How succession in authoritarian regimes was less a competition of visions for the future and more a settling of scores "Joseph Torigian's stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the way Chinese Communist and Soviet politics operate."--Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine "[Torigian's] work is absolutely outstanding."--Stephen Kotkin, ChinaTalk The political successions in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, respectively, are often explained as triumphs of inner-party democracy, leading to a victory of "reformers" over "conservatives" or "radicals." In traditional thinking, Leninist institutions provide competitors a mechanism for debating policy and making promises, stipulate rules for leadership selection, and prevent the military and secret police from playing a coercive role. Here, Joseph Torigian argues that the post-cult of personality power struggles in history's two greatest Leninist regimes were instead shaped by the politics of personal prestige, historical antagonisms, backhanded political maneuvering, and violence. Mining newly discovered material from Russia and China, Torigian challenges the established historiography and suggests a new way of thinking about the nature of power in authoritarian regimes.

How succession in authoritarian regimes was less a competition of visions for the future and more a settling of scores “Joseph Torigian’s stellar research and personal interviews have produced a brilliant, meticulous study. It fundamentally undermines what political scientists have presumed to be the way Chinese Communist and Soviet politics operate.”—Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine The political successions in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao, respectively, are often explained as triumphs of inner‑party democracy, leading to a victory of “reformers” over “conservatives” or “radicals.” In traditional thinking, Leninist institutions provide competitors a mechanism for debating policy and making promises, stipulate rules for leadership selection, and prevent the military and secret police from playing a coercive role. Here, Joseph Torigian argues that the post-cult of personality power struggles in history’s two greatest Leninist regimes were instead shaped by the politics of personal prestige, historical antagonisms, backhanded political maneuvering, and violence. Mining newly discovered material from Russia and China, Torigian challenges the established historiography and suggests a new way of thinking about the nature of power in authoritarian regimes.

In an illuminating study that blends diplomatic, military, technology, and business history, Winkler shows how U.S. officials during World War I discovered the enormous value of global communications. In this absorbing history, Winkler sheds light on the early stages of the global infrastructure that helped launch the United States as the predominant power of the century.

The Organizational Weapon is a classic study of the methods, propaganda, and institutions which create infiltration and eventually cooptation of organizations from within. The study applies its theory to communist techniques but its analysis and insights have, over the years, become extremely useful in perceiving and combating such methods in jihadist cells, terrorist organizations, and political groups of many varieties, not only from the Left. The book's continuing relevance and utility have been exemplified in how it has influenced, and been cited by, many current writers on how extremist and politically astute groups recruit and infiltrate more benign organizations and make them tools of further expansion of power and action. The book is also considered excellent social science and history, analyzing an important moment in U.S. history when trade organizations, community groups, and the like became affected by Soviet encroachment and Marxist influence. Its insights, from one of the country's most recognized social scientists, have stood the test of time. The new digital reprint edition from Quid Pro Books features an extensive and substantive 2014 Foreword by Martin Krygier, a senior professor of law and social theory at the law school of the University of New South Wales, in Australia, and adjunct professor at Australian National University.

Why the world’s most resilient dictatorships are products of violent revolution Revolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution—such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam—are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass discontent, and intense external pressure. Few other modern autocracies have survived in the face of such extreme challenges. Drawing on comparative historical analysis, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that radical efforts to transform the social and geopolitical order trigger intense counterrevolutionary conflict, which initially threatens regime survival, but ultimately fosters the unity and state-building that supports authoritarianism. Although most revolutionary governments begin weak, they challenge powerful domestic and foreign actors, often bringing about civil or external wars. These counterrevolutionary wars pose a threat that can destroy new regimes, as in the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia. Among regimes that survive, however, prolonged conflicts give rise to a cohesive ruling elite and a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus. This leads to the downfall of rival organizations and alternative centers of power, such as armies, churches, monarchies, and landowners, and helps to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest—three principal sources of authoritarian breakdown. Looking at a range of revolutionary and nonrevolutionary regimes from across the globe, Revolution and Dictatorship shows why governments that emerge from violent conflict endure.

The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis repositions the subfield of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to a central analytic location within the study of International Relations (IR). Over the last twenty years, IR has seen a cross-theoretical turn toward incorporating domestic politics, decision-making, agency, practices, and subjectivity - the staples of the FPA subfield. This turn, however, is underdeveloped theoretically, empirically, and methodologically. To reconnect FPA and IR research, this handbook links FPA to other theoretical traditions in IR, takes FPA to a wider range of state and non-state actors, and connects FPA to significant policy challenges and debates. By advancing FPA along these trajectories, the handbook directly addresses enduring criticisms of FPA, including that it is isolated within IR, it is state-centric, its policy relevance is not always clear, and its theoretical foundations and methodological techniques are stale. The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis provides an inclusive and forward-looking assessment of this subfield. Edited and written by a team of word-class scholars and with a preface by Margaret Hermann and Stephen Walker, the handbook sets the agenda for future research in FPA and in IR. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smit of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by specialists in the field. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of Reus-Smit and Snidal's original Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by scholars drawn from different perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions.

A comprehensive and authoritative introduction to China's political history, contemporary political system, and key policy areas, such as the environment, population management, and public health. Politics in China is an authoritative introduction to how the world's second most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. Written by leading China scholars, each chapter offers an accessible overview of a key topic in Chinese politics. The opening section provides readers with a firm grounding in China's modern political history, covering the decline and fall of the last imperial dynasty and the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the radicalism of the era of Mao Zedong (1949-76), the dramatic economic reforms carried out by Deng Xiaoping and his disciples (1978 to 2012) and the era of Xi Jinping (2012-present), who has consolidated more personal power than any CCP leader since Mao.The next section sets the framework of politics in the People's Republic of China (PRC) with chapters on the ideology of the CCP, the structure and dynamics of the political system, the role of law and legal reform, and the policies behind the country's spectacular economic transformation. The book then shifts to a discussion of a series of major political issues in China today: reform and resistance in the countryside; changes and challenges in the cities; the arts and culture; the environment and climate change; public health; population policy; and internet politics. The final chapters of the book covers politics in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The fourth edition of Politics in China has been thoroughly updated and includes a new chapter on the rise and rule of Xi Jinping. It is essential reading not only for students studying the PRC, but also for any reader interested in learning how China has evolved in recent times, how its political system works, and about the most important challenges it faces in years ahead.

The 1980s saw spirited debate in China, as officials and the public pressed for economic and political liberalization. But after Tiananmen, the Communist Party erased the reform debate from memory. Julian Gewirtz shows how the leadership expunged alternative visions of China's future and set the stage for the policing of history under Xi Jinping.

Drawing on his years of first-hand reporting across China, including insights from scholars and diplomats and analyses of official speeches and documents, a Wall Street Journal correspondent provides a broad, lucid account of China's leader and how he inspires fear and fervor in his Party, his nation and beyond.