Reading The Regime

States seldom resort to war to overthrow their adversaries. They are more likely to attempt to covertly change the opposing regime, by assassinating a foreign leader, sponsoring a coup d’état, meddling in a democratic election, or secretly aiding foreign dissident groups. In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey A. O’Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on overt cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O’Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Offensive operations aim to overthrow a current military rival or break up a rival alliance. Preventive operations seek to stop a state from taking certain actions, such as joining a rival alliance, that may make them a future security threat. Hegemonic operations try to maintain a hierarchical relationship between the intervening state and the target government. Despite the prevalence of covert attempts at regime change, most operations fail to remain covert and spark blowback in unanticipated ways. Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was ten times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War. Her dataset allows O’Rourke to address three foundational questions: What motivates states to attempt foreign regime change? Why do states prefer to conduct these operations covertly rather than overtly? How successful are such missions in achieving their foreign policy goals?

An eye-opening look at North Korea, a brutal Stalinist country that has become one of the most volatile hot spots in the world.

An award-winning author tells the stories of the audacious American politicians, military commanders, and business executives who took it upon themselves to depose monarchs, presidents, and prime ministers of other countries with disastrous long-term consequences.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks starkly recast the U.S. debate on "rogue states." In this new era of vulnerability, should the United States counter the dangers of weapons proliferation and state-sponsored terrorism by toppling regimes or by promoting change in the threatening behavior of their leaders? Regime Change examines the contrasting precedents set with Iraq and Libya and provides incisive analysis of the pressing crises with North Korea and Iran. A successor to the author's influential Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy (2000), this compelling book clarifies and critiques the terms in which today's vital foreign policy and security debate is being conducted.

Aristotle in his Politics devotes a large portion to his theory of the best regime. Renewed interest in this idea, along with scholarly disagreements on what Aristotle says, make this reading an important contribution to classical political studies. Chuska's approach is a defense of Aristotle's theory, showing it to be necessary and helpful, despite controversy over his purportedly narrow-minded discussions of non-Greeks. Relying on the text of Politics as well as Greek history and other works by Aristotle, Chuska expands on the theory of the best city.

Outlines twenty years of human rights abuses in Syria under the rule of President Hafez Asad, providing details of imprisonment without trial, torture, and other forms of opression.

In this volume, fourteen distinguished specialists in international political economy thoroughly explore the concept of international regimes--the implicit and explicit principles, norms, rules, and procedures that guide international behavior. In the first section, the authors develop several theoretical views of regimes. In the following section, the theories are applied to specific issues in international relations, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and on the still-enduring postwar regimes for money and security.

Stephen L. Elkin deftly combines the empirical and normative strands of political science to make a powerfully original statement about what cities are, can, and should be. Rejecting the idea that two goals of city politics—equality and efficiency—are opposed to one another, Elkin argues that a commercial republic could achieve both. He then takes the unusual step of addressing how the political institutions of the city can help to form the kind of citizenry such a republic needs. The present workings of American urban political institutions are, Elkin maintains, characterized by a close relationship between politicians and businessmen, a relationship that promotes neither political equality nor effective social problem-solving. Elkin pays particular attention to the issue of land-use in his analysis of these failures of popular control in traditional city politics. Urban political institutions, however, are not just instruments for the dispensing of valued outcomes or devices for social problem-solving—they help to form the citizenry. Our present institutions largely define citizens as interest group adversaries and do little to encourage them to focus on the commercial public interest of the city. Elkin concludes by proposing new institutional arrangements that would be better able to harness the self-interested behavior of individuals for the common good of a commercial republic.

From the end of Georgia's white primary in 1946 to the present, Atlanta has been a community of growing black electoral strength and stable white economic power. Yet the ballot box and investment money never became opposing weapons in a battle for domination. Instead, Atlanta experienced the emergence and evolution of a biracial coalition. Although beset by changing conditions and significant cost pressures, this coalition has remained intact. At critical junctures forces of cooperation overcame antagonisms of race and ideology. While retaining a critical distance from rational choice theory, author Clarence Stone finds the problem of collective action to be centrally important. The urban condition in America is one of weak and diffuse authority, and this situation favors any group that can act cohesively and control a substantial body of resources. Those endowed with a capacity to promote cooperation can attract allies and overcome oppositional forces. On the negative side of the political ledger, Atlanta's style of civic cooperation is achieved at a cost. Despite an ambitious program of physical redevelopment, the city is second only to Newark, New Jersey, in the poverty rate. Social problems, conflict of interest issues, and inattention to the production potential of a large lower class bespeak a regime unable to address a wide range of human needs. No simple matter of elite domination, it is a matter of governing arrangements built out of selective incentives and inside deal-making; such arrangements can serve only limited purposes. The capacity of urban regimes to bring about elaborate forms of physical redevelopment should not blind us to their incapacity to address deeply rooted social problems. Stone takes the historical approach seriously. The flow of events enables us to see how some groups deploy their resource advantages to fashion governing arrangements to their liking. But no one enjoys a completely free hand; some arrangements are more workable than others. Stone's theory-minded analysis of key events enables us to ask why and what else might be done. Regime Politics offers readers a political history of postwar Atlanta and an elegant, innovative, and incisive conceptual framework destined to influence the way urban politics is studied.

Dynamic Romanian multimillionaire Nicolae Carpathia's sphere of influence steadily grows as he parlays his looks, charm, charisma, and intellectual brilliance into success in business and politics. But is it mere coincidence that those who oppose or offend him suffer to the point of death? Meanwhile, a young Buck Williams begins his journalistic career. Pilot Rayford Steele gains more responsibility at work and at home. Scientist Chaim Rosenzweig begins work on a secret formula that could change the world. All three go about their daily lives, unaware of each other or of the powerful young man from Romania. Around the world, the stage is being set for the cataclysmic event that will change the world forever.