Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

The most important issues in global politics today are about borders. Wars in the Middle East have created a refugee "crisis" that has led to upheaval in Europe and elsewhere. Nationalist politicians have risen to power around the world on anti-immigration platforms. At this writing debates rage about how to contain the spread of COVID-19. All of this makes Against Borders a timely and important contribution to discussions about how to handle the most pressing issues currently facing the world. Sager (philosophy, Portland State Univ.) draws on the concepts of freedom, equality, and distributive justice to push back against common arguments around restricting borders that center on self-determination, security, and cultural values. He not only makes a compelling case for more open borders but also emphasizes the moral responsibility to fight for the rights of migrants. Sager dedicates only a few pages to discussing the feasibility of an open-borders regime, so readers seeking policy prescriptions need to look elsewhere. But the book's contribution to philosophical debates underlying border issues make it an essential read.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Henke (Northwestern Univ.) seeks to explain the formation of multilateral military coalitions. These do not arise spontaneously, as countries vary enormously in the extent to which they are willing to commit military force. Instead, these coalitions are constructed by what Henke calls pivotal states, those that most want to form these coalitions. The pivotal state uses both bargaining and side payments to get others to join the coalition, and mobilizes its bilateral and multilateral diplomatic connections--what the author terms "diplomatic embeddedness." Henke opens with her theoretical argument, then launches into a quantitative analysis of 80 multilateral military coalitions. Subsequent chapters cover four qualitative case studies of multilateral military coalitions in different contexts: the Korean War, Darfur, the independence of East Timor, and conflict in Chad and the Central African Republic. The pivotal states in these cases were the US (in the first two cases), Australia, and France, providing a good range for analysis. These richly detailed case studies enliven this innovative, interesting, and convincing book, which serves not only as a scholarly work but as a manual for would-be pivotal states on constructing a multilateral military coalition.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Building on Reus-Smit's On Cultural Diversity: International Theory in a World of Difference (2018), Phillips and Reus-Smit (both, international relations, Univ. of Queensland, Australia) offer a pathbreaking collection on international relations. Written by outstanding international relations scholars, the 15 essays argue that culture is a diverse phenomenon affecting world order and institutional structures. Employing an interdisciplinary approach to political organization, the volume opposes the European and static dictate of the widely accepted Westphalian nation-state. The contributors point out that examples of cultural diversity are found in such widely separated systems as the Ottoman Turkish empire and selected ancient Chinese regimes, and serve as civic orders. The growing importance of a new liberal international order is brought out with an emphasis on religion in Israel and Pakistan. Gender as a sociological and anthropological concept is discussed as it appears in Western literature. In sum, this collection's overall theoretical approach moves away from acceptance of culture as a homogeneous system and toward a diverse set of norms and beliefs, showing that varied forms of cultural expression can serve as the basis of identification leading to mobilization for political interests. This is an absolutely required addition to the literature on international relations.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Four decades of intense, unrelenting economic growth have generated, among the Chinese people, a widespread democratic mindset This is the thesis of Ci's tightly argued Democracy in China. Ci (philosophy, Univ. of Hong Kong) anticipated the turmoil over the past six months in Hong Kong and wonders if that turmoil eventually will appear more broadly across the People's Republic of China. Ci makes a forceful argument for the incorporation of Chinese normative democratic values and a gradual incorporation of these values into Chinese political life. Moreover, he hopes the Chinese Communist Party leadership will see the need and have the wisdom to assist in the creation of a more democratic China in the decade ahead. This excellent scholarly study will be of use to a broad audience.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This is a fascinating historical study of how and why humanitarian organizations quantified basic human needs over the course of the 20th century. Glasman (Univ. of Bayreuth, Germany) provides an engaging intellectual genealogy of the transition from subjective approaches to evaluating suffering to relying on allegedly objective and universal measurements. Using methods such as measuring the left arms of children for malnutrition allowed humanitarian organizations to claim they avoided politicizing assistance. However, organizations frequently debated how needs should be defined, as Glasman describes in detail with the Sphere Handbook, a humanitarian needs manual published in the 1990s. Just as humanitarian organizations claimed to be serving a generic humanity not defined by culture or politics, aid personnel also promoted an idea of consensus between the global North and South regarding needs. The author convincingly argues that this aspirational ideal of a common, measurable set of needs actually obscures the financial and political inequities between North and South, using Cameroon as a case study of the political and economic realities of how needs are measured in a humanitarian crisis. Specialists in humanitarianism should definitely read this book.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Radical right-wing parties have proliferated globally. Relying on quantitative methods and extensive interviews, McDonnell and Werner (both, Griffith Univ., Australia) argue that populist parties have become more internationalized. Until 2014, right-wing populist parties were internally divided and failed to create a pan-European bloc. Yet resources in the European Parliament (EP) are allocated based on ideological cross-national party families. After the 2014 European elections, right-wing populists suddenly managed to form pan-European alliances and strengthen their political salience. The authors analyze party manifestos, leadership priorities, and national dynamics to understand why and how national right-wing populists joined different EP blocs. Some populist parties joined with like-minded parties that shared common ideological and policy objectives. Others entered a pan-European bloc for the purely practical reason of accessing EP resources. A third group aligned with a more mainstream conservative party to gain respectability. This is an excellent addition to the literature on populism. As the authors demonstrate, right-wing populists not only claim to be the defenders of the national people, but also present themselves as saviors of European voters who are threatened by the policies of the European Union.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Kostal (law, Western Univ., Canada) delivers a thoroughly researched exploration of US legal operations in postwar Germany and Japan. Occupied following WW II, those one-time Axis powers endured attempts to remove the vestiges of fascist-style approaches to jurisprudence. However, as Kostal carefully explains, their experiences were dissimilar. The American sector of occupied Germany, under General Lucius D. Clay, soon allowed German lawyers and judges to reassert control over legal practices, a process abetted by an American belief in shared approaches to the law, in addition to clear ethnocentrism. By contrast, racist assumptions drove US occupation of Japan, and General Douglas MacArthur was initially committed to bringing about a revolution in that nation's legal and political processes. Nevertheless, as the Cold War took hold, liberal sensibilities gave way to anti-communist practices that allowed for "former" Nazis to reestablish preeminence in Germany and hard-line conservatives to do the same in Japan. Democratic trappings were put in place, but nothing akin to the Rooseveltian legal revolution once envisioned by key American strategists. Kostal underscores, as he writes in the conclusion, how an unhappy combination "of liberal idealism, hypocrisy, and fear" ensured this result.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

