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...

A multidisciplinary analysis of how state capture unfolded in South Africa and was contested within both civil society and the state itself. It presents a scholarly and empirical understanding of how things went awry, even with various regulating bodies in place, and how to prevent state capture from happening again in the future.The metaphor of ‘state capture’ has dominated South Africa’s political discourse in the post-Zuma presidency era. What is state capture and how does it ma...

In 2013 and in 2014 respectively, the South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS) and Politikon (the South African Journal of Political Studies) celebrate their 40th anniversary. Also, in April 2014 South Africa celebrates twenty years since the advent of the post-Apartheid democracy, and the birth of the ‘rainbow nation’. This book provides a timely account of the birth and evolution of South African politics over the past four decades, but also of the study of Politic...

This book offers readers an alternative history of the origins of the discipline of International Relations. Conventional, western histories of the discipline point to 1919 as the year of the ‘birth of the discipline’ with two seminal initiatives – setting up of the first Chair of IR at Aberystwyth and the founding of the Institute of International Relations on the side-lines of the Paris Peace Conference. From these events, International Relations is argued to have been established as a p...

International relations are what a government does when nobodys looking. While this may well once have been true, the conduct of international relations in South Africa and elsewhere has come under increasing scrutiny by the public. This is partially the result of specialist expertise around the formal study of international relations and the making of foreign policy, enhanced by the development of International Relations as a separate academic field. Like the growth of institutes of inter...

The Sunday Times BestsellerA new assessment of the West’s colonial recordIn the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the ‘End of History’ – that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever.Now however, with Russia rattling its sabre on the borders of Europe and China rising to challenge the post-1945 world order, the liberal West faces major threats.These t...

In this informative critique of contemporary leadership, renowned political scientist Donald Savoie poses and answers the crucial questions: where is power located, and who is in charge? In recent years it has become extremely difficult to pinpoint the location of political and economic power, making it complicated to determine who is to blame for political and economic catastrophes and leading to increased disenchantment with Western politicians and bureaucrats. Power considers how forces...

The age of party democracy has passed, argues Peter Mair in Ruling the Void. The major parties have become so disconnected from society that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.First published in 2013, Ruling the Void presciently observed that the widening gap between citizens and their political leaders posed a crisis of legitimacy for the governing class, and was fuelling populist mobilizations against it. Europe's political e...

From the eighteenth century until the 1950s the British Empire was the biggest political entity in the world. The territories forming this empire ranged from tiny islands to vast segments of the world's major continental land masses. The British Empire left its mark on the world in a multitude of ways, many of them permanent. In this Very Short Introduction, Ashley Jackson introduces and defines the British Empire, reviewing its historiography by answering a series of key question...

Public administration ensures the development and delivery of the essential public services required for sustaining modern civilization. Covering areas from public safety and social welfare to transportation and education, the services provided through the public sector are inextricably part of our daily lives. However, mandatory budgetary cuts in recent years have caused public administrators to radically re-think how they govern in the modern age. In this Very Short Introduction...

This open access Regional Reader proposes new ways of theorizing migration in Southern Africa by arguing that traditional western forms of theorizing do not adequately fit the South-South migration context. It explores the existing definitions of a ‘migrant’ with a view to conceptualise a definition which will speak to the complexities, envisioning a more inclusive Southern African region. The book investigates the various levels of migration moving from the local (rural to urban and urban...

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely ...