Political Science & International Affairs Books

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  NATO After Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: Threat Perceptions and Their Consequences

  Jason W. Davidson

  When Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, analysts and policymakers highlighted the unifying shock that NATO members experienced. However even before the return of US president Donald Trump, beneath this seeming cohesion lay deep-seated differences in how member states perceive and prioritize security threats. NATO after Russia's Invasion of Ukraine analyzes the six most influential members of the alliance: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, and Italy. Through extensive interviews with current and former policymakers and a detailed examination of public statements and policies, Jason W. Davidson delivers a unique assessment of how divergent threat perceptions influence the NATO allies' major defense decisions, such as defense spending, and whether the alliance addresses each ally's most important threat and its view of NATO's most important challenges. With the rise in tumultuous geopolitical challenges posed by Russia, China, terrorism, mass refugee flows, and nationalism, this book provides the crucial context needed to navigate NATO's evolving role in international security.

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  Late-Night in Washington: Political Humor and the American Presidency

  Stephen J. Farnsworth, S Robert Lichter, and Farah Latif

  This book traces the trajectory of late-night political humor, which has long been a staple of entertainment television and is now a prominent part of social media political discourse, especially when it comes to the presidency. From Richard Nixon on Laugh-In to Donald Trump’s avatar on Saturday Night Live, this book takes the next step and considers how late-night comedy treats Joe Biden, the new American president who strives to restore a civil public tone but offers far less comedy fodder than his predecessor. Employing content analysis, public opinion surveys, and a variety of other quantitative and qualitative research, the authors look beyond the day-to-day memes and mimes of late-night comics and show how political humor may evolve. For students and scholars of politics and the media, this book will appeal to the general public and political pundits as well.

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  Feeling Their Pain: Why Voters Want Leaders Who Care

  Jared McDonald

  The 2020 presidential election in the United States marked, for many, a return to “compassionate politics.” Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy, emphasizing his personal history as a means of connecting with everyone from American workers who had lost jobs to military families who had lost loved ones. Although perceptions of candidate compassion are broadly understood to influence voter choice, less understood is the question of how candidates convince voters they truly “care about people like them.” In Feeling Their Pain: Why Voters Want Leaders Who Care, Jared McDonald provides a framework for understanding why voters view some politicians as more compassionate than others. McDonald shows that perceptions of compassion in candidates for public office are based on the number and intensity of commonalities that bind citizens to political leaders. Commonalities can come in many forms, such as a shared experience (“I’ve been through what you’ve been through”), a shared emotion (“I feel the way you feel”), or a shared identity (“I am who you are”). Compassion is conceptualized through the lens of self-interest. Compassion may be universal, such as when candidates convey empathy to all individuals who are struggling. Or compassion may be exclusionary, such as when candidates express a preference for some groups over others. Thus, the way campaigns choose to wield compassion in their messaging strategies has important implications not only for election outcomes but also for American political polarization as well.

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  Sell-Outs or Warriors for Change?: A Comparative Look at Conservative Women in Politics in Democracies

  Malliga Och, Shauna Shames, and Rosalyn Cooperman

  This book addresses the central question of how right-wing women navigate the cross-pressures between gender identity and political ideology.

  The hope has always been that more women in politics would lead to greater inclusion of women’s voices and interests in decision-making and policy. Yet this is not always the case; some prominent conservative women such as Margaret Thatcher have rejected the feminist label while others such as Angela Merkel have reluctantly accepted it. Republican women in the U.S. Congress have embraced social and economic policies contrary to what many consider to be women’s issues while EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is a staunch supporter of feminist ideas. Other conservative women, such as Marine LePen in France strategically use feminist ideas to justify their conservative stances on immigration. This brings up an interesting yet understudied question: under what circumstances do conservative women become feminist allies and when do they toe the party line? It is this tension between women’s political representation and conservatism that this edited volume explores.

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  Citizens of the World: Political Engagement and Policy Attitudes of Millennials across the Globe

  Stella M. Rouse, Jared McDonald, Richard N. Engstrom, Michael J. Hanmer, Roberto Gonzalez, Siugmin Lay, and Daniel Miranda

  The Millennial Generation, the age cohort born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, is the most educated, digitally connected, and globalized in the history of the world. Around the globe, Millennials encompass 1.8 billion people, a quarter of the population. The size of the Millennial Generation means that they will soon produce a majority of political, economic, and social leaders. It is therefore important to understand how the Millennial Generation may respond in an era of rapid change and uncertainty, shaped by factors such as a global pandemic, economic hardship, demands for racial justice, and the retrenchment of the United States from the global stage. Making sense of what is to come requires a deeper understanding of what defines the Millennial Generation’s persona, their attachment to various identities, how they perceive the need for change, and the tools they will utilize to bring about change. Citizens of the World explores the political attitudes and behaviors of Millennials relative to older adults across eight countries: Australia, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The book argues that Millennials share a core persona, one that differentiates between a traditional and an emerging global identity that shapes news consumption, political attitudes, civic engagement, public service, and beliefs about the ability to enact political change. In this first-of-its-kind comparative analysis, the authors find that Millennials are unique in a variety of ways that have important implications for domestic and international politics.

