Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 - Social & Behavioral Sciences — Sociology — African and African American Studies

In her groundbreaking book, Palanza (Pontificia Universidad de Chile) examines policy making in separation of powers systems by explaining the levels of reliance on executive decrees that may lead to unbalanced presidential systems and ultimately low democratic quality. The author accurately defends the long-held belief that policy enacted by decree is less stable than policy enacted by the widely supported congressional statutes. This explanation captures the importance of institutions by taking into account the way they are structured and interact, and by shedding light on the complex process behind the enforcement of checks and balances. The author puts forth the notion that the existence of rules imposing checks on executive behavior is worth nothing if the actors in charge of imposing constraints on presidents do not exercise their constitutional powers. She goes further in outlining mechanisms leading to politicians' willingness to enforce limits on the executive by means of exercising and enforcing their own decision-making rights. In doing so, they help strengthen the institutions they embody, and endow them with added democratic value. Palanza has shown that veto players are not established by constitutions, but by actors' willingness to enforce constitutional rules, which in turn contributes to policy stability.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Norris (Harvard) and Inglehart (Michigan) present a richly empirical and theoretical portrait of the rise of authoritarian Populism inspired by cultural backlash. Possessing new evidence, they argue that a silent cultural revolution triggered Populist and authoritarian movements across Europe and the Americas in direct conflict with the values and institutions of liberal democracy. The research is supported by many entities, including the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard, the National Science Foundation, the US World Values Survey (Michigan), and the European Social Survey. Populists claim that legitimate authority derives from the people and not establishment elites, which undermines faith in democratic institutions. Authoritarian values blend with Populist rhetoric fostering tribalistic conflicts, anxiety, and hatred, the triumph of fear over hope. The book opens with new definitions for authoritarianism and the theoretical framework of the research. Part 2 explores authoritarian and Populist values and the cultural backlash theory, built on empirically testable propositions: a silent revolution intensified polarization around cultural issues, instigating an authoritarian Populist backlash. Former dominant cultural majorities melt away as a new majority emerges with divergent views on social values and norms. A generation experiencing existential security and higher education is more secular, tolerant, and open to diverse identities. Every political scientist should read this book.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Mueller examines the "third wave" of political protests throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, 2011-2016. Her book adopts class analysis, in which the middle class provides "generals," the (primarily urban) poor the "soldiers." Their relationship is symbiotic. Economic disparities have grown on the continent. In 1970, about one-tenth of the global poor lived in Africa. By 2010, the figure had risen to nearly half. Mueller rejects the argument that political spillover from the Middle East and North Africa touched off the "third wave." Sub-Saharan countries illustrate "social movements," involving coordination and cooperation. The introduction sets forth Mueller's basic argument; chapter 2 explains why fewer protests occurred in the 1970s and 1980s than scholars expected. The author asks why poverty persists despite rising per capita incomes and why the middle class's rising economic status hasn't guaranteed political empowerment. Chapter 4 examines leaders of Kenyan and Senegalese protest movements. In the following chapter, Mueller uses Afrobarometer data from 31 countries, while chapter 7 examines Niger in detail. The book is exceptionally well documented--the bibliography is 47 pages long. The book should be read by every serious analyst of contemporary Africa.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This is a thorough, well-written study of the 1956 Suez Crisis, authored in large part by Zelikow (Univ. of Virginia) but with chapters by five other capable scholars. May (Harvard until his death in 2009) earned co-authorship of the book by virtue of involvement in the research project as far back as the 1990s. The book presents three successive historical phases: (1) from Egypt's turn to the USSR for arms in 1955 until the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company in July 1956; (2) from this astonishing action until the following October, when Israel, France, and Great Britain concocted a scheme for military action; and (3) from the start of the ensuing war until the invaders succumbed to pressures to withdraw. The situation is examined from the perspectives of Washington, Moscow, Paris, Jerusalem, London, and Cairo. The authors use existing literature and some archival research to produce the best study so far of the crisis. With its vivid insight into the international politics of this period (and the domestic politics of key countries), Suez Deconstructed will interest many historians, political scientists, policy makers, and sophisticated general readers.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This is one of the most important books on the growth of global populist political movements during the past 20 years. It focuses on the evolution of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (JDP-Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) since 2002 under the leadership of now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and how the party evolved from a left-right or secular-religious divide into a "low-high" populist party "as a manifestation of politics of social and cultural inequalities." The "low-populist" moniker depicts the JDP cadres "as the true representatives of the despised, belittled, socially and culturally excluded, and downtrodden segments of the society." This enabled the JDP to establish strong emotional links with low-income and peripheral segments. In other words, it was not class but cultural, linguistic, and emotional ties that bound so many Turks (and Kurds) to the JDP, resulting in the party's movement from an "electoral democracy" to one of "competitive authoritarianism." The failed coup d'etat on July 15, 2016, allowed the JDP and President Erdogan to move further to the Right in what the author describes as an "elected dictatorship." The populist paradigms discussed make clear that similar populist movements could take place in the US.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This reviewer thought that he had read most, if not all, of the definitive books dealing with the Ottoman genocide and ethnic cleansings of the Armenians prior to and during WWI, especially Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek's outstanding books (CH, Jul'96, 33-6488), (CH, Dec'11, 49-2253), (CH, Apr'15, 52-4383). But this book by Morris and Ze'evi, two well-known Israeli historians, is another brilliant study. Its major contribution is that it includes not just the genocide of Armenians, but also Ottoman destruction of the Greek and much of other Christian communities in Turkey and parts of the Middle East from 1894 to 1924. The authors are emphatic that Ottoman and Turkish intentions to diminish and eradicate these groups were more intentional and crueler than previously thought. The book is powerfully written. The authors do not mince words. They conclude that the "destruction of the Christians communities was the result of deliberate government policy and the will of the country's Muslim inhabitants." The authors compare this period to the anti-Semitism, discrimination, and cultural annihilation that let to the genocide of European Jews in 20th-century Europe. The book will heighten the tensions, arguments, and differences, not only among scholars, but in other countries and peoples--especially among Christians, Muslims, and Jews.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This thin historical account of contemporary Yemen is an intensely detailed examination of this ancient land on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula. More than history, it presents an ethnographic essay covering the country's leadership over tribal conflicts, plus the interaction of the Iranian, UAE, and Saudi Arabian foreign policies regarding the geopolitical importance of Yemen at the crucial choke point of the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. Bonnefoy, a CNRS researcher at the Centre de recherches internationales (CERI) Po, Paris, spent four years in country, forced out and refused reentry, studying the political dynamics as he saw them and well sourced from a wide array of multilingual materials. The author places Yemen in a larger political context of globalization, diplomacy, trade, migration, culture, and militant Islam. Yemen, it is noted, has been geographically divided North from South and by religion and politics. The current civil conflict can be better understood by a reading of Yemen and the World, perhaps more so than any other published account. The author concludes that while Yemen has been traditionally characterized as a backwater state, its location, the presence of jihadi groups, and the economic destruction resultant from years of conflict, first tribal then interregional, will require considerable reconstruction efforts.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.