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This book explores the idea of Persia as a means of investigating the soul of the fascinating nation.

In 1721, the French philosopher Montesquieu posed the question “Comment peut-on être persan?” ("How can one be Persian?") in the title to his famous Persian Letters. After centuries of invasion, murder, destruction, authoritarian rule, decay of political theory, and increasing dissolution in Iran’s politics, this volume is an investigation into what the answer to that question might be today.

The Idea of Persia explores the notion of what it is to be Persian, but not as it has been constituted in the past with reference to the political experience of antiquity, nor as an affirmation of the secular-rational project of modernity. Rather, the book examines the question of what it is to be Persian against the backdrop of centuries in which a common, plural subjectivity of Persian-ness has been continually delayed by those who, with or without ideologies, believed in politics only as a means of ruling or of being ruled without laws or citizenship. 

The historical battle for social and political freedoms is still underway in Iran. As the nation wrestles with the possibility of an extended period of political, social, and cultural decline, it is a timely moment to return to the perspective embodied in the enlightened thinking of figures such as the writer and three times prime minister of Iran Mohammed Ali Foroughi (1877–1942) and his vision of a country possessing rational and moral capabilities, and to a possible renaissance of social and political institutions.

The idea of Persia as it is presented here sees hope in the future as the means by which Iranians may liberate themselves from the duality of heroes and saints and remake their political mentality while staying true to an age-old idea of Persia and to freedom as an essential virtue. 

Analyzes the influence of populism on the development and transformation of parties and party systems in seven European countries between 2000 and 2020. 

The Impact of Populism on the Party System: The Experience of European Democracies (2000–2020) analyzes the influence of populism on the development and transformation of parties and party systems in Hungary, Poland, Greece, Germany, Spain, Czechia, and France in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In individual case studies, the international team of authors asks to what extent the rise of populist parties witnessed during the period in question caused increased polarization and ideological distance between parties in a given country, and whether this polarization led to a transformation in party system. Moderate party systems can be transformed into polarized party systems under the influence of populism, with a high degree of polarization affecting the functioning of the entire democratic regime. In extreme cases, the very democratic essence of European political regimes may be threatened.

This book questions the accepted origins of the field of International Relations (IR). Commonly understood to have emerged from the horrors of WW1 with the goal of bringing about world peace, the authors argue that on the contrary, IR came from a somewhat less noble tradition – that of the Round Table.

The Round Table were a network of imperialists emerging in the late 1800s across five key British imperial societies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India. Their aim was to improve imperial governance, placing the empire into a position to control world affairs. Although they ultimately failed to rearrange world order according to their vision, they did help to build what we now call the discipline of IR.

The Round Table's 'scientific method' for the study of world affairs was rapidly subsumed into each geopolitical context. Through telling this story, the authors recover it, and interrogate its meanings for the discipline of IR today. They show the importance of the Global South to IR's foundations, and argue that IR scholarship in this period was intertwined with imperial racial thought in ways that it should not and cannot forget.

There is an alluring desire that research should lead us to find the practical knowledge that enables people to live a good life in a just and equitable society. This desire haunted the 19th century emergence of the social sciences as a discipline, then became more pronounced in the postwar mobilizations of research. Today that desire lives on in the international assessments of national schools and in the structure of professional education, both of which influence government modernization of schools and also provide for people’s well-being. American policy thus reflects research in which reforms are verified by “scientific, empirical evidences” about “what works” in experiments, and “will work” therefore in society.

The book explores the idea that practical and useful knowledge changes over time, and shows how this knowledge has been (re)visioned in contemporary research on educational reform, instructional improvement, and professionalization. The study of science draws on a range of social and cultural theories and historical studies to understand the politics of science, as well as scientific knowledge that is concerned with social and educational change. Research hopes to change social conditions to create a better life, and to shape people whose conduct embodies these valued characteristics—the good citizen, parent, or worker. Yet this hope continually articulates the dangers that threaten this future. Thomas Popkewitz explores how the research to correct social wrongs is paradoxically entangled with the inscription of differences that ultimately hamper the efforts to include.

A provocative reevaluation of the power that the minority party in Congress wields beyond obstruction.

In The Indispensable Minority, Andrew Ballard and James M. Curry dispel a common assumption about American politics: that congressional majorities govern and congressional minorities merely obstruct. Drawing on four decades of legislative data, an original database of the most consequential lawmaking efforts since 1987, and candid interviews with veteran Capitol Hill staffers, the authors reveal that minority parties shape major legislation far more often than typically thought—both collectively and through the efforts of individual lawmakers.

