Theories of War and Peace

Theories of War and Peace
Author: Michael E. Brown
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 610
Release: 1998-09-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780262522526

New approaches to understanding war and peace in the changing international system. What causes war? How can wars be prevented? Scholars and policymakers have sought the answers to these questions for centuries. Although wars continue to occur, recent scholarship has made progress toward developing more sophisticated and perhaps more useful theories on the causes and prevention of war. This volume includes essays by leading scholars on contemporary approaches to understanding war and peace. The essays include expositions, analyses, and critiques of some of the more prominent and enduring explanations of war. Several authors discuss realist theories of war, which focus on the distribution of power and the potential for offensive war. Others examine the prominent hypothesis that the spread of democracy will usher in an era of peace. In light of the apparent increase in nationalism and ethnic conflict, several authors present hypotheses on how nationalism causes war and how such wars can be controlled. Contributors also engage in a vigorous debate on whether international institutions can promote peace. In a section on war and peace in the changing international system, several authors consider whether rising levels of international economic independence and environmental scarcity will influence the likelihood of war.

The Socialist Sixties

The Socialist Sixties
Author: Anne E. Gorsuch
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2013-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253009499

“A very engaging collection of essays that adds much to an evolving literature on the social history of the Soviet Union and broader socialist societies.” —Choice The 1960s have reemerged in scholarly and popular culture as a protean moment of cultural revolution and social transformation. In this volume socialist societies in the Second World (the Soviet Union, East European countries, and Cuba) are the springboard for exploring global interconnections and cultural cross-pollination between communist and capitalist countries and within the communist world. Themes explored include flows of people and media; the emergence of a flourishing youth culture; sharing of songs, films, and personal experiences through tourism and international festivals; and the rise of a socialist consumer culture and an esthetics of modernity. Challenging traditional categories of analysis and periodization, this book brings the sixties problematic to Soviet studies while introducing the socialist experience into scholarly conversations traditionally dominated by First World perspectives.

The Conflict Helix

The Conflict Helix
Author: R. J. Rummel
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 320
Release:
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781412836302

This is a book on conflict and consensus aimed at the general reader. In active, plain and direct language it makes the seemingly abstract and complex issues simple. Its view of peace is well-rounded, tough-minded, one that well understands the difficult world of social and personal violence and conflict. At its heart is a simple finding: "to wage peace we need to foster freedom." The human race can best achieve that simple aim by "leaving people alone to form their own communities." "The Conflict Helix "avoids the ambiguous in favor of the categorical; the hedged, qualified statement for the direct Rummel presents a series of basic principles, each concerning an aspect of conflict and peace - psychological, interpersonal, societal, international - and each aspect having its own master principle. These principles are not mere organizational props, but are deeply theoretical and empirically fundamental. The volume expresses the core ideas, results and conclusions of Rummel's major, five-volume work on "Understanding Conflict and War. "In discarding technical material and focusing on principles and meaning, "The Conflict Helix "presents an executive summary of a lifetime of work in a digestible form. In light of recent events in Europe, Asia and Latin American this work takes on a special poignancy for the developing no less than the industrialized worlds. Hence, this book should be of value to the general reader as well as professionals and advanced students of international politics.

Pandemic Fissures

Pandemic Fissures
Author: Suddhabrata Deb Roy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2024-08-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040104266

This book analyses India’s response to COVID-19, using an intersectional framework that highlights the roles of the central government, regional governments, and community organisations, both formal and informal. The volume brings forward the immense potential embedded within collective communitarian formations by exploring themes such as disaster capitalism, municipal socialism, civic capitalism, apocalypse or disaster communism, and Marxist humanism in relation to the management strategies exhibited by the Indian government towards the COVID-19 pandemic. It underscores the necessity for imagining a scenario where egalitarian and socially just policies replace the dominance of capitalism. Part of the Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-COVID World series, the book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of sociology, political studies, cultural studies, social anthropology, South Asia studies, pandemic studies, and postcolonial studies.

Making War and Building Peace

Making War and Building Peace
Author: Michael W. Doyle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2011-04-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400837693

Making War and Building Peace examines how well United Nations peacekeeping missions work after civil war. Statistically analyzing all civil wars since 1945, the book compares peace processes that had UN involvement to those that didn't. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis argue that each mission must be designed to fit the conflict, with the right authority and adequate resources. UN missions can be effective by supporting new actors committed to the peace, building governing institutions, and monitoring and policing implementation of peace settlements. But the UN is not good at intervening in ongoing wars. If the conflict is controlled by spoilers or if the parties are not ready to make peace, the UN cannot play an effective enforcement role. It can, however, offer its technical expertise in multidimensional peacekeeping operations that follow enforcement missions undertaken by states or regional organizations such as NATO. Finding that UN missions are most effective in the first few years after the end of war, and that economic development is the best way to decrease the risk of new fighting in the long run, the authors also argue that the UN's role in launching development projects after civil war should be expanded.

End of History and the Last Man

End of History and the Last Man
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2006-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1416531785

Ever since its first publication in 1992, the New York Times bestselling The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. "Profoundly realistic and important...supremely timely and cogent...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." —The Washington Post Book World Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

Soviet Union

Soviet Union
Author: Raymond E. Zickel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1182
Release: 1991
Genre: Russia
ISBN:

Economies of Peace

Economies of Peace
Author: Werner Distler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2020-06-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429559291

Looking beyond and beneath the macro level, this book examines the processes and outcomes of the interaction of economic reforms and socio-economic peacebuilding programmes with, and international interventions in, people’s lived realities in conflict-affected societies. The contributions argue that disregarding socio-economic aspects of peace and how they relate to the everyday leaves a vacuum in the understanding of the formation of post-conflict economies. To address this gap, the book outlines and deploys the concept of ‘post-conflict economy formation’. This is a multifaceted phenomenon, including both formal and informal processes that occur in the post-conflict period and contribute to the introduction, adjustment, or abolition of economic practices, institutions, and rules that inform the transformation of the socio-economic fabric of the society. The contributions engage with existing statebuilding and peacebuilding debates, while bringing in critical political economy perspectives. Specifically, they analyse processes of post-conflict economy formation and the navigation between livelihood needs; local translations of the liberal hegemonic order; and different, sparse manifestations of welfare states. The book concludes that a sustainable peace requires the formation of peace economies: economies that work towards reducing structural inequalities and grievances of the (pre-)conflict period, as well as addressing the livelihood concerns of citizens. This book was originally published as a special issue of Civil Wars.

Power Kills

Power Kills
Author: R. J. Rummel
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1412831709

This volume, newly published in paperback, is part of a comprehensive effort by R. J. Rummel to understand and place in historical perspective the entire subject of genocide and mass murder, or what he calls democide. It is the fifth in a series of volumes in which he offers a detailed analysis of the 120,000,000 people killed as a result of government action or direct intervention. In Power Kills, Rummel offers a realistic and practical solution to war, democide, and other collective violence. As he states it, "The solution...is to foster democratic freedom and to democratize coercive power and force. That is, mass killing and mass murder carried out by government is a result of indiscriminate, irresponsible Power at the center." Rummel observes that well-established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. The more democratic two nations are, the less likely is war or smaller-scale violence between them. The more democratic a nation is, the less severe its overall foreign violence, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence, and the less its democide. Rummel argues that the evidence supports overwhelmingly the most important fact of our time: democracy is a method of nonviolence.