Comparative Politics

A large, widening gap has opened between Western democracies' international ambitions and their domestic political capacity to support them. On issues ranging from immigration and international trade to national security, new political parties on the left and the right are rejecting the core foreign policy principles that Western governments have championed for over half a century. In Geopolitics and Democracy, Peter Trubowitz and Brian Burgoon provide a powerful new explanation for the rise of anti-globalism in the West.

Christianity or Islam: which is the real religion of peace? Almost any liberal pundit will tell you that there's a religion bent on destroying our Constitution, stripping us of our liberties, and imposing religious rule on the U.S. And that religion is . . .Christianity! About Islam, however, the Left is silent--except to claim a moral equivalence between the two: if Islam has terrorists today, that's nothing compared to the Crusades, inquisitions, and religious wars in Christianity's past.

In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.

The tenth parallel - the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator - is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do sixty percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well.

Buddha or Karl Marx is a comparative study of the two philosophies Buddhism and Marxism. It concludes by presenting in plain English that Buddhism through changing man's disposition is a superior way to achieve and most importantly maintain a society sans suffering, greed and fostering Maitri (universal love and brotherhood).

This groundbreaking book is the first to both identify the wide range of political risks that global firms face and show investors how to effectively manage them. Written by two of the world's leading figures in political risk management, it reveals that, while the world remains exceedingly risky for businesses, it is by no means incomprehensible. The authors provide a wealth of unique methods, tools, and concepts to help understand political risk, showing when and how political risk analysis works - and when it does not.

Who hasn't dreamed of one day ruling your own country? Along with great power comes unlimited influence, control, admiration, and often wealth. How to Be a Dictator will teach you the tricks of the trade - how to rise to the top and stay in power, and how to enjoy the fruits of your excellence.

With silence increasingly becoming a stranger to us, one man set out to become its intimate: Pablo d'Ors, a Catholic priest whose life was changed by Zen meditation. With disarming honesty and directness, as well as a striking clarity of language, d'Ors shares his struggles as a beginning meditator: the tedium, restlessness, and distraction. But, persevering, the author discovers not only a deep peace and understanding of his true nature, but also that silence, rather than being a retreat from life, offers us an intense engagement with life just as it is.

More than five years in the making, Mark Gevisser’s The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers is a globetrotting exploration of how the human rights frontier around sexual orientation and gender identity has come to divide - and describe - the world in an entirely new way over the first two decades of the 21st century. No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results.

Fantasy is the USA’s primary product. From the Pilgrim fathers onward, America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten constitutional right. But this do-your-own-thing freedom also is the driving credo of America's current transformation, where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling.

The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.

A controversial examination of the influence and presence of the Norse god Odin in contemporary history and culture.

Media and public discussion tends to understand Russian politics as a direct reflection of Vladimir Putin's seeming omnipotence or Russia's unique history and culture. Yet Russia is remarkably similar to other autocracies - and recognizing this illuminates the inherent limits to Putin's power. Weak Strongman challenges the conventional wisdom about Putin's Russia, highlighting the difficult trade-offs that confront the Kremlin on issues ranging from election fraud and repression to propaganda and foreign policy.

Julia Cameron shares beautiful prayers of empowerment followed by potent declarations and reflections on the nature of change and coping. They extend beyond affirmations to facilitate a powerful awakening of the potential of the human soul and to revitalize our abilities to transform our lives in the face of whatever the universe may put in our life's path. Transitions will help guide the soul and draw listeners toward the source of their inner strength. Whether listened to in one sitting, or over time, this is an audiobook no thoughtful being will want to be without.

El neoliberalismo es un fenómeno de perfiles borrosos, como tantas cosas, y hay un empleo retórico del término, de intención derogatoria, que no ayuda a aclarar nada. Pero es un fenómeno perfectamente identificable, cuya historia se puede contar. Es en primer lugar, y sobre todo, un programa intelectual, un conjunto de ideas cuya trama básica es compartida por economistas, filósofos, sociólogos, juristas. Es también un programa político: una serie de leyes, arreglos institucionales, criterios de política económica, fiscal, derivados de aquellas ideas.

Everybody wants breathable air, a healthy population, civil politics. We want a peaceful world, a stable economy. The fundamental point of politics is to deliver them. And yet clearly our political systems are failing. The answer is that politics we aspire to - democracy, equality, solidarity, security and prosperity - is also the politics that creates traps for us. But there is hope. Ansell explains the cul-de-sac of modern politics - and how we can make it better.

With its emphasis on relation over substance and possibility over predetermined endings, open and relational theology provides a way forward for both Muslims and Christians. This way, as “Open and Relational Theology and its Social and Political Implications: Muslim and Christian Perspectives” posits, aligns beautifully with important and ancient thinking from both traditions. Our world desperately needs “people of the book” to pursue cooperation over competition. Open and relational theology affords us that possibility. These essays were presented in their original forms at a ...

As the BBC's North America Editor, Jon Sopel has had a pretty busy time of it lately. In the 18 months it's taken for a reality star to go from laughingstock to leader of the free world, Jon has travelled the length and breadth of the United States, experiencing it from a perspective that most of us could only dream of: he has flown aboard Air Force One, interviewed President Obama and has even been described as 'a beauty' by none other than Donald Trump.

From the best-selling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state. Dysfunctional government: It' s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world.

In The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put inequality at the centre of public debate by showing conclusively that less equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across everything from education to life expectancy. The Inner Level now explains how inequality affects us individually, how it alters how we think, feel and behave. It sets out the overwhelming evidence that material inequalities have powerful psychological effects: when the gap between rich and poor increases, so does the tendency to define and value ourselves and others in terms of superiority and inferiority.