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Most Americans think that judges should be, and are, generalists who decide a wide array of cases. Nonetheless, we now have specialized courts in many key policy areas. Specializing the Courts provides the first comprehensive analysis of this growing trend toward specialization in the federal and state court systems.

Lawrence Baum incisively explores the scope, causes, and consequences of judicial specialization in four areas that include most specialized courts: foreign policy and national security, criminal law, economic issues involving the government, and economic issues in the private sector. Baum examines the process by which court systems in the United States have become increasingly specialized and the motives that have led to the growth of specialization. He also considers the effects of judicial specialization on the work of the courts by demonstrating that under certain conditions, specialization can and does have fundamental effects on the policies that courts make. For this reason, the movement toward greater specialization constitutes a major change in the judiciary.

In the nineteenth century, long before film and television arrived to electrify audiences with explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was America's theaters that offered audiences such thrills, with "sensation scenes" of speeding trains, burning buildings, and endangered bodies, often in melodramas extolling the virtues of temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage. In Spectacles of Reform , Amy E. Hughes scrutinizes these peculiar intersections of spectacle and reform, revealing that spectacle plays a crucial role in American activism. By examining how theater producers and political groups harnessed its power and appeal, Hughes suggests that spectacle was—and remains—central to the dramaturgy of reform.

Engaging evidence from lithographs to children's books to typography catalogs, Hughes traces the cultural history of three famous sensation scenes—the drunkard suffering from the delirium tremens, the fugitive slave escaping over a river, and the victim tied to the railroad tracks—assessing how they conveyed, allayed, and denied concerns about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These images also appeared in printed propaganda, suggesting that the coup de théâtre was an essential part of American reform culture. Additionally, Hughes argues that today's producers and advertisers continue to exploit the affective dynamism of spectacle, reaching an even broader audience through film, television, and the Internet.

To be attuned to the dynamics of spectacle, Hughes argues, is to understand how we see. Consequently, Spectacles of Reform will interest not only theater historians, but also scholars and students of political, literary, and visual culture who are curious about how U.S. citizens saw themselves and their world during a pivotal period in American history.

A look at the violent “Red Summer of 1919” and its intersection with the highly politicized New Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance

With the New Negro movement and the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s was a landmark decade in African American political and cultural history, characterized by an upsurge in racial awareness and artistic creativity. In Spectres of 1919 Barbara Foley traces the origins of this revolutionary era to the turbulent year 1919, identifying the events and trends in American society that spurred the black community to action and examining the forms that action took as it evolved.

Unlike prior studies of the Harlem Renaissance, which see 1919 as significant mostly because of the geographic migrations of blacks to the North, Spectres of 1919 looks at that year as the political crucible from which the radicalism of the 1920s emerged. Foley draws from a wealth of primary sources, taking a bold new approach to the origins of African American radicalism and adding nuance and complexity to the understanding of a fascinating and vibrant era.

Speculation: Politics, Ideology, Event develops Hegel’s radical perspective of speculative thought as a way of reclaiming and revitalizing the sense of the future and its possibilities. Engaging with such figures as Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Žižek, and Fredric Jameson, Glyn Daly articulates the distinctness of speculative philosophy and draws its implications for new debates in areas of science, politics, capitalism, ideology, ethics, and the event. 

In a confrontation with today’s fatalistic milieu, principal emphasis is given to Hegel’s idea of infinity as the intrinsic dimension of negativity within all finitude. Against the modern era’s paradigmatic tendency to externalize social problems in the form of antagonism and Otherness, Daly argues for a renewal of utopian thought based on Hegelian reconciliation and the affirmation of excess as the essence of all being. On these grounds, he advances a new kind of political imagination that in speculative terms centers on uncompromising notions of truth and reason. 
 

Across the modern political spectrum, left-wing and right-wing political theorists have invested sport with ideological significance. That significance, however, varies distinctively and characteristically with the ideology—a phenomenon John Hoberman terms "ideological differentiation." Taking this phenomenon as its point of departure, this provocative work interprets the major sport ideologies of the twentieth century as distinct expressions of political doctrine.

Hoberman argues that a political ideology's interpretation of sport is shaped in part by the value it assigns to work and play as modes of experience; the political anthropologies of right and left can be distinguished by examining their resistance to—or affinity for—sportive imagery of their leaders and of the state itself; there exists a fascist temperament that shows an affinity to athleticism and the sphere of the body that is not shared by the left.

