The story of Black Hawk Down is a familiar one. On 3 October 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation; the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. The United States sought to show the world that the UN could rebuild a country, but in a dire foreshadowing of the failed efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later, the intervention in Somalia was plagued with political infighting, policy mismatch, confusion, and fatal assumptions.

In 1992 Somalia saw the largest ever deployment of American troops to the continent of Africa, and 1993 brought the first UN-led peace enforcement mission and the most ambitious experiment in nation-building. In Beyond Black Hawk Down, Jonathan Carroll provides the first scholarly military history of the entire intervention, from its early and largely successful humanitarian phase in 1992 through to the ultimate withdrawal of UN forces in 1995. Carroll dispels the myths and misunderstandings surrounding one of the most infamous episodes of the 1990s to present a new interpretation of events, most notably by including the Somali perspective, to argue what went so wrong in Somalia, and more importantly, why.

Understanding the intervention in Somalia, its successes and the roots of its failures, is invaluable to contemporary debates on concepts of nation-building and counterinsurgency. Moreover, the increasing regularity of inter-state and intra-state conflicts across the world means the international community will continue to be called upon to intervene in other failed or failing states in the future. Beyond Black Hawk Down is an important new history that will inform the shape and nature of future military interventions.

The influence of news coverage on the rise of far-right ideologies is undeniable. To better understand the potential impact of the liberal media on the development of authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, xenophobic, racist, or reactionary views, it is essential to explore the connection between dominant ideology and the role of news organizations in society. Using my analytical framework, I demonstrate how the mass media leverages the "safety net" to bolster far-right candidates and parties and weaken radical left-wing political groups and social movements, particularly during capitalist crises. My project goes beyond scrutinizing commercial media and critically analyzes the capitalist mode of production.

This book investigates the implementation of gender mainstreaming legislation and policies in South Africa, focusing on their impact on women's empowerment in terms of representation, participation, and influence in municipal government. The objective is to understand why women remain underrepresented in leadership roles and decision-making at the district level of municipal governance. Emphasizing how municipal councils incorporate gender mainstreaming into their decision-making processes and the resulting impact, the author focuses on understanding the developments that advance municipal governments toward equitable governance and how decision-making has evolved. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in gender studies, African studies, postcolonial feminist theory, and politics, as well as policy-makers and government representatives.

This book examines the causes and consequences of the dramatic shift in Japanese national security perspectives and mutually exclusive policies toward China and the USA. It sheds new light on the changing trajectories of triadic dynamics shaping U.S.-China-Japan strategic insecurity, their historical roots, its implications for trans-Pacific peace and stability, and their potential influence on emerging regional and systemic security architectures. Against the backdrop of U.S.-proclaimed "great power competition" with China as the defining feature and organizing principle of the U.S.-led coalition's strategic and geopolitical responses to China's "national rejuvenation," with primacy's "displacement anxiety" triggering a "systemic transitional fluidity," the book examines the origins and outcomes of Sino-Japanese insecurity, its polarizing effects on U.S.-China and U.S.-Japan relations, and the wider systemic resonances and dissonances as the post-Cold War unipolar systemic structure gives way to an uncertain, ambiguous, and imprecise successor regime. Finally, historical lessons drawn from primary documents are used to illuminate the prospects for triangular relations in shaping the Asia-Pacific security ecology over the medium term.

Oceans and deserts, jungles and plains, mountains and rivers, monsoons and blizzards, fertile grounds and diseased lands; all have shaped how strategy and technology has been deployed and developed, and all have supported unexpected victories and decimated even the best-laid plans. Conversely, warfare and militarization have shaped the environment, scarring landscapes, accelerating the global spread of disease, unbalancing ecosystems, and contributing to climate change.

Reflecting on the inextricable, reciprocal, and often surprising relationship between the natural world and human warfare, these essays offer a new perspective on power, knowledge, and the environment in US military history.

The history of US military engagement in the Pacific powerfully demonstrates the profound and diverse impacts that regions' extraordinarily diverse environments have wrought on warfare. US military action has also had profound impacts in the Pacific, from the nuclear weapons testing programs of the Cold War to the use of chemical defoliants in Vietnam. The contributors to this volume consider how the physical environments of the Pacific shaped the process and outcome of battles and wars, and discuss the effect warfare and other military actions had on these physical environments.

Expert authors explore how colonial legacies, institutional frameworks, and international influences have molded public policy evaluation across diverse contexts. Chapters critically assess current challenges facing evaluators, including capacity constraints, political interference, and the tension between global standards and local realities. Integrating both political and technocratic perspectives, they consider emerging practices in the field, proposing innovative strategies for developing more effective and culturally responsive approaches to evaluation. Timely and perceptive, the Handbook ultimately emphasizes the need for more inclusive global discussions surrounding public policy evaluation.

This Handbook is an important resource for students and academics in public policy, public administration, political science, international development, and sociology. Policymakers, government officials, and professionals will also benefit from the book's theoretical and practical insights.

