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
In this first English-language edition of a sole-authored book from Frédéric Ramel, benevolence is defined as a moral principle which promotes temperance and attention to vulnerability. Ramel unpacks this concept, analyses its received meanings in different contexts and spells out its practical and ethical implications in detail.
In preparing this work for an English-speaking readership, the author undertook extensive revisions and included two additional chapters. It also includes a foreword from Chris Brown, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The French edition was published as La Bienveillance Dans Les Relations Internationales.
Inequality is an ever-present danger in our society. This important book addresses the crucial nexus between the lived experience of inequality and how it shapes political responses.
With contributors from the UK and Continental Europe, the book compiles case studies with theoretically informed discussions of the relationship between affective polarisation, social inequality and the fall-out from Brexit and COVID-19. Using a broad concept of social inequality, the book incorporates aspects of economy and society, language and emotion culture as well as interviews and film in historical and transnational perspective.
The contributors offer a powerful examination of the ways in which the politics of the UK and the lived experiences of its residents have been reframed in the first decades of the 21st century.
This book explores civil-military relations in Asia. With chapters on individual countries in the region, it provides a comprehensive account of the range of contemporary Asian practices under conditions of abridged democracy, soft authoritarianism or complete totalitarianism.
Through its analysis, the book argues that civil-military relations in Asia ought to be examined under the concept of ‘Asian military evolutions.’ It demonstrates that while Asian militaries have tried to incorporate standard, western-derived frameworks of civil-military relations, it has been necessary to adapt such frameworks to suit local circumstances. The book reveals how this has in turn led to creative fusions and novel changes in making civil-military relations an asset to furthering national security objectives.
This book reviews the formative years of the United Nations (UN) under its first Secretary-General Trygve Lie.
This welcome appraisal shows how the foundations for an expanded secretary-general role were laid during this period, and that Lie’s contribution was greater than has later been acknowledged. The interplay of crisis decision-making, institutional constraints and the individuals involved thus built the foundations for the UN organization we know today.
Addressing important wider questions of IGO creation, governance and autonomy, this is an incisive account of how the UN moved from paper to practice under Lie.
This book brings together thirteen of Nicholas Greenwood Onuf’s previously published yet rarely cited essays. They address topics that Onuf, a celebrated international theorist, has puzzled over for decades, prompting him to develop a distinctive perspective on international theory as social theory. Among these topics are the problem of materiality in social construction, epochal change in the modern world and the power of language.
Building on the work of giants, from Aristotle and Cicero, Hume and Kant, to Derrida and Foucault, and drawing on diverse contemporary theorists, including Seyla Benhabib, James Der Derian, Johan Galtung, Morton Kaplan, Joseph Nye, James Rosenau, Elaine Scarry and Kenneth Waltz, the book ranges over the margins of the field and settles on issues that have never been put to rest.
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
What is feminist peace? How can we advocate for peace from patriarchy? What do women, globally, advocate for when they use the term 'peace'? This edited collection brings together conversations across borders and boundaries to explore plural, intersectional and interdisciplinary concepts of feminist peace.
The book includes contributions from a geographically diverse range of scholars, judges, practitioners and activists, and the chapters cut across themes of movement building and resistance and explore the limits of institutionalised peacebuilding. The chapters deal with a range of issues, such as environmental degradation, militarization, online violence and arms spending.
Offering a resource to advance theoretical development and to advocate for policy change, this book transcends traditional approaches to the study of peace and security and embraces diverse voices and perspectives which are absent in both academic and policy spaces.
This timely analysis of security in Europe identifies the factors that enable and hinder the creation of networks of defence cooperation across the continent.
Going beyond regional arrangements established by NATO and the European Union, the book considers the sub-regional level by focusing on bilateral and minilateral defence collaborations. It provides a new conceptual framework to assess the rationales, leadership and the complex dynamics within these alliances, and highlights how they shape and interact with NATO and EU initiatives.
The world has changed dramatically since the emergence of post-Marxism, and a reassessment is needed to determine its significance in the modern world.
First published as a special issue of Global Discourse, this book explores the theoretical position of post-Marxism and investigates its significance in recent, global political developments such as Brexit, Trump and the rise of the far right. With valuable insights from international contributors across a range of disciplines, the book puts forward a strong case for the continuing relevance of post-Marxism and particularly for Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy.
Is the European Union (EU) in a state of crisis? Over recent years, a series of systemic and spontaneous challenges, including Brexit, the rise of Euroscepticism and the Eurozone and refugee crises, have manifested in landmark moments for European integration.
First published as a special issue of the journal Global Discourse, this edited collection investigates whether these crises are isolated phenomena or symptoms of a deeper malaise across the EU. Experts from across disciplines analyse and rethink the forces which pull Europeans together, as well as those which push them apart.
Drawing on the words and stories of queer Turkish activists, this book aims to unravel the complexities of queer lives in Turkey. In doing so, it challenges dominant conceptualizations of the queer Turkish experience within critical security discourses.
The book argues that while queer Turks are subjected to ceaseless forms of insecurity in their governance, opportunities for emancipatory resistance have emerged alongside these abuses. It identifies the ways in which the state, the family, Turkish Islam and other socially-mediated processes and agencies can expose or protect queers from violence in the Turkish community.
