Countries at the Crossroads: An Analysis of Democratic Governance evaluates government performance in seventy strategically important countries from across the globe, including emerging market countries and at-risk states. The in-depth comparative analyses and quantitative ratings_examining Accountability and Public Voice, Civil Liberties, Rule of Law, and Anticorruption and Transparency_serve as a valuable tool for public analysts, educators and students, government officials, and the business community.

Middle Eastern police forces have a reputation for carrying out repression and surveillance on behalf of authoritarian regimes, despite frequently under enforcing the law. But what is their role in co-creating and sustaining social order? In this book, Jessica Watkins focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are first and foremost concerned with order. In Jordan, social order combines the influence of longstanding tribal practices with regime efforts to promote neoliberal economic policies alongside a sense of civic duty amongst citizens. Rather than focusing on the 'high policing' of offences deemed to threaten state security, Watkins explores the 'low policing' of interpersonal disputes including assault, theft, murder, traffic accidents, and domestic abuse to shed light on the varied strategies of power deployed by the police alongside other societal actors to procure hegemonic 'consent'.

Torture doctors invent and oversee techniques to inflict pain and suffering without leaving scars. Their knowledge of the body and its breaking points and their credible authority over death certificates and medical records make them powerful and elusive perpetrators of the crime of torture. In The Torture Doctors, Steven H. Miles fearlessly explores who these physicians are, what they do, how they escape justice, and what can be done to hold them accountable. At least one hundred countries employ torture doctors, including both dictatorships and democracies. While torture doctors mostly act with impunity—protected by governments, medical associations, and licensing boards—Miles shows that a movement has begun to hold these doctors accountable and to return them to their proper role as promoters of health and human rights. Miles’s groundbreaking portrayal exposes the thinking and psychology of these doctors, and his investigation points to how the international human rights community and the medical community can come together to end these atrocities.

Torture doctors invent and oversee techniques to inflict pain and suffering without leaving scars. Their knowledge of the body and its breaking points and their credible authority over death certificates and medical records make them powerful and elusive perpetrators of the crime of torture. In The Torture Doctors, Steven H. Miles fearlessly explores who these physicians are, what they do, how they escape justice, and what can be done to hold them accountable. At least one hundred countries employ torture doctors, including both dictatorships and democracies. While torture doctors mostly act with impunity—protected by governments, medical associations, and licensing boards—Miles shows that a movement has begun to hold these doctors accountable and to return them to their proper role as promoters of health and human rights. Miles’s groundbreaking portrayal exposes the thinking and psychology of these doctors, and his investigation points to how the international human rights community and the medical community can come together to end these atrocities.

In Jordan, between censorship, repression and election rigging, political activism is limited – despite the democratic opening glimpsed in 1989. In this important new book, Pénélope Larzillière charts the path of longstanding activists in Jordan and shows how opposition movements there have shifted from the underground to a heavily controlled public sphere. Activists discuss their motivation and commitment and the consequences their activism has had throughout their lives. Not only do these accounts highlight the general conditions for political activism in a repressive regime, they also unpack the meaning individuals attach to their political journey and chosen ideology, whether communist, nationalist, Islamist or otherwise.

The report sets forth concrete recommendations to strengthen US trade accords' substantive labor provisions, proposing that all such agreements: unambiguously require all parties to uphold core labor rights in their domestic laws; penalize states that fail to enforce their labor laws in all cases involving trade or investment between the parties; punish corporations implicated in labor abuses; and depoliticize enforcement, in part, by requiring that meritorious labor complaints proceed through the complaint and dispute settlement processes unless they are satisfactorily resolved.

In My Voice Is My Weapon, David A. McDonald rethinks the conventional history of the Palestinian crisis through an ethnographic analysis of music and musicians, protest songs, and popular culture. Charting a historical narrative that stretches from the late-Ottoman period through the end of the second Palestinian intifada, McDonald examines the shifting politics of music in its capacity to both reflect and shape fundamental aspects of national identity. Drawing case studies from Palestinian communities in Israel, in exile, and under occupation, McDonald grapples with the theoretical and methodological challenges of tracing "resistance" in the popular imagination, attempting to reveal the nuanced ways in which Palestinians have confronted and opposed the traumas of foreign occupation. The first of its kind, this book offers an in-depth ethnomusicological analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributing a performative perspective to the larger scholarly conversation about one of the world's most contested humanitarian issues.

Human Rights Watch is increasingly recognized as the world’s leader in building a stronger awareness for human rights. Their annual World Report is the most probing review of human rights developments available anywhere. Written in straightforward, non-technical language, Human Rights Watch World Report prioritizes events in the most affected countries during the previous year. The backbone of the report consists of a series of concise overviews of the most pressing human rights issues in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with particular focus on the role—positive or negative—played in each country by key domestic and international figures. Highly anticipated and widely publicized by the U.S. and international press every year, the World Report is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and all citizens of the world.