Evolving Iran presents an overview of how the politics and policy decisions in the Islamic Republic of Iran have developed since the 1979 revolution and how they are likely to evolve in the near future. Despite the fact that the revolution ushered in a theocracy, its political system has largely tended to prioritize self-interest and pragmatism over theology and religious values, while continuing to reinvent itself in the face of internal and international threats.

The author also examines the prospects for democratization in Iran. Since the early years of the twentieth century, Iranians have attempted to make their political system more democratic, yet various attempts to produce a system where citizens have a meaningful voice in political decisions have failed. This book argues that greater democratization is unlikely to occur in the short term, especially in light of increased threats from the international community.

This accessible overview of Iran’s political system covers a broad array of subjects, including foreign policy, human rights, women’s struggle for equality, the development and evolution of elections, and the institutions of the political system including the Revolutionary Guards and Assembly of Experts. It will appeal to undergraduates and the general public who seek to understand a country and regime that has mystified Westerners for decades.

Journalist Jonathan Cook explores Israel’s key role in persuading the Bush administration to invade Iraq, as part of a plan to remake the Middle East, and their joint determination to isolate Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons that might rival Israel’s own.
 
This concise and clearly argued book makes the case that Israel's desire to be the sole regional power in the Middle East neatly chimed with Bush’s objectives in the “war on terror”.
 
Examining a host of related issues, from the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to the role of Big Oil and the demonisation of the Arab world, Cook argues that the current chaos in the Middle East is the objective of the Bush administration – a policy that is equally beneficial to Israel.

Rick Rockwell and Noreene Janus examine the region country by country and deal with the specific conditions of government-sponsored media repression, economic censorship, corruption, and consumer trends that shape the political landscape. Challenging the notion of the media as a democratizing force, Media Power in Central America shows how governments use the media to block democratic reforms and outlines the difficulties of playing watchdog to rulers who use the media as a tool of power.

Histories of revolutions often focus on military, political, or economic upheavals but sometimes neglect to connect these larger events to the daily lives of "ordinary" people. Yet the peoples' perception that "things are worse than before" can topple revolutionary governments, as shown by the recent defeat of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and the governments of Eastern Europe. Providing the kind of prosaic, revealing details that more formal histories have excluded, My Car in Managua offers an objective, often humorous description of the great difficulties and occasional pleasures of life in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution.

During a year's work (1985-1986) at the Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas (INCAE), Forrest Colburn purchased a dilapidated car—and with it an introduction to everyday life in Nicaragua. His discoveries of the length of time required to register the car (approximately six weeks), the impossibility of finding spare parts (except when U.S. dollars were applied to the search), and the fact that "anyone getting into a car in Managua can be charged a small fee [for car watching] by anyone else" all suggest the difficulties most Nicaraguans faced living in a devastated economy.

Drawing on experiences from visits throughout the revolutionary period (1979-1989), Colburn also sheds light on how the Revolution affected social customs and language, gender roles and family relationships, equality and authority, the availability of goods and services, the status of ethnic minorities, and governmental and other institutions. Illustrations by Nicaragua's celebrated political cartoonist Róger Sánchez Flores enliven the lucid text.

A leading public intellectual gives his authoritative and personal account of the tragic postcolonial fate of Uganda, his homeland.

In 1972, when Mahmood Mamdani came home to Uganda, he found a country transformed by “an orgy of violence.” Two years earlier, with support from the colonial powers of Great Britain and Israel, Idi Amin had forcefully cemented his rule. He soon expelled Uganda’s Indian minority in hopes of fostering a nation for Black Ugandans. The plan backfired. Amin was followed by Yoweri Museveni, who has now ruled for nearly four decades. Whereas Amin tried to create a Black nation out of the majority, Museveni sought to fragment this majority into multiple ethnic minorities, re-creating a version of colonial indirect rule.

Slow Poison is Mamdani’s firsthand report on the tragic unraveling of his country’s struggle for decolonialization. A witness to East Africa’s endlessly intricate power plays, and one of the most insightful political philosophers of his generation, Mamdani casts a learned and wary eye on Amin, internationally depicted as a buffoon; the radical scholar Museveni; and the global heavyweights that exploited and manipulated Uganda before and after its independence.

Each leader made violence central to his project, but Mamdani sees a signal difference between Amin, who retained popular support to the end, and Museveni, who has not. The Asian expulsion made Amin a monster in the eyes of the West. In contrast, Museveni was hailed as standard bearer of the “war on terror” in Africa and was protected from accountability for far greater crimes. In exchange for adopting the package of neoliberal reforms known as the Washington Consensus, he became Africa’s poster child. Amin, who aimed to create a nation of Black millionaires, never became one himself. Meanwhile, Uganda’s surrender to privatization has brought Museveni’s family immense wealth, even as the country remains one of the world’s poorest.

Why do some countries progress while others stagnate? Why does adversity strengthen some countries and weaken others? Indeed, in this era of unprecedented movement of people, goods, and ideas, just what constitutes a nation-state? Forrest Colburn and Arturo Cruz suggest how fundamental these questions are through an exploration of the evolution of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica over the last quarter of a century, a period of intriguing, often confounding, paradoxes in Central America's development.

Offering an elegant defense of empiricism, Colburn and Cruz explore the roles of geography and political choice in constructing nations and states. Countries are shown to be unique: there are a daunting number of variables. There is causality, but not the kind that can be revealed in the laboratory or on the blackboard. Liberalism—today defined as democracy and unfettered markets—may be in vogue, but it has no inherent determinants. Democracy and market economies, when welded to the messy realities of individual countries, are compatible with many different outcomes. The world is more pluralistic in both causes and effects than either academic theories or political rhetoric suggest.

The president of Uganda addresses key questions about Africa’s future.

Recent seismic shifts in Congo and Rwanda have exposed the continued volatility of the state of affairs in central Africa. As African states have shaken off their postcolonial despots, new leaders with sweeping ideas about a pan-African alliance have emerged-and yet the internecine struggles go on. What is Africa’s problem? As one of the leaders expressing a broad and forceful vision for Africa’s future, Uganda’s Yoweri K. Museveni is perhaps better placed than anyone in the world to address the very question his book poses.