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Coalition Government, Subnational Style examines parliamentary democracy in subnational legislative assemblies. Comparing three different European democracies—Germany, France, and Belgium—William M. Downs provides a powerful account of the ways politicians and political parties negotiate the composition of new governments following elections in which no single party wins a clear majority.

Downs argues that postelection alliance building is a window onto many of the political processes fundamental to representative democracy: the interpretations of electoral verdicts; the compromises of campaign pledges; the trade-offs between policy and power; the temporary cooperation between long-term adversaries; the collective decision making; and the blurring of lines of accountability through collective responsibility.

The study reports findings from an unprecedented collection of information, including cross-national survey responses, interviews with political elites, and three decades of postelection studies of coalition building in the German state parliaments, the French regional assemblies, and the Belgian provincial councils and regional parliaments. Coalition Government, Subnational Style conclusively demonstrates that the struggles for government status at subnational levels are profoundly important to both parties and voters and that the outcomes of these struggles can result in governments of varying political complexions. Downs's findings question key assumptions of democratic theory and raise important concerns about individual and organizational behavior in changing institutional and electoral environments, ultimately allowing for a deeper understanding of representation, power, and cooperation outside the more familiar arena of national parliamentary politics.

An even-handed exploration of the polarized state of campus politics that suggests ways for schools and universities to encourage discourse across difference. 

College campuses have become flashpoints of the current culture war and, consequently, much ink has been spilled over the relationship between universities and the cultivation or coddling of young American minds. Philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath takes head-on arguments that infantilize students who speak out against violent and racist discourse on campus or rehash interpretations of the First Amendment. Ben-Porath sets out to demonstrate the role of the university in American society and, specifically, how it can model free speech in ways that promote democratic ideals.

In Cancel Wars, she argues that the escalating struggles over “cancel culture,” “safe spaces,” and free speech on campus are a manifestation of broader democratic erosion in the United States. At the same time, she takes a nuanced approach to the legitimate claims of harm put forward by those who are targeted by hate speech. Ben-Porath’s focus on the boundaries of acceptable speech (and on the disproportional impact that hate speech has on marginalized groups) sheds light on the responsibility of institutions to respond to extreme speech in ways that proactively establish conversations across difference. Establishing these conversations has profound implications for political discourse beyond the boundaries of collegiate institutions. If we can draw on the truth, expertise, and reliable sources of information that are within the work of academic institutions, we might harness the shared construction of knowledge that takes place at schools, colleges, and universities against truth decay. Of interest to teachers and school leaders, this book shows that by expanding and disseminating knowledge, universities can help rekindle the civic trust that is necessary for revitalizing democracy.
 

From the 1960s to the 1990s the ground-breaking Japanese economists Kozo Uno and Thomas Sekine developed a masterful reconfiguration of Marxist economics. The most well-known aspect of which is the levels of analysis approach to the study of capitalism.

Written in Japanese, the Uno-Sekine approach to Marx's work is little understood in West. John Bell seeks to correct this, explaining how problematic elements of Marxian Political Economy such as the law of value and the law of relative surplus population can be solved by using a more rigorous dialectical analysis.

Bell's clear and accessible synthesis provides economists with the tools to interrogate capitalism in a more powerful way than ever before.

Are nations that are journeying away from communism succeeding in becoming free-market democracies? In what ways do decades of totalitarian rule continue to distort the institutional shape of these societies? Which of communism's legacies may remain as permanent features of their landscape? In an effort to answer these questions, Roman Frydman, Kenneth Murphy, and Andrzej Rapaczynski analyze the turbulent transitions that have taken place in the post-Communist world since the revolutions of 1989-1991.

Each of the essays in this collection dissects the institutional upheaval in a particular institution in transition, such as central banking, the trade union movement, capital markets, or corporate govern-ance. In a lively and accessible style, the authors bring out the links between what was and what will be in the social fabric of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. They expose the fragility of political and economic institutions that can easily threaten the region's rebirth, but they also believe that many post-Communist countries are successfully seizing the opportunity to become reunited with the West and the global economy.

With both sweeping perspective and critical depth, Frydman, Murphy, and Rapaczynski show the wide range of institutional improvisations under way. They weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different reform strategies and assess the role of politics in fostering or arresting the process of transformation. Each essay illuminates the pro-found difficulties of reconciling the needs of economic development with the special interests fighting for their survival.

