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The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth Century Europe: Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics
by David RobertsBy developing a long-term supranational perspective, this ambitious, multi-faceted work provides a new understanding of ‘totalitarianism’, the troubling common element linking Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. The book’s original analysis of antecedent ideas on the subject sheds light on the common origins and practices of the regimes. Through this fresh appreciation of their initial frame of mind, Roberts demonstrates how the three political experiments yielded unprecedented collective mobilization but also a characteristic combination of radicalization, myth-making, and failure. Providing deep historical analysis, the book proves that 'totalitarianism' best characterizes the common features in the originating aspirations, the mode of action and even the outcomes of Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. By enhancing our knowledge of what ‘totalitarianism’ was and where it came from, Roberts affords important lessons about the ongoing challenges, possibilities, and dangers of the modern political experiment.
The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth Century Europe: Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics
by David RobertsBy developing a long-term supranational perspective, this ambitious, multi-faceted work provides a new understanding of ‘totalitarianism’, the troubling common element linking Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. The book’s original analysis of antecedent ideas on the subject sheds light on the common origins and practices of the regimes. Through this fresh appreciation of their initial frame of mind, Roberts demonstrates how the three political experiments yielded unprecedented collective mobilization but also a characteristic combination of radicalization, myth-making, and failure. Providing deep historical analysis, the book proves that 'totalitarianism' best characterizes the common features in the originating aspirations, the mode of action and even the outcomes of Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. By enhancing our knowledge of what ‘totalitarianism’ was and where it came from, Roberts affords important lessons about the ongoing challenges, possibilities, and dangers of the modern political experiment.
Fascist Interactions: Proposals for a New Approach to Fascism and Its Era, 1919-1945
by David D. RobertsAlthough studies of fascism have constituted one of the most fertile areas of historical inquiry in recent decades, more and more scholars have called for a new agenda with more research beyond Italy and Germany, less preoccupation with definition and classification, and more sustained focus on the relationships among different fascist formations before 1945. Starting from a critical assessment of these imperatives, this rigorous volume charts a historiographical path that transcends rigid distinctions while still developing meaningful criteria of differentiation. Even as we take fascism seriously as a political phenomenon, such an approach allows us to better understand its distinctive contradictions and historical variations.
Totalitarianism (Key Concepts in Political Theory)
by David D. RobertsLess than a century old, the concept of totalitarianism is one of the most controversial in political theory, with some proposing to abandon it altogether. In this accessible, wide-ranging introduction, David Roberts addresses the grounds for skepticism and shows that appropriately recast—as an aspiration and direction, rather than a system of domination—totalitarianism is essential for understanding the modern political universe. Surveying the career of the concept from the 1920s to today, Roberts shows how it might better be applied to the three ""classic"" regimes of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Extending totalitarianism’s reach into the twenty-first century, he then examines how Communist China, Vladimir Putin's Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), and the threat of the technological “surveillance state” can be conceptualized in the totalitarian tradition. Roberts shows that although the term has come to have overwhelmingly negative connotations, some have enthusiastically pursued a totalitarian direction—and not simply for power, control, or domination. This volume will be essential reading for any student, scholar or reader interested in how totalitarianism does, and could, shape our modern political world.
Totalitarianism (Key Concepts in Political Theory)
by David D. RobertsLess than a century old, the concept of totalitarianism is one of the most controversial in political theory, with some proposing to abandon it altogether. In this accessible, wide-ranging introduction, David Roberts addresses the grounds for skepticism and shows that appropriately recast—as an aspiration and direction, rather than a system of domination—totalitarianism is essential for understanding the modern political universe. Surveying the career of the concept from the 1920s to today, Roberts shows how it might better be applied to the three ""classic"" regimes of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Extending totalitarianism’s reach into the twenty-first century, he then examines how Communist China, Vladimir Putin's Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS), and the threat of the technological “surveillance state” can be conceptualized in the totalitarian tradition. Roberts shows that although the term has come to have overwhelmingly negative connotations, some have enthusiastically pursued a totalitarian direction—and not simply for power, control, or domination. This volume will be essential reading for any student, scholar or reader interested in how totalitarianism does, and could, shape our modern political world.
German politics today: Second edition (Politics Today)
by Geoffrey RobertsThis revised and updated edition provides the reader with a comprehensive description and analysis of the institutions of the German political system. The historical development of German politics is surveyed, and special attention is given to the causes, course and consequences of German reunification. Where more detailed explanations of special topics are required, such as surplus seats in the electoral system, or the political career of Chancellor Merkel, these are provided in boxes set within the relevant chapters. Some information is provided in tabular form, such as the list of federal chancellors and federal presidents, the membership of trade unions, or election results. Appendices contain examples of important constitutional court cases, plus a survey of the political features of the sixteen Länder which make up the federal structure of the state. Each chapter offers suggestions for further reading. Accessibly written, with suggestions for further reading, this book offers a sound basis for all undergraduate courses focused on, or including, study of the German political system. The author's familiarity with all aspects of the German political system is evident from the authority with which he explains the structures and processes which form the basis of German politics.
