Critical Issues in Modern Politics – serie

Owing to the changing nature of Japan and its role within the world, more needs to be known of the dynamics of Japanese politics. This timely set brings together key articles on the most crucial issues facing Japanese politics today, and the relationship between Japanese politics and the main institutions including big business, the bureaucracy and the media. This is an area that has been studied by leading academics for a number of decades, but whose work has yet to be given sufficient notice or credit. With more and more students enrolling at universities to study Japan, there is a demand for books which bring comprehensive and key articles under one umbrella. To date there have been few books which have dealt with Japanese politics. Most have been on issues which are covered in articles contained in this collection.

This new Routledge Major Work is a four-volume collection which gathers the best and most influential research on the contemporary politics of Taiwan. Although the collected materials are in English, they include contributions from leading Taiwan experts in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Taiwan.Volumes I (‘Nationalism and National Identity’) and II (‘Democratization, Democratic Consolidation’) address the two key issues that have received the most attention from political scientists working on Taiwan. Gathered here is the best research on competing nation-building projects and national identities, including the ‘Taiwanese versus Chinese’ identity debate. Various explanations for Taiwan’s democratic transition are explored in depth. Other topics include religion and democracy, along with appraisals of Taiwan’s democratic consolidation and its current state.The scholarship collected in Volume III (‘Consequences of Democratization’) examines the policy implications of democratization while the last volume (‘Party and Local Politics’) focuses on salient issues in Taiwan’s domestic politics. There is a growing literature addressing a broad range of aspects of the island’s political development since the advent of multi-party politics in the late 1980s. Volumes III and IV pay particular attention to the following topics: political corruption; constitutional reform; the creation of a social welfare system; party systems and party politics; political communication and electoral politics; changing patterns in local politics; the development of social movements; and the political impact of the change in ruling parties in 2000.Politics of Modern Taiwan is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Comprising the states of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, South Asia has gained considerable international visibility over the past decade. Nuclear proliferation, the rapid evolution of India as a major global economic player, the emergence of new markets, cross-border terrorism, and issues of climate change and the environment are prominent among the factors that have contributed to the growing importance of the region. This has led to a commensurate growth of interest in the modern politics of South Asia, and a vast expansion of in scholarly work.This new five-volume collection from Routledge brings together the best and most influential research to make sense of this ever-expanding corpus. And while each of the five volumes has been carefully designed by the collection’s editor to be self-contained, they are also helpfully linked to one another through a general introduction (which places the assembled materials in their intellectual and historical context), cross-referencing, a general index, and an annotated bibliography of further readings.Each of the five volumes is organized around the following themes: History, Political Theory and Institutions; Society, Religion, Political Culture, and Movements; Political Economy (in two parts: volumes 3 and 4); and International Relations to provide a readily accessible and comprehensive research and pedagogic resource which will be especially welcomed by scholars, students, policy-makers, and anyone else with a serious interest in the politics of this fascinating region.

Southeast Asia offers a rich tapestry of comparatively under-studied countries that shed light on political dynamics and political economy within developing states. Some countries manage rapid economic development while others do not; Southeast Asia is home to some of the fastest growing economies in the last forty years (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and later Indonesia) alongside economic basket cases (e.g. Burma) and chronic under-performers (e.g. the Philippines).In addition, there are abundant examples of political transitions to or from democracy to be found in the region, along with countries that seem to function stably somewhere between democracy and autocracy. (Indonesia’s experiment with democracy is a critical case study in the compatibility of Islam with democracy.)This new four-volume collection from Routledge represents a unique compilation of the best work on modern Southeast Asian politics, and as such will be an invaluable resource for students and instructors interested in the region. It will also appeal to those interested in the politics of the developing world more generally and who are looking to the experiences of the countries that form Southeast Asia for invaluable case studies that resonate in a wider political and economic context.

This new four-volume collection of cutting-edge and canonical scholarship counters the oft-cited opinion that studies of Middle Eastern politics are devoid of social scientific theory and method by providing an overview of the state of the scholarship in the field, innovations therein, and the debates that have advanced knowledge in the field.The collection covers the Arab world, from Morocco to the borders of Iran, with the focus primarily on the twentieth century, and especially the post-Second World War era. By choosing a wide array of authors, many of whom are from the region or from the non-Anglophone world, the full breadth of worldwide scholarship on the modern Arab world is on display. The collection defines politics broadly—in line with the most innovative current works in the field of political studies—to include not only politics at the state level, but also the public, social, and popular domains that define and shape (and are in turn defined and shaped by) politics.