Using Marx as a touchstone, Timothy W. Luke warns that if communities are not to be overwhelmed by new class economic and political agendas, then the practice of democracy must be reconstituted on a more populist basis. However, the galvanizing force for this new, more community-centered populism will not be the proletariat, as Marx predicted, nor contemporary militant patriotic groups. Rather, Luke argues that many groups unified by a concern for ecological justice present the strongest potential opposition to capitalism.

Wide-ranging and lucid, Capitalism, Democracy, and Ecology is essential reading in the age of information.

Facing real threats of extinction and futurelessness, a search for new ground on which to build projects toward emancipation

Chaos and the Automaton is the first volume to collect Franco “Bifo” Berardi’s extensive collaboration with e-flux, which has become one of his primary English-language publishers since 2010. The selection of key essays collected here presents Berardi’s prescient interventions into more than a decade of social turmoil, offering a tour through the cataclysms that have rocked the foundations of the global order since the 2008 financial crisis, from European austerity, Occupy, the Arab Spring, and Anonymous through the ascendance of Pope Francis, Brexit, Covid-19, the Trump–Biden sequence, the U.S. Capitol riots, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—as well as bizarre new cultural occurrences that were consequences.

Berardi draws not only from current events but also movements and figures at the firmament of his thought, such as Guattari, Pasolini, and Italian street art of the 1970s. His essays represent a sustained and singular effort to reveal the psychic and material underpinnings of a society in which history came roaring back at the same moment as any vision of a sustainable future receded from sight. “I know that it is dangerous to write in simultaneity with events that nobody can precisely foresee, that can only be vaguely intuited,” he wrote on the eve of the 2020 American elections, “but the only way to imagine something about the becoming of the psycho-sphere is to run ahead of the dynamics of the disaster.”

The authors of this text believe that “areas” as assemblages of social processes requiring distinct, culture-bound explanations cannot be replaced with global theories, but that the meaning of “the area” can be different depending on the question one studies. The study of China and Chinese, in particular, is a good arena to challenge the disciplinary and geographic boundaries of conventional area studies for several reasons. First, because of the wealth of simultaneous processes of rapid political, social, and discursive change in contemporary Chinese society; second, because of the problematic relationship between state, territory, nation, and ethnicity in China; third, because China studies, perhaps more than any other area studies at the moment, is a highly competitive political and academic industry whose internal working must be critically examined. In addition, the subject of China has become one of the primary loci of contesting the meanings of globalization and the universality versus relativity of “values” and modernity.

A timely new edition of the acclaimed work, Christian America and the Kingdom of God spotlights how the centuries-long pursuit of a Christian America has bred an aggressive white Christian nationalism that twists faith, unleashes unchristian behavior, and threatens the nation.

A deep dive into Italian cinema under Mussolini’s regime and the filmmakers who used it as a means of antifascist resistance
 

Looking at Italy’s national film industry under the rule of Benito Mussolini and in the era that followed, Cinema Is the Strongest Weapon examines how cinema was harnessed as a political tool by both the reigning fascist regime and those who sought to resist it. Covering a range of canonical works alongside many of their neglected contemporaries, this book explores film’s mutable relationship to the apparatuses of state power and racial capitalism. 

Exploiting realism’s aesthetic, experiential, and affective affordances, Mussolini’s biopolitical project employed cinema to advance an idealized vision of life under fascism and cultivate the basis for a homogenous racial identity. In this book, Lorenzo Fabbri crucially underscores realism’s susceptibility to manipulation from diametrically opposed political perspectives, highlighting the queer, Communist, Jewish, and feminist filmmakers who subverted Mussolini’s notion that “cinema is the regime’s strongest weapon” by developing film narratives and film forms that challenged the prevailing ethno-nationalist ideology. 

Focusing on an understudied era of film history and Italian cultural production, Fabbri issues an important recontextualization of Italy’s celebrated neorealist movement and the structural ties it shares with its predecessor. Drawing incisive parallels to contemporary debates around race, whiteness, authoritarianism, and politics, he presents an urgent examination into the broader impact of visual media on culture and society.

