The establishment of the African Union and its African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in 2002 marked a fundamental transformation in how African states collectively address security challenges. This book examines the origins, institutional design, and early performance of APSA, revealing the political dynamics that shaped this landmark initiative in regional security governance.

Drawing on extensive elite interviews with key decision-makers, such as former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and access to foreign policy documents, this study reconstructs how a coalition of states known as the Like-Minded Five (South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Ethiopia, and Mali) exercised disproportionate influence over the creation of APSA. The analysis traces the formation of state preferences, the negotiation process through which diverse visions were reconciled, and the relationship between institutional design choices and subsequent performance. The book challenges the tendency to underestimate the agency of African states in shaping continental institutions and instead demonstrates how domestic political considerations shaped South African and Nigerian preferences, whilst strategic coalition-building and normative entrepreneurship enabled these middle powers to translate their vision into institutional outcomes.

Understanding the political bargains struck during APSA's formative period remains essential to understanding security cooperation in Africa and beyond. This book will therefore be an important read for policymakers and for researchers across the fields of African studies, international relations, and security studies.

This book offers a critical rethinking of international gender agendas by placing Tunisian perspectives at the centre of analysis.

Drawing on a rich, interdisciplinary, theoretical account and extensive empirical research, the book examines European Union gender policies in Tunisia from the 1995 Association Agreement through the 2010?2011 revolution and the recent authoritarian resurgence. Grounded in the ‘decentring’ approach in International Relations and inspired by Gayatri Spivak’s distinction between “giving voice” and “speaking for”, it interrogates how far EU policies genuinely engage with, or marginalise, the diverse agencies of Tunisian women. Situating EU initiatives within broader United Nations frameworks, the study highlights the reciprocal circulation of gender discourses and practices across international and regional levels. Methodologically informed by the Grounded Theory, it adopts a self-reflexive approach, addressing key issues such as positionality, freedom, safety, and care in research, while challenging Eurocentric assumptions about knowledge production and policy design.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Gender and International Relations, the Middle East and North Africa, and European foreign policy, as well as practitioners interested in feminist approaches to international governance and Euro?Mediterranean relations.

Emphasising the importance of intra-household investigation, contributors incorporate a range of methodological theories to address fundamental consumer topics. They demonstrate that consumer decisions are essential for correctly deriving economic quantitative evidence for social and policy issues. Illustrating how individual consumption habits can influence patterns on a regional and national level, entries provide an intergenerational overview of both household and population economics.

The Elgar Encyclopedia of Consumption is an essential resource for economists and sociology scholars, particularly those focusing on consumption and economic theory. It will also be of interest to market researchers and managers seeking to better understand the intricacies of consumer behaviour.

Key Features:

• Explores the economic and social impacts of consumer patterns
• Addresses methodological issues for economists attempting to analyse consumer behaviour
• Presents interdisciplinary entries that combine economic insights and their consequences on household social dynamics
• Evaluates topics from retirement to migration to provide an inclusive overview of purchaser behaviour

This volume examines Greenland's challenging paths towards independence and explores the fundamental tension between Greenland's aspirations for sovereignty and the geopolitical realities of Arctic strategic competition. The book provides a comprehensive framework for understanding Greenland's strategic options through detailed examination of its socio-economic, foreign, security, and defence policy, the Kingdom-Greenland relationship, and external pressures and offers from major powers. It analyses how Greenland can maintain external resilience while pursuing greater autonomy in foreign policy, addressing the conflicting goals that arise when domestic independence
processes intersect with international security concerns. Drawing on recent geopolitical developments-including renewed U.S. interest in acquiring the territory and remilitarisation of the Arctic-the analysis demonstrates how gradual economic diversification and strategic partnerships offer more sustainable paths than hasty independence or resource extraction dependency. The book reveals the mutual interdependence between Denmark and Greenland in protecting sovereignty against great power influence, while critically examining whether Greenland's inclusive foreign policy vision ("nothing about us without us") can be implemented without adequate resources.

Essential reading for scholars and policymakers working on Arctic governance, sovereignty studies, and small state diplomacy, this book will appeal to researchers in international relations, political science, Indigenous governance, and Arctic studies. It provides crucial insights for understanding how sub-state territories navigate independence aspirations within complex geopolitical environments.