As the locus of Great Power rivalry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the battleground for the first ‘hot’ conflict of the early Cold War, and—in the case of the contemporary challenge of a nuclear North Korea—one of the most potentially destabilizing threats to regional security, the Korean peninsula is critical in understanding the history, politics, and international relations of Asia. However, Korea’s importance is not confined to issues of security and international conflict. The dramatic growth of South Korea, propelling it from the status of an underdeveloped and war-ravaged country to the world’s eleventh largest economy in the space of some thirty years, has been the subject of intense scrutiny by economists, political scientists, and sociologists. Understanding its rapid economic growth is important not only in assessing the nature of modern capitalism, but also in realizing the lessons of development that potentially can be applied to the economic challenges and opportunities faced by the developing world.Modernization is not merely an economic concept. South Korea’s experience of political transition from authoritarian military-led rule to a democratic system of government in the late 1980s arguably represents one of Asia’s most important twentieth-century political success stories. To political scientists, the South Korean political case raises fascinating questions about the nature of political legitimacy, as well as revealing potential contradictions. If political change has been a dominant theme in recent developments in South Korea, political stasis appears to be the norm in North Korea, where the cult of the leader and the dynastic rule of the Kim family have arguably restricted political activity to the informal and non-transparent competition for influence among those close to the leadership.Both Koreas find themselves confronting a rapidly changing and fluid international environment. For South Korea, salient issues include how to manage its core alliance relations, most notably with the United States and how far it should move closer to China’s economic and political orbit. For North Korea, the key diplomatic challenge is managing the post-Cold War erosion of its old alliance partnerships, while finding a mechanism for engaging with the wider world.This new collection from Routledge addresses thematically four broad sets of issues which are essential to understand the political and economic development of the two Koreas in the modern era. The collection is divided as follows: Volume I: Conflict on the Korean Peninsula (from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first century); Volume II: Economic Development in North and South Korea; Volume III: Political Systems, Legitimacy, and the State in the Two Koreas; and Volume IV: The Foreign Relations of Contemporary Korea.

Especially since the end of the Cold War, research on and around the international relations of Asia has grown exponentially and, to make sense of what is now a vast and unwieldly corpus of scholarly literature, this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s Critical Issues in Modern Politics series brings together the best and most influential work in the field.It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers of Asian international relations, politics, history, and current affairs as a vital resource.

The startling growth of China’s economic and military power, as well as its cultural influence, is having a huge impact on the rest of the world. The key region to observe this impact is, of course, Asia and the past decade has witnessed significant and multi-faceted changes in China’s policy toward its Asian neighbours and in the relations between them. The strategic dimension of China’s approaches to Asian international relations is increasingly a focal point in the scholarly community and policy-making circles. However, views on the strategic impact of China’s rise on Asia’s political and security future are polarized, with some believing that China’s regional policy is an intentional attempt to challenge the US supremacy in Asia, or who are simply suspicious of China’s long-term regional ambitions.Volume I of this new Routledge Major Work collection examines China’s long-term strategy in Asia, and Volume II looks at China and non-traditional security in Asia. Volume III focuses on China and Asian regionalism, while Volume IV assembles the best scholarship on the response of Asian states to the rise of China and how China’s rise and its increasing influence in the region have changed the foreign and security policy of those regional states and their domestic political economies.China’s International Relations in Asia is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context.

A quarter of a century on from the revolution of 1979 there is an ongoing political struggle within Iran between traditionalists and modernists, with the ever-younger average age of the population playing a dynamic role. And on the international stage, the big issues remain Iran’s hostility towards Israel and the development of nuclear power in the face of US and international opposition. This is all in addition to the oil question and the strategic interest of Russia, an issue which harks back to the nineteenth century but remains unresolved, as well as Iran’s concern about the proper stewardship of the holy places of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.This four-volume collection brings together for the first time the very best and most influential scholarship on the politics of modern Iran. It is an invaluable source of reference for both scholars and students alike, and will allow those developing an interest in Iran quickly and easily to access the highest quality scholarship in the field.Any understanding of modern Iran must be founded on a firm grasp of the historical context and some of the conceptual issues which underwrite contemporary Iranian politics. Volume I brings together the key work on Iran’s historical inheritance, including articles on religion and culture. Volume II gathers the vital scholarship on the political development of Iran while the third volume assembles materials focused on economic development and the contemporary political economy. The final volume in the collection is organized around Iran’s foreign relations, and includes a special section on the Iran–Iraq War.