Political Science

Democratic Institutions in Decline? by Tobrjorn Bergman and Kaare Strom

The Fog of Peace by Janine Davidson

Obama for President by Hanes Walton, Josephine Allen, Donald Deskins, and Sherman Puckett

Democratic Institutions in Decline?

Tobrjorn Bergman and Kaare Strom

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Tobrjorn Bergman and Kaare Strom, two major scholars of comparative politics, have assembled a team of the leading scholars in their field to provide a comprehensive look at parliamentary politics in the Scandinavian countries. Given the general belief that countries like Sweden are among the most advanced democracies in the world, and the further sense that Finland and other states of the region offer us a look in the future of multiparty, multiethnic political societies, Bergman and Strom's book will become the benchmark for much future comparative work on the subject.

Tobrjorn Bergman is Professor of Political Science at Umeå University in Umeå, Sweden and is currently a visiting professor at the University of North Caolina.

Kaare Strom is Professor of Political Science at UC San Diego. He is the author of Minority Government and Majority Rule (CUP, 1990); and coeditor with Laws Svåsand of Challenges to Political Parties, Policy, Office, or Votes? (UMP, 1997), and with Gabriel Almond, Bingham Powell, and Russell J. Dalton, of the textbook Comparative Politics Today: A World View (Addison-Wesley, 8th ed. 2004).

June 2010
400 pages

The Fog of Peace

Janine Davidson

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

The Fog of Peace looks at what the US military calls "stabilization and reconstruction operations" and the military's ability to learn and adapt. As we know, the military's responsibilities have steadily expanded under the Clinton and Bush administrations to include peacekeeping, reconstruction, stability- and institution-building. It is no longer uncommon for soldiers and officers who were trained for the traditional battlefield to be charged with running an election or rebuilding a city's sewage system. American officers have managed schools in Iraq, hospitals in Kosovo, and civilian airports in Afghanistan, generally without training or even the guidance of formal policy. Despite the fact that nearly every generation of U.S. military professionals has been called to conduct such missions, the military has remained focused on traditional warfare. The result of failing to acknowledge these missions sets as "core competence" has been ad hoc adaptation by officers in the field and the uneven application of U.S. power.

The Fog of Peace aims to explain "how military organizations that are organized, trained, and equipped for conventional war, adapt—or fail to adapt—to the task of irregular operations at the tactical and operational levels." When is rebuilding a road a counterinsurgency tactic, and when is it a civilian reconstruction effort? How do officers and enlisted soldiers survive the blurring of military and so-called stabilization and reconstruction operations? How does a military force learn from experience, and change its tactics and strategies to cope with postwar realities?

Janine Davidson is a former C-130 and C-17 pilot and Brookings Institute Fellow, who has just been hired to advise the Pentagon on humanitarian and stability operations issues.

Spring 2010
288 pages

Obama for President: The 2008 Election

Hanes Walton, Josephine Allen, Donald Deskins, and Sherman Puckett

Rights: World
For more info, contact Michael Kehoe at mkehoe@umich.edu

Obama for President will describe Obama's current campaign in the context of his political history, spanning 14 elections, and compare his candidacy to the experiences of previous black presidential contenders, including Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. The goal will be to provide a full political account of Obama's rise, and his effect on the 2008 race—the so-called "Obama effect".

Hanes Walton, Jr. is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He also holds positions as Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Political Studies and as a faculty member in the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.

Josephine Allen is Associate Professor in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. She is also Vice President of the Inter-University Consortium for International Social Development; a Trustee of the National Association of Social Workers's Insurance Trust; and a member of the Council on Social Work Education's International Commission.

Donald Deskins is a political geographer and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan.

Sherman Puckett is manager of the Wayne County Geographic Information System's Department of Technology.

Spring 2010
248 Pages