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Singapore's success story has increasingly been recognised but few have told it from the perspective of an insider. As a senior civil servant and "mandarin" from 1959 to 1999, Ngiam Tong Dow served with the founding generation of political leaders and contributed to the country's economic growth. In this book, he reflects on these experiences, sharing personal anecdotes and perceptive insights of Singapore's early decades. He also boldly questions some of the policies of government and emerging trends in the country to suggest how Singapore must change to survive and thrive in the future.

Germany today boasts the fastest growing population of Jews in Europe. The streets of Berlin abound with signs of a revival of Jewish culture, ranging from bagel shops to the sight of worshipers leaving synagogue on Saturday. With the new energy infused by Jewish immigration from Russia and changes in immigration and naturalization laws in general, Jeffrey M. Peck argues that we must now begin considering how Jews live in Germany rather than merely asking why they would choose to do so.

In Being Jewish in the New Germany, Peck explores the diversity of contemporary Jewish life and the complex struggles within the community-and among Germans in general-over history, responsibility, culture, and identity. He provides a glimpse of an emerging, if conflicted, multicultural country and examines how the development of the European Community, globalization, and the post-9/11 political climate play out in this context. With sensitive, yet critical, insight into the nation's political and social life, chapters explore issues such as the shifting ethnic/national makeup of the population, changes in political leadership, and the renaissance of Jewish art and literature. Peck also explores new forms of anti-Semitism and relations between Jews and Turks-the country's other prominent minority population.

In this surprising description of the rebirth of a community, Peck argues that there is, indeed, a vibrant and significant future for Jews in Germany. Written in clear and compelling language, this book will be of interest to the general public and scholars alike.

 

Throughout the 1980s, Barricada, the official daily newspaper of the ruling Sandinista Front, played the standard role of a party organ, seeking the mobilize the Nicaraguan public to support the revolutionary agenda. Beyond the Barricades, however, reveals a story that is both more intriguing and much more complex. Even during this period of sweeping transformation and outside military siege, another, more professional agenda also motivated Barricada’s journalists and editors.

When the Sandinistas unexpectedly fell from power in the 1990 elections, Barricada gained a substantial degree of autonomy that allowed it to explore a more balanced and nuanced journalism “in the national interest.” This new orientation, however, ran afoul of more orthodox party leaders, who gradually gained the upper hand in the bitter internal struggle that wracked the Sandinista Front in the early 1990s. The paper closed its doors in January 1998.

Adam Jones’s outstanding study offers an unprecedented behin-the-scenes looks at Barricada’s two decades of evolution and dissolution. It also presents an intimate portrait of a key revolutionary institution and the memorable individuals who were a part of it.

Debra Sabia describes and analyzes the rise, growth, and fragmentation of the popular church and assesses the effect of the Christian base communities on religion, politics, and the nation's social revolutionary experiment.

The 1990s witnessed significant changes in the Cuban economy. The first half of the decade focused on obtaining the adjustments necessary to enable the country to overcome the profound economic crisis that had befallen it. The second half was characterized by the reality and possibilities of economic recovery. This volume may be the first academic text specifically written to assess the development perspectives of Cuba in the new conditions that prevail. The overarching question is "What comes after recovery?" The authors deal with questions of immediate relevance to the Cuban economy and its recent past, with emphasis placed on the implications for long-term prospects for development. This reflects the conviction that solutions to the challenge of development will require longer periods of analysis and different areas of focus than those which have served as the temporal and conceptual references for recent studies of the island's economy.
Contributors include Julio Carranza, Anicia Garcia, Hiram Marquetti, Lazaro Pena, Omar Everleny Perez, and Julio Diaz Vazquez (University of Havana, Cuba), Claes Brundenius (Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, Denmark), David Dapice (Tufts University and Harvard University, USA), Francisco Leon (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), and Mauricio de Miranda (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia).

