Politics

About: Politics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 263762 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5388913 citations.

National identity and the idea of European unity

Abstract: Since the project of European integration began, at issue has always been whether a European political identity could develop to underpin political unification. Is a genuine European identity possible? Anthony Smith takes up the question from the standpoint of his work on nationalism. Why is it that we are witnessing a revival of nationalism even as the globalizing trends of post-industrial society become clearer? Established cultures are essentially antithetical to the development of a cosmopolitan culture, he writes, which poses problems for a European identity. If this is to do more than coexist weakly alongside national and subnational identities, it may come at a dangerous price only if Europe defines itself exclusively against other world actors.

Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival

Abstract: African independence launched into international politics a group of the world's poorest, weakest, and most artificial states. How have such states managed to survive? To what extent is their survival now threatened? Christopher Clapham shows how an initially supportive international environment has - as a result partly of political and economic mismanagement within African states themselves, partly of global developments over which they had no control - become increasingly threatening to African rulers and the states over which they preside. The author also reveals how international conventions designed to uphold state sovereignty have often been appropriated and subverted by rulers to enhance their domestic control, and how African states have been undermined by guerrilla insurgencies and the use of international relations to serve essentially private ends. He shows how awkward, how ambiguous, how unsatisfactory, and often how tragic, has been the encounter between Africa and Western conceptions of statehood.

Class, crisis and the state

Abstract: One of the major works of the new American Marxism, Wright's book draws a challenging new class map of the United States and other, comparable, advanced capitalist countries today. It also discusses the various classical theories of economic crisis in the West and their relevance to the current recession, and contrasts the way in which the major political problem of bureaucracy was confronted by two great antagonists Weber and Lenin. A concluding essay brings together the practical lessons of these theoretical analyses, in an examination of the problems of left governments coming to power in capitalist states."

Tradition and modernity

Abstract: This book offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. In their attempt to evolve ways of life appropriate to our modern world culture, says Kwame Gyekye, African people and societies face a number of challenges, some stemming from the values and practices of their traditional cultures, and others representing the legacy of European colonialism. Defending the cross-cultural applicability of philosophical concepts developed in Western culture, Kwame Gyekye attempts to show the usefulness of such concepts in addressing a wide range of specifically African problems. Among the issues he considers are: economic development, nation-building, the evolution of viable and appropriate democratic political institutions, the development of appropriate and credible ideologies, political corruption, and the crumbling of traditional moral standards in the wake of rapid social change. Throughout, Gyekye challenges the notion that modernity must be equated with Western values and institutions, arguing instead that African modernity must be forged creatively within the furnace of Africa's many-sided cultural experience.