Richard Stacey - Böcker

Security sector reform (SSR) is central to the democratic transitions currently unfolding across the globe, as a diverse range of countries grapple with how to transform militias, tribal forces, and dominant military, police, and intelligence agencies into democratically controlled and accountable security services. SSR will be a key element in shifts from authoritarian to democratic rule for the foreseeable future, since abuse of the security sector is a central technique of autocratic government. This edited collection advances solutions through a selection of case studies from around the world that cover a wide range of contexts.

The possibility of democracy-enhancing uses and anti-democratic abuses of referendums reveals a paradox: mechanisms of democracy can be exploited to do violence to the basic principles of democracy. The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums seeks to identify standards we might use to assess the democratic legitimacy of a referendum when we cannot rely on the norms of traditional liberal democracy.This innovative book explores how referendums manage the tension between liberalism and democracy, and whether this device holds promise for reconciling these two commitments. A range of scholars from around the world expose how referendums may be abused on one hand to achieve short-term political or even personal gains, and how, on the other, they may aspire to reflect the best traditions of deliberative, innovative, democracy-enhancing popular decision-making.Structured around three big questions, this book seeks to identify what makes a referendum legitimate. First, why have referendums on issues of fundamental political importance become so frequent around the world? Second, who are - or who should be - the people that make decisions about a political community's future? And third, are referendums an effective and reliable mechanism of popular sovereignty or democratic choice?These essays - written for scholars, public lawyers, political actors and citizens - bring together diverse perspectives on referendums, constitutionalism, liberalism and democracy in ways that challenge the conventional wisdom, prompt new answers to enduring questions, and urge reconsideration of how we evaluate the legitimacy of referendums.

Expanding our understanding of the moments which define Shakespeare's practice, this collection richly combines literary studies with analyses based on new advances in computational scholarship. Ranging widely across Shakespeare's dramatic writings, it invites us to pay close critical attention to the points at which words are shaped into something new or surprising. Bringing together a distinguished team of international scholars, the chapters show that Shakespeare's creative morphology is also an act of collective meaning-making, where what might be shaped through words - their creative potential - is transformed into something 'strange and admirable'.

Expanding our understanding of the moments which define Shakespeare's practice, this collection richly combines literary studies with analyses based on new advances in computational scholarship. Ranging widely across Shakespeare's dramatic writings, it invites us to pay close critical attention to the points at which words are shaped into something new or surprising. Bringing together a distinguished team of international scholars, the chapters show that Shakespeare's creative morphology is also an act of collective meaning-making, where what might be shaped through words - their creative potential - is transformed into something 'strange and admirable'.

Harry Rawlins yearns for excitement before the war ends so volunteers to leave his relatively safe position, intercepting enemy signals, to join the Nottingham Sherwood Rangers. He tragically loses his friends and crewmates in a training accident just three weeks before D-Day. A veteran tank crew, mysteriously transferred into his unit, is a man down and Harry is the body to fill that slot. Finding himself thrown into the vanguard of the assault on the beaches, can Harry survive long enough to prove himself and gain the acceptance of his new crew? Further along the coast a traitor, codenamed Kobold, is doing his upmost to derail the allied plans. Destiny has decreed that as they battle inland their paths will become inextricably entwined. With little enthusiasm from superiors they find themselves alone in his pursuit. The chase is on. What will get Harry first? Bad luck, the enemy or Kobold … and just what is the connection between Kobold and his new tank commander …