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Communism, or as Ken Jowitt prefers, Leninism, has attracted, repelled, mystified, and terrified millions for nearly a century. In his brilliant, timely, and controversial study, New World Disorder, Jowitt identifies and interprets the extraordinary character of Leninist regimes, their political corruption, extinction, and highly unsettling legacy. Earlier attempts to grasp the essence of Leninism have treated the Soviet experience as either a variant of or alien to Western history, an approach that robs Leninism of much of its intriguing novelty. Jowitt instead takes a "polytheist" approach, Weberian in tenor and terms, comparing the Leninist to the liberal experience in the West, rather th...
Economists and political scientists wrestle with the challenges faced by Russian officials and public alike in adapting to a market economy and democracy, including the fragility of property rights and elections still rooted in old institutional structures. This book examines the reforms of health and welfare, and the hierarchy of privilege and access, and consider how Putin's statist approach to mythmaking compares to that of previous Soviet and post-Soviet regimes. Historians and anthropologists explore the issue of nostalgia, gender, punishment, belief, and how history itself is being created and perceived today. The book concludes with a journey through the ruined landscape of real socialism.
Democracy Without Borders? assesses the worldwide prospects of liberal democracy. In an era of globalization and in an intellectual climate in which the idea of national sovereignty is under assault, Plattner identifies the essential features of modern liberal democracy and offers guidance about what is required to sustain it. This examination comes at a critical moment. After three decades of global advance, liberal democracy today is being challenged from many quarters. Among the reasons why its future looks cloudy is the popular election of candidates hostile to liberalism_in Palestine, Russia, Venezuela, and elsewhere. An investigation of the complex and tension-filled relationship between liberalism and majority rule is at the heart of this essential book. PlattnerOs contention is that liberalism needs democracy and that liberal democracy needs the nation-state. He argues that transnational bodies like the European Union cannot overcome their 'democratic deficit.' Hence he recommends an approach that will enable the United States to promote international cooperation without sacrificing the fundamental elements of national sovereignty or American democracy.
Chirot offers a study of modern tyrants, revealing the forces which allow them to come to power and predicting where they may arise in the future.
The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of char...
World Order after Leninism examines the origins and evolution of world communism and explores how its legacies have shaped the post-Cold War world order. The lessons of Leninism continue to exert a strong influence in contemporary foreign affairs--most visibly in Poland and other post-communist states of the former Soviet Union, but also in China and other newly industrialized states balancing authoritarian impulses against the pressures of globalization, free markets, and democratic possibilities. World Order after Leninism began as a conversation among former students of Ken Jowitt, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley from 1970-2002 and whose monumental career transformed the fields of political science, Russian studies, and post-communist studies. Using divergent case studies, the essays in this volume document the ways in which Jowitt's exceptionally original work on Leninism's evolution and consolidation remains highly relevant in analyzing contemporary post-communist and post-authoritarian political transformations.
A comprehensive but accessible examination of how elite Chinese politics work covering the period from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.
Discusses the birth pangs of democracy in post-communist Romania, and its difficult transition from a state of non-law to a rule-of-law state.
In China, the central government has the political will to control organized crime, which is seen as a national security threat. The crux of the problem is how to control local governments that have demonstrated lax enforcement without sufficient regulation from the provincial governments. The development of prostitution, underground gambling and narcotics production has become so serious that the central government has to rely on anti-crime campaigns to combat these "three evils". This book explores the specific role of government institutions and agencies, notably the police, in controlling organised and cross-border crime in Greater China. Drawing heavily on original empirical data, it co...
The Revolutions of 1989 is a collection of both classic and recent articles examining the causes and consequences of the collapse of communism in East and Central Europe, the most important event in recent world history. It includes discussion of: * the economic, political and social nature of revolutions * the role of dissidents and civil society in encouraging the breakdown of eastern * European communist regimes * comparisons with other revolutions * the extent of the collapse of Leninist regimes in East-Central Europe. European historians, scholars and students will wnat to make this an integral part of their studies.