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There are worldwide concerns about the quality of elections and democracy. There is also an ambiguity in academia, the international community and popular discourse about how to define and measure good elections. This Element develops an original concept of electoral integrity based on human empowerment. Elections serve a purpose: They should give citizens a voice, empower the everyday citizen against the powerful and act as mechanisms for political equality. Secondly, it argues that there have been major societal 'megatrends,' meaning that the holding of elections has moved from the modern era to an age of complexity. This describes an era of demographic, technological, legal, economic and political complexity and fluidity. The greater connection between nodes of activities in the electoral process means that elections held in one part of the world can be very quickly affected by actors and developments elsewhere. Thirdly, it provides new measurement tools to assess election quality.
The invention of paper currency marked a watershed in global financial history. In this deeply researched study, Richard von Glahn explains why paper money first arose in China rather than any other part of the world – and why it ultimately failed. Although paper money achieved notable success during the Song and Yuan dynasties, it collapsed under the very different principles of political economy adopted by the Ming. In the first English-language examination of the rise and demise of paper money, von Glahn argues that the answer lies in China's unique monetary system and political economy, introducing readers to the eleventh-century origins of paper money in China, the principles of Chinese monetary theory, China's bronze coin monetary standard and specific forms of fiscal governance. This is not only an essential introduction to Chinese monetary history, but a major contribution to global economic history.
In Nahua Singers, Peter Bjorndahl Sorensen provides a more than 300-year long history of the Aztecs from their departure from the Seven Caves (Chicomoztoc) to the close of the sixteenth century-centering Indigenous voices as they narrate their own past. Nahua singers preserved their histories in the form of popular song lyrics that have long been misunderstood. Sorensen employs a new approach to the lyrics, bringing them to life by spotlighting their performative elements, offering new and accessible translations, and explaining the lyrics' historical significance in a comprehensive yet concise way. Through fourteen complete translations and dozens partly translated, the songs featured cover topics including precolonial kings, the conquest of Mexico, and early examples of the adaption and adoption of Christian imagery.
How do voters form left–right images of political parties? This Element applies the theoretical framework of ecologically rational heuristic inference to synthesize insights from the extensive literature on the meaning of left and right in politics. It proposes several hypotheses about cues that voters with varying levels of political sophistication use to infer parties' left–right positions. These expectations are tested through seven conjoint and factorial survey experiments in Germany, Denmark, Canada, and the UK. Findings show that many voters develop sensible left–right perceptions of parties by relying on small sets of highly predictive cues. However, voters differ in how they interpret these cues. Less politically sophisticated voters tend to infer party positions mainly from partisan signals, whereas more sophisticated voters rely on a broader range of indicators, including party policies, ideological values, and social group support. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This book complements abundant research about immigrants by contributing novel data, knowledge, and theories about potential immigrants-those who might have immigrated but did not despite the benefits of migration to immigrants and origin and destination societies. The text examines three mechanisms that reduce or restrict immigration-governments denying visas, policies and social forces deterring many from applying for visas, and potential immigrants becoming disenchanted with immigration. Jacob expands the Push-Pull Model to a Push-Retain-Pull-Repel Model that accounts for why many remain ambivalently immobile. Narratives of might-have-been-immigrants reveal an (im)mobility paradox: factors facilitating migration-socio-economic resources and social ties-also hinder it. The book analyses denial, deterrence, and disenchantment from the perspective of countless people who do not immigrate due to one of these processes, revealing how they are socio-economically stratified with respect to each other and immigrants. This provokes a deeper, more global understanding of inequalities in migratory opportunities.
This comprehensive History examines Middle Eastern modernism through analyses of its roots and development across Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and other regional languages. An international team of contributors explains the modernist movement in the Middle East from its beginnings in the nineteenth century until today. Combining linguistic breadth and focused treatments of canonical works of Middle Eastern modernist art and literature, this History highlights remarkable connections in modernist form and content that link the Arab world to the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic as well as Qajar and Pahlavi Iran, Central Asia, and even India, often to the exclusion of Western modernist norms and experiments. Working within the broader framework of global modernisms while attending to the movement's local particularities, this volume establishes Middle Eastern modernism as a vibrant field of inquiry and a cornerstone for modernist studies more generally.