German politics today: Third edition (Politics Today Ser.)
by Geoffrey RobertsThis revised and updated third edition provides readers with a comprehensive description and analysis of the German political system, and of the political behaviour within the context of that system. It surveys the historical development of German politics, including the background, processes and political consequences of reunification, and recent changes to the electoral system, party system and recent Bundestag and Land elections. This authoritative yet accessible textbook presents certain specialised topics, such as the career of Angela Merkel and the Eurozone crisis, in separate sections within the relevant chapters, and provides tables for key information including election results, the membership of trade unions and lists of presidents and chancellors. The appendices include a review of significant constitutional court cases, a survey of the more important political features of each of the sixteen Länder, and the Bundestag election campaigns since 1949. Each chapter also offers suggestions for further reading. This new edition of German politics today offers a sound foundation for undergraduate courses focused on, or involving, study of the German political system.
German politics today: Third edition (Politics Today Mup Ser.)
by Geoffrey RobertsThis revised and updated third edition provides readers with a comprehensive description and analysis of the German political system, and of the political behaviour within the context of that system. It surveys the historical development of German politics, including the background, processes and political consequences of reunification, and recent changes to the electoral system, party system and recent Bundestag and Land elections. This authoritative yet accessible textbook presents certain specialised topics, such as the career of Angela Merkel and the Eurozone crisis, in separate sections within the relevant chapters, and provides tables for key information including election results, the membership of trade unions and lists of presidents and chancellors. The appendices include a review of significant constitutional court cases, a survey of the more important political features of each of the sixteen Länder, and the Bundestag election campaigns since 1949. Each chapter also offers suggestions for further reading. This new edition of German politics today offers a sound foundation for undergraduate courses focused on, or involving, study of the German political system.
Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books
by Geoffrey RobertsA compelling intellectual biography of Stalin told through his personal library In this engaging life of the twentieth century’s most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin’s tumultuous life and politics. Stalin, an avid reader from an early age, amassed a surprisingly diverse personal collection of thousands of books, many of which he marked and annotated revealing his intimate thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Based on his wide-ranging research in Russian archives, Roberts tells the story of the creation, fragmentation, and resurrection of Stalin’s personal library. As a true believer in communist ideology, Stalin was a fanatical idealist who hated his enemies—the bourgeoisie, kulaks, capitalists, imperialists, reactionaries, counter-revolutionaries, traitors—but detested their ideas even more.
US Foreign Policy and China: Bush’s First Term (Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy)
by Guy RobertsThis work is an exploration of how U.S.-China relations were managed by President George W. Bush. Roberts argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, President Bush conducted a calculated, pragmatic and highly successful strategy toward Beijing, which avoided conflict, resolved crisis and significantly increased economic and diplomatic ties. Roberts identifies key players and polices of the Bush White House and the specific themes of engagement (successful and unsuccessful) that unfolded during Bush’s first term. Research is based on analysis of primary and secondary documentation, as well as interviews with key White House actors (including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage), and two former Australian Prime Ministers. Topics of discussion include China’s changing attitude toward international engagement, China’s rising economic power and the tensions this triggered in the American establishment, the nature of U.S. China relations, contemporary and ideological understanding of the Bush Presidency as well as the strengths and weaknesses of different sources of information. US Foreign Policy and China will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy and China Studies.
US Foreign Policy and China: Bush’s First Term (Routledge Studies in US Foreign Policy)
by Guy RobertsThis work is an exploration of how U.S.-China relations were managed by President George W. Bush. Roberts argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, President Bush conducted a calculated, pragmatic and highly successful strategy toward Beijing, which avoided conflict, resolved crisis and significantly increased economic and diplomatic ties. Roberts identifies key players and polices of the Bush White House and the specific themes of engagement (successful and unsuccessful) that unfolded during Bush’s first term. Research is based on analysis of primary and secondary documentation, as well as interviews with key White House actors (including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage), and two former Australian Prime Ministers. Topics of discussion include China’s changing attitude toward international engagement, China’s rising economic power and the tensions this triggered in the American establishment, the nature of U.S. China relations, contemporary and ideological understanding of the Bush Presidency as well as the strengths and weaknesses of different sources of information. US Foreign Policy and China will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy and China Studies.
