Robert Crowcroft has assembled a world-class, international cast of outstanding scholars and international figures to produce a stimulating collection of essays on applied history and policy making. With contributors such as Philip Bobbitt, Margaret MacMillan, and Jeremy Black, this collection of essays addresses some of the most important geopolitical challenges confronting the world today. From reconstructing collapsed political regimes to security competition in the China Seas and the evolution of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, it explores a range of statecraft, policy, and strategy. The essays span a number of policy areas and historical problems, tackling important questions about what historians do (and should do), and considering the nature and limits of historical judgement. With some examining how applied history can be used to rethink contemporary challenges, others explore how it has been used and abused in the past. Making a splash in intellectual debate by making a definitive case for Applied History, this book demonstrates that a knowledge of the past, and the insight it provides, is imperative to effective statecraft.

Robert Crowcroft has assembled a world-class, international cast of outstanding scholars and international figures to produce a stimulating collection of essays on applied history and policy making. With contributors such as Philip Bobbitt, Margaret MacMillan, and Jeremy Black, this collection of essays addresses some of the most important geopolitical challenges confronting the world today. From reconstructing collapsed political regimes to security competition in the China Seas and the evolution of Salafi-Jihadi ideology, it explores a range of statecraft, policy, and strategy. The essays span a number of policy areas and historical problems, tackling important questions about what historians do (and should do), and considering the nature and limits of historical judgement. With some examining how applied history can be used to rethink contemporary challenges, others explore how it has been used and abused in the past. Making a splash in intellectual debate by making a definitive case for Applied History, this book demonstrates that a knowledge of the past, and the insight it provides, is imperative to effective statecraft.

The tale of the relentless intrigue, burning ambition, and bitter rivalry in British politics during the years preceding the Second World War, exploring the interaction between Westminster and a world primed to explode.

The distinction between basic and applied research was central to twentieth-century science and policymaking, and if this framework has been contested in recent years, it nonetheless remains ubiquitous in both scientific and public discourse. Employing a transnational, diachronic perspective informed by historical semantics, this volume traces the conceptual history of the basic–applied distinction from the nineteenth century to today, taking stock of European developments alongside comparative case studies from the United States and China. It shows how an older dichotomy of pure and applied science was reconceived in response to rapid scientific progress and then further transformed by the geopolitical circumstances of the postwar era.

What do we mean by failed states and why is this concept important to study? The “failed states” literature is important because it aims to understand how state institutions (or lack thereof) impact conflict, crime, coups, terrorism and economic performance. In spite of this objective, the “failed state” literature has not focused enough on how institutions operate in the developing world. This book unpacks the state, by examining the administrative, security, judicial and political institutions separately. By doing so, the book offers a more comprehensive and clear picture of how the state functions or does not function in the developing world, merging the failed state and institutionalist literatures. Rather than merely describing states in crisis, this book explains how and why different types of institutions deteriorate. Moreover, the book illustrates the impact that institutional decay has on political instability and poverty using examples not only from Africa but from all around the world.

There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy making has progressively reached into the structure and fabric of everyday life. An instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into systems of governance themselves, opening up ways to study power and the construction of regimes of truth. This volume argues that policies are not simply coercive, constraining or confined to static texts; rather, they are productive, continually contested and able to create new social and semantic spaces and new sets of relations. Anthropologists do not stand outside or above systems of governance but are themselves subject to the rhetoric and rationalities of policy. The analyses of policy worlds presented by the contributors to this volume open up new possibilities for understanding systems of knowledge and power and the positioning of academics within them.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2014 Scores of books have been written by Western experts, mainly American, looking at the root causes of the conflict between Iran and the US. However, none of them have presented an inside look at this complex relationship from within the Iranian culture, society, and most importantly, the Iranian policy-making system. This gap has been the cause of misperceptions, misanalyses, and conflict, followed by the adoption of US policies that have failed to achieve their objectives. Seyed Hossein Mousavian worked for over 30 years on diplomatic efforts between Iran and the West, serving in numerous official posts, and as a confidante, colleague, and peer to many former and current high ranking Iranian officials, including now-President Hassan Rouhani and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Here the former diplomat gives an insider's history of the troubled relationship between Iran and the US. His unique firsthand perspective blends memoir, analysis, and never before seen details of the many near misses in the quest for rapprochement. With so much at stake, the book concludes with a roadmap for peace that both nations so desperately need.