The Handbook is divided into three core thematic sections, covering analytical models and frameworks, cross-country comparisons, and in-depth case studies. Chapters explore the current use of mainstream theories and investigate topics such as transparency, innovation, regulation, communication, and public policy teaching, identifying key challenges as well as opportunities for development. They conduct detailed examinations of countries across Latin America, highlighting the heterogeneity of the region and revealing how policies are shaped by local political regimes, socio-economic conditions, and cultural factors. Ultimately, the Handbook encourages a rethinking of public policy processes in Latin America, underscoring the need to promote South-South connections and to develop analytical models that are sensitive to the regional context.

Presenting original practical and theoretical innovations from Latin America to a wider international audience, this Handbook will benefit students and academics in public policy, public administration, policy analysis and evaluation, regulation and governance, and development studies. It is also an important read for policymakers and professionals looking to improve public policies in Latin America.

This pioneering volume examines Europeanism in the new international society that emerged after the First World War through the League of Nations, with a focus on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the Baltic countries, and the Balkans. The book analyzes how Europeanism was consolidated as an argument for the future, especially after the Second World War, when the three strong ideas of Europeanism came to fruition: peace among Europeans, good democratic government, and the socioeconomic welfare of peoples. By doing so, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the evolution of Europeanism and its positive influence in the countries of Eastern Europe, from the interwar period to the present day.

The book will appeal to researchers, students, and scholars of political science, international relations, European studies, and history, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of Europeanism and the European integration process of the CEE, Baltic, and Balkan countries.

There is a pressing need for a greater understanding among the world's diverse peoples. Once individuals gain an appreciation of each other's language and history, they can use this foundation to help construct a more peaceful, harmonious, cooperative and equitable world. But how can they begin to work toward this goal? In 2013 China proposed the Community of Shared Future (CSF), which has since become a framework for international collaboration aimed at creating a better world. Under the CSF framework , the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the three major globalinitiatives have been proposed. The BRI and these initiatives have garnered support and praise from much of the world. Nearly all African countries that maintain diplomatic relations with China have signed BRI cooperative agreements. However, the United States and other Western countries are not willing to accept a rising China in the international community. Thus, the West needs to gain a better understanding of them. The BRI and the three major global initiatives are not empty slogans. It is crucial for China to develop a global governance system that takes concrete actions and benefits other countries.

This project seeks to demonstrate how multiple sites of discursive production (political elite, media, and popular culture) interact to construct truths about a conflict that condition political possibility. Through breaking down the interaction between multiple sites of production within moments of discursive stability and by tracing major themes across multiple sites of discursive production this work will illuminate the processes by which the 'truth' for a conflict is produced, sustained, and challenged. Specifically, this project will be contesting two historical moments of 'naturalness' wherein a dominant discourse established a representational stability within American foreign policy in order to display how multiple sites of production work to produce, sustain, and challenge the political realities of military interventions. In doing so, the processes which impact the production of policy and public acceptance/condemnation for military interventions will be demonstrated.

As a continuation of our award-winning book, 'China's City Cluster Development in the Race to Carbon Neutrality' and our recent book, '30 Years of Urban Change in China's 10 Core Cities', this book delves into China's recent progress in reshaping its cities through holistic urban transformation strategies. Building on our previous work, we expand our focus to explore the latest developments in urbanization, examining how recent strategies and policies have influenced cities and cityscapes across China and beyond.

It is evident that China is reshaping its cities through a dynamic interplay of policy reforms, technological advancements, and creative planning. The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a sharp increase in urbanization, with a particular focus on the development of smart, resilient, and sustainable cities. Through a thorough examination of case study examples that have undergone significant recent change, this book investigates how these goals are being achieved.

'China Under Construction: Shaping Cities through Recent Urban Transformation' offers a thorough overview of China's current urban transformation efforts, highlighting both the achievements and the ongoing challenges, through case studies and in-depth evaluations. We hope to provide insightful information about the real-world applications of urban strategies and their wider implications for China's future urban landscape by concentrating on ten selected cities. This extension of our earlier research emphasizes how critical it is to view urban transformation as a complex process influencing social dynamics, technology, infrastructure, and environmental sustainability, among other facets of city life and urbanization.

Shari`a, Citizenship, and identity in Aceh presents both an ethnographic and a sociohistorical account of identity making among both the Muslim majority population and different minority groups in Aceh, Indonesia.

Diverging from previous studies on majority-minority group relations in a predominantly Muslim country that tend to engage solely with one group's experiences, Shari`a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh argues that the majority and minority groups in Aceh, Indonesia, have interactively and mutually created conceptions of identity and recognition that have significant implications on the experience of citizenship in the region. The authors provide not only a narrative of majority-minority group encounters in a variety of issues, but also a wide-ranging account of struggles from both the Muslim majority and non-Muslim minority groups for recognition of their own identity in the public space. To what extent do minority groups feel that they belong to Aceh's communal identity, which is mostly Islamic? And what kind of citizenship is in place when minorities feel marginalized living under Aceh's Islamic rules?

Shari`a, Citizenship, and Identity in Aceh debunks the concept of citizenship by way of deploying the concept of the politics of recognition against the politics of the dominant culture theory. It looks further at how equal citizenship in a democratic political system has been negotiated and compromised, and how the politics of dominant culture has caused a sense of shared ownership to be largely deficient and vague in Aceh.