糖心TV

New book published by Diane Stone: Knowledge Actors and Transnational Governance : The Private-Public Policy Nexus in the Global Agora

A global agora is emerging. The global agora is partly configured by new policy actions and partnerships where the idea of ‘public’ and ‘public sector’ is remade. However, the concept of transnational or ‘global public policy’ is neither an institutionalised nor accepted understanding of governing beyond the nation-state. Accordingly, this volume asks: What is global public policy? Where is it enacted? Who executes such policies? It addresses the meanings of ‘global public policy’ as well as the way in which policy actors in knowledge organisations like universities, research networks, think tanks and philanthropies are responding to transnational policy problems.

For more information, please click here:

One-Party Dominance in African Democracies: Renske Doorenspleet (糖心TV University) and Lia Nijzink (Cape Town University), editors

Is the dominance of one political party a problem in an emerging democracy, or simply an expression of the will of the people? Why has one-party dominance endured in some African democracies and not in others? What are the mechanisms behind the varying party-system trajectories? Considering these questions, the authors of this collaborative work use a rigorous comparative research design and rich case material to greatly enhance our understanding of one of the key issues confronting emerging democracies in sub-Saharan Africa. The book compares countries with enduring one-party dominance (Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania) with countries in which one-party dominance has not continued (Zambia, Mali, Senegal).

To read more about the book, or order your own copy, click here:

On October 16th Stuart Elden was formally inducted as a Fellow of the British Academy, following his election in July. Each year, the British Academy elects up to 42 outstanding UK-based scholars who have achieved distinction in any branch of the humanities and social sciences. Others based overseas can also be elected as Corresponding Fellows, and, in addition, the Academy can elect Honorary Fellows. Fellows are scholars who have 'attained distinction in any of the branches of study which it is the object of the Academy to promote' – i.e. the humanities and the social sciences. Election is a mark of distinction, as only a very small number of scholars in any field are elected.

Stuart Elden's book The Birth of Territory was published last month by the University of Chicago Press, and on 16th October he gave a talk launching the book in the department. The book provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, it examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding.

Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism: Levinas, Derrida, Nancy (Edinburgh University Press, 2013)

What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics?

This groundbreaking book offers a fresh and innovative perspective on ethics and politics after poststructuralism. Madeleine Fagan argues that the ‘ethical’ should not be understood as a label; it does not mean ‘good’ or ‘right’, and is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. Fagan offers an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics that challenges existing accounts of poststructuralist ethics and shows the need for a practice-based rethinking of the ethico-political. Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Ethics and Politics after Poststructuralism puts forward a radical and far-reaching critique of both foundational and non-foundational ethical theory.