What happened when millions of British servicemen were demobbed demobilized after World War II? Most had been absent for years, and the joy of arrival was often clouded with ambivalence, regrets, and fears. Returning soldiers faced both practical and psychological problems, from reasserting their place in the family home to rejoining a much-altered labor force. Civilians worried that their homecoming heroes had been barbarized by their experiences and would bring crime and violence back from the battlefield. Drawing on personal letters and diaries, newspapers, reports, novels, and films, Alan Allport illuminates the darker side of the homecoming experience for ex-servicemen, their families, and society at large a gripping story that s in danger of being lost to national memory."

In the early and mid-1900s, several African countries demobilized part of their armed forces. This book analyzes, in the light of Africa's large development challenges and continuing wars and insecurity, the question of how demobilizations have contributed to peace and human development. It also explores what we can learn from the different approaches that have been taken.

This volume examines the impact of the wars in the Atlantic world between 1770 and 1830, focusing both on the military, economic, political, social and cultural demobilization that occurred immediately at their end, and their long-term legacy and memory.

After the 1994 Oslo Accords, Palestinians were hopeful that an end to the Israeli occupation was within reach, and that a state would be theirs by 1999. With this promise, international powers became increasingly involved in Palestinian politics, and many shadows of statehood arose in the territories. Today, however, no state has emerged, and the occupation has become more entrenched. Concurrently, the Palestinian Authority has become increasingly authoritarian, and Palestinians ever more polarized and demobilized. Palestine is not unique in this: international involvement, and its disruptive effects, have been a constant across the contemporary Arab world. This book argues that internationally backed authoritarianism has an effect on society itself, not just on regime-level dynamics. It explains how the Oslo paradigm has demobilized Palestinians in a way that direct Israeli occupation, for many years, failed to do. Using a multi-method approach including interviews, historical analysis, and cutting-edge experimental data, Dana El Kurd reveals how international involvement has insulated Palestinian elites from the public, and strengthened their ability to engage in authoritarian practices. In turn, those practices have had profound effects on society, including crippling levels of polarization and a weakened capacity for collective action.

Adopting Argentina’s popular uprisings against neoliberalism including the 2001-02 rebellion and subsequent mass protests as a case study, The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-Class Revolt analyzes two decades of longitudinal research (1995-2018), including World Bank and Latinobarómeter household survey data, along with participant interviews, to explore why nonpolitically active middle-class citizens engage in radical protest movements, and why they eventually demobilize. In particular it asks, how do they become politicized and resist economic and political crises, along with their own hardship? Theoretically informed by Gramsci’s notions of hegemony, ideology and class consciousness, Ozarow posits that to affect profound and lasting social change, multisectoral alliances and sustainable mobilizing vehicles are required to maintain radical progressive movements beyond periods of crisis. With the Argentinian revolt understood to be the ideological forbearer to the autonomist-inspired uprisings which later emerged, comparisons are drawn with experiences in the USA, Spain, Greece UK, Iceland and the Middle East, as well as 1990s contexts in South Africa and Russia. Such a comparative analysis helps understand how contextual factors shape distinctive struggling middle-class citizen responses to external shocks. This book will be of immense value to students, activists and theorists of social change in North America, in Europe and globally.

"Keeping Down the Black Vote" offers a controversial examination of how the American political system works to suppress the vote--especially the votes of African Americans and minorities.

This book revisits post-Cold War Disarmament Disintegration and Reintegration (DDR) programmes in the light of previous experiences of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. In the history of North America and Europe, in particular, such programmes had a major impact on state-building, contributing to the development of the welfare state, shaping political settlements and directing government policy to maintain social peace. The authors in this important book ask what is left of these state-building dimensions in contemporary DDR programmes and whether the constraints imposed by international organisations on DDR programmes have more negative effects than positive ones. The role of political leadership in DDR processes is highlighted: can bureaucratically-driven processes deliver success? Only if political elites take full control and manage DDR programmes can there be a lasting impact on state-building. Even then, most political elites avoid deep changes in their relationship with the veterans. Is there a chance of reshaping international intervention in such a way as to favour the development of a 'social contract' between political elites and veterans? In taking a historical perspective, this book is unique in the existing literature on DDR and will be essential reading for policy makers, students and scholars of conflict studies, and those working in NGOs, particularly donor agencies. This volume was produced with the contribution of the Crisis States Research Centre (LSE).