The New World of Democracy Promotion (Current History, November 2011)
Lincoln Mitchell: The New World of Democracy Promotion
Published Tuesday, 01 November 2011
Professor Lincoln Mitchell analyzes the evolution of American democracy promotion,and the changing face of democracy assistance since the 1990s. He urges U.S. policy makers to tailor their democracy promotion strategies to the specific political context of each nation, and sees the need for a general reframing of the issue of democracy promotion.
To read the article please download the PDF.
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Zrimaia Lirika: Derzhavin
Published Friday, 30 July 2010
Zrimaia Lirika: Derzhavinwas published in summer 2010 by NLO Publishers (Moscow) in their series “Ocherki vizual’nosti.” An English version of the book is being prepared for publication.
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The Policy World Meets Academia: Rethinking U.S. Policy toward Russia
Published Thursday, 15 July 2010
Edited by Timothy Colton (Director, Davis Center, Harvard University), Timothy Frye (Director, Harriman Institute), and Robert Legvold (former Director, Harriman Institute), "Rethinking U.S. Policy toward Russia" brings together young academic international relations and Russia specialists with senior members of the policy-making community to address the growing gap between scholarly work and the needs of the policy community.
A companion essay by Rachel Salzman evaluates the main themes and recommendations in the many reports that have appeared over the last year that assess the state of U.S.-Russian relations and make recommendations to the Obama administration as it proceeds with its Russia policy.
A third essay by Robert Legvold is entitled "Meeting the Russian Challenge in the Obama Era."
The publications can be found under the heading "New Publications from the Project" if you follow the link below:
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Jewish Bialystok and its Diaspora
Published Friday, 23 April 2010
Korbin, Rebecca. Jewish Bialystok and its Diaspora. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2010.
The mass migration of East European Jews and their resettlement in cities throughout Europe, the United States, Argentina, the Middle East and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries not only transformed the demographic and cultural centers of world Jewry, it also reshaped Jews’ understanding and performance of their diasporic identities. Rebecca Kobrin’s study of the dispersal of Jews from one city in Poland—Bialystok—demonstrates how the act of migration set in motion a wide range of transformations that led the migrants to imagine themselves as exiles not only from the mythic Land of Israel but most immediately from their east European homeland. Kobrin explores the organizations, institutions, newspapers, and philanthropies that the Bialystokers created around the world and that reshaped their perceptions of exile and diaspora.
“A work of truly extraordinary scope, driven by admirable intellectual ambition. It is exhilarating to come across a work of such imagination and originality.”
—Jonathan Frankel, author of Crisis, Revolution, and Russian Jews
“Challenges and refines long-standing assumptions about Old World/New World dynamics generally and Jewish immigrants to America in particular. . . . Original and smartly conceived, grounded in careful, extensive research and thoughtful analysis.” —Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University
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No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations
Published Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Mazower, Mark. No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 2009.
No Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering instead a strikingly original interpretation of the UN's ideological roots, early history, and changing role in world affairs.
“[Mazower] has identified a gigantic contradiction in the United Nations’ very DNA that may explain how the ambitious, well-intentioned body evolved into Mess-on-East River.”—Marc Tracy, New York Times Book Review
“Mark Mazower sets out to challenge two notions: first, that the UN’s creation in 1945 was uncontaminated by association with the League; and second, that it was above all an American affair... This book offers interesting glimpses of the UN’s origins.” —Adam Roberts, Times Literary Supplement
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Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations
Published Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Cooley, Alexander and Hendrik Spruyt. Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University, 2009.
Building on important advances in economics and law, Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt develop a highly original, interdisciplinary approach and apply it to a broad range of cases involving international sovereign political integration and disintegration. The authors reveal the importance of incomplete contracting in the decolonization of territories once held by Europe and the Soviet Union; U.S. overseas military basing agreements with host countries; and in regional economic-integration agreements such as the European Union. Cooley and Spruyt examine contemporary problems such as the Arab-Israeli dispute over water resources, and show why the international community inadequately prepared for Kosovo's independence.
“Contracting States is a brilliant and original book—a long-overdue addition to international relations theory. Extending insights from incomplete contracting theory and conceiving of sovereignty as a bundle of ‘tradable’ rights, Cooley and Spruyt offer a unified analytical framework that sheds fresh light on seemingly disparate key events, including regional integration, state formation, and territorial fragmentation.”
