition are studies of selected works by, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Herzen, Antonio Gramsci, Sebastian de Grazia, and John Rawls. Also new are a table of contents and an updated, comprehensive bibliography -- each clear and concise for easy reference.

Together with the first volume, also available in a Discus edition, which covers political thought from Plato and Aristotle to Locke and Montesquieu, The Great Political Theories offers an unparalleled view of political thought in Western civilization.

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Review of College Political Philosophy
In college, while not a political science major, I did take several lectures and seminars on political philosophy.I supposedly read Rousseau, de Tocqueville, Lincoln, Burke, Lenin, etc, but how could the typical college student, raised in technological privilege and surrounded by a rustic solemnity, even begin to comprehend the revolutionary times and chaos that would give rise to humanity's greatest political philosophers?Even if it were the Vietnam War era college students still would not be equipped with life experience, and would not have been tortured with ideas the way the great thinkers were.Reading "The Great Political Theories" by Michael Curtis I was suddenly thrown back into my college days, and a deep nostalgia settled and hugged me.This is really an ideal book for those who majored in political science in college, and who now in middle age at last have the life experience to begin to fathom the political philosophers.

Michael Curtis is an excellent editor, mining the passages in usually thick volumes of work that best represent the philosopher's ideas and ideals.Having taught political science for decades Mr. Curtis seamlessly and effortlessly weave together the modern political philosophers together, summarizing well their ideas and putting everyone in the proper context.

There is a problem in the book that is no fault of Michael Curtis's.The book starts off too strongly, and the momentum is not maintainable.Rousseau, Burke, Paine, and Adam Smith, de Tocqueville -- all strong powerful writers in their own right -- start off the book, and we end with much lesser authors most people have never heard of.Having glimpsed at Adam Smith's prose I'd like to read "Wealth of Nations," and this book will certainly inspire other readers to read other authors.

An Excellent Survey of Politcal Thought
This book is a excellent survey of political philosophies from the last days of the ancien regime to the 1970s.
This survey is treated in a very organized way by the editor, Michael Curtis.Each section of the book has a certain theme.Each section begins with a preface and overview of the thinkers whose selections will follow.Curtis, like an excellent professor, exposits the views of the thinkers fairly.
Let me give an example of one of the sections of the book, which illustrates the strenghts and possible even minor weaknesses of this book.
Section XIII is entitled "Theological Thought and Politics."I found this chapter very interesting, for although I consider myself very informed in matters concerning politics, I had previously given little thought to the inter-connection of theology and politics.As the book shows, other disciples have influenced political thinkers--history and economics readily come to mind--and so has theology.
In the preface/overview of this section, Mr. Curtis gives a synopsis of two examples of theological thinking on politics, one Catholic, the other Protestant.What follows, then, are selections that represent Catholic social thought: selections from Papal Encyclicals, and from the Thomist Jacques Maritain; and, for Protestant social thought, selections from the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr.
These selections are chosen--as are all the others in the book--because they represent a major argument of the thinker into consideration which also distinguishes himself from other thinkers.For example, in the selections of the Catholic thinkers, a theme that is stressed is the uniqueness of man among physicial creation--that man has a soul, a spiritual nature, and because of that, is a person, and thus has dignity.
This metaphysical account of the nature of man has consequences in the social realm.While these selections have an optimistic tone, especially from Maritain, this is contrasted with the Protestant social thought of Reinhold Niebuhr.Reading Niebuhr, I thought of the notions of Original Sin, the Fall of Man, and man's tendency to sin.The belief that man is fundamentally good is an error.This belief in the essential goodness in man can lead to political misjudgments.This work by Niebuhr was written in during World War II, and I thought how Niebuhr was vindicated, when just a few years before, the Prime Minister of England had said, "There shall be peace in our time."
This section also points out the possible weaknesses of the book.Perhaps other selections of theological thought could have also been included, and I speak as a Catholic whose tradition is well represented in Mr. Curtis' book.For example, I recently came across some writings of the Russian Orthodox philosopher/mystic Berdayev.Berdayev wrote about the dehumanization of man in the modern world, and in his writing considered the general approach of Catholic and Protestant thinking.Berdayev would have made an excellent addition in this section.
Besides theology, other influences on political thought are shown, mainly from the social sciences, and from history.The dominant schools of thought, such as Marxism, Utilitariansism, Conservatism, are well represented, even sub-divisions of the major schools, such as the revolutionary Marxism of Lenin versus the gradual approach of Eduard Bernstein.
There is a great diversity of opinion presented here; I am a political junkie, so I would not mind even more selections.
The book closes with selections from the late political theorist John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice."The roughly 30 years since the publication of "A Theory of Justice," there have been contributions toward politcal theory.Some examples would be the works of Michael Walzer "Just and Unjust Wars," and "Spheres of Justice; Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia;" writings in support of the environmental movement; and the impact of technology, especially newer technologies such as genetic engineering to the Internet, from various writers.What will the 21st Century hold? ... Read more

