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The process of making a new constitution often begins in conditions that are not optimal for careful consideration of the process of constitution making and its objectives. Emphasizing the need for a process that maximizes chances for a democratic outcome, this book makes a case for processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and oriented toward achieving consensus rather than merely negotiated outcomes. The book focuses attention on politicians who participate in creating new constitutions. It discusses methods for selecting them, modes of organizing the deliberating and drafting bodies, their standards of decision making, their ways of connecting to the public, and their use of outside advice—all with a view to enhancing the commitment of the participants after the process concludes. Beginning with an enumeration of unpropitious conditions and ways of mitigating them, the chapters provide illustrations of processes that have been relatively successful and others that have gone astray, drawing on an array of country-focused accounts. The volume also identifies characteristic problems, tradeoffs, and pitfalls that can arise in the course of constitution making. The book aims to provide arguments, evidence, and descriptions that will appeal to a wide audience, ranging from curious non-specialist readers to students, experts, and constitution makers and advisors alike.

The United States is home to the world’s oldest national constitution. Stability defines the document. Americans have never convened to replace the Constitution and rarely amended or fundamentally reinterpreted the document. What explains the American Constitution’s longevity? This book proposes that state constitutional revision resolves national constitutional controversies. With lower barriers to amendment and replacement, the American state constitutions invite reform, addressing national constitutional controversies. This state constitutional reform discourages national constitutional revision and quiets conflict between the branches of the national government, guiding American political development. The book elaborates this claim using original datasets of all 12,000 proposed federal constitutional amendments and all 411 state constitutional revision bodies from 1776-2020. Using detailed, chronological case studies from the Revolution to the present, the book shows that state constitutionalism guides national politics. This frequent, popular revision grants the state constitutions a democratic legitimacy that the national Constitution lacks.

Can great powers be confident that their peers have benign intentions? States that trust each other can live at peace; those that mistrust each other are doomed to compete for arms and allies and may even go to war. This book offers a theory—intentions pessimism—that says great powers can rarely if ever be confident that their peers have benign intentions, because it is extraordinarily difficult for them to obtain the kind of information that would allow them to reach such a conclusion. Any optimistic assertions to the contrary—and there are many—are wrong. Indeed, even in cases that supposedly involved mutual trust—Germany and Russia in the Bismarck era (1871-90); Britain and the United States during the great rapprochement (1895-1906); France and Germany, and Japan and the United States in the early interwar period (1919-30); and the Soviet Union and the United States at the end of the Cold War (1985-90)—the protagonists were acutely uncertain about each other’s intentions. As a result, they competed for security. The ramifications for the future of U.S.-China relations are profound. Uncertain about the other side’s intentions, but aware of its formidable capabilities, Washington and Beijing will go to great lengths to strengthen their military and diplomatic positions, triggering a competitive action-reaction spiral with the potential for war.

How can the United States chart a path forward in the war on drugs? This book uncovers the full history of this war that has lasted more than a century. The book provides an essential view of the economic, political, and human impacts of U.S. drug policies. It takes readers from Afghanistan to Colombia, to Peru and Mexico, to Miami International Airport and the border crossing between El Paso and Juarez to trace the complex social networks that make up the drug trade and drug consumption. Through historically driven stories, the book reveals how the war on drugs has evolved to address mass incarceration, the opioid epidemic, the legalization and medical use of marijuana, and America's shifting foreign policy.