Berber Government: The Kabyle Polity in Pre-colonial Algeria
by Hugh RobertsThe political organisation of pre-colonial Kabylia, from which these traditions originate, was well described by nineteenth-century French authors. But their inability to explain it encouraged later theorists of Berber society, such as Ernest Gellner and Pierre Bourdieu, to dismiss Kabylia's political institutions, notably the jema'a (assembly or council), and to reduce Berber politics to a function of social structure and shared religion. In Berber Government, Hugh Roberts, a renowned expert on North Africa, explores the remarkable logics of Kabyle political organisation and the unusual degree of autonomy it possessed in relation to both kinship divisions and the religious field. This book further offers a pioneering account of the social and political history of Kabylia during the Ottoman period and establishes a radically new way to understand the complex place of the Kabyles in Algerian politics.
Berber Government: The Kabyle Polity in Pre-colonial Algeria (Library of Middle East History)
by Hugh RobertsThe Berber identity movement in North Africa was pioneered by the Kabyles of Algeria. But a preoccupation with identity and language has obscured the fact that Kabyle dissidence has been rooted in democratic aspirations inspired by the political traditions of Kabylia itself, a Berber-speaking region in the north of Algeria. The political organisation of pre-colonial Kabylia, from which these traditions originate, was well described by nineteenth-century French authors. But their inability to explain it encouraged later theorists of Berber society, such as Ernest Gellner and Pierre Bourdieu, to dismiss Kabylia's political institutions, notably the jema'a (assembly or council), and to reduce Berber politics to a function of social structure and shared religion. In Berber Government, Hugh Roberts, a renowned expert on North Africa, explores the remarkable logics of Kabyle political organisation and the unusual degree of autonomy it possessed in relation to both kinship divisions and the religious field. This book further offers a pioneering account of the social and political history of Kabylia during the Ottoman period and establishes a radically new way to understand the complex place of the Kabyles in Algerian politics.
An Urban Profile of the Middle East
by Hugh RobertsChanges in economic and social conditions throughout the Middle East have been profound, and perhaps nowhere has this been more evident than in the field of urban development and town planning. This book, first published in 1979, provides a view of the Middle East as it undergoes transition by identifying and analysing the symptoms of change.
An Urban Profile of the Middle East
by Hugh RobertsChanges in economic and social conditions throughout the Middle East have been profound, and perhaps nowhere has this been more evident than in the field of urban development and town planning. This book, first published in 1979, provides a view of the Middle East as it undergoes transition by identifying and analysing the symptoms of change.
The Energy Glut: The Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World
by Ian RobertsWorld-wide, over a billion adults are overweight and 300 million are officially 'obese', more than 3,000 people die every day on the world's roads and global warming and war threaten our survival as a species. The Energy Glut tells the story of energy and how our abuse of fossil fuel energy links all of these public issues as manifestations of the same fundamental planetary malaise.This exciting new book argues that the pulse of fossil fuel energy released from the ground after the discovery of oil not only started the process of catastrophic climate change, but also propelled the average human weight distribution upwards. The author presents a frightening vision of humans besieged by a food industry that uses sophisticated marketing techniques to sell mountains of energy-dense food to those who are 'functionally paralysed', with fewer opportunities to move our bodies than ever before. We see why the accumulation of body fat is a political, not a personal, problem. This insightful new work offers and appraises for the reader a set of personal and political de-carbonising strategies, but to 'tread more lightly on our world' we first need to make sense of the systemic processes, and The Energy Glut takes expert first steps in this direction.
The Energy Glut: The Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World
by Ian RobertsWorld-wide, over a billion adults are overweight and 300 million are officially 'obese', more than 3,000 people die every day on the world's roads and global warming and war threaten our survival as a species. The Energy Glut tells the story of energy and how our abuse of fossil fuel energy links all of these public issues as manifestations of the same fundamental planetary malaise.This exciting new book argues that the pulse of fossil fuel energy released from the ground after the discovery of oil not only started the process of catastrophic climate change, but also propelled the average human weight distribution upwards. The author presents a frightening vision of humans besieged by a food industry that uses sophisticated marketing techniques to sell mountains of energy-dense food to those who are 'functionally paralysed', with fewer opportunities to move our bodies than ever before. We see why the accumulation of body fat is a political, not a personal, problem. This insightful new work offers and appraises for the reader a set of personal and political de-carbonising strategies, but to 'tread more lightly on our world' we first need to make sense of the systemic processes, and The Energy Glut takes expert first steps in this direction.
Nicholas I And The Russian Intervention In Hungary (Studies in Russia and East Europe)
by Ian W Roberts
The Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere
by J. RobertsThe Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere is one of the first books to theoretically explore the relationship between free speech and the public sphere. By drawing upon Marxist theory the author, John Michael Roberts, demonstrates how liberal theorists frequently construct an abstract aesthetic of 'rational', 'cultivated' and 'competent' discussion which then serves as a norm through which certain utterances can be humiliated and excluded from participating fully within the public sphere. However, the author also shows how excluded utterances develop their own aesthetic of free speech and how this aesthetic then comes back to haunt the bourgeois public sphere.