By employing empirical evidence and diverse research methods, Wan highlights how concepts such as competition and selection, as well as evolutionary game theory, can be drivers within international relations. Chapters identify the global system and domestic politics, including political actors and political problems, as evolutionary products. Using the USA as an example, Wan also demonstrates an evolutionary narrative of institutional change and continuity. Finally, the book presents a compelling use case for this framework by adopting an evolutionary paradigm to discuss implications for the USA-China strategic rivalry.

Evolutionary Theory of International Politics provides valuable insights for scholars and students of international relations seeking a more in-depth understanding of global politics and the theories used to comprehend it. Specialists in international relations and political theory will also benefit from the evolutionary framework’s treatment of pressing international issues.

This book explores the evolution and impact of deliberative democracy in East Asia, focusing on Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan through a deliberative systems framework.

Democratization and democratic development in the region are intertwined with social movements, public participation, institutional reform, and deliberative innovation. The book highlights how deliberative democracy can transform politics, inform policymaking, and strengthen democratic governance, while also exploring the integration of deliberation with digital technologies and artificial intelligence to advance democratic innovations. Drawing on practical experiences, it demonstrates how democratic deliberation can shift public attitudes, shape policy, and address complex challenges.

Essential reading for students and scholars of East Asian politics and deliberative democracy, The Transformative Power of Deliberative Democracy in East Asia is also invaluable for political and social scientists interested in comparative democracy, public governance, and public participation in science and technology.

This book critically rethinks the dominant narratives around the so-called 'liberal international'/'rules-based' order, by examining how China discursively engages with, and mirrors, the very hegemonic order it contests. Moving beyond the commonplace representation of China as a paradoxically 'revisionist' yet occasionally 'compliant' power, it argues that what appears contradictory is, in fact, a coherent counterhegemonic strategy rooted in discursive rearticulation rather than outright rejection.

Using a Gramscian analytical lens, the book disarticulates the ideologically fused concept of the 'liberal international order', revealing it as a hegemonic construct that equates liberalism with order and opposition with illiberal disorder. It demonstrates how China's international practices expose the ideological and relational structures underpinning liberal hegemony. Rather than simply resisting liberal norms, China mirrors and rearticulates them in an effort to position itself as a more legitimate global leader.

This book challenges IR orthodoxy by examining hegemonic representations and by foregrounding the role of the global South - not as a passive recipient but as an active co-producer of order. In doing so, it raises provocative questions about whether liberal hegemony is tied to Western dominance at all, or whether it may survive its unmaking by being mirrored into new forms.

Going beyond unimaginative calls for UN Security Council reform and demands for defunding and “detoothing” the UN entirely, veteran diplomat, Jassim Buallay, offers a practical road map for the modernization of the UN System and improvement of its crisis response.

Since its inception, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the United Nations System has undertaken both the routine work of global affairs, including legal, political, economic, social, cultural, and judicial work, and the exceptional work of crisis management, including responding to territorial disputes, civil conflicts, famine, natural disasters, global health pandemics, and much more. Increasingly, the crisis response capacity of the United Nations System has been exposed as woefully inadequate, hindered by structural redundancies, bureaucratic inefficiencies, budgetary profligacies, and lack of adequate accountability mechanisms.

Drawing upon the extensive knowledge and personal experience of the author working with the United Nations, both from within as an international civil servant and later as a diplomatic representative of his country to the System, Jassim Buallay delves into how UN institutions are organized, mandated, funded, staffed, and managed. Through extensive examination of the history and processes of the United Nations, Buallay explores a middle path for UN reform which emphasizes efficiency and accountability and calls upon all member states to renew their commitment to the UN as the best hope for world peace and sustainable social and economic development.

This fully updated textbook provides a concise yet comprehensive overview on the EU’s polity and politics, offering an ideal balance between its history, institutions, and decision-making processes, while drawing connections between these dimensions throughout.

It helps students and scholars understand the EU’s evolution and organization, as well as its interactions with various global actors, presenting a highly readable analysis of how the EU works while recognizing the complexity of the European project.

Key features:

• Explores core questions of European integration such as democratic deficit, politicization, the role of member states, institutional crisis, and citizen involvement.
• Engages with fundamental and pressing issues in EU policy-making such as its evolutions, the EU’s legitimization, Brexit, Covid-19, the challenges of democratic backsliding, populism, and Euroscepticism, as well as the EU’s role in the world.
• Presents new in-text boxes focusing on major debates or evolutions such as the European Semester, and reflective end-of-chapter questions for further study.

At a time of multiple and continued challenges to the European Union and its legitimacy, this textbook is essential reading for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to understand EU politics today.