Using emergency as a cause for action ultimately leads to an almost unnoticed evolution in the political understanding of presidential powers. The Constitution of the United States, however, was designed to function under “states of exception,” most notably through the separation of powers, and provides ample internal checks on emergency actions taken under claims of necessity. This book urges the United States Congress, the courts, and other bodies to put those checks into practice. The book analyzes the constitutional norms that fail to guide and constrain the choice of action through an analysis of what is appropriate. It explores how constitutional norms always apply as unavoidably normative constitutional questions during an emergency. It explains how necessity can produce dictatorship, because the people are willing to allow whatever it takes to solve their immediate needs, and it looks into the theory that a president might suspend the constitutional order in order to post hoc political accountability. It then talks about necessity that enables presidential discretion, and responds to arguments regarding the president having all the power that necessity confers. The book considers the scope of implied presidential power, arguing that even if there is power to do what is necessary, it is still constrained by conceptions of what is proper. It emphasizes how deference to the president is inconsistent with a constitutional tradition that preciously guards decisions about liberty. The book concludes with a review of the commitment to constitutional values as a constitutive feature of political identity in American constitutionalism.

The author of this book has long been known as a reformist or moderate Islamist thinker. In this book he argues that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—in its broad outlines—meets with wide acceptance among Muslims if their interpretation of Islamic law is correct. Under his theory of the purposes of Shariʻa, justice and human welfare are not exclusive to Islamic governance, and the objectives of Islamic law can be advanced in multiple ways. The book examines the Western concept of freedom and the Islamic perspective on freedom and human rights, basic democratic principles, the basic principles of an Islamic political system, the concept of tyranny across three different schools of thought, and concludes with an examination of the solutions in Islamic thought that can curb state tyranny, for the benefit of freedom, justice, and the human rights of citizens.

Authoritarian nationalist movements labeled “populist” are advancing xenophobic, intolerant “stories of peoplehood” to justify repression and exclusions in many nations today. That Is Not Who We Are! argues that those stories must be met in part by advancing more egalitarian and inclusive national narratives. It provides criteria for developing better stories of peoplehood and explores examples from many nations around the world, including Denmark, India, Israel, and the United States. The book concludes that stories championing democracy; a more perfect union; and the Declaration of Independence’s quest to secure rights for all can help to combat the dangers of Donald Trump’s “America First” nationalist narrative.

Now available in English for the first time, this book was written in immediate response to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 but withheld from publication for fear of reprisals against Jews trapped in Germany. Acclaimed when finally published by Kösel Verlag in 1952, it is a devastatingly prescient exposure, giving special attention to the regime's corruption of language as masterminded by Joseph Goebbels. Bertolt Brecht wrote to the author that, in his indictment of Nazism, “You have disclosed the atrocities of intonation and created an ethics of language.” This masterful translation aims for clarity where the author had good reason to be cautious and obscure.

Social order requires a sovereign: an actor with unlimited, undivided, and unaccountable authority. Or so the classic theory says. But without noticing, we've gutted the theory. Constitutionalism limits state authority. Federalism divides it. The rule of law holds it accountable. In vivid historical detail—with millions tortured and slaughtered in Europe, a king put on trial for his life, journalists groaning at complaints about the League of Nations, and much more—this book charts both the political struggles that forged sovereignty and the ones that undid it. The book argues that it's no longer a helpful guide to our legal and political problems, but a pernicious bit of confusion. It's time to retire sovereignty.

This book explores the impact of Chinese growth on Latin America since the early 2000s. Some twenty years ago, Chinese entrepreneurs headed to the Western Hemisphere in search of profits and commodities, specifically those that China lacked and that some Latin American countries held in abundance—copper, iron ore, crude oil, fishmeal and soybeans. Focusing largely on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru, the book traces the evolution of political and economic ties between China and these countries back to the 1950s and explores how more recent and ongoing interaction with China has shaped the respective political economies of these country cases. Drawing on the development economics literature as an analytical roadmap, the book offers two sets of findings. First, the three small, open economies—Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru—outperformed Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico by a wide margin during the China 2003–2013 boom and thereafter. Second, success in dealing with China has varied by sector, project, and country. The author argues that while opportunities for closer economic integration with China are seemingly infinite, so are the risks. The best outcomes have stemmed from endeavours where the rule of law, regulatory oversight, and a clear strategy exist on the Latin American side.