Tracing modern sport ideology back to its premodern antecedents, Hoberman examines the interpretations of sport that have been promulgated by European political intellectuals, such as cultural conservatives and contemporary neo-Marxists, and by the official ideologists of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and China before and after Mao.

As a form of mass theater, sport can advertise any ideology. But the deeper relationship between sport and political ideology has never before been explored wth such vigor. Presenting the first general theory of sport and political ideology to appear in any language, Hoberman's groundbreaking work is a unique and invaluable contribution to the intellectual and political history of sport in the twentieth century.

The human race has often put a high value on struggle, strife, turmoil, and excitement. Peace has been regarded as a utopian, unattainable, perhaps dull ideal or as some random element over which we have no control. However, the desperate necessities of the nuclear age have forced us to take peace seriously as an object of both personal and national policy. Stable Peace attempts to answer the question, If we had a policy for peace, what would it look like?

A policy for peace aims to speed up the historically slow, painful, but persistent transition from a state of continual war and turmoil to one of continual peace. In a stable peace, the war-peace system is tipped firmly toward peace and away from the cycle of folly, illusion, and ill will that leads to war.

Boulding proposes a number of modest, easily attainable, eminently reasonable policies directed toward this goal. His recommendations include the removal of national boundaries from political agendas, the encouragement of reciprocal acts of good will between potential enemies, the exploration of the theory and practice of nonviolence, the development of governmental and nongovernmental organizations to promote peace, and the development of research in the whole area of peace and conflict management.

Written in straightforward, lucid prose, Stable Peace will be of importance to politicians, policy makers, economists, diplomats, all concerned citizens, and all those interested in international relations and the resolution of conflict.

Bureaucrats play a critical role in managing governance and delivering public services, whether in democratic and authoritarian contexts. Leaders are responsible for managing bureaucrats—from assigning posts to evaluating performance—to ensure that state resources and services are directed to key constituencies. Focusing on Pakistan, a hybrid regime where military interventions often disrupt electoral politics and civilian governance, Staffing the State shows how controlling bureaucratic appointments allows politicians and civil servants to manage political uncertainty. At the same time, such control entrenches arbitrary patterns of governance such that democratic transitions stall and hybrid regimes persist.

Drawing on interviews, semi-participant observation, and newspaper archives, this book’s analysis reveals the significance of bureaucratic politics to political power, public sector performance and reform, and in determining democratic or autocratic trajectories. The findings extend discussions around indicators of democratic decay into more nuanced, complex explorations of the consequences of these politics for the permanent institutions of the state. Staffing the State will interest political scientists, scholars of South Asian politics and especially Pakistan, and those working at the intersection of politics and public administration.

Beginning in the 1950s, the theory of modernization emerged as the dominant paradigm of economic, social, and political development within the American foreign policy establishment. Purporting to explain the stages through which all nations pass on the road to industrial modernity, it provided a rationale for a broad range of cultural and political projects aimed at fostering Third World growth while simultaneously combating communism. 

But modernization theory was more than simply an expression of Cold War ideology. As the essays in this volume show, the ideal of modernization proliferated throughout the postcolonial world and across ideological lines in places as diverse as East Asia, Southern Africa, and South Asia. Indeed, it was embraced by all who shared the American enthusiasm for the increased production and higher standards of living promised by industrialization—enemies and allies alike. 

Situating modernization theory historically, Staging Growth avoids conventional chronologies and categories of analysis, particularly the traditional focus on conflicts between major powers. The contributors employ a variety of approaches—from economic and intellectual history to cultural criticism and biography—to shed fresh light on the global forces that shaped the Cold War and its legacies. Most of the pieces are comparative, exploring how different countries and cultures have grappled with the implications of modern development. At the same time, all of the essays address similar fundamental questions. Is modernization the same thing as Westernization? Is the idea of modernization universally valid? Do countries follow similar trajectories as they undertake development? Does modernization bring about globalization? 

In addition to the editors and Akira Iriye, contributors include Michael Adas, Laura Belmonte, Gregg Andrew Brazinsky, Christina Klein, J. Victor Koschmann, and Michael R. Mahoney.

