There was no Reichstag fire. No storming of the Bastille. No mutiny on the Aurora. Instead, the mediocre have seized power without firing a single shot. They rose to power on the tide of an economy where workers produce assembly-line meals without knowing how to cook at home, give customers instructions over the phone that they themselves don’t understand, or sell books and newspapers that they never read. Canadian intellectual juggernaut Alain Deneault has taken on all kinds of evildoers: mining companies, tax-dodgers, and corporate criminals. Now he takes on the most menacing threat of all: the mediocre.

Against the centre ground Since 1989, politics has been a contest to see who can best serve the needs of the market. In this urgent and wideranging case for the prosecution, Tariq Ali looks at the people and events that have informed this development across the world. It is an investigation that reaches its logical conclusion with the presidency of Donald Trump, the success of En Marche! in France, and the dominance of Merkel’s Germany throughout Europe. In this fully updated edition of The Extreme Centre, Ali considers recent events that suggest, despite everything, that there is room for hope. He finds promise in Latin America and at the edges of Europe. Emerging parties in Scotland, Greece, and Spain, formed out of the 2008 crisis, are offering new promise for democracy. Even in the UK, with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, there are indications that the hegemony of the centre may be weaker than imagined.

Politics at the Centre is a comparative study of the rules, norms and behaviour surrounding political party leadership. The primary analysis includes 25 parties in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards. The topics covered include methods of leadership selection and removal and the nature of leadership politics. The themes of the book include intra party democracy, with an emphasis on the relative roles of the parliamentary and extra parliamentary groups, and the causes of organizational reform within parties. Particular attention is paid to change over time and to differences among parties with explanations offered for both. Considerable attention is paid to the trend of expanding the leadership selectorate including consideration of why many parties are adopting this reform while others resist it. Data, collected from more than 200 leadership elections, are analyzed to consider issues such as the competitiveness of leadership contests, the types of individuals who win the contests and the longevity of leaders. The influence of different methods of selection and removal on these issues is also examined. Much of the analysis is based on in-country interviews conducted with active politicians, former and current party leaders, political journalists and officials of the extra parliamentary parties. Extensive use is also made of a comprehensive review of party documents related to leadership selection. Many real-life examples from all five countries are used to illustrate the central concepts and themes. A separate chapter considers the applicability of the findings from the Westminster systems to parties in other parliamentary and presidential systems. The concluding chapter makes a normative argument for a particular version of leadership selection and removal. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr. The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

Politics at the Centre studies the ways in which political parties select and remove their leaders in five parliamentary democracies: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. It addresses the subject through cross national comparison of 25 parties in these countries from 1965 to the present day.

The year 1996 in Italian politics was a year rich in novelty. After the "stalled transition" of 1995, the political atmosphere had begun to change. Most obvious was the end of Dini's unelected government of technocrats, supported by a heterogeneous group in Parliament, and its replacement with Romano Prodi's government, a coalition of the parties that had won the general election on April 21, 1996. But an even more important change and one more likely to be remembered was a new climate of dialogue amongst the main political forces that emerged from this period of transition between two republics. In 1996, despite the general elections, cooperation again became part of the political game.

Agencies and policies instituted to streamline Ottawa's planning process instead concentrate power in the hands of the Prime Minister, more powerful in Canadian politics than the U.S. President in America. Riveting, startling, and indispensable reading.

Accompanied by DVD videodisc, entitled The 2006-08 throne and budget debates between NDP leader Lorne Calvert and Saskatchewan Party leader Brad Wall, in jewel case.

Around the world, parties of the left and center-left have been struggling, losing ground to right-wing parties and various forms of reactionary populism. This book brings together a range of leading academics and experts on social democratic politics and policy to offer an international, comparative view of the changing political landscape. Using case studies from the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Australia and New Zealand contributors argue that despite different local and specific contexts, the mainstream center-left is beset by a range of common challenges. Analysis focuses on institutional and structural factors, the role of key individuals, and the atrophy of progressive ideas as interconnected reasons for the current struggles of the center-left.

Evangelical Christianity is often thought of as oppressive to women. The #MeToo era, when many women hit a breaking point with rampant sexism, has also reached evangelical communities. Yet more than thirty million women in the United States still identify as evangelical. Why do so many women remain in male-dominated churches that marginalize them, and why do others leave? In each case, what does this cost them? The Struggle to Stay is an intimate and insightful portrait of single women’s experiences in evangelical churches. Drawing on unprecedented access to churches in the United States and the United Kingdom, Katie Gaddini relates the struggles of four women, interwoven with her own story of leaving behind a devout faith. She connects these personal narratives with rigorous analysis of Christianity and politics in both countries, and contextualizes them through interviews with more than fifty other evangelical women. Gaddini grapples with the complexities of obedience and resistance for women within a patriarchal religion against the backdrop of a culture war. Her exploration of how women choose to leave or remain in environments that constrain them is nuanced and personal, telling powerful stories of faith, community, isolation, and loss. Bringing together meticulous research and deep empathy, The Struggle to Stay provides a revelatory account of the private burdens that evangelical women bear.