**An award-winning political scientist shows that a society’s path to prosperity, sustainability, and equality depends on who owns the land“Fascinating...a must read.” —Thomas Piketty, New York Times–bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First CenturyA New Yorker Best Book of the Year**For millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land P...

Major land reform programs have reallocated property in more than one-third of the world's countries in the last century and impacted over one billion people. But only rarely have these programs granted beneficiaries complete property rights. Why is this the case, and what are the consequences? This book draws on wide-ranging original data and charts new conceptual terrain to reveal the political origins of the property rights gap. It shows that land reform programs are most often implemen...

This book argues that - in terms of institutional design, the allocation of power and privilege, and the lived experiences of citizens - democracy often does not restart the political game after displacing authoritarianism. Democratic institutions are frequently designed by the outgoing authoritarian regime to shield incumbent elites from the rule of law and give them an unfair advantage over politics and the economy after democratization. Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democrac...

Canonical theories of political economy struggle to explain patterns of distribution in authoritarian regimes. In this Element, Albertus, Fenner, and Slater challenge existing models and introduce an alternative, supply-side, and state-centered theory of 'coercive distribution'. Authoritarian regimes proactively deploy distributive policies as advantageous strategies to consolidate their monopoly on power. These policies contribute to authoritarian durability by undercutting rival elites a...

When and why do countries redistribute land to the landless? What political purposes does land reform serve, and what place does it have in today's world? A long-standing literature dating back to Aristotle and echoed in important recent works holds that redistribution should be both higher and more targeted at the poor under democracy. Yet comprehensive historical data to test this claim has been lacking. This book shows that land redistribution - the most consequential form of redistribu...

An award-winning political scientist shows that a society’s path to prosperity, sustainability, and equality depends on who owns the landFor millennia, land has been a symbol of wealth and privilege. But the true power of land ownership is even greater than we might think. In Land Power, political scientist Michael Albertus shows that who owns the land determines whether a society will be equal or unequal, whether it will develop or decline, and whether it...

The authoritative book to help you make sense of the world - as told by a former British diplomat.'A must-read to understand the often bewildering world we now live in, written as a scholarly book in an accessible tone' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Iran. Greenland. Ukraine. Global politics as we know it has been challenged beyond measure in recent times.Westlessness by former UK diplomat Dr Samir Puri is here to help make...

Brought to you by Penguin.From the former Director of GCHQ comes a guide to surviving crises using the latest intelligence strategiesWar, terrorism, cyberattack, climate change, the threat of AI: it has never been more important to be prepared for the crises that await us.In How to Survive a Crisis, Professor Sir David Omand draws on his experience in defence, security and intelligence, including as Director of GCHQ and UK ...

Brought to you by Penguin.We all want to know what on earth is going on. Why real wages are flatlining but taxes are rising, and public services are still collapsing. Why our children can’t afford a house and our neighbours are using foodbanks. We are all yearning for a way out of the repeated economic crises, generational divisions and political dysfunction that dominate our lives. Most of all we want our – and Britain’s – future back.Great Britain?

**Brought to you by Penguin.The culture war is over. If you want it to be. It wasn’t even a culture war; it was a war on culture. A sustained attack, Dan Hicks argues, in the form of the weaponisation of civic museums, public art, and even universities — and one that has a deeper history than you might think.**Tracing the origins of contemporary conflicts over art, heritage, memory, and colonialism, Every Monument Will Fall joins the dots between the building of st...

Brought to you by Penguin.In the early years of Vladmir Putin’s Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin emerged as one of the President’s most trusted assets. By 2023, he had become a dangerous warlord – and also one of Putin’s chief rivals in Russia’s tumultuous political climate, exiled after leading an attempted coup, and shortly after killed in a mysterious plane crash.But what is the truth about this enigmatic figure, his role in the war with Ukraine, and the chaos ...

Brought to you by Penguin.A ground-breaking, present-tense reconstruction of the life and world of one of the most consequential figures in world history, Suleyman the Magnificent, from the author of The Lion HouseChosen by The Times, Guardian and Financial Times as a 'Book to Look Out For' in 2025Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while...