Deals with the period of takeover and of ‘high Stalinism’ in Eastern Europe (1945–1955). These years are considered to be fundamentally characterized by institutional and ideological transfers based upon the premise of radical transformism and of cultural revolution. Both a balance-sheet and a politico-historical synthesis that reflects the archival and thematic novelties which came about in the field of communism studies after 1989.

Contains contributions analyzing various aspects related these topics for each country of the former Soviet bloc (with the exception of Albania). The essays are based on new archival research, some are reassessments of the author’s previous research and others are critical appraisals of the specific literature published on issues related to the main topic. A path-breaking comparative framework for interpreting the relationship between late Stalinism and the communist takeovers in former Eastern Europe. A bonus for the volume is that it also provides detailed, sectorial analyses for the Romanian case, something that the field paritcularly lacks.

Reassessing the Political Legacy of Alabama's Most Influential Governor.

Whereas other studies have focused on George Wallace’s career as a national figure, Stand Up for Alabama provides a detailed, comprehensive, and analytical study of Wallace’s political life that emphasizes his activities and their impact within the state of Alabama. Jeff Frederick answers two fundamental questions: What was George Wallace’s impact on the state of Alabama? Why did Alabamians continue to embrace him over a twenty-five year period? Using a variety of sources to document the state’s performance in areas including mental health, education, conservation, prisons, and industrial development, Frederick answers question number one. He cites comparisons between Alabama and both peer states in the South and national averages. Wallace’s policies improved the state, but only in relation to Alabama’s past, not in relation to peer states in the region or national averages. As a result, energy was expended but little progress was made.

To answer the second question, Frederick uses the words of Alabamians themselves through oral history, correspondence, letters to the editor, and other sources. Alabamians, white and eventually black, supported Wallace because race was but one of his appeals. Stand Up for Alabama shows that Wallace connected to Alabamians at a gut level, reminding them of their history and memory, championing their causes on the stump, and soothing their concerns about their place in the region and the nation.

Jeff Frederick examines the development of policy during the Wallace administrations and documents relationships with his constituents in ways that go beyond racial politics. He also analyzes the connections between Wallace’s career and Alabamians’ understanding of their history, sense of morality, and class system. “Stand up for Alabama” was the governor’s campaign slogan.

Eric Fassin examines the trend of State anti-intellectualism in France using the nation as a case study to demonstrate that this tendency is not limited to ostensibly illiberal regimes. He argues that today’s world requires an examination of this phenomenon beyond Cold War geopolitical divisions and highlights a global shift towards authoritarian neoliberalism. His book is a plea for the political urgency of intellectual work in a global moment of political anti-intellectualism.
The book covers the period from President Sarkozy to Prime Minister Valls and includes both firsthand and public cases of attacks against academics, not only in France, but also in Brazil, Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and the United States, with examples of State racism and the argument of the State against antiracism. The book also considers issues of censorship and cancel culture, concluding with Fassin’s firsthand account of attacks on him from the far-right.

The period in Northern Ireland known as 'the Troubles' (1968-98) seemed to have been conclusively ended by the official peace process. But recent violence from dissident Republicans shows that tensions from the past remain unresolved.

State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles reveals disturbing unanswered questions about the use of state violence during this period. Maurice Punch documents in chilling detail how the British government turned to desperate, illegal measures in a time of crisis, disregarding domestic and international law. He broadens out his analysis to consider other cases of state violence against ‘insurgent groups’ in Spain and South Africa.

This is the story of how the British state collaborated with violent groups and directly participated in illegal violence. It also raises urgent questions about why states around the world continue to deploy such violence rather than seeking durable political settlements.

Based on extensive research into opposition and government documents, including the previously unavailable Manual Básico da Escola de Guerra, Maria Helena Moreira Alves provides a rich description of the long and tortuous attempt by the Brazilian military government to create a workable “national security state” in the face of determined and resilient opposition.

She interviewed more than one hundred key figures in government, the military, business, professional associations, the Catholic church, grassroots organizations, and trade unions in order to analyze politically and historically the relationship between civil society and government structures in Brazil during the years 1964–1983. Her study charts the rise and subsequent decline of the military government’s power, concluding with a discussion of the abertura policy instituted under General João Batista Figueiredo.