With this volume, one gets the sense of a discipline coming of age; it articulates a maturing of the field of scholarship around peace-building and conflict engagement/transformation/resolution. The work includes contributions from scholars and practitioners who propose strategies for determining what works, why, and how in a complex field that has often seen itself as exceptional, resisting efforts to set realizable goals for--and implementing processes for achieving--assessment. Anchoring chapters by the editor lay out the groundwork for evaluation (types and purposes) and make a plea for building a "community of inquiry for public, shared, and cumulative learning." Other contributions review the different contexts and modalities for evaluation, and different evaluative tools and frameworks applicable in these contexts--all in the interest of building knowledge from experience. Overall, the work contributes to clarity--conceptually and operationally--for an emerging field that is starting to look at itself, and indicates ways the field can build both problem-solving and theory-building research. It will be of interest to practitioners and scholars, as well as to students of social science methodology.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

In this superb book Gavin (history, Johns Hopkins--SAIS) looks at the US's grand strategy on nuclear weapons from a historian's perspective. He does a superb job of uncovering the gap between the rhetoric and reality of US military strategy in Europe, and he addresses the tensions/contradictions of advocating nuclear abstinence on the one hand and practicing military buildup and an aggressive strategy of nuclear primacy on the other. Gavin raises important issues, e.g., the future of nuclear nonproliferation if the US does not exercise leadership to prevent the emergence of more nuclear weapon states. He observes that the literature has neglected important issues, e.g., the US's policy of protecting allies from the Soviet Union under a "nuclear umbrella," even after the end of the Cold War. Gavin concludes that the US's reliance on nuclear weapons may have "outlived its utility," and calls for a vigorous debate on whether the US should continue to invest in nuclear weapon capabilities or instead practice self-restraint while encouraging nuclear abstinence on the part of others. A useful complement to Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (3rd ed., 2003), this invaluable volume challenges conventional wisdom on a range of issues, from deterrence theory and practice to the lessons of nuclear crises, e.g., in Berlin, 1958-61.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Why does the US consistently condemn genocides while simultaneously failing to intervene to stop them? Those interested in answers to this vital question will especially welcome this book. Delving deep into domestic politics, Mayroz (peace and conflict studies, Univ. of Sydney, Australia) illustrates how an intricate relationship between the general public, media, elites, and politicians shapes US foreign policy toward mass atrocities. The author also sheds light on when and why the genocide label itself is used. Detailed discussion of the debates surrounding Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Darfur help place the theoretical argument in context. Though Mayroz points toward the potential for change, the reader will come away realizing just how much would need to happen for the US and the world to take meaningful action to put an end to genocide. The book is a bit dry and bogged down by terminology, so it will not be particularly appealing to the casual reader, but students and scholars interested in human rights would be well advised to seek out this book.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers.