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Political Communication and Social Theory presents an advanced and challenging text for students and scholars of political communication and mass media in democracies. It draws together work from across political communication, media sociology and political sociology, and includes a mix of theoretical debate and current examples from several democratic media systems. Its wide ranging discussions both introduce and contest the traditional scholarship on a number of contemporary topics and issues. These include:

• comparative political and media systems
• theories of democracy, representation and the public sphere
• political party communication, marketing and elections
• the production of news media and public policy
• media sociology and journalist-source relations
• celebrity politics, popular culture and political leadership
• new media and online democracy
• national-global politics and international political communication
• foreign policy-making, war and media
• the crisis of public communication in established democracies.

At the same time, Political Communication and Social Theory also offers a fascinating investigation of the causes of crisis in established political and media systems. In today’s democracies, trust in politicians, state institutions and mainstream media sources has dropped to new lows. The traditional business model that sustained journalism is failing and nations are struggling to respond to the existing global recession and impending environmental and resource crises. Drawing on interviews with over 100 experienced politicians, journalists and civil servants, Aeron Davis explores how the varied political actors and communicative processes, at the centre of UK democracy, may or may not be contributing to such crisis tendencies.

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This volume explores the science fiction/world politics intertext. Through detailed analyses of such texts as Blade Runner, Stalker, Star Trek, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the chapters in this volume examine the complex and sometimes contradictory relations between world politics, both as discipline and as practice, and discourses of science fiction. Offering a novel combination of popular culture analysis with major theoretical and empirical issues concerning world politics, To Seek Out New Worlds provides insights into the discursive constitution of both science fiction and world politics while highlighting the occasional challenges that the science fiction/world politics intertext launches at our common sense.
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General readers, students of American history, and professional historians alike will profit from reading this engaging presentation of an aspect of American history conspicuously absent from the usual textbooks and popular presentations of the political thought of this crucial period.Thomas Jefferson was the only president who could read and understand Newton's Principia. Benjamin Franklin is credited with establishing the science of electricity. John Adams had the finest education in science that the new country could provide, including "Pnewmaticks, Hydrostaticks, Mechanicks, Staticks, Opticks." James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, peppered his Federalist Papers with reference to physics, chemistry, and the life sciences.

For these men science was an integral part of life--including political life. This is the story of their scientific education and of how they employed that knowledge in shaping the political issues of the day, incorporating scientific reasoning into the Constitution.
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Over its long lifetime, "political economy" has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study of the inter-relationship between economics and politics for some twentieth-century commentators; and for others, a methodology emphasizing individual rationality (the economic or "public choice" approach) or institutional adaptation (the sociological version). This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political economy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions.

This Handbooksurveys the field of political economy, with fifty-eight chapters ranging from micro to macro, national to international, institutional to behavioral, methodological to substantive. Chapters on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent, but of limited scope
This handbook is almost excellent - it is certainly one of the two best handbooks in OUP's series, alongside Boix and Stokes' one on Comparative Politics. It is by far better than the other titles in the series, such as the one on political institutions, that on public management, or that on public policy. The reason for this success is threefold (i.e. the book scores very well on three criteria):

(1) It covers almost anything you would wish to read about in this sub-discipline, from public choice to principal-agent, and from monetary or trade politics to constitutional issues;
(2) It really reaches up to the state-of-the-art in every single chapter (except perhaps the strange chapter on Arrow, which nevertheless makes for an interesting read); and
(3)Most of it is written clearly, with individual chapters presenting the historical evolution of knowledge in their areas, and hence enhancing one's understanding of the significance (or lack of) of newer scholarship.