The contentious debate in Cuba over Internet use and digital media primarily focuses on three issuesùmaximizing the potential for economic and cultural development, establishing stronger ties to the outside world, and changing the hierarchy of control. A growing number of users decry censorship and insist on personal freedom in accessing the web, while the centrally managed system benefits the government in circumventing U.S. sanctions against the country and in controlling what limited capacity exists.

Digital Dilemmas views Cuba from the Soviet Union's demise to the present, to assess how conflicts over media access play out in their both liberating and repressive potential. Drawing on extensive scholarship and interviews, Cristina Venegas questions myths of how Internet use necessarily fosters global democracy and reveals the impact of new technologies on the country's governance and culture. She includes film in the context of broader media history, as well as artistic practices such as digital art and networks of diasporic communities connected by the Web. This book is a model for understanding the geopolitic location of power relations in the age of digital information sharing.

If we are moving toward one global financial market, will all national financial systems that determine how businesses raise money look the same? Richard Deeg argues that, despite financial market integration and considerable harmonization in the regulation of financial markets, the traditional structure and economic functions of national financial systems are not inevitably undermined. Using the case of Germany--a country with a strong and distinctive financial sector that is at the center of the pressures of economic integration--the author shows how the unique aspects of the German financial sector and its relationship to the German economy have persisted notwithstanding powerful pressures to change. Posing the German model of coordinated capitalism in which banks play an important role in shaping both firm behavior and the possibilities for state intervention in the economy against the liberal model of the United States and Britain in which the securities markets play a much greater role than banks, Deeg shows how the German model has survived competitive pressures in the international economic system that have pushed Germany--and other countries--toward the liberal model.

This book will appeal to political scientists and economists interested in international financial markets, globalization, and the comparative study of domestic financial markets, as well as in German politics and the German economy.

Richard Deeg is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Temple University.

Germany serves as a case study of when and how members of intersectional groups—individuals belonging to two or more disadvantaged social categories—capture the attention of policymakers, and what happens when they do. This edited volume identifies three venues through which intersectional groups are able to form alliances and generate policy discussions regarding their concerns. Original empirical case studies focus on a wide range of timely subjects, including the intersexed, gender and disability rights, lesbian parenting, women working in STEM fields, workers’ rights in feminized sectors, women in combat, and Muslim women and girls.

 

Few political parties have been as misunderstood—or as roundly condemned—as Lebanon’s Hezbollah. With this book, Joseph Daher presents a new way of looking at Hezbollah: through the lens of political economy.
           
By discarding more common approaches to the party that focus on religious discourse or military questions, Daher is freed up to analyze what the party actually is: an organization that is operating within a specific political and socio-economic context, one that simultaneously offers it a rich ground of support and limits its range of action. Daher clearly and carefully positions Hezbollah within that context, focusing on its historic ties with its main sponsor, Iran, its media and cultural wings, its relationship with Western economic policies, and the impact of the Shi’a population on the sectarian politics of Lebanon. Offering additional attention to the party’s positions on worker’s rights and women’s issues, this fresh take on Hezbollah will be incredibly useful for understanding the world’s most tumultuous region.
 

Intimate Activism tells the story of Nicaraguan sexual-rights activists who helped to overturn the most repressive antisodomy law in the Americas. The law was passed shortly after the Sandinistas lost power in 1990 and, to the surprise of many, was repealed in 2007. In this vivid ethnography, Cymene Howe analyzes how local activists balanced global discourses regarding human rights and identity politics with the contingencies of daily life in Nicaragua. Though they were initially spurred by the antisodomy measure, activists sought to change not only the law but also culture. Howe emphasizes the different levels of intervention where activism occurs, from mass-media outlets and public protests to meetings of clandestine consciousness-raising groups. She follows the travails of queer characters in a hugely successful telenovela, traces the ideological tensions within the struggle for sexual rights, and conveys the voices of those engaged in "becoming" lesbianas and homosexuales in contemporary Nicaragua.