As Ballard and Curry show, the key to minority influence lies not in procedural tricks like the filibuster, but in the interplay of raw political forces: how constrained the majority party is as it tries to act on its legislative agenda, how well the minority party can hold together as a cohesive bloc, and whether the minority chooses to engage in legislating rather than electoral posturing. When these conditions align, congressional minority parties don't just block bills—they help write them.

Rich with historical cases and sharp new evidence, The Indispensable Minority reshapes how we understand party power, congressional gridlock, and the health of American democracy itself. Far from a symptom of dysfunction, the authors argue, minority party influence is a vital—and indispensable—feature of how the American system is supposed to work.

Campaign contributions are widely viewed as a corrupting influence but most scholarly research concludes that they have marginal impact on legislative behavior. Lynda W. Powell shows that contributions have considerable influence in some state legislatures but very little in others. Using a national survey of legislators, she develops an innovative measure of influence and delineates the factors that explain this great variation across the 99 U.S. state legislative chambers.

Powell identifies the personal, institutional, and political factors that determine how much time a legislator devotes to personal fundraising and fundraising for the caucus. She shows that the extent of donors' legislative influence varies in ways corresponding to the same variations in the factors that determine fundraising time. She also confirms a link between fundraising and lobbying with evidence supporting the theory that contributors gain access to legislators based on donations, Powell's findings have important implications for the debate over the role of money in the legislative process.

"Colbert has long been celebrated as Louis XIV's minister of finance, trade, and industry. More recently, he has been viewed as his minister of culture and propaganda. In this lively and persuasive book, Jake Soll has given us a third Colbert, the information manager."
---Peter Burke, University of Cambridge

"Jacob Soll gives us a road map drawn from the French state under Colbert. With a stunning attention to detail Colbert used knowledge in the service of enhancing
royal power. Jacob Soll's scholarship is impeccable and his story long
overdue and compelling."
---Margaret Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles

"Nowadays we all know that information is the key to power, and that the masters of information rule the world. Jacob Soll teaches us that Jean-Baptiste Colbert had grasped this principle three and a half centuries ago, and used it to construct a new kind of state. This imaginative, erudite, and powerfully written book re-creates the history of libraries and archives in early modern Europe, and ties them in a novel and convincing way to the new statecraft of Europe's absolute monarchs."
---Anthony Grafton, Princeton University

"Brilliantly researched, superbly told, and timely, Soll's story is crucial for the history of the modern state."
---Keith Baker, Stanford University

When Louis XIV asked his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert---the man who was to oversee the building of Versailles and the Royal Academy of Sciences, as well as the navy, the Paris police force, and French industry---to build a large-scale administrative government, Colbert created an unprecedented information system for political power. In The Information Master, Jacob Soll shows how the legacy of Colbert's encyclopedic tradition lies at the very center of the rise of the modern state and was a precursor to industrial intelligence and Internet search engines.

Soll's innovative look at Colbert's rise to power argues that his practice of collecting knowledge originated from techniques of church scholarship and from Renaissance Italy, where merchants recognized the power to be gained from merging scholarship, finance, and library science. With his connection of interdisciplinary approaches---regarding accounting, state administration, archives, libraries, merchant techniques, ecclesiastical culture, policing, and humanist pedagogy---Soll has written an innovative book that will redefine not only the history of the reign of Louis XIV and information science but also the study of political and economic history.

Jacob Soll is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author of Publishing The Prince: History, Reading, and the Birth of Political Criticism (University of Michigan Press, 2005), and winner of the 2005 Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society and a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. Soll edited a special issue of Journal of the History of Ideas titled "The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe"; has cofounded the online journal Republics of Letters; and is editor, along with Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair, of the series Cultures of Knowledge in the Early Modern World.

The definitive work on the Hollywood blacklist era

The Inquisition in Hollywood examines the suppression of radical political activity in the film industry from the days of the Great Depression through the tumultuous House Un-American Activities Commission era to the waning days of the infamous blacklist.

Although this thirty-year period of American history is marked by widespread targeting of leftists in all areas of life, those in the film industry–-predominately screenwriters–-were considered to be in positions of great potential indoctrinating power, and found themselves under intense scrutiny as the Cold War hysteria mounted.

