One of the keys to dealing with militant Islamic groups is understanding how they work with, relate to, and motivate their constituencies. Mobilizing the Faithful offers a pair of detailed case studies—of the Egyptian groups al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad and Lebanon's Hizbullah—to identify typical forms of support relationships, development patterns, and dynamics of both radicalization and restraint. The insights it offers into the crucial relationship between militants and the communities from which they arise are widely applicable to violent insurgencies not only in the Middle East but around the world.

In reaction to the international financial crisis of 2007, a network of social scientists from seven countries analyzed the various changes in the regulation of financial markets, and this book presents their results. The articles published herein show patterns of institutional change that were triggered by the economic crisis on different political levels, of their implementation and effectiveness, as well as their results. An indispensible tool for political scientists, Crisis and Control contributes significantly to the theory of institutional change.

Multilevel structures are becoming increasingly characteristic of the world in which we live. This book is a unique study of policy making in a multilevel political system extending from the national to the international level. Taking as its subject the process of financial market reforms that took place following the recent financial crisis, it brings together an international group of renowned social scientists to explore the interplay between international organizations, European authorities, and regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany in global financial decision making. Contributors thoroughly explore a small set of reform issues—including bank structure, bank capital, resolution, and over-the-counter trading of derivatives—to provide a detailed view of the vertical and horizontal interactions between these actors as related to a set of key questions: Are those states affected by the crisis adopting internationally negotiated regulations? Or are they instead determining the European and international reform agenda? Are the agreed upon policies contributing to greater harmonization of financial regulation in a multilevel political system? Or is the process being dominated by differing national interests?

Spirits in Politics explores the interface between religion and politics in African societies by examining recent and ongoing research in a variety of regional settings. Case studies from across the African continent exemplify how—and at which social levels—spirits, witchcraft, and other supernatural agents play an active role in political action and the conceptualization of power. This volume illustrates not only how ritual techniques such as divination or spirit possession may play a vital role in people’s efforts to regain control over the political processes that determine their lives, but also how magical and other secret practices are at the center of local discourse on democratization and state politics. Moreover, the contributors show that these practices are prominent in day-to-day decision-making processes at local levels, including the interaction between spirit-based and democratic institutions of social organization in modern urban life and economies.

The freedom of the individual to aim high is a deeply rooted part of the American ethos but we rarely acknowledge its flip side: failure. If people are responsible for their individual successes, is the same true of their failures? The Failed Individual brings together a variety of disciplinary approaches to explore how people fail in the United States and the West at large, whether economically, politically, socially, culturally, or physically. How do we understand individual failure, especially in the context of the zero-sum game of international capitalism? And what new spaces of resistance, or even pleasure, might failure open up for people and society?