Books published by Cornell University Press

"Tackles the problem of how to interpret the current conservative turn in Indonesian Islam by trying to understand how everyday Indonesians understand their relationship to the Arab world, directly considering the experiences of two groups of Indonesians who actually travel to the Arabian peninsula: pilgrims, and labor migrants"--

The Roots of Resilience examines governance from the ground up in the world's two most enduring electoral authoritarian or "e;hybrid"e; regimes-Singapore and Malaysia-where politically liberal and authoritarian features are blended to evade substantive democracy. Although skewed elections, curbed civil liberties, and a dose of coercion help sustain these regimes, selectively structured state policies and patronage, partisan machines that effectively stand in for local governments, and diligently sustained clientelist relations between politicians and constituents are equally important. While key attributes of these regimes differ, affecting the scope, character, and balance among national parties and policies, local machines, and personalized linkages-and notwithstanding a momentous change of government in Malaysia in 2018-the similarity in the overall patterns in these countries confirms the salience of these dimensions. As Meredith L. Weiss shows, taken together, these attributes accustom citizens to the system in place, making meaningful change in how electoral mobilization and policymaking happen all the harder to change. This authoritarian acculturation is key to the durability of both regimes, but, given weaker party competition and party-civil society links, is stronger in Singapore than Malaysia. High levels of authoritarian acculturation, amplifying the political payoffs of what parties and politicians actually provide their constituents, explain why electoral turnover alone is insufficient for real regime change in either state.

What explains differences in soldier participation in violence during irregular war? How do ordinary men become professional wielders of force, and when does this transformation falter or fail? Regular Soldiers, Irregular War presents a theoretical framework for understanding the various forms of behavior in which soldiers engage during counterinsurgency campaigns-compliance and shirking, abuse and restraint, as well as the creation of new violent practices.Through an in-depth study of the Israeli Defense Forces' repression of the Second Palestinian Intifada of 2000-2005, including in-depth interviews with and a survey of former combatants, Devorah Manekin examines how soldiers come both to unleash and to curb violence against civilians in a counterinsurgency campaign. Manekin argues that variation in soldiers' behavior is best explained by the effectiveness of the control mechanisms put in place to ensure combatant violence reflects the strategies and preferences of military elites, primarily at the small-unit level. Furthermore, she develops and analyzes soldier participation in three categories of violence: strategic violence authorized by military elites; opportunistic or unauthorized violence; and "e;entrepreneurial violence"e;-violence initiated from below to advance organizational aims when leaders are ambiguous about what will best serve those aims. By going inside military field units and exploring their patterns of command and control, Regular Soldiers, Irregular War, sheds new light on the dynamics of violence and restraint in counterinsurgency.

"This book examines how people from all walks of life mobilized different forms of wealth-savings, privatization vouchers, remittances, housing, social ties-to invest in the speculative pyramid schemes that were all the rage in late 1990s Albania"--

"This book analyzes what the theory of exceptionalism in the Arabian Peninsula does, how it is used by various people, and how it helps shape power relations in the societies that the authors study"--

"This book explores the ways in which postwar Asian cinema was shaped by transnational collaborations and competitions between newly independent and colonial states at the height of Cold War cultural politics"--

"This book analyzes the way swords were collected, used, shared, and valued by warrior elites in France and Britain for over 1,000 years, from ca 500 to 1600"--

Volume II.

"This book traces the evolution of Russian policies toward Armenians, showing how and why the tsarist state relied on Armenians to build its empire in the Caucasus and beyond"--