The past five decades have seen both a prioritization of copyright in US foreign economic policies and a head-spinning disruption to copyright law caused by the digital revolution—all in the context of conflicts between copyright owners and users. Madison Cartwright explores those conflicts: the interests involved, the changes over time, key legal and political decisions, and most    More >

Why have so many attempts at democracy in the past half-century failed? Confronting this much discussed question, Jay Ulfelder offers a novel explanation for the coups and rebellions that have toppled fledgling democratic regimes and that continue to threaten many new democracies today. Ulfelder draws on an original dataset of 110 democratic failures spanning 1955–2007 and also presents    More >

As China enters a stage of economic reform more challenging and risky than any that has gone before, the pressure for political liberalization grows apace. This volume explores the dilemmas of this new phase of complex change. The authors—most of whom write with the insight that comes from having lived and worked within the Chinese system—analyze how the evolution of China’s    More >

Direct democracy typically is lauded for putting power in the hands of the people. But is it really as democratic as it seems? To what extent, and in what circumstances, is it less about citizen power and more about external influences seeking to manipulate outcomes? Addressing these issues, Shauna Reilly draws on and compares case studies of referendums, recall elections, and initiatives    More >

Choice Outstanding Academic Book! What is the lived experience of previously healthy older adults as they face disability in late life, and how is disability assimilated in their identity? How do prevailing practices facilitate—or limit—options for elders living with new disabilities? To address these questions, Jeffrey Kahana and Eva Kahana uniquely synthesize disability and    More >

Choice Outstanding Academic Book! Rosalyn Darling offers a sweeping examination of disability and identity, parsing the shifting forces that have shaped individual and societal understandings of ability and impairment across time. Darling focuses on the relationship between societal views and the self-conceptions of people with mental and physical impairments. She also illuminates the impact    More >

From websites to mobile devices, cyberspace has revolutionized the lived experience of disability—frequently for better, but sometimes for worse.  Paul Jaeger offers a sweeping examination of the complex and often contradictory relationships between people with disabilities and the Internet. Tracing the historical and legal evolution of the digital disability divide in the realms of    More >

During the Nuremberg Medical Trial (1946-1947), the perpetrators of the Nazi euthanasia program were barely prosecuted. The program, also known as Aktion T4, was essentially a campaign of mass murder, designed to cleanse society of individuals who were deemed undesirable: incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, or simply old. Emmeline Burdett's close reading of the trial transcript and    More >

Although disarmament is a longstanding feature of the international system, it is often dismissed as utopian and remains largely understudied and undertheorized. To redress this gap, the authors of this timely collective work reexamine the conceptual foundations and practice of disarmament and explore both pressing challenges and emerging opportunities.    More >

Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration, or DDR, has been widely advocated for decades as an essential component of postconflict peacebuilding. But DDR in practice has generated more questions than answers. Does the approach work, contributing to postconflict stabilization and the reintegration of former combatants? Can it work better? What constitutes success? What accounts for failures?    More >