Books like Democracy Prevention — picked by fans

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith emphasize the desire of leaders to seek political survival after all else. The authors show how democratic and autocratic leaders respond to the political institutions that they are embedded in, by having systemically distinct policy proclivities. The academic version of the theory is in their book The Logic of Political Survival. The Dictators’ Handbook is the version meant for popular consumption. It is full of examples of leaders making policy choices that benefit their political survival at the expense of their own people who they profess to rule for. I assign the book to illustrate the theory in classes in Comparative Politics. The examples in the book, all of which are non-fiction, are always popular with undergraduate students.

Democracy aid deals with governance-related political reforms. Using statistics and case studies of the US, Tunisia, and Jordan, Bush understands the failures of democracy aid through the lenses of organizational politics. On the donors’ side, Bush documents how the professionalization of democracy aid forces nongovernmental groups to prioritize projects with quantifiable outputs that bureaucrats want. On the recipients’ side, Bush demonstrates the attempts by authoritarian regimes to control, restrict and co-opt the nongovernmental groups that seek democratic reforms. Buffeted from both directions, such nongovernmental groups respond by avoiding serious projects that challenge the authoritarian regime. Instead, they prioritize symbolic projects that look good to the bureaucrats in the donors but fail to promote genuine democratization. It is organizational politics run amok. 

A colleague recommended this book, and I purchased a used one through Amazon. I found it very good reading on the dynamics of development aid and the regime of corruption and redundancy that often accompany it.

A very interesting and perhaps passionate take on the influence of foreign aid on development in Africa. Portrays the fact that aid can be both counterproductive and engendering of corruption in Africa. It advocates for both a nuanced and strategic deployment of such aid; limitation on aid as the only source of development funding; and enumerated other ways the international community can play a better and result-oriented role in Africa’s development.

Regilme studies the negative impact of US foreign aid on Philippines’s and Thailand’s human rights. He argues that the shared policy expectations between the donors and recipient governments and the domestic legitimacy of recipient regime jointly determine the extent of human rights abuse. The recipients with strong domestic legitimacy need only use the foreign aid on legitimate military threats. This was the case for the Philippines and Thailand in the 1990s. When the domestic legitimacy of the recipient regime is weak, that foreign aid is strategically repurposed to include the repression of the political opposition. This explains the human rights abuse in Thaksin and Arroyo administrations. The book helps us understand how authoritarian aid recipients can manipulate foreign aid to seek political survival. 

I have chosen this work for the Egyptology list because Ancient Egypt must be ideally analyzed into a regional context, which overpasses its borders. In this sense, the present work is a magnificent example of how all the cultures of the Near East were integrated within a network of more or less fluid contacts.

Professor Liverani's work shows the mastery of the great scholar who knows all the sources and analyzes them from a new diplomatic, economic, anthropological, and political perspective.

This book explains why small states fail or succeed in world politics, and as such, set the parameters to assess Caribbean diplomacy and its promise and shortcomings. This book adds a compelling framework to my work, and I enjoyed reading this book, which was written "with clarity and rigor," according to noted scholar Anders Wivel.

This is the most compelling explanation for why major wars have started over the last half-millennium. His thesis is very simple: countries are tempted to start wars to conquer their own continents, even if there is a low prospect of success, because the payoff is tremendous.

The U.S., which is the only country to have achieved continental hegemony, pays very little for the cost of its defense because of the protection of the Oceans, and is able to project power to support smaller countries draining the resources of the regional hegemonic candidates on other continents.

This book does not explain most wars, just the ones most likely to involve all of the great powers, nuclear weapons, and to have the greatest impact in terms of the deaths of millions, post-war international institutions, and the most wide-sweeping territorial changes.   

Charles Cumming is often cited as a worthy successor to John le Carré, and anyone who enjoys the work of the Doyen of British spy fiction should enjoy this particular example of his work; my favourite book from Cumming.

Thomas Kell (like my agent Jack Tate in my novel) is a disgraced MI6 agent who longs to come back in from the cold from where he’s been banished. When MI6’s top spy in Turkey is killed in what looks like a car accident Kell grabs his chance for professional redemption when his masters at MI6 feel he might be the only agent who can be safely be trusted to investigate what actually happened…and why.

Many spy fiction writers have been cited as successors to John le Carré but Charles Cumming is about the only one I’d agree this might be true about. The quality of the writing is first class,… show more.

An experienced diplomat offers a good overview of how the past diplomatic history of the US since 1945 informs the present. Explains the major theoretical perspectives on modern diplomacy and fundamentals of practice. An informative read which presents a broad on how American diplomacy can be better shaped to function more effectively in the future.

Lizzie Shackleford, serving at the time as a junior Foreign Service Officer at the American Embassy in Juba, was of invaluable assistance to me as I tried to orchestrate the emergency evacuation of Canadian citizens (nearly all of them dual South Sudanese/Canadians) when Juba imploded in December 2013. With Canada declining to send evacuation aircraft I depended largely on her to secure seats on USAAF Hercules aircraft. She helped save dozens of lives. So, I read her account of the opening of South Sudan’s civil war with great interest.

It’s an eye-opening counterpoint to the glamour and sophistication that many outsiders associate with the diplomatic lifestyle, but it’s also an indictment of short-sighted and misguided American policy-making in the region. The eponymous Dissent Channel is the outlet US diplomats have to express their personal discomfort with official policy. More than once I have found myself wishing that the Canadian diplomatic… show more.