In this compelling study of labor and nationalism during and after Namibia's struggle for liberation, Gretchen Bauer addresses the very difficult task of consolidating democracy in an independent Namibia. Labor and Democracy in Namibia, 1971-1996 argues that a vibrant and autonomous civil society is crucial to the consolidation of new democracies, and it identifies trade unions, in particular, as especially important organizations of civil society. In Namibia, however, trade unions have emerged from the liberation struggle and the first years of independence in a weakened state. Dr. Bauer gives a lucid explanation for this phenomenon by tracing the origins and evolution of the trade unions in Namibia and discusses the implications thereof for the future of democracy in Namibia.

Based on material not widely available before independence in 1990, this study takes a critical look at the nationalist movement in Namibia. Through the use of dozens of interviews with political leaders, trade unionists, community activists, and others, Bauer offers the controversial suggestion that there are many within the nationalist movement (now the ruling party in government) who would rather not see a strong trade union movement (or any other potential rival) emerge in independent Namibia.

Leadership has long been an important subject in the study of international economic relations. Many scholars give American leadership credit for strong economic growth in western Europe and Japan after World War II. Other scholars have accused leading nations of using their power to the detriment of foreign countries. For example, it is often argued that a failure of both British and American leadership was a cause of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In Leading Questions, Robert Pahre develops a series of formal models to determine under what conditions leadership will be beneficial or harmful for the international political economy. He begins with a simple model of collective action and then adds leadership, security concerns, cooperation, and multilateral regimes to this basic model. He tests each model against a different historical period between 1815 and 1967.

Pahre's findings challenge conventional wisdom on international leadership. He finds that a leading state harms others when it has many allies but is good for the international political economy when it lacks allies. Leaders are less likely to engage in international cooperation than are other states, but having a leader in the system makes cooperation among follower states more likely. Cooperation by others may cause the leader to join a system of multilateral cooperation.

Pahre presents the technical material in an accessible style. By challenging the conventional interpretations of political economy in several historical periods, Leading Questions will be of interest not only to political scientists but also to economists and historians.

Robert Pahre is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Historically, Nicaragua has been mired in poverty and political conflict, yet the country has become a model for the successful emergence of democracy in a developing nation. Learning Democracy tells the story of how Nicaragua overcame an authoritarian government and American interventionism by engaging in an electoral revolution that solidified its democratic self-governance.

By analyzing nationwide surveys conducted during the 1990, 1996, and 2001 Nicaraguan presidential elections, Leslie E. Anderson and Lawrence C. Dodd provide insight into one of the most unexpected and intriguing recent advancements in third world politics. They offer a balanced account of the voting patterns and forward-thinking decisions that led Nicaraguans to first support the reformist Sandinista revolutionaries only to replace them with a conservative democratic regime a few years later. Addressing issues largely unexamined in Latin American studies, Learning Democracy is a unique and probing look at how the country's mass electorate moved beyond revolutionary struggle to establish a more stable democratic government by realizing the vital role of citizens in democratization processes.

Tracing Cuba’s ideological history, Gordy first looks at the ways in which the 19th century wars of independence and the 1959 revolution were used as the basis for both challenging and legitimizing Cuban socialism. Following the embrace of a pure socialist ideology in the 1960s, state policies of the 1970s became more accommodating of market imperatives, while still holding on to the principles articulated by Che Guevara and Karl Marx. In the 1990s, the Cuban people themselves pushed back against further economic reforms, reasserting the value of socioeconomic equality. Gordy also examines ideological debates among intellectuals, from the controversy sparked by Fidel Castro’s “Words to the Intellectuals” speech to the demand in the 1990s for a separation between academia and the state—not to safeguard academia from politics, but to ensure that academics as such could contribute to the political dialogue.

In recent years, child migrants from Central America have arrived in the United States in unprecedented numbers. But whilst minors from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador make the perilous journey to the north, their Nicaraguan peers have remained in Central America. Nicaragua also enjoys lower murder rates and far fewer gang problems when compared with her neighbours. Why is Nicaragua so different? The present government has promulgated a discourse of Nicaraguan exceptionalism, arguing that Nicaragua is unique thanks to heritage of the 1979 Sandinista revolution. This volume critically interrogates that claim, asking whether the legacy of the revolution is truly exceptional. An interdisciplinary work, the book brings together historians, anthropologists and sociologists to explore the multifarious ways in which the revolutionary past continues to shape public policy - and daily life - in Nicaragua’s tumultuous present. 

