A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia’s international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia’s supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.

A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia's international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia's supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.

After twenty-five years of independence, there is little doubt that the five Central Asian states will persist as sovereign, independent states. They increasingly differ from each other, and are making their way in global politics. No longer connected only to Russia, they are now connected in important ways to Afghanistan, South Asia, China, Iran, and each other. This volume covers a wide range of issues and presents the work of emerging scholars authors well-known for their expertise in the region. The first part addresses social issues. Covering a wide range from HIV/AIDs to social media, the rebirth of Islam, outmigration, and problematic borders, this section follows two main currents: political development in the region and states’ responses to transboundary challenges. The second part, addressing economics and security, provides analyses of new infrastructure, informal economies (from bazaars to criminal networks), energy development, the role of enclaves in the Ferghana Valley, and the development of the states’ military structures. This section illuminates the interactions between economic developments and security, and the forces that could undermine both. The final part, comprised of five case studies, offers a “deeper dive” into a specific factor that matters in the development of each Central Asian state. These cases include Kazakhstan’s foreign policy identity, Kyrgyzstan’s domestic politics, Tajikistan’s pursuit of hydropower, foreign direct investment in Turkmenistan, and the perception of everyday corruption in Uzbekistan.

Rising Powers and State Transformation advances the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a useful lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation, with chapters dedicated to China, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. The volume breaks with the prevalent tendency in International Relations (IR) scholarship to treat rising powers as unitary actors in international politics. Although a neat demarcation of the domestic and international domains, on which the notion of unitary agency is premised, has always been a myth, these states’ uneven integration into the global political economy has eroded this perspective’s empirical purchase considerably. Instead, this volume employs the concept of ‘state transformation’ as a lens through which to examine rising power states’ foreign policymaking and implementation. State transformation refers to the pluralisation of cross-border state agency via contested and uneven processes of fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation of state apparatuses. The volume demonstrates the significance of state transformation processes for explaining some of these states’ key foreign policy agendas, and outlines the implications for the wider field in IR. With chapters dedicated to all of today’s most important rising power states, Rising Powers and State Transformation will be of great interest to scholars of IR, international politics and foreign policy. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

In recent decades, there has been an upsurge of western professionals providing financial and legal services to kleptocrats Russia and Eurasia. The United Kingdom has provided more such services than any other nation, and the effect has been to undermine democracy and good governance in both the UK and in the countries these elites come from. By cataloging through rich case studies of how kleptocrats offshored their wealth and exploited both financial deregulation and the UK's punitive libel regime, this book demonstrates what is at stake politically in the globalization of authoritarian regime practices.

Contains English translations of twenty-eight pieces of literature by authors from all over the world, including Ariel Dorfman, Aleksandar Hemon, Francine Prose, Wole Soyinka, and more.

For while admittedly imperfect, democracy is still the only self-correcting system, while totalitarian societies are always forced to the catastrophic end of their own logic. Yet despite this worldwide rejection of utopian illusions, the victory of democracy is by no means historically inevitable. Vigorous alternatives remain, particularly in the Third World, where Islamic fundamentalism offers perhaps the most serious contemporary challenge to democratic values. In order to ensure its success, Revel argues, we must identify our interests with the flourishing of democratic principles. Thus, our foreign aid must place political reforms ahead of economic development, and we must establish a right to intervene in the internal affairs of nondemocratic regimes, respecting only those that are rooted in popular sovereignty. But even under democratic governments, we are unlikely ever to construct a world that is much better than ourselves.

A hilarious collection of the lowest of the lows – from the worst generals to the dumbest dogs, the shortest Hollywood marriages to the most dangerous golf courses. The World's Worsts is the latest compendium of quirky information and vamped–up trivia from Pop Culture guru Les Krantz. This entertaining and utterly addictive reference taps into the dark side of human nature and the less–than–stellar and perhaps best forgotten moments in history. Drew Barrymore makes the Top–10 Shortest Celebrity Marriage list TWICE! #4 Drew Barrymore and Jeremy Thomas – 19 days #7 Drew Barrymore and Tom Green – 5 months Worst Military Leaders #2 Philip VI of France (1293–1350) Lost 4000 (one–third of his force) to a mere 100 English soldiers in the Battle of Crécy The World's Dumbest Dogs #1 Afghan Hound #7 Beagle