This book examines the principle and practice of the core but under-scrutinised pillar of guarantees of non-recurrence in transitional justice.

Transitional justice’s grand ambition is embodied in the slogan: ‘Never again’ ? never again should societies endure the atrocities of war and mass violence. However, as conflicts proliferate in the 21st century, transitional justice has thus far failed to ensure states take the necessary steps to remedy their root causes ? that is, those measures framed as guarantees of non-recurrence. One reason is a lack of clarity about the scope of the duty to prevent recurrence. This conceptual gap is particularly acute in South Asia, where countries continue to struggle with violence and autocracy. Yet, scholarly examination of this region remains under-developed. With Sri Lanka as a case study, this book contributes to filling these two critical gaps ? conceptual and regional ? by examining the scope and application of the duty to guarantee non-recurrence from a key Global South perspective. Through extensive fieldwork, the book explores how guarantees of non-recurrence are interpreted and applied in an emblematic post-conflict context in the Global South. Embedding the empirical research in interdisciplinary scholarship across transitional justice, human rights, peacebuilding, development, political economy and regional studies, the book critically interrogates the extent to which guarantees of non-recurrence can effectively advance socio-political transformation towards a more comprehensive justice. The book argues for a re-prioritising of guarantees of non-recurrence within transitional justice and advances a novel approach based on applied political economy to achieve a more transformative version of guarantees of non-recurrence.

This book is relevant for a wide range of scholars, students, policymakers, advocates and activists working in transitional justice, peacebuilding, conflict transformation, human rights and Sri Lanka and South Asian studies.

This collection examines what 'critical theory' as a distinct intellectual tradition in social, political, and legal thought contributes to the study of EU law and to the future of the European project.

Covering a broad range of substantive fields of EU law and the history of legal integration, including constitutional law, the design of monetary union and economic law, fiscal integration and taxation, labour law, fundamental rights and anti-discrimination law, gender equality, migration law and policy, data protection, and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), the volume illustrates how a more rigorous engagement with critical theory helps to navigate the post-crisis European legal landscape. The contributors bring fresh, thoughtful, and innovative perspectives to EU law and theory, diagnosing the deep-seated challenges facing contemporary EU law and reimagining the emancipatory possibilities still available for it.

Contributors provide in-depth analysis of concerns related to the methods and procedures in private international law reflecting on their relevance in different legal situations. They illustrate the application and stress testing of traditional approaches and evaluate how specific categories are distinguished according to the vulnerability of the person to be protected, the legal position, and the values to be enhanced. The book considers the role of contractually weaker parties and the torts’ victim, and concludes by addressing these values on a global scale.

Values in Private International Law is a vital reference for scholars and students of private international law, European law and comparative law. Its insights will also be pertinent for practitioners, judges, and international lawyers seeking legislation and case law for challenging issues in these evolving fields.

This book is the first publication that comprehensively addresses the Mulheres da Paz Project, implemented throughout Brazil by the federal government, and examines the execution of the program in two different territories in Rio de Janeiro: one dominated by criminal drug trafficking organizations and the other by the presence of militias.

Through rich ethnographic study and interviews, Estivalet shows how women living in the urban peripheries of Rio de Janeiro organized to imagine and create better lives for themselves and their communities in ways far beyond the expectations of the program's founders. Bringing their strengths to the surface and taking advantage of the networks established through participation in the project, the women studied in this book occupied public space and representative positions in institutional politics, such as women's rights councils and women's groups in political parties. They developed activities to generate collective income, train and educate themselves and other citizens and young people, and promoted improvements in the living conditions of their communities.

Gender, Violence, and Public Policies: When Women Act for Peace highlights the transformative impact of women's participation in urban social policy for the achievement of women's rights and human rights.

The book codifies the DRC Research Practice's methodological heuristics for its several research process elements: conceiving cases as endeavors, characterizing them, explaining their system behaviors and process outcomes, and drawing lessons about how endeavors of the kind could possibly work. These heuristics are fully exemplified in three original case studies.

Critically engaging with Herbert Simon's idea of disciplines concerned with artificial phenomena, Michael Barzelay and Alan Love show what it would mean for disciplines like Public Management to take a stand that they are endeavor-centered disciplines. All told, the book makes the affirmative case that Public Management can cumulatively develop knowledge that is original, rigorous, and relevant to practice, while exemplifying endeavor-centered academic disciplines in the academy.