The Competent Public Sphere: Global Political Economy, Dialogue and the Contemporary Workplace
by J. RobertsSuggesting that an expressive ideology has arisen within the workplace public sphere around the theme of 'competence', this book explores the hegemony of global finance and the fetishism of the new economy, exposing the dilemmas of the competence agenda, and illustrating how competence is played out in the workplace public sphere.
The Penguin History of the World: 6th edition
by J M Roberts Odd Arne WestadThis is a completely new and updated edition of J. M. Roberts and Odd Arne Westad's widely acclaimed, landmark bestseller The Penguin History of the World.For generations of readers The Penguin History of the World has been one of the great cultural experiences - the entire story of human endeavour laid out in all its grandeur and folly, drama and pain in a single authoritative book. Now, for the first time, it has been completely overhauled for its 6th edition - not just bringing it up to date, but revising it throughout in the light of new research and discoveries, such as the revolution in our understanding of many civilizations in the Ancient World. The closing sections of the book reflect what now seems to be the inexorable rise of Asia and the increasingly troubled situation in the West.About the authors:J.M. Roberts, CBE, published The Penguin History of the World in 1976 to immediate acclaim. His other major books include The Paris Commune from the Right, The Triumph of the West (which was also a successful television series), The Penguin History of Europe and The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century. He died in 2003.Odd Arne Westad, FBA, is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He has published fifteen books on modern and contemporary international history, among them The Global Cold War, which won the Bancroft Prize, and Decisive Encounters, a standard history of the Chinese civil war. He also served as general co-editor of the Cambridge History of the Cold War.Reviews'A work of outstanding breadth of scholarship and penetrating judgements. There is nothing better of its kind' Jonathan Sumption, Sunday Telegraph 'A stupendous achievement' A.J.P. Taylor'A brilliant book ... the most outstanding history of the world yet written' J.H. Plumb
The Globalization and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change
by J. Timmons Roberts Amy Bellone Hite Nitsan ChorevThis revised and updated second edition of The Globalization and Development Reader builds on the considerable success of a first edition that has been used around the world. It combines selected readings and editorial material to provide a coherent text with global coverage, reflecting new theoretical and empirical developments. Main text and core reference for students and professionals studying the processes of social change and development in “third world” countries. Carefully excerpted materials facilitate the understanding of classic and contemporary writings Second edition includes 33 essential readings, including 21 new selections New pieces cover the impact of the recession in the global North, global inequality and uneven development, gender, international migration, the role of cities, agriculture and on the governance of pharmaceuticals and climate change politics Increased coverage of China and India help to provide genuinely global coverage, and for a student readership the materials have been subject to a higher degree of editing in the new edition Includes a general introduction to the field, and short, insightful section introductions to each reading New readings include selections by Alexander Gershenkron, Alice Amsden, Amartya Sen, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Cecile Jackson, Dani Rodrik, David Harvey, Greta Krippner, Kathryn Sikkink, Leslie Sklair, Margaret E. Keck, Michael Burawoy, Nitsan Chorev, Oscar Lewis, Patrick Bond, Peter Evans, Philip McMichael, Pranab Bardhan, Ruth Pearson, Sarah Babb, Saskia Sassen, and Steve Radelet
The Globalization and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change
by J. Timmons Roberts Amy Bellone Hite Nitsan ChorevThis revised and updated second edition of The Globalization and Development Reader builds on the considerable success of a first edition that has been used around the world. It combines selected readings and editorial material to provide a coherent text with global coverage, reflecting new theoretical and empirical developments. Main text and core reference for students and professionals studying the processes of social change and development in “third world” countries. Carefully excerpted materials facilitate the understanding of classic and contemporary writings Second edition includes 33 essential readings, including 21 new selections New pieces cover the impact of the recession in the global North, global inequality and uneven development, gender, international migration, the role of cities, agriculture and on the governance of pharmaceuticals and climate change politics Increased coverage of China and India help to provide genuinely global coverage, and for a student readership the materials have been subject to a higher degree of editing in the new edition Includes a general introduction to the field, and short, insightful section introductions to each reading New readings include selections by Alexander Gershenkron, Alice Amsden, Amartya Sen, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Cecile Jackson, Dani Rodrik, David Harvey, Greta Krippner, Kathryn Sikkink, Leslie Sklair, Margaret E. Keck, Michael Burawoy, Nitsan Chorev, Oscar Lewis, Patrick Bond, Peter Evans, Philip McMichael, Pranab Bardhan, Ruth Pearson, Sarah Babb, Saskia Sassen, and Steve Radelet