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  America's Entangling Alliances: 1778 to the Present

  Jason W. Davidson

  Since the Revolutionary War, the United States has entered into dozens of alliances with international powers to protect its assets and advance its security interests. America’s Entangling Alliances offers a corrective to long-held assumptions about US foreign policy and is relevant to current public and academic debates about the costs and benefits of America’s allies. Author Jason W. Davidson examines these alliances to shed light on their nature and what they reveal about the evolution of American power. He challenges the belief that the nation resists international alliances, showing that this has been true in practice only when using a narrow definition of alliance.

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  Politics and Society in Contemporary China

  Elizabeth Freund Larus

  This acclaimed introduction to China's politics and policies has been extensively revised and thoroughly updated not only to focus on the Xi Jinping era, but also to be even more accessible to students. Elizabeth Larus concisely captures the dynamism of Chinese politics. From local politics to the judicial system, from minority issues to defense policy, from the Belt and Road Initiative to global political and economic statecraft, she provides a rich, thought-provoking analysis of the forces and facets of political, social, and economic change.

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  Italian Foreign Policy during Matteo Renzi's Government: A Domestically Focused Outsider and the World

  Fabrizio Coticchia and Jason W. Davidson

  This book sets out to explain the foreign policy of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (February 2014 to December 2016). It offers a unique analytical framework to make sense of Renzi’s foreign policy: the domestically-focused outsider. It argues that to untangle Renzi’s foreign policy one must first understand that his clear priority was enacting domestic economic and political reforms. Domestic focus means that Renzi made foreign policy decisions with a sensitivity to public opinion and party unity. The book also argues that Renzi’s status as an outsider in Italian politics—having previously served only as the mayor of Florence—provides critical insight into his foreign policy. Renzi was prone to skepticism of the establishment and dramatic, symbolic gestures rather than patient coalition building. The book applies this framework to the five most important foreign policy issues Renzi’s government faced: migration, finance and the EU, Russia, ISIL, and Libya. The book’s analysis of the cases benefits from over twenty elite interviews, including those with senior members of Renzi’s government.

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  Liberalism and Leadership: The Irony of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

  Emile Lester

  Most scholars and pundits today view Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy as aggressive liberal leaders, while viewing Schlesinger’s famous histories of their presidencies as celebrations of their steadfast progressive leadership. A more careful reading of Schlesinger’s work demonstrates that he preferred an ironic political outlook emphasizing the virtues of restraint, patience, and discipline. For Schlesinger, Roosevelt and Kennedy were liberal heroes and models as much because they respected the constraints on their power and ideals as because they tested traditional institutions and redefined the boundaries of presidential power. Aggressive liberalism involves the use of inspirational rhetoric and cunning political tactics to expand civil liberties and insure economic equality. Schlesinger’s emphasis on the crucial role that irony has played and should play in liberalism poses a challenge to the aggressive liberalism advocated by liberal activists, political thinkers, and pundits. That his counsel was grounded in conservative insights as well as liberal values makes it accessible to leaders across the political spectrum.

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  Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump

  Stephen J. Farnsworth

  This book traces the evolution of White House news management during America’s changing media environment over the past two decades. Comparing and contrasting the communication strategies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, it demonstrates the difficulty that all presidents have in controlling their messages despite a seemingly endless array of new media outlets and the great advantages of the office. That difficulty is compounded by new media’s amplification of presidential character traits for good or ill. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube notwithstanding, presidential power still resides in the "power to persuade," and that task remains a steep challenge. More than ever, presidential character matters, and the media presidents now employ report on the messenger as much as the message.

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  Teaching about Religions: A Democratic Approach for Public Schools

  Emile Lester

  Frequent news stories about the debates waged between secularists and religious conservatives have convinced most Americans that public schools must choose between promoting respect for religious minorities and respecting the interests of conservative Christians. As a result, public schools fail to teach students about the meaning and value of protecting religious liberty and consequently perpetuate mistrust across the cultural divide, further empower extremists, and obscure the fact that most Americans of all religious backgrounds share a commitment to basic democratic principles.

  In response, the public schools in the religiously diverse and divided community of Modesto, California, have introduced a widely acclaimed required world religions course. Drawing on groundbreaking research on the creation of and response to the Modesto course as well as on political philosophy, Emile Lester advocates a civic approach to teaching about religion in public schools that at once emphasizes respect for all views about religion and provides a special recognition of conservative Christian beliefs.