Nations that embark on armed conflict have alchemists for foreign secretaries. As happened after 9/11 and the Second Gulf War, policy makers can create a climate for upheavals they did not anticipate. The rise of ISIS is one such example: the Middle East crisis was escalated by the Syrian civil war, which attracted disaffected, foreign-born Muslims to fight for the former Islamic State's caliphate. Pokalova (security studies, College of International Security Affairs, National Defense Univ.) addresses this particular problem in Returning Islamist Foreign Fighters. The West never foresaw this danger. Pokalova tackles the initial phenomenon of foreign fighters and compares it to earlier Islamist ventures, especially in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq. But the threat that Pokalova focuses on is these fighters' return from the Syrian civil war and the risk they pose to their nations of origin. One of the issues she identifies involves women who joined ISIS and their children, a problem that has been in the news recently. Pokalova's book is an important quest to understand a form of terrorism that still poses perils to the West and should not be taken lightly.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

Pinfari (American Univ. in Cairo) here argues that politicians frame terrorists as unmanageable monsters in order to secure popular backing for their counterterrorism policies. He examines many historical monster metaphors in relation to different types of terrorism, including state, left-wing, anarchist, ethno-nationalist, and white supremacist terrorism, to delineate the political processes that aim to combat political violence. As he notes, politicians and journalists use this specific framing to shift blame to actors labeled as terrorists in order to gain acceptance for harsher counterterrorist measures. The author underscores that terrorists do not exist as political phenomena independent of the metaphorical imagery through which they are presented, as monster analogies are handpicked to fit specific political narratives and in turn direct counterterrorism measures. New political agendas thus inform the use of specific imagery in specific circumstances. Ultimately, Pinfari argues that only a holistic understanding of how monster metaphors function across contexts can help explain the recurrence and meaning of specific metaphors and their political framing.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Funabashi (Asia Pacific Initiative, an international think tank) and Ikenberry (Princeton) have put together a timely collection of 11 essays on Japan's role in protecting the US-led liberal international order, which came into being after WW II and from which Japan has benefited greatly. This international order now faces new challenges as it is under siege by the illiberal forces of China and Russia, by moves to withdraw from alliances such as Brexit, and, surprisingly, by the US itself under the Trump Administration. As Japan faces this challenge to its continued place in a liberal international order, it encounters serious foreign and domestic constraints in its efforts to preserve it. Divided into two parts devoted to foreign policy and domestic statecraft, these solid, well-written, and accessible essays by recognized experts survey problems facing Japan at home and abroad. Topics examined include trade, international organizations, regional security, foreign policy, populism, journalism, Japan's welfare system, constitutional issues, and the legacy of history in dealing with its Asian neighbors.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium in the world, generating more than 90 percent of the world's heroin and more than 95 percent of Europe's supply. Despite 20 years of war, allied forces have not made a dent in this problem. In The War on Drugs and Anglo-American Relations, Berry (King's College London, UK) recounts the struggle NATO forces faced in attempting to stem the growing of opium poppies in Afghanistan, focusing on the role of the British in this battle because much of the opium and heroin ends up on the streets of Britain. Over the 10 years the book covers (2001-2011), the allied forces attempted to implement several strategies to reduce opium production, including aerial spraying, ground-based spraying, crop substitution, paying farmers not to plant opium poppies, and simply purchasing all the opium produced. Ultimately, none of these strategies worked. Part of the problem was the fraught relationship between the US, Britain, and the Afghan government over how to proceed. This excellent book is a welcome addition to the literature on fighting narcotics production and more generally on understanding the conflict in Afghanistan.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

These Islands Are Ours examines the role of social identity in shaping public policy in three Northeast Asian countries--Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan--regarding disputed territories. Bukh (Victoria Univ. of Wellington, New Zealand) creatively employs a constructivist perspective to elucidate how narratives developed by entrepreneurs influence the shaping of both state (provincial) and national policies regarding objectively minor disputed territories. He explores how these "national identity" entrepreneurs (those "in a contentious relationships with their government") raised the salience of political issues in the public consciousness, thereby forcing political elites to address an issue that they had previously ignored or downplayed. Through exhaustive analysis of archival sources, Bukh traces the transformation of narratives regarding Japan's territorial disputes with Russia, South Korea's disputes with Japan over the Dokdo Islands, and Taiwan's disputes with Japan regarding the Diaoyutai Islands (with an area of only 6.3 square kilometers). He excellently demonstrates how critical junctures and post-WW II reforms enabled greater civic action focused on the injustice of the loss of territory, perceived as threatening to national identity as well as personal and group economic interests.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.