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the countries of East-Central Europe embarked on a journey to transform themselves into democratic capitalist societies. Their governments searched for strategies that would allow them to pursue radical market reforms within the context of nascent democratic politics. Poland adopted a neoliberal strategy that attempted to push through as much reform as possible before an antireform backlash could occur. In the Czech Republic, a social liberal strategy for transformation attempted to combine neoliberal macro-economic policies with social democratic measures designed to avert such a backlash.
A detailed analysis of Poland and the Czech Republic suggests that alternation between strategies has been the secret to the success of East-Central European countries.
This comparative case analysis identifies the significance of reform mistakes during transition and the corrective benefits of policy alternation, its claims illustrated with an in-depth study of privatization policy in the two countries.
Mitchell A. Orenstein delves into the historic struggle to build capitalism and democracy during a decade of post- communist transition in East-Central Europe and develops a model that explains why democratic policy alternation may accelerate policy learning under conditions of uncertainty and constraint.
Out of the Red is accessible to a general audience and as such is suitable for both graduate and undergraduate courses on political economy. It will be of particular interest to economists, political scientists, sociologists, students of postcommunism, and anyone interested in the relations between capitalism and democracy in the contemporary world.
Mitchell A. Orenstein is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University.

Drawing on testimonies from contra collaborators and ex-combatants, as well as pro-Sandinista peasants, this book presents a dynamic account of the growing divisions between peasants from the area of Quilalí who took up arms in defense of revolutionary programs and ideals such as land reform and equality and those who opposed the FSLN.

Peasants in Arms details the role of local elites in organizing the first anti-Sandinista uprising in 1980 and their subsequent rise to positions of field command in the contras. Lynn Horton explores the internal factors that led a majority of peasants to turn against the revolution and the ways in which the military draft, and family and community pressures reinforced conflict and undermined mid-decade FSLN policy shifts that attempted to win back peasant support.

Poland in the 1980s was filled with shuttered restaurants and shops that bore such imaginative names as “bread,” “shoes,” and “milk products,” from which lines could stretch for days on the mere rumor there was something worth buying. But you’d be hard-pressed to recognize the same squares—buzzing with bars and cafés—today. In the years since the collapse of communism, Poland’s GDP has almost tripled, making it the eighth-largest economy in the European Union, with a wealth of well-educated and highly skilled workers and a buoyant private sector that competes in international markets. Many consider it one of the only European countries to have truly weathered the financial crisis.
           
As the Warsaw bureau chief for the Financial Times, Jan Cienski spent more than a decade talking with the people who did something that had never been done before: recreating a market economy out of a socialist one. Poland had always lagged behind wealthier Western Europe, but in the 1980s the gap had grown to its widest in centuries. But the corrupt Polish version of communism also created the conditions for its eventual revitalization, bringing forth a remarkably resilient and entrepreneurial people prepared to brave red tape and limited access to capital. In the 1990s, more than a million Polish people opened their own businesses, selling everything from bicycles to leather jackets, Japanese VCRs, and romance novels. The most business-savvy turned those primitive operations into complex corporations that now have global reach.

Well researched and accessibly and entertainingly written, Start-Up Poland tells the story of the opening bell in the East, painting lively portraits of the men and women who built successful businesses there, what their lives were like, and what they did to catapult their ideas to incredible success. At a time when Poland’s new right-wing government plays on past grievances and forms part of the populist and nationalist revolution sweeping the Western world, Cienski’s book also serves as a reminder that the past century has been the most successful in Poland’s history.
 

