CIAO DATE: 08/2009
Volume: 124, Issue: 2
Summer 2009
Pakistan and Afghanistan: Beyond the Taliban
JUAN COLE
JUAN COLE analyzes political and economic developments in contemporary Pakistan and Afghanistan. He argues that Western preoccupation with "crisis" and "radicalism" in Pakistan has caused observers to miss the success of an expanding white-collar middle class in demanding a rule of law and a return to civilian rule after nearly a decade of military dictatorship. He questions the idea that there is a purely military, and especially Western military, solution to the problem of Talibanism in northwest Pakistan and southern Afghanistan, analyzing the insurgency as several distinct groups driven in part by religious nationalism and anti-imperialism.
What the New Deal Did
DAVID M. KENNEDY
DAVID M. KENNEDY revisits the New Deal's relevance to our own time. He concludes that the stubborn persistence of the Great Depression through the decade of the 1930s opened the political space for the New Deal's greatest accomplishments, all of which were aimed at reducing risk in key sectors of the economy and imparting a measure of security to American life for generations thereafter.
Freedom Fighters and Zealots: Al Qaeda in Historical Perspective (PDF)
Christopher J. Fettweis
CHRISTOPHER J. FETTWEIS argues that too many post-September 11 analyses of terrorism seem to regard the phenomenon as brand new. Terrorism has existed throughout history, and its groups come in two forms: nationalist and ideological. This simple binary typology illuminates a number of important characteristics of terrorism, from group strategy and tactics to overall life expectancy. Perhaps most important, counter-terrorism measures that prove effective against groups in one category will often fail against those in the other.
War Has Almost Ceased to Exist: An Assessment
John Mueller
JOHN MUELLER suggests that we may be reaching a point at which war, as conventionally defined, ceases or nearly ceases to exist in both its international and civil varieties. He assesses the phenomenon and speculates about what this development, should it definitively materialize, might suggest about the various explanations and theories scholars and analysts have preferred to explain the problem of war.
Presidential Travel from Eisenhower to George W. Bush: An "Electoral College" Strategy
EMILY JANE CHARNOCK, JAMES A. McCANN, KATHRYN DUNN TENPAS
EMILY JANE CHARNOCK, JAMES A. McCANN, and KATHRYN DUNN TENPAS examine patterns of presidential travel since the Eisenhower years, focusing on the factors that prompt visits to particular states during the first term. The authors argue that electoral considerations are becoming increasingly relevant as presidents decide where and when to travel.
Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal (PDF)
Richard Holtzman
Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal
by Stephen Skowronek. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2008.
192 pp. Cloth, $34.95; paper, $16.95.
Michael C. Desch, Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism
Alexander B. Downes
Michael S. Lewis-Beck, William G. Jacoby, Helmut Norpoth, and Herbert F. Weisberg, The American Voter Revisited
Barry C. Burden
David M. Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds
Andrew Rudalevige
Darrell M. West
Attack Politics: Negativity in Presidential Campaigns Since 1960 by Emmett H. Buell, Jr. and Lee Sigelman. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2008. 354 pp. $34.95.
Chad Alan Goldberg, Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen's Bureau to Workfare
Greg M. Shaw
Richard Gowan
Does PeacekeepingWork? Shaping Belligerents' Choices after CivilWar by Virginia Page Fortna. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2008. 232 pp. $60.00.
UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars by Lise Morjé Howard. New York,
Cambridge University Press, 2008. 416 pp. $90.00.
Feargal Cochrane, Ending Wars
Alex Weisiger
Matthew J. Flynn, First Strike: Preemptive War in Modern History
Whitley Kaufman
Paige Whaley Eager, From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence
Mia Bloom
Amb. James F. Dobbins, After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan
Christopher J. Fettweis
Kathleen R. Arnold, America's New Working Class: Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Biopolitical Age
Margaret Gray
Brad Lockerbie, Do Voters Look to the Future? Economics and Elections
Robert S. Erikson
Lewis L. Gould, Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics
Daniel Klinghard
Lina Newton, Illegal, Alien, or Immigrant: The Politics of Immigration Reform
Kristen Hill Maher
Heidi J. Swarts, Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements
Elisabeth S. Clemens
Thomas L. Brunell, Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections are Bad for America
David T. Canon
Ronnee Schreiber, Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics
Joyce Gelb
Brian Pinaire, The Constitution of Electoral Speech Law: The Supreme Court and Freedom of Expression in Campaigns and Elections
Allison R. Hayward
David C.W. Parker, The Power of Money in Congressional Campaigns 1880-2006
Robin Kolodny
Andrew Wroe, The Republican Party and Immigration Politics: From Proposition 187 to George W. Bush
John J. Pitney, Jr.
Jeffrey R. Henig, Spin Cycle: How Research Is Used in Policy Debates, The Case of Charter Schools
John A. Hird
David E. Kyvig, The Age of Impeachment: American Constitutional Culture Since 1960
Timothy M. Cole
Andrew Walter, Governing Finance: East Asia's Adoption of International Standards
Tim Büthe
Jodi S. Finkel, Judicial Reform as Political Insurance: Argentina, Peru, and Mexico in the 1990s
Verónica Michel
Armando Razo, Social Foundations of Limited Dictatorship: Networks and Private Protection During Mexico's Early Industrialization
Roderic Ai Camp
Makau Mutua, Kenya's Quest for Democracy: Taming Leviathan
Stephen Orvis
Yossi Shain, Kinship and Diasporas in International Affairs
Idean Salehyan
George Gavrilis, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries
Peter Andreas
Paul D. Senese and John A. Vasquez, The Steps to War: An Empirical Study
Branislav L. Slantchev
Brian Waddell, Toward the National Security State: Civil-Military Relations during World War II
Mark A. Stoler