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Dániel Mikecz addresses in this study the tensions between oppositional civil society and party-political actors. As successive elections demonstrate the increasing confidence of the illiberal regime of Viktor Orbán, left and liberal parties of the opposition have faced a prolonged crisis in credibility. At the same time, the civil society has not been immobile, and bottom-up initiatives, social and political movements, and non-governmental organizations have gained momentum in the public sphere. The ruling power is also active in the extra-parliamentary political arena. Through national consultations, Peace Marches, and other means, Orbán’s governing Fidesz party has mobilized voters outside of election campaigns and has implemented a so-called movement governance. The study offers a vivid examination of this top-down or astroturf mobilization of the regime.

Mikecz identifies the different patterns of activism and creates a coherent typology. He describes in detail each kind of activism based on opinion surveys, protest surveys and content analysis. The categorization and comprehensive exploration of civil movements provide a deep understanding of the mechanisms of illiberal postcommunist regimes.

A surprising and innovative look at class that proposes new approaches to this important topic

While references to gender, race, and class are everywhere in social theory, class has not received the kind of theoretical and empirical attention accorded to gender and race. A welcome and much-needed corrective, this book offers a novel theoretical approach to class and an active practice of class analysis.

The authors offer new and compelling ways to look at class through examinations of such topics as sex work, the experiences of African American women as domestic laborers, and blue- and white-collar workers. Their work acknowledges that individuals may participate in various class relations at one moment or over time and that class identities are multiple and changing, interacting with other aspects of identity in contingent and unpredictable ways.

The essays in the book focus on class difference, class transformation and change, and on the intersection of class, race, gender, sexuality, and other dimensions of identity. They find class in seemingly unlikely places-in households, parent-child relationships, and self-employment-and locate class politics on the interpersonal level as well as at the level of enterprises, communities, and nations. Taken together, they will prompt a rethinking of class and class subjectivity that will expand social theory.

Contributors: Enid Arvidson, U of Texas, Arlington; Jenny Cameron, Monash U, Australia; Harriet Fraad; Janet Hotch; Susan Jahoda, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Amitava Kumar, U of Florida; Cecilia Marie Rio; Jacquelyn Southern; Marjolein van der Veen.

Class Forces offers a new political economy explanation of the forces behind Egypt’s 2011 uprising. How did movements that had long struggled to challenge an authoritarian regime suddenly help generate a mass uprising capable of bringing down President Hosni Mubarak—and why did that uprising ultimately fail? Moving beyond explanations centered on economic grievances and political repression, the book shows how transformations in capitalism and changing class relations created new opportunities for labor, democratic, and youth movements to mobilize. It traces how the evolving relationship between business and the regime indirectly helped open political space and strengthen movements whose organizational capacities had remained limited.

Nada Matta argues that class dynamics were central to the extraordinary mass mobilization that filled Tahrir Square during the uprising. By focusing on class linkages rather than the more static concept of cross-class coalitions, Matta offers a dynamic account of class relations that also identifies the limits of associational capacities and durable cross-class alliances and helps explain why democratic forces failed to consolidate political gains after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster. Class Forces illuminates the sources of movement power and vulnerability under contemporary capitalism for social movement practitioners.

Why does the American federal government seem to prioritize elite capitalist interests over those of other groups? Class Politics and the Creation of the American State draws on a wide range of sources—personal letters, official government documents, private notes, and newspaper articles—to reveal that the federal government was built to give the emerging capitalist elite a way to consolidate and institutionalize their power. Challenging both liberal and conservative interpretations about what the US Constitution means, this book tells a new story about how the American state took shape.

The framers of the Constitution constructed an image of the state, enshrined in the Constitution, that presented their power as universal: a system meant to serve all Americans equally. This image helped legitimize the new order, even if the rising capitalist class stood to benefit most of all. Since the United States of the late 1780s was not yet a fully capitalist society, the state that was built opened space for less capitalistically incorporated social classes, including some artisans and yeoman farmers, to have limited representation. Class Politics and the Creation of the American State shows how the structure of the early American state worked primarily to advance capitalist interests, while incorporating other groups enough to maintain a sense of broad representation and inclusion.

This book is about the Americanization of Yugoslav culture and everyday life during the nineteen-sixties. After falling out with the Eastern bloc, Tito turned to the United States for support and inspiration. In the political sphere the distance between the two countries was carefully maintained, yet in the realms of culture and consumption the Yugoslav regime was definitely much more receptive to the American model. For Titoist Yugoslavia this tactic turned out to be beneficial, stabilising the regime internally and providing an image of openness in foreign policy.