In a time of global crises, governments, international agencies and various experts claim to promote political participation that is inclusive of children and young people. This book details how these claims tend to be deceptive.

The Politics of Deception demonstrates how youth parliaments, councils and roundtables are governance exercises not just designed and tightly managed by adults but limited by them. Informed by adultist ways of seeing, young people are represented as vulnerable and citizens-in-waiting and cannot be taken seriously as political agents. Parallel to these formal initiatives, large numbers of young people are recognising the interconnected nature of contemporary crises, mobilising politically in diverse ways, from street marches to digital action, to strategic litigation and even 'lying flats' to push for equality, social justice and planetary survival. Animated by optimism and recognition that intergenerational solidarity is essential for creating a future in which humans and 'more-than-humans' can flourish, Judith Bessant and Rob Watts illustrate how youth participation, as it is commonly practised, is deeply political, deceptive, highly contested and too often informed by outdated and harmful representations of young people.

This volume is for young people, researchers, policymakers, parents and educators wanting to better understand what is happening in the world and who appreciate the value of recognising young people's political capacity and right to help shape the world.

Examines the role of identity in fostering deep perceptual divides in both American and British politics, ultimately addressing the question: how do we make sense of the divisive political landscape we find ourselves in?

We dwell in parallel universes. An identity-based gulf in perception has emerged in recent years in both the U.K and the U.S. Elements of identity involving a sense of one’s place in society, of who belongs and who does not, of the role of government, and of the meaning of “freedom” all shape what individuals are willing and unwilling to believe. As these elements of identity have become more tightly bundled together, identity-based divisions have deepened, yielding the Great Perceptual Divide. In the U.S., this divide has tended to fold neatly into the gulf between the two main political parties, while in Britain Brexit has shaped the fault line between “Leavers” and “Remainers,” competing identities that have endured beyond the process of exiting the European Union.

What are the consequences of this identity-driven perceptual divide? By focusing on the role of identity as a source of the political divide, this book analyzes specific dynamics such as the systematic undermining of authoritative institutions and information sources, the demand for misinformation, a perversion of political accountability, and the displacement of substantive policy debate by culture wars. The book concludes with actionable paths forward in an effort to lead society back to good-willed partisanship.

This book examines how the United Nations Secretariat built a coordinated regional peacekeeping architecture across the Israel?Arab conflict between 1967 and 1982, tracing its operational achievements and the structural limits that ultimately constrained them.

Drawing on previously classified UN archives, the book offers the first integrated institutional history of four UN operations ? UNTSO, UNEF II, UNDOF, and UNIFIL ? treated not as isolated deployments but as components of a deliberately managed regional system. It introduces the concept of Inter-Operation Collaboration (IOC), demonstrating that mission integration was practised decades before it was formalised in UN doctrine. Central to the narrative is General Ensio Siilasvuo, the Finnish officer who served successively as force commander, ceasefire negotiator at Kilometre 101, and Chief Coordinator of UN Peacekeeping in the Middle East, and whose career embodies the blend of military and diplomatic innovation that defined the era. The book also recovers the critical role of the Office of Special Political Affairs as the Secretariat's institutional engine.

The book will be of interest to scholars of UN peacekeeping, Middle Eastern history, and international organisations, as well as to practitioners and policymakers engaged with contemporary questions of multilateral conflict management.

Interrogating the divide between violent and nonviolent protest, this volume highlights the importance of strategically connecting seemingly unrelated historical events and political movements across Sri Lanka's North and South, spanning the period from 1971 to 2022, to offer fresh insights into intranational conflict.

By bringing the different protest movements of insurgency and civil disobedience (as well as the ethno-religious communities aligned with them) under one umbrella, this book represents a call for political action to address long-standing socio-political conflicts plaguing Sri Lanka. Divided into three sections (revolution and militant violence (1971?2009); postwar politics (2009 to present); and civil disobedience and the Aragalaya (2022)), the book offers case study chapters that draw on a range of sources such as literature, film, and performance studies, citing aesthetic expressions as acts of political resistance. Providing a conceptual framework for how we define protest and how protest intersects with war and revolution, the book deliberately reframes the act as a continuum that includes insurgency, civil disobedience, and artistic resistance.

Ultimately challenging established regional and ethno-linguistic divisions that have been understudied by scholars of Sri Lanka since the 1970s, this book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of South Asian studies in particular, as well as scholars researching protest movements and peace studies more generally.