—Walter Mattli, St. John's College, University of Oxford
“Contracting States is an extraordinary undertaking that challenges us to see the foundations of successful international cooperation in a new light. This is likely to be a seminal work that defines the terms of the debate about sovereignty and governance for years to come.”—Philip G. Roeder, University of California, San Diego
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The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life
Published Wednesday, 30 December 2009
What counts? In work, as in other areas of life, it is not always clear what standards we are being judged by or how our worth is being determined. This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such “heterarchy” rather than seeking to purge it. Stark makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and post-communist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that "perplexing situations" provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.
“In this book, Stark takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery, from the socialist factories of Eastern Europe to the new media companies and financial trading floors of Manhattan. The Sense of Dissonance is equally a book about how organizations really work and how we should think about the problem of organization—a great accomplishment.”—Duncan Watts, author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age
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Koestler
Published Saturday, 12 December 2009
Scammell, Michael. Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. Random House: New York, 2009.
Based upon over 100 interviews and a wealth of new sources (private diaries, unpublished letters, archives of the CIA, MI5, the French Sureté, the German and Soviet communist parties), Koestler is a nuanced account of its subject’s turbulent public and private life: his drug use, manic depression, the frenetic womanizing that led to an accusation of rape, and the shocking suicide pact with his third wife in 1983. It also makes the case for Koestler’s stature as a major autobiographer and essayist as well as novelist. The result is a complex and indelible portrait of a brilliant, unpredictable, and talented writer, memorably described by one MI5 interrogator as “one-third blackguard, one-third lunatic, and one-third genius.”
“Scammell is able to reconstruct complicated scenes from Koestler’s life with real historical and literary flair.... The main characters are shown from every angle, with all of their faults and virtues. Koestler himself seems so alive he might leap off the page.”
—Anne Applebaum, The New York Review of Books.
“Readers looking for a terrific biography, as well as a gripping work of intellectual history, shouldn’t miss this record of “the literary and political history of a twentieth century skeptic.” Every page is enthralling....”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post.
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Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective
Published Monday, 23 June 2008
Barkey, Karen. Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
This book is a comparative study of imperial organization and longevity that assesses Ottoman successes as well as failures against those of other empires with similar characteristics. Barkey examines the Ottoman Empire's social organization and mechanisms of rule at key moments of its history, emergence, imperial institutionalization, remodeling, and transition to nation-state, revealing how the empire managed these moments, adapted, and averted crises and what changes made it transform dramatically. The flexible techniques by which the Ottomans maintained their legitimacy, the cooperation of their diverse elites both at the center and in the provinces, as well as their control over economic and human resources were responsible for the longevity of this particular "negotiated empire." Her analysis illuminates topics that include imperial governance, imperial institutions, imperial diversity and multiculturalism, the manner in which dissent is handled and/or internalized, and the nature of state society negotiations.
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All the Names of the Lord: Lists, Mysticism, and Magic
Published Thursday, 01 May 2008
All the Names of the Lord: Lists, Mysticism, and Magic. Izmirlieva, Valentina.
University Of Chicago Press, May 2008 (expected).
Christians face a conundrum when it comes to naming God, for if God is unnamable, as theologians maintain, he can also be called by every name. His proper name is thus an open-ended, all-encompassing list, a mystery the Church embraces in its rhetoric, but which many Christians have found difficult to accept. To explore this conflict, Valentina Izmirlieva examines two lists of God’s names: one from The Divine Names, the classic treatise by Pseudo-Dionysius, and the other from The 72 Names of the Lord, an amulet whose history binds together Kabbalah and Christianity, Jews and Slavs, Palestine, Provence, and the Balkans.
This unexpected juxtaposition of a theological treatise and a magical amulet allows Izmirlieva to reveal lists’ rhetorical potential to create order and to function as both tools of knowledge and of power. Despite the two different visions of order represented by each list, Izmirlieva finds that their uses in Christian practice point to a complementary relationship between the existential need for God’s protection and the metaphysical desire to submit to his infinite majesty—a compelling claim sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.
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