Coca-Cola Socialism addresses the link between cultural diplomacy, culture, consumer society and politics. Its main argument is that both culture and everyday life modelled on the American way were a major source of legitimacy for the Yugoslav Communist Party, and a powerful weapon for both USA and Yugoslavia in the Cold War battle for hearts and minds.

Radina Vučetić explores how the Party used American culture in order to promote its own values and what life in this socialist and capitalist hybrid system looked like for ordinary people who lived in a country with communist ideology in a capitalist wrapping. Her book offers a careful reevaluation of the limits of appropriating the American dream and questions both an uncritical celebration of Yugoslavia’s openness and an exaggerated depiction of its authoritarianism.

Nicholas J. Schlosser draws on broadcast transcripts, internal memoranda, listener letters, and surveys by the U.S. Information Agency to profile RIAS. Its mission: to undermine the German Democratic Republic with propaganda that, ironically, gained in potency by obeying the rules of objective journalism. Throughout, Schlosser examines the friction inherent in such a contradictory project and propaganda's role in shaping political culture. He also portrays how RIAS's primarily German staff influenced its outlook and how the organization both competed against its rivals in the GDR and pushed communist officials to alter their methods in order to keep listeners.

From the occupation of Berlin through the airlift to the construction of the Berlin Wall, Cold War on the Airwaves offers an absorbing view of how public diplomacy played out at a flashpoint of East-West tension.

First published in France in 2001 by Éditions Belin under the title Le communisme au quotidien, Sandrine Kott’s book examines how East German businesses and government carried out communist practices on a daily basis and how citizens and workers experienced the conditions created by the totalitarian state in their daily lives. Kott undertakes a social analysis of the Communist Party’s grasp on state enterprises and the limits of its power. She then analyzes the enterprises themselves and the social, generational, and gender tensions that had a profound impact on the lived experience of socialism. Finally, she considers the development and acceptance of a complex set of rituals and gift exchanges that masked latent conflicts while providing meaning to socialism’s role in ordinary life.

Communist Gourmet presents a lively, detailed account of how the communist regime in Bulgaria determined people’s everyday food experience between 1944 and 1989. It examines the daily routines of acquiring food, cooking it, and eating out at restaurants through the memories of Bulgarians and foreigners, during communism.

In looking back on a wide array of issues and events, Albena Shkodrova attempts to explain the paradoxes of daily existence. She reports human stories that are touching, sometimes dark, but often full of humor and anecdotes from nearly one hundred people: some of them are Bulgarians who were involved in the communist food industry, whether as consumers or employees, while others are visitors from the United States and Western Europe who report culinary highlights and disappointments. The author made use of the national press, officially published cookbooks, Communist Party documents, and other previously unstudied sources.

An appendix containing recipes of dishes typical of the period and an extensive set of archival photographs are special features of the volume.

Communists and Community seeks to reframe the traditional chronology of the Communist Party in the United States as a means to better understand the change that occurred in community activism in the mid-twentieth century. Ryan Pettengill argues that Popular Front activism continued to flourish throughout the war years and into the postwar period. In Detroit, where there was a critical mass of heavy industry, Communist Party activists mobilized support for civil rights and affordable housing, brought attention to police brutality, sought protection for the foreign-born, and led a movement for world peace. 

Communists and Community demonstrates that the Communist Party created a social space where activists became effective advocates for the socioeconomic betterment of a multiracial work force. Pettengill uses Detroit as a case study to examine how communist activists and their sympathizers maintained a community to enhance the quality of life for the city’s working class. He investigates the long-term effects of organized labor’s decision to force communists out of the unions and abandon community-based activism. Communists and Community recounts how leftists helped workers, people of color, and other under-represented groups became part of the mainstream citizenry in America.

Winner of the Ralph Bunche Award, American Political Science Association

No socialist organization has ever had a more profound effect on black life than the Communist Party did in Harlem during the Depression. Mark Naison describes how the party won the early endorsement of such people as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and how its support of racial equality and integration impressed black intellectuals, including Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson.

This meticulously researched work, largely based on primary materials and interviews with leading black Communists from the 1930s, is the first to fully explore this provocative encounter between whites and blacks. It provides a detailed look at an exciting period of reform, as well as an intimate portrait of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, at the high point of its influence and pride.