 

Does the new, more powerful Germany pose a threat to its neighbors? Does the new German Problem resemble the old? The German Problem Transformed addresses these questions fifty years after the founding of the Federal Republic and ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Many observers have underscored the reemergence of Germany as Europe's central power. After four decades of division, they contend, Germany is once again fully sovereign; without the strictures of bipolarity, its leaders are free to define and pursue national interests in East and West. From this perspective, the reunified Germany faces challenges not unlike those of its unified predecessor a century earlier.

The German Problem Transformed rejects this formulation. Thomas Banchoff acknowledges post-reunification challenges, but argues that postwar changes, not prewar analogies, best illuminate them. The book explains the transformation of German foreign policy through a structured analysis of four critical postwar junctures: the cold war of the 1950s, the détente of the 1960s and 1970s, the new cold war of the early 1980s, and the post-cold war 1990s. Each chapter examines the interaction of four factors--international structure and institutions, foreign policy ideas, and domestic politics--in driving the direction of German foreign policy at a key turning point.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of German history, German politics, and European international relations, as well as policymakers and the interested public.

Thomas Banchoff is Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University.

Taking power in Nicaragua in 1979 as a revolutionary party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was willing to put its fate in the hands of the Nicaraguan people twice, in 1984 and 1990. The party wrote a democratic constitution and then, remarkably, accepted the decision of the majority by relinquishing power upon its defeat in the 1990 election.

The Many Faces of Sandinista Democracy explores the conflicts involving different visions of political and economic democracy, as well as new radical thought on participatory democracy. The latter addresses the problems popular organizations encountered as they moved from subservience to the FSLN in the 1980s to the liberating but disorientating electoral defeat of 1990. Up until the moment of defeat, the Sandinistas saw themselves as the true vanguard of the Nicaraguan people, able to submit themselves to free elections, because they felt they truly represented the general will of the people.

Dr. Hoyt brings to an international audience for the first time a study of the ideas of several Nicaraguan thinkers. She examines the conflicts surrounding the development of ideas within the FSLN, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of its rare combination of democratic and vanguard principles.

“The New Berlin is a notable contribution to human geography and to the interdisciplinary literature on social memory and place making. Till’s methods and scholarship have provided the conceptual groundwork for the exploration and development of place making, social memory, and spatial haunting through the particular practices and politics of the new Berlin. Her readable style is marked by a narrative economy in which every word and sentence serves the larger purposes of the book. I recommend this book to anyone—student, scholar, or practitioner—who is interested in the social dynamics of memory formation and place making.” —The Professional Geographer

“This book is a well-written ‘first-hand’ account, though it also thoroughly covers academic literature, contemporary news accounts, and archival records.” —German Studies Review

“Karen E. Till's The New Berlin describes the modern metropolis and the ghosts of the past that it has to deal with.” —German World

“Well illustrated and copiously footnoted, this is a cutting-edge study of the power of identity-construction/analysis. Highly recommended.” —CHOICE

The Arab Spring unsettled regimes across North Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to Oman. Lebanon, however, proved immune. How can that be explained? What features of Lebanese politics and governance could account for the system’s ability to withstand the domestic and regional pressures unleashed by the Arab Spring?
 
The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon builds on extensive field work to find the answers to those questions and more. Bassel Salloukh, Lebanon’s leading political scientist, analyses the mix of institutional, clientelist, and discursive practices that sustain the sectarian nature of Lebanon, revealing an expanding sectarian web that occupies ever-more-substantial areas of everyday life in Lebanon. It also highlights the struggles waged by opponents of the system, including women, public sector employees, teachers, students, and NGO-based coalitions, and how their efforts often fail to bear fruit because of sabotage by various systematic forces.

Even in the period following the electoral defeat of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1990, the revolution of 1979 continues to have a profound effect on the political economy of Nicaragua. Wright’s study, which is based on interviews with people from all walks of life—from government and party officials to academics and campesinos—as well as on the large volume of literature in both English and Spanish, focuses on the FSLN understanding of the relationships between the state, the party, and mass actors, and the nature of social classes. Wright considers the topics of agrarian reform, the development of mass organizations, the role of labor, and other aspects of the Nicaraguan political economy in order to assess their significance in theoretical as well as practical terms.