Mark Curtis shows that, contrary to the impression usually conveyed by both academic writing and press coverage, British policy, in both intention and effect, has been far removed from the principles it has conventionally been assumed to be based on: the pursuit of peace, the promotion of democracy and human rights, and the relief of poverty worldwide.

' This book documents the bases for a new view of legitimacy in general and in various parts of Asia, including China, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The authors see legitimacy anywhere as always partial, rather than total, and somewhat measurable. Legitimacy is specifically political, rather than more vaguely socioeconomic. It can be a predicate of various sizes of collectivity, not just of a sovereign government, or of policies, or of leaders. It can be challenged by patriotism. Legitimacy derives not just from scientific norms or technocracy, even in modern times. It is a belief whose alternative (illegitimacy) people may often suppress in their minds until external situations change, bringing an unexpected cascade of altered legitimacy. The volume is edited by Lynn White, a professor in the Woodrow Wilson School and Politics Department at Princeton. It throws light not only on modern changes of the process of political legitimization, but also on the correlates of that process in specific East and Southeast Asian countries. This book can be adopted as a textbook, please email [email protected] for student price enquiries. Sample Chapter(s) Introduction – Dimensions of Legitimacy (222 KB) Contents:Dimensions of Legitimacy (L White)Political Legitimacy in Malaysia: Regime Performance in the Asian Context (B Gilley)The Basis of Political Legitimacy in Late-Authoritarian Taiwan (D D Yang)Political Trust in China: Forms and Causes (Z Wang)Nationalism and the Problem of Political Legitimacy in China (J Seo)Political Legitimacy in Reform China: Between Economic Performance and Democratization (Y Zheng & L F Lye)Legitimating Rhetorics and Factual Economies in a South Korean Development Dispute (R Oppenheim)Policy Legitimacy as a Determinant of Policy Outputs: Japan's Case (T Sakamoto) Readership: University academics and students, government administrators, and interested general readers. Keywords:Legitimacy;Political Attitude Surveys;Nationalism;Political Trust;Political Stability;East Asia;Southeast AsiaKey Features:The contributors are academics from various disciplines; they find extensive areas of agreement despite methodological diversityThe volume broaches a sensitive topic about which too few academics have recently writtenIt finds empirical grounds for a new conceptualization of political legitimacy that relies on both statistical and interpretive researchReviews:“Most of the articles are also well worth reading.”Pacific Affairs “A book that attempts to make sense of the changing nature and importance of legitimacy in East Asia is, therefore, timely and welcome, Legitimacy does precisely that … this book will be of interest to scholars working on East Asian politics in particular, and on the nature of legitimacy more generally.”The China Review “One of the strengths of this book is that contributors in the book study legitimacy in different countries that are authoritarian (China and Taiwan before democratization), semi-democratic (Malaysia) and democratic (South Korea and Japan). Thus the book presents studies and information on legitimacy issues in a truly comparative fashion … Another strength of the book is that authors took different yet appropriate methodological approaches including systematic quantitative and interpretative methods to study the issue of legitimacy.”Professor Yang Zhong University of Tennessee “This is a courageous attempt on the part of several authors to put aside the hegemonic liberal democratic narrative and grapple with this very complicated concept.”The China Journal '

What makes a person call a particular place ‘home’? Does it follow simply from being born there? Is it the result of a language shared with neighbours or attachment to a familiar landscape? Perhaps it is a piece of music, or a painting, or even a travelogue that captures the essence of home. And what about the sense of belonging that inspires nationalist or local autonomy movements? Each of these can be a marker of identity, but all are ambiguous. Where you were born has a different meaning if, like so many modern Germans, you have moved on and now live elsewhere. Representing the ‘national interest’ in parliament becomes more difficult when voters demand attention to local and regional issues or when ethnic tensions erupt. In all these situations the landscape of ‘home’ takes on a more elusive meaning. Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place is about the German nation state and the German-speaking lands beyond it, from the 1860s to the 1930s. The authors explore a wide range of subjects: music and art, elections and political festivities, local landscape and nature conservation, tourism and language struggles in the family and the school. Yet they share an interest in the ambiguities of German identity in an age of extraordinarily rapid socio-economic change. These essays do not assume the primacy of national allegiance. Instead, by using the ‘sense of place’ as a prism to look at German identity in new ways, they examine a sense of ‘Germanness’ that was neither self-evident nor unchanging.

This collection assesses the record of American foreign policy in the twentieth century.

Treating rhetoric and symbols as central rather than peripheral to politics, Lisa Wedeen’s groundbreaking book offers a compelling counterargument to those who insist that politics is primarily about material interests and the groups advocating for them. During the thirty-year rule of President Hafiz al-Asad’s regime, his image was everywhere. In newspapers, on television, and during orchestrated spectacles. Asad was praised as the “father,” the “gallant knight,” even the country’s “premier pharmacist.” Yet most Syrians, including those who create the official rhetoric, did not believe its claims. Why would a regime spend scarce resources on a personality cult whose content is patently spurious? Wedeen shows how such flagrantly fictitious claims were able to produce a politics of public dissimulation in which citizens acted as if they revered the leader. By inundating daily life with tired symbolism, the regime exercised a subtle, yet effective form of power. The cult worked to enforce obedience, induce complicity, isolate Syrians from one another, and set guidelines for public speech and behavior. Wedeen‘s ethnographic research demonstrates how Syrians recognized the disciplinary aspects of the cult and sought to undermine them. In a new preface, Wedeen discusses the uprising against the Syrian regime that began in 2011 and questions the usefulness of the concept of legitimacy in trying to analyze and understand authoritarian regimes.