Seeds of Solidarity is a study of British Guiana amid a wave of Caribbean uprisings that brought modern politics to colonial spaces during the 1930s. It explores the historical power of a movement forged by people at the edges of empire during economic, political, and environmental crises. African- and Indian-Guianese youth, women, and men who worked on sugar plantations led a series of labor uprisings, despite attempts to turn these racialized communities against each other. Rather than erasing identities, their 'overlapping diasporas' signify how solidary can emerge without sameness, and how this process challenged the British Empire and reshaped Caribbean politics. This important work unites Caribbean history, African Diaspora and South Asian Diaspora studies, histories of racial capitalism and labor movements, gender studies, and the politics of colonialism and empire in the post-indenture period. It offers a model of resistance in today's era of deepening racial and economic inequality, fascism, and climate emergency.
The Supreme Court's composition tends to remain stable over time, yet its docket and rulings change, affecting our understanding of the Court's broader political ramifications. In Majority Opinions, Stephen Jessee, Neil Malhotra and Maya Sen examine how the Supreme Court's alignment with public opinion shifts dramatically, shaping its legitimacy, approval, and vulnerability to reform. Introducing an empirical method and framework that systematically compares Americans' preferences on case outcomes with the Court's actual rulings, the authors uncover yawning gaps and unexpected alignments across issues and terms. They show how changes in court composition-Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example-can shift the Court's trajectory rightward, while docket choices can move rulings closer to public sentiment after unpopular rulings. Examining how the Supreme Court navigates a polarized political environment, the authors reveal how its choices have profoundly affect influence, legitimacy, and national policy.
In the years surrounding the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, major non-Muslim communities of Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, and Bahaʾis negotiated identities, rights, and power structures. Using primary documents from Iranian, British, and French archives, Saghar Sadeghian sheds light on an underexplored aspect of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and offers a comparative view of these communities during the late Qajar era. This study draws on theories from Foucault, Agamben, and Lefebvre, providing an interdisciplinary analysis that connects history and sociology. The position of non-Muslims in Iranian society created heterotopias for the Muslim majority, yet the fluid identities blurred boundaries and bent regulations. Sadeghian explores the roles of non-Muslims in the revolution, demonstrating the impacts on these groups at the intersection of religion, economy, and politics.
Islamist civil wars pose a major challenge to peace and security around the world. Written by two leading scholars of conflict resolution, Jihadist Peace: Ending Islamist Civil Wars offers a groundbreaking analysis of why these conflicts are among the most difficult to end, and what can be done about it. The book makes a theoretical contribution by explaining their intractability, arguing that the transnational ideological framing of Islamist civil wars increases uncertainty about the capabilities and resolve of the warring parties. Drawing on conflict resolution theory, rigorous statistical analysis, and detailed case studies of Afghanistan, Mauritania, Mali, and Syria, the authors explore the conditions under which these wars can both come to an end and be resolved. They argue that the local dimension is key: by disentangling both rebel and government actors from broader networks, Jihadist Peace charts a path toward resolving some of the world's most intractable civil wars.
How has it happened that the term kânûn has been adopted by different political and legal regimes – Muslim empires, Muslim monarchies, colonial states, secular and Islamic republics – to refer to their respective 'state laws'? This study explores the lengthy and complex history of kânûn from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The transformations of the concept enabled its broad circulation and malleable applications in significantly different political and legal contexts across time. Guy Burak examines how the Ottoman dynasty and its administrative, intellectual, and judicial elites experimented with the concept of kânûn, alongside Ottoman subjects and foreigners. Written in accessible language, the study covers a wide range of material from Turkish, Arabic, and Persian sources. By focusing on specific moments along the genealogy of kânûn, Burak draws attention to aspects of this concept that have shaped its post-Ottoman history. This is a Flip it Open title and may be available open access on Cambridge Core.
From the 1920s to the 1960s in Cuba, against the backdrop of revolutions, new constitutions, and rampant inequality, the Cuban Communist Party stood out as an unparalleled space for Black political leadership, activism, and advocacy. This party, led by Black political actors, including labor leaders, members of Black fraternal organizations and the Black intelligentsia, fought for an end to racial discrimination and used their voices to advocate for true equality. Analyzing US government surveillance records, Cuban newspapers, government records, party pamphlets, and more, Kaitlyn D. Henderson illustrates how the Cuban Communist Party created a unique space for an expression of Cuban Black nationalism and how communist parties in the western hemisphere strayed from traditional Marxist ideology. An important corrective, this book sheds light on the overlooked history of Black Communist leaders who fought for equality before the Revolution changed everything.
