Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 11 items for :
- Type: Book x
- African and Middle-Eastern Politics x
- Access: All content x
The return of the Taliban has undermined EU external action, reversed twenty years of state-building efforts and represents the most significant failure of EU foreign policy to date.
Drawing on over 100 hours of interviews with key actors and an in-depth examination of the EU’s state-building efforts, this book offers unparalleled insights into the complex interplay between transatlantic relations and the resurgence of the Taliban. It critically evaluates the EU's strategies, advocating for a nuanced, historically informed approach to international relations.
Indispensable for academics, policy makers and anyone vested in the intricacies of foreign interventions in an ever-complex global environment.
Africa’s unique position as an international diplomatic actor has not always been given the attention it deserves. This volume bridges this gap by offering a fresh, comprehensive and realistic overview of African diplomacy.
The book examines African diplomatic practice. Chapters explore how different types of diplomacy have developed over time, including energy diplomacy, economic diplomacy and quiet diplomacy. Crucially, the book assesses how certain events have allowed Africa to use certain types of diplomacy to yield better outcomes for itself.
Including contributions from an international team of scholars, policy makers and experts from the diplomatic world, the book provides a comprehensive guide to African diplomacy and challenges the current dominant usage of Northern perspectives on diplomacy studies.
Only 15 kilometres away from the border of Zimbabwe, Musina is an obscure town in South Africa that the media cast into the public eye in the wake of the 2008 Zimbabwean economic crisis.
Taking as its starting point the arrival of thousands of displaced Zimbabwean migrants at Musina, this book presents valuable new perspectives on the temporality of migration and the governance of immobilities. The author explores the role of humanitarian actors in supporting migrants, and examines the outcomes of government-led activities in the longer term.
This is an insightful assessment of how state and non-state practices intertwine in the management of largely immobile people, and of the importance of time in understanding African migration and borders.
How is peace built at the local level?
Covering three Lebanese municipalities with striking sectarian diversity, Saida, Bourj Hammoud and Tyre, this book investigates the ways in which local service delivery, local interactions and vertical relationships matter in building peace. Using the stories and experiences of municipal councillors, employees and civil society actors, it illustrates how local activities and agencies are performed and what it means for local peace in Lebanon.
Through its analysis, the book illustrates what the practice of peacebuilding can look like at the local level and the wider lessons, both practical and theoretical, that can be drawn from it.
This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how these populations are actively transforming urban space.
Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography by urban in-migrants, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management, evictions and gentrification, and the networked labour of displaced populations that underpins growing urban economies. Central throughout is a critical analysis of how the discursive figure of the ‘internally displaced person’ is co-produced by various actors. The book argues that this label exerts significant power in structuring socio-economic inequalities and the politics of group belonging within different Somali cities connected through protracted histories of conflict-related migration.
Coups d’état continue to present one of the most extreme risks to democracy and stable governance worldwide. This book examines the unique role played by regional organisations (ROs) following the occurrence of a coup d’état.
The book analyses which factors influence the strength of reactions demonstrated by ROs and explores which different post-coup solutions ROs pursue. It argues that, when confronted with a coup, ROs take both basic democratic standards and regional stability into account before forming their responses.
Using a mixed methods approach, the book concludes that ROs respond more decisively to a coup based on how detrimental it will be for the state of democracy in a country, and the higher its risk of destabilizing the region.
This volume analyses the impact of globalization on civil service systems across the Middle East and North Africa.
A collaboration between practitioners and academic public policy experts, it presents an analytical model to assess how globalization influences civil servants, illustrated by case studies of countries where there has been an increased engagement with international actors. It demonstrates how this increased interaction has altered the position of civil servants and traces the shifting patterns of power and accountability between civil servants, politicians and other actors.
It is an original and important addition to debate about globalization’s role in transnational public administration and governance.
Lily Hamourtziadou’s investigation into civilian victims during the conflicts that followed the US-led coalition’s 2003 invasion of Iraq provides important new perspectives on the human cost of the War on Terror.
From early fighting to the withdrawal and return of coalition troops, the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, the book explores the scale and causes of deaths and places them in the contexts of power struggles, US foreign policy and radicalisation. Casting fresh light on not just the conflict but international geopolitics and the history of Iraq, it constructs a unique and insightful human security approach to war.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Bringing together a range of experts across various sectors, this important volume explores some of the key issues that have arisen in the Global South with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Situating the worldwide health crisis within broader processes of globalisation, the book investigates implications for development and gender, as well as the effects on migration, climate change and economic inequality. Contributors consider how widespread and long-lasting responses to the pandemic should be, while paying particular attention to the accentuated risks faced by vulnerable populations. Providing answers that will be essential to development practitioners and policy makers, the book offers vital insights into how the impact of COVID-19 can be mitigated in some of the most challenging socio-economic contexts worldwide.
Africa’s urban population is growing rapidly, raising numerous environmental concerns. Urban areas are often linked to poverty as well as power and wealth, and hazardous and unhealthy environments as the pace of change stretches local resources. Yet there are a wide range of perspectives and possibilities for political analysis of these rapidly changing environments.
Written by a widely respected author, this important book will mark a major new step forward in the study of Africa’s urban environments. Using innovative research including fieldwork data, map analysis, place-name study, interviewing and fiction, the book explores environmentalism from a variety of perspectives, acknowledging the clash between Western planning mind-sets pursuing the goal of sustainable development, and the lived realities of residents of often poor, informal settlements. The book will be valuable to advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in geography, urban studies, development studies, environmental studies and African studies.
