Privatization, Efficiency, Gender, Development, and Inequality— Transnational Conflicts Over Access to Water and Sanitation

A review of: Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace by Vandana Shiva. Boston, MA: South End Press, 2005. and Gender, Water, and Development edited by Anne Coles and Tina Wallace. New York: Berg, 2005. and Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power by Sanjeev Khagram. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004

Book review: Fifty years of The Battle of Algiers: past as Prologue by Sohail Daulatzai

In Fifty Years of The Battle of Algiers: Past as Prologue, Sohail Daulatzai not only offers an ode to The Battle of Algiers, exploring the film’s intellectual lineage and its impact upon postcolonial liberation movements, but also argues that its revolutionary logic has more recently been inverted in service of the ‘war on terror’. This is a powerful, thought-provoking and stimulating book, finds Srini Sitaraman

Building Walls and Retreating into Fortress America: Isolation, Protectionism, and Populism--Is Making America Great Again Working?

The author explores the implications and causes of the Trump campaign's theme of "America First" and making "America Great Again". These include the concepts of protectionism, economic nationalism, national populism in both the US and Western Europe and possible changes in US policy toward Russia and Syria.Ope

Reading list: 15 recommended reads on colonial histories, colonial legacies

In this reading list, we recommend fifteen books previously reviewed on the LSE RB blog that critically explore the histories of imperialism, discuss the life and works of people who have contested colonialism and seek to better understand the legacies of empire in the present. If you would like to add to this list, please add your recommendations in the comments below

Explaining China's Continued Resistance Towards Human Rights Norms: A Historical Legal Analysis

This paper examines why the People's Republic of China is wary of international human rights law and why it has difficulties complying with international human rights norms. Specifically, this article seeks to understand why PR China is antagonistic towards human rights law, while it has been welcoming of other forms of legal reform, institutional development, and foreign cooperation.unpublishednot peer reviewe

Power and Knowledge: International Relations Scholarship in the Core and Periphery

The field of International Relations (IR) is motivated as much by the institutional dynamics of American universities and the internal rewards structure of tenure, promotion, and merit pay, as it is by wider scholarly recognition. This article discusses how the incentives of the U.S. academe influence IR theory and how it imitates the preferences of American foreign policy. Moreover, this article denotes that IR scholarship has abstracted away from the realities of international affairs and it does not speak of, or speak to those in the far away periphery. It concludes by discussing two promising movements: Global IR and Planet Politics. Global IR involves rebuilding the theories of IR by incorporating contributions from the periphery, whereas Planet Politics is a manifesto for rewriting IR as a set of practices based on the concept of Anthropocene by proposing a new ontology that is driven by the dread of planetary extinction

Environmental Change and Foreign Policy: A Survey of Theory

Acomprehensive understanding of international environmental politics re quires attention to foreign policy. In this essay we describe a wide range of theories and approaches to foreign policy and international relations, with emphasis on how they can help us to better understand foreign policy in the environmental issue area. We organize the theories into three categories: systemic theories, which emphasize the influence of the international system, including the distribution of power within it; societal theories, which focus our attention on domestic politics and culture; and state-centric theories, which find answers to questions about foreign policy within the structure of the state and the individuals who promulgate and implement foreign policies in the name of a given country. Within this presentation of various theories, we highlight the influence of power, interests and ideas. Copyright (c) 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.