This book reveals how Congress quietly shaped American elections across more than a century of constitutional development. Far from a passive observer, Congress used its authority to influence key controversies – from the expansion of slavery in new territories to the reconstruction of the post-Civil War electorate. Congress exercised power under the Elections Clause, the Guarantee Clause, and later, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to combat voter suppression, reimagine representation, and determine who could (and could not) participate in American democracy. Even as Jim Crow laws disenfranchised millions, Congress continued to review and sometimes overturn the elections of its own members, refusing to cede complete control to the states. In doing so, Congress routinely subordinated federalism to politics. In Congress We Trust? provides a new perspective on who truly governs our system of elections by showing that federal authority has been broad, lasting, and decisive.
This book explains variations in the effectiveness of vote buying. Current theory assumes that vote buying is effective, rotting democracy's foundations. Yet evidence shows that it rarely succeeds. Against the Machine presents a partisan competition theory to explain why buying vote choices is typically ineffective, the conditions under which it occasionally succeeds, and why it persists despite meager electoral returns. Competitive elections arm voters with the psychological wherewithal to resist the influence of electoral gifts, deprive political machines of the information they need to target compliant clients, and reinforce belief in ballot secrecy. The success or failure of vote buying thus relies more on the capacity of parties that challenge machines rather than the prowess of political machines themselves. Against the Machine provides a new account of vote buying that paints a more optimistic portrait of elections, voter behavior, and the chances for political accountability in new democracies.
William Burroughs in Context offers the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the iconic author to date and it captures the immense scope of Burroughs' radical vision and cultural influence. Moving far beyond the Beat Generation, this volume brings together 35 original essays that reframe Burroughs through his many identities: novelist, multimedia artist, queer visionary, drug theorist, and cultural provocateur. By organizing contributions around themes like space-time travel, technology, environmentalism, and creative collaboration, the book presents Burroughs as a uniquely situated figure at the crossroads of literature, science, philosophy, and pop culture. The contributors-drawn from leading voices in literary studies, media theory, cultural history, and the arts-offer readers fresh insights into both familiar and underexplored dimensions of Burroughs' oeuvre. An essential resource for scholars and fans alike, this landmark volume positions Burroughs as a central figure in understanding 20th-century counterculture and its ongoing 21st-century legacy
In the wake of Iran's revolution in 1978–79, a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy took control of the country. These dramatic changes impacted all sectors of society including a vast array of diverse peoples and cultures. In this book, Lois Beck provides an anthropological and historical account of Iran's many minorities. She focuses on the aftermath of the revolution, declaration of an Islamic republic, and Iraq-Iran war. Drawing on six decades of anthropological research, Beck provides frameworks for understanding how each of Iran's linguistic, religious, ethnic, ethno-national, and tribal minorities fashioned unique identities. These identities stem from factors relating to history, location, socioeconomic patterns, and sociocultural traits. They reflect the people's interactions with Iran's rulers and governments as they changed over time. A modern nation-state cannot be fully understood without knowing the extent of its reach in the peripheries and border regions and among its diverse peoples. This landmark study challenges existing scholarly accounts by offering broad and detailed perspectives on Iran's many distinct languages, religions, ethnicities, ethno-nations, and tribes.
This book is an attempt at highlighting the intellectual and cultural history of British imperial knowledge production in late-nineteenth-century India, examined through the life and writings of William Wilson Hunter (1840–1900). Tracing Hunter's role as an imperial bureaucrat, historian, and publicist, the book explores how his works sought to shape colonial governance through structured information systems and a rhetoric of 'improvement'; an intellectual enterprise that drew the interests of contemporary stalwarts across the continents, such as Rabindranath Tagore and Charles Darwin. It also examines how Bengali intellectuals, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and others engaged with and contested Hunter's ideas, opening up new directions in nationalist thought and historiography. It strives to offer a new outlook on the mutual entanglements of empire and knowledge, and the political life of texts in colonial Bengal.