Rising superpower China duly anointed a new generation of leaders led by Xi Jinping at the Communist Party's 18th National Congress held in November 2012. While the conclave itself passed off with smoothly choreographed efficiency, the months leading up to this once-a-decade transition were anything but orderly. Intense factional wrangling behind the scenes was accompanied by scandals very much in public view. In the most spectacular furore the political aspirations of Communist aristocrat...

Michael Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world's most prosperous countries - the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew - former prime minister and Singapore's 'founding father' - designed to empower himself and his family. Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country's sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked c...

India and Pakistan will be among the most important countries in the twenty-first century. In Avoiding Armageddon, Bruce Riedel clearly explains the challenge and the importance of successfully managing America's affairs with these two emerging powers and their toxic relationship.Born from the British Raj, the two nations share a common heritage, but they are different in many important ways. India is already the world's largest democracy and will soon become the planet's m...

What makes a man put politics and ambition before family? Ed Miliband is perhaps the least understood political leader of modern times. Brought up against A backdrop of tragedy, with a prominent Marxist thinker for a father, Ed followed his brother to the same college at Oxford, into Parliament and into the Cabinet before, at the eleventh hour, snatching away David's dream of the leadership. This new and fully updated edition follows Ed through the highs of leading the charge against Ruper...

Japan and China have been rivals for more than a millennium. In more recent times, China was the more powerful until the late nineteenth century, while Japan took the upper hand in the twentieth. Now, China's resurgence has emboldened it even as Japan perceives itself falling behind, exacerbating long-standing historical frictions. June Teufel Dreyer's Middle Kingdom and Empire of the Rising Sun provides a highly accessible overview of one of the world's great civilizational rival...

The rivalry between India and Pakistan has proven to be one of the world's most intractable international conflicts, ever since 1947 when the British botched their departure from the South Asian subcontinent. And the enmity is likely to continue for another thirty-five years, reaching the century mark. This has critical implications for both countries and the rest of the world. Renowned South Asia expert Stephen P. Cohen explains why he expects this rivalry to continue in this first compre...

This book provides an analysis of the urban government system in Bangladesh, focusing on its upper tier, the City Corporation (CC), and the institutional and legal frameworks within which it operates. Along with a discussion of the scale and magnitude of urbanization, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of the reform agendas of CCs including their functional assignments, local political leadership, local control over administration and service delivery, local fiscal autonomy and loc...

This book describes the main contradictions in China’s actions on the world stage—peaceful vs. assertive—through a culturally informed framework that takes into account China’s historical memory and political culture. The author analyzes nine cases, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), as examples that show both China’s commitment to peace and development in the region, as well as its concerted effort to introduce alternative institutions on the global stage that coul...

This book evaluates the impact of the 2001 central government reforms on effective foreign policy making in Japan. It puts a special focus on the evolution of the domestic institutional factors and decision-making processes behind Japan’s foreign policy, while also analyzing the development of Japan’s external relations with various other countries, such as the US, China and North Korea. Adhering to the neoclassical realist approach, the authors show that, thanks to a more independent Kant...

Taking a comparative approach and bringing together perspectives from Japan, China, Korea, and Taiwan, this volume considers former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama's 1995 apology statement, the height of Japan's post-war apology, and examines its implications for memory, international relations, and reconciliation in Asia.

This book examines the many ways in which the Communist Party in China is still revolutionary by focusing on how, in recent years, it has attempted to mobilize Party members to become ethical subjects. In the context of the Party’s history of the military revolution, Cultural Revolution and Economic Reform (or economic revolution), the authors argue that under President Xi Jinping the Party has launched an ethical revolution within the Party for the sake of sustaining its legitimacy. This ...

At the time when the national movement was still in its early stages, Madan Mohan Malaviya emerged as an enigmatic but commanding figure in the political landscape of India. This work reconstructs Malaviya’s ideal of nationalism, which was composite, constructive and creative and offers a fresh perspective on an important period of modern India’s political history. Utilizing new and authentic source material, this book traces Malaviya’s role in the freedom struggle, the people who supporte...