Political science & theory

This book develops a concept and a theory of reluctance in world politics. Applying it to regional crisis management by leading powers, it finds that reluctance emerges when governments fail to devise clear foreign policy preferences and face competing international pressures.

This book explores the relationship between the state and war within the context of seismic technological change. Through its analysis, the book questions what will happen to war and the state and whether we will reach a point where war leads to the unmaking of the state itself.

This book examines Japan’s relationship with Myanmar from the passage of its constitution in May 2008 to the February 2021 coup d’état that finished its transition to a ‘disciplined democracy.’ It develops a unique Area Studies approach that critiques how Japan’s foreign policy elites perceive Japan’s role in the liberal international order.

Introducing the concept of ‘knowledge alchemy’ as the formulation of global standards through the use of indicators and algorithms, this book explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation.

A uniquely hybrid approach to welfare state policy, ecological sustainability and social transformation, this book explores transformative models of welfare change. Using Ireland as a case study, it addresses the institutional adaptations needed to move towards a sustainable welfare state.

Bringing together eminent International Relations (IR) scholars from China and the West, this book examines moral realism from a range of different perspectives. Through its analyses, it verifies the robustness of moral realism in IR theory.

This volume brings together perspectives from political science and philosophy to shed new light on the political faces of negative emotions. Engaging with real-world political events from Europe, the US and Africa, contributors critically evaluate much-discussed emotions, such as anger, but also less prominent ones, such as frustration.

This book examines how changes to social rules reshape how states explain their military actions, and changes to technology and society transform contemporary warfare. Analysing the role that war serves in global politics, it outlines the ways in which war affects the contemporary world, from international relations to our day-to-day lives.

This book brings together thirteen of Nicholas Onuf’s previously published yet rarely cited essays. They address topics that Onuf has puzzled over for decades, including the problem of materiality in social construction, epochal change in the modern world, and the power of language.

Felix Anderl’s book is a stimulating analysis of the decline of the social movement against the World Bank and the rise of a new form of transnational rule. The book observes international organizations and social movements in their interaction, demonstrating how social movements are divided and ruled in the absence of a ruler.

This book examines the concept of the pluriverse alongside global ethics and the ethics of care in order to contemplate new ethical horizons for engaging across difference. Offering a challenge to the current state of the field, this book argues for a rethinking of global ethics as it has been conceived thus far.

Positioning social policy within political economy and social contract debates, Wistow draws on empirical evidence to show how the social contract produces longstanding inequitable consequences in relation to health, place and social mobility in England.