Ceplair and Englund trace the history of political struggle in Hollywood back to the formation of the Screen Writers Guild in 1933. Many of the blacklisted filmmakers were members of the Communist Party and all of the graylisted filmmakers had expressed their sympathy with progressive (mainly anti-fascist) causes.

Although no Hollywood Communist has ever been linked to espionage or sabotage, and charges of subversive indoctrination have no basis in documented fact, this book powerfully shows how devastating a mere suspicion or insinuation of guilt could be during the era of the Red Menace.

Twenty-two years after its initial publication, The Inquisition in Hollywood remains the definitive work on the blacklist era, and this new edition features a new introduction by the authors.

Rethinking governance: Where democracy meets administration.

This revised and expanded third edition extends Ostrom’s analysis to account for the most resent developments in American politics, including those of the Clinton and Bush administrations.

First published in 1973, The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration remains one of the most influential critiques of the administrative state. Vincent Ostrom examines the intellectual roots of American public administration, questioning whether centralized bureaucratic systems align with the constitutional principles of self-governance. Through a rigorous analysis of institutional design, federalism, and public choice theory, Ostrom advocates for polycentric governance—an approach that empowers citizens and decentralizes authority. This seminal work continues to inspire debates on accountability, legitimacy, and the future of democratic administration.

Based on their successful undergraduate course at the University of Southern California, Abigail E. Ruane and Patrick James provide an introduction to International Relations using J. R. R. Tolkien's fantastically popular trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Because Tolkien's major themes---such as good versus evil and human agency versus determinism---are perennially relevant to International Relations, The Lord of the Rings is well suited for application to the study of politics in our own world. This innovative combination of social science and humanities approaches to illustrate key concepts engages students and stimulates critical thinking in new and exciting ways.

Focusing on the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Hamdi Hassan offers a balanced examination of the motivation of the Iraqi polity and the conditions which accelerated and facilitated the decision to invade. Critical of the traditional approach of most Middle East studies, The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait offers a counterpoint to Western interpretations of this key event in the contemporary history of the Middle East.

Hassan examines how Saddam Hussein assessed and responded to American and Israeli intentions after the invasion, the reaction of other Arab states, and the unprecedented grassroots support for the Iraqi leadership. In this context, the author examines the social structure of Iraqi society – families, clans and regional alliances – and the importance of Ba’athism. Hassan also examines the political structure of the country, relating the identity of Arabism – the religion and language which is associated closely with the Pan Arabist ideals – to Iraqi foreign policy.

Race, Politics, and the Making of the Modern South.

The Irony of the Solid South examines how the south became the “Solid South” for the Democratic Party and how that solidarity began to crack with the advent of American involvement in World War II. Relying on a sophisticated analysis of secondary research—as well as a wealth of deep research in primary sources such as letters, diaries, interviews, court cases, newspapers, and other archival materials—Glenn Feldman argues in The Irony of the Solid South that the history of the solid Democratic south is actually marked by several ironies that involve a concern with the fundamental nature of southern society and culture and the central place that race and allied types of cultural conservatism have played in ensuring regional distinctiveness and continuity across time and various partisan labels. Along the way, this account has much to say about the quality and nature of the New Deal in Dixie, southern liberalism, and its fatal shortcomings.

Feldman focuses primarily on Alabama and race but also considers at length circumstances in the other southern states as well as insights into the uses of emotional issues other than race that have been used time and again to distract whites from their economic and material interests. Feldman explains how conservative political forces (Bourbon Democrats, Dixiecrats, Wallace, independents, and eventually the modern GOP) ingeniously fused white supremacy with economic conservatism based on the common glue of animus to the federal government. A second great melding is exposed, one that joined economic fundamentalism to the religious kind along the shared axis of antidemocratic impulses.

Feldman’s study has much to say about southern and American conservatism, the enduring power of cultural and emotional issues, and the modern south’s path to becoming solidly Republican.

Will Saudi Arabia join the democratic wave in the Middle East? The uprisings and revolutions of 2011 do not, yet, seem to have affected the stability of the House of Saud, which remains secretive, highly repressive and propped up by the West.

The Islamic Utopia uses a range of sources including first-hand reporting and recently released WikiLeaks documents to examine Saudi Arabia in the decade after the 9/11 attacks, when King Abdullah’s 'reform' agenda took centre stage in public debate. It considers Saudi claims of 'exemption' from the democratic demands of the Arab Spring.

Andrew Hammond argues that for too long Western media and governments have accepted Saudi leaders' claims to be a buttress against jihadist Islam and that a new policy is needed towards the House of Saud.