BOOKS
September 2009
Primary Politics: How Presidential Candidates Have Shaped the Modern Nominating System
By Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy
In Primary Politics, political insider Elaine Kamarck explains how the presidential nomination process became the often baffling system we have today. Her focus is the largely untold story of how presidential candidates since the early 1970s have sought to alter the rules in their favor and how their failures and successes have led to even more change. She describes how candidates have sought to manipulate the sequencing of primaries to their advantage and how Iowa and New Hampshire came to dominate the system. She analyzes the rules that are used to translate votes into delegates, paying special attention to the Democrats' twenty-year fight over proportional representation.
May 2009
Acting in Time on Energy Policy
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
Energy policy is on everyone's mind these days. The U.S. presidential campaign focused on energy independence and exploration ("Drill, baby, drill!"), climate change, alternative fuels, even nuclear energy. But there is a serious problem endemic to America's energy challenges. Policymakers tend to do just enough to satisfy political demands but not enough to solve the real problems, and they wait too long to act. The resulting policies are overly reactive, enacted once damage is already done, and they are too often incomplete, incoherent, and ineffectual. Given the gravity of current economic, geopolitical, and environmental concerns, this is more unacceptable than ever. This important volume details this problem, making clear the unfortunate results of such short-sighted thinking, and it proposes measures to overcome this counterproductive tendency.
April 2009
Entrepreneurial Finance: Financing of Young Innovative Ventures
By Ant Bozkaya, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2008–2009; Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2005–2009; Dubai Initiative, 2007–2008
This book aims to better understand the process of the funding of young innovative ventures, and how a deeper understanding of this process can help public policy to better stimulate entrepreneurial firms—especially in high-technology industries.
These essays, complemented by a comprehensive introduction, are essential for scholars, researchers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs wishing to advance their understanding of this important and expanding field of study.
March 2009
Power and Restraint: A Shared Vision for the U.S.-China Relationship
By Richard N. Rosecrance, Adjunct Professor; International Security Program; Director, Project on U.S.-China Relations and Gu Guoliang
Over several years, some of the most distinguished Chinese and American scholars have engaged in a major research project, sponsored by the China- U.S. Exchange Foundation (USEF), to address the big bilateral and global issues the two countries face. Historically, the ascension of a great power has resulted in armed conflict. This group of scholars—experts in politics, economics, international security, and environmental studies—set out to establish consensus on potentially contentious issues and elaborate areas where the two nations can work together to achieve common goals. Featuring essays on global warming, trade relations, Taiwan, democratization, WMDs and bilateral humanitarian intervention, Power and Restraint finds that China and the United States can exist side by side and establish mutual understanding to better cope with the common challenges they face.
December 2008
Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons
Drawn from presentations made at the Hoover Institution's October 2007 conference, this collection of essays examines the practical steps necessary to address the current security challenges of nuclear weapons and to move toward the goal Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev envisaged in their historic meeting at Reykjavik: the elimination of all nuclear weapons. The distinguished group of contributors includes former officials of the past six administrations—Republican and Democratic—along with senior scholars and scientific experts on nuclear issues. They discuss the critical issues involved in reducing the number of weapons, preventing the growth of new nuclear weapons capabilities, securing nuclear stockpiles worldwide, the challenges of verification and compliance with treaties to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, preventing the spread of technology for nuclear fuel enrichment and reprocessing, dealing with regional animosities, and engaging the entire international community in the joint enterprise of reducing the nuclear threat.
December 2008
The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks
By Assaf Moghadam, Former Associate, International Security Program (ISP)/Initiative on Religion in International Affairs (RIIA), 2009–2010; former Research Fellow, ISP/RIIA, 2007–2009; former Research Fellow, ISP, 2004–2006
This groundbreaking volume examines the rise and spread of suicide attacks over the past decade. Sorting through 1,270 terror strikes between 1981 and 2007, Assaf Moghadam attributes their recent proliferation to the mutually related ascendance of al Qaeda and its guiding ideology, Salafi Jihad, an extreme interpretation of Islam that rejects national boundaries and seeks to create a global Muslim community. This unflinching analysis provides new information about the relationship between ideology and suicide attacks and recommends policies focused on containing Salafi Jihadism.
November 18, 2008
Securing the Bomb 2008
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Project on Managing the Atom Co-Principal Investigator Matthew Bunn provides a comprehensive assessment of efforts to secure and remove vulnerable nuclear stockpiles around the world, and a detailed action plan for reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. Securing the Bomb 2008 was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The full report, with additional information on the threat of nuclear terrorism, is available on the NTI website.
October 2008
Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia
By Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman
Given the rise of globalization and coinciding increase in cultural clashes among diverse nations, it has become eminently clear to scholars of political thought that there exists a critical gap in the knowledge of non-Western philosophies and how Western thought has been influenced by them. This gap has led to a severely diminished capacity of both state and nonstate actors to communicate effectively on a global scale. The political theorists, area scholars, and intellectual historians gathered here by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman examine the exchange of political ideas between Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century.
October 2008
China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
“Two myths have been concocted by the West on Africa: that the Western impact on Africa has been benign while China’s record in Africa has only been negative. The truth in both areas is more complex. This volume, China into Africa, brings out the complexity of the China story in Africa and illustrates why more balanced assessments are needed on Africa’s relations with the world”
--Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
July 2008
Terrorism: What the Next President will Face: The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
volume 618
The July 2008 edition of the ANNALS of the American Academcy of Political and Social Science. It includes eighteen chapters discussing a wide range of topics relating to terrorism, including Al Qaeda, Iran, andcounterterrorism intelligence.
