In contrast to a globalizing approach to 'transnational organized crime, ' this edited volume studies socio-historical environments in which mafia-esque violence has found a fertile ground for growth and development within the political arena

This book looks at how China and India's growing interests in Central Asia disrupt the traditional Russia-U.S. 'Great Game' at the heart of the old continent. In the years to come, both Asian powers are looking to redeploy their rivalry on the Central Asian and Afghan theatres on a geopolitical, but also political and economic level.

This book is devoted to Israel's asymmetric wars, those conducted against irregular armed groups that have attacked it. It seeks to understand the Israeli strategy in the fight against terrorists acting under the guise of civilians or using the population as human shields. The army has implemented a loosely devised, if not simplistic, doctrine of "disproportionate response" since Israel's founding. The results have been mediocre, nearly always leading to the death of innocent Arab civilians and exacerbating anti-Israeli sentiment. Each time it has led to an escalation that is difficult to...

Do international institutions really contribute to building a lasting peace? As diplomats, practitioners with these institutions, and experts on their processes, the authors underline the strengths and weaknesses that international actors have created and won't abandon.

Based on a case study of the RAND Corporation, this shows how the uncertainties of US defense policies since the fall of the USSR can be understood and illustrated through an analysis of the evolution of the think tank community, and more particularly through a sociological study of the so-called defense intellectuals such as the RAND Corporation.

This edited volume deals with the reintegration and trajectories of intrastate or interstate war veterans. It raises the question of the effects of the war experience on ex-combatants with regards, in particular, to the perpetuation of a certain level of violence as well as the maintaining of structures, networks, and war methods after the war. The book considers various modalities of reintegration and analyzes how they are linked to resources, statuses, and sociabilities that were all built during the war. The various chapters of the book also analyze the role of policies that were made for...

This book examines the emergence of different forms of capitalism in Central-Eastern states in Europe and Mekong states within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). All of them (but Thailand) have historically disappeared from the regional ma

Contemporary bureaucracy is a set of norms, rules, procedures, and formalities which includes administration, business, and NGOs. Where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Beatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying this process. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control, producing social and political indifference.

The issue of defining and redefining enmity has been at the heart of constitutional justice since South Korea's change of regime. This book explores how the Constitutional Court of Korea has addressed this challenge, carving the contours of who is included in or excluded from the body politic throughout its jurisprudence.

This book analyses the making of the Chinese middle class that started in the 1990s using a constructivist approach. As such, the making of the middle class is the result of three convergent phenomena: an attempt to define the middle class, a process of civilization, and the development of protest movements.