Having said that, OUP was not going to publish another volume on different ways of doing political economy. For this reason, this volume should have dedicated a little space to non-mathematical traditions, such as the one usually exhibited by contributors in the Review of International Political Economy. (One may or may not agree with these informal and indeed quite "ideologically-loaded" traditions. Nevertheless, they are part of our world, and as such, they should be duly acknowledged, described, and if applicable criticised.)

The second reason why I don't give this volume a 5-star is that there is nothing to set the non-specialised reader ready for some generally technical chapters. More often than not, the mathematics and the rationale of the formal models is not fully explained -- at least for someone who is not already familiar with this body of work. This could have been dealt with rather easily, for example by providing a separate chapter on the way optimization theory was introduced into the analysis of political phenomena, or more simply by offering an appendix that would take you in 20 pages from the theory of functions to partial derivatives and the basic rules of integral calculus (for something like that, see Morrow's "Game Theory" of 1994).

All in all, this is excellent for specialists or really interested readers, but neither encompassing nor simple enough to make sense to everybody else. ... Read more

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Why do attempts by authoritarian regimes to legalize their political repression differ so dramatically? Why do some dispense with the law altogether, while others scrupulously modify constitutions, pass new laws, and organize political trials?Political (In)Justice answers these questions by comparing the legal aspects of political repression in three recent military regimes: Brazil (1964-1985); Chile (1973-1990); and Argentina (1976-1983).By focusing on political trials as a reflection of each regime's overall approach to the law, Anthony Pereira argues that the practice of each regime can be explained by examining the long-term relationship between the judiciary and the military.Brazil was marked by a high degree of judicial-military integration and cooperation; Chile's military essentially usurped judicial authority; and in Argentina, the military negated the judiciary altogether. Pereira extends the judicial-military framework to other authoritarian regimes--Salazar's Portugal, Hitler's Germany, and Franco's Spain--and a democracy (the United States), to illuminate historical and contemporary aspects of state coercion and the rule of law. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

The role of emotion in politics
"The Affect Effect" is a welcome volume.In political science--and in the study of political thinking and behavior--the rational choice perspective has become very powerful.While it yields some genuine insights, it is also one dimensional.People are not simply cost-benefit calculators, are not solely means-ends analysts.Emotion matters.And that is what this volume is about.The volume is intended as much for a more academic audience than not, so it will be something of a challenge for the non-cognoscenti.Nonetheless, a useful and welcome volume.

The editors begin by noting their "scope of work" (page 1):

"This book responds to a resurgent interest in the way emotion interacts with thinking about politics and, as a result, the way citizens engage in or withdraw from political activity.We have come to conclude that there is indeed an affect effect. . . .Our explicit goal in this work is to draw focused attention to what had been a relatively neglected area in the study of mass political behavior."

Their introduction places the issues addressed here in a broader context, and represents a nice starting point for the book.

The first part is important, in that two of the chapters emphasize the importance of considering the human brain and neurosciences in understanding emotion and its role in politics.Humans are a product of the evolutionary process and have brains that affect how people think and behave.Not to recognize this would have been a problem with the volume; acknowledging this is a plus.The second part focuses on "micro models," how emotion/affect influences individuals' political thinking and behavior.Part Three addresses "macro level" issues, how human affect influences system level politics.Finally, Part Four considers "Next Steps in Research and Outreach."

This is a good examination of the role of emotion and affect in politics.It points to future research directions.It will not necessarily be easy reading for a lay audience, but it is worth the struggle.For academic scholars, this is, indeed, a rich resource and should be required reading for those studying humans' political thinking and behavior.
... Read more