The Origins of Overthrow

Why has regime change figured so recurrently in US foreign policy? Between 1906 and 2011, the United States forcibly intervened in at least sixteen states, targeting their domestic political authority structure. Accounts thus far in International Relations scholarship fail to provide sound explanations for this pattern. Their premise that the United States seeks national security, economic benefits, or democracy in the target state is put into doubt by studies that demonstrate the limited success of most US regime change interventions. Focusing on the emotional state of US presidents, this book presents a novel explanation for the recurrence of forcible regime change in US foreign policy. It argues that regime change becomes an attractive foreign policy tool to US presidents when emotional frustration grips them. Emotional frustration, the book’s core concept, is an emotional state that comprises hegemonic expectations, perceptions of hatred in target state obstructions, and negative affect. Once instigated, it shapes both presidential preferences and strategies, carrying with it both a desire for removing foreign leaders as the perceived source of frustration and a turn to military aggression. Based on a wealth of declassified government sources, the empirical part of the book illustrates how emotional frustration has time and again shaped US regime change decisions. Spanning two world regions—the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East—and roughly one hundred years of US foreign policy, the book traces the emotional state of US presidents in five regime change episodes—Cuba 1906, Nicaragua 1909–1912, the Dominican Republic 1963–1965, Iran 1979–1980, and Iraq 2001–2003.

Emma Goldman

Both in the United States and internationally, the anarchist Emma Goldman earned a reputation as a prominent Jewish radical feminist. Goldman became a household name at a time when that was extremely rare for a woman. Anarchism and Emma Goldman played a significant role in US politics around the turn into the 20th century, as they were also key for the development of US Jewish life, feminism, and the Left more generally. Like most Jews in the United States, even in her day, Goldman was secular, and also identifiably Jewish culturally. She was concerned about the potential statism of Zionism, but at the time most Jews in the United States and globally, of all political stripes, were similarly not Zionist. She also never hesitated to offer apt critiques of Jews whose politics differed from hers. Identified as “the most dangerous anarchist in America” of her day and a most dangerous woman, she was accused of terrorism for her political ideals and activism in a way that foreshadowed the ensuing century of US elites targeting justice workers by calling them terrorists. More broadly for Jews and Jewish studies, anarchist theory and what that meant for this Jewish feminist activist and thinker are among the best frames for understanding Jewish life without a central authority structure, and particularly in the diasporic context.

Secularist Humanism, Law and Religion in Ian McEwan’s The Children Act

Ian McEwan’s The Children Act focuses on a real-life conflict between religion and children’s rights in a pluralist society. By drawing on Charles Taylor’s work on religion in the “secular age”, I argue that McEwan’s narrative is ultimately built on secularist assumptions that devalue religious experience. McEwan’s approach aims to build a bridge between literary imagination and scientific rationality: religion is, from this perspective, reducible to a “fable” and an authority structure incongruous with legal rationality and the quest for meaning in the modern-secular society. In The Children Act, art substitutes religion and its aspiration to transcendence: music in particular is a universal idiom that can overcome barriers of communication and provides “ecstatic” experiences in a godless world.

Introduction

The introduction sets out the central concern of this book: in a liberal regime, what is required to bring children from dependence to freedom? Children are not immediately capable of freedom or even of consent to government, so liberalism must always find some way to account for the authority that must be exercised over them until they are. The dominant contemporary approach has been one of “congruence”: modeling the family and school on the authority structure of the liberal state to allow children to practice liberty and equality in these protected settings to prepare them for their civic roles as adults. However, congruence was originally the aim of absolutists like Bodin, Hobbes, and Filmer, while early liberals like Locke and Rousseau rejected it as tyrannical. What was the reason for their rejection? Understanding where contemporary liberalism falls short requires returning to this early modern debate over education and authority.

Sources of Challenge to Charismatic Authority in Newly Emerging Religious Movements

Charismatic authority has been alternatively depicted as extraordinarily powerful and fragile and transitory. The argument developed here is that organizations generally, and newly emerging religious movements in particular, are sites of both coordination and contestation. If new movements are established with a charismatic authority structure, one important question is from what sources can challenges to that authority emanate. Three movement sectors are identified as potential sources of challenge: inner circle leadership, administrative functionaries, and grassroots membership. Using illustrative cases from contemporary emerging religious movements, instances of authority challenges are presented in support of the argument that both coordination and contestation are normal features of movement development.

Marjaʿiyya in the digital era: Renegotiating the relationship between marjaʿ and muqallid in the era of the democratization of knowledge

The marjaʿiyya is the dominant religious authority structure among Twelver Shiʿis. This study explores the attitudes of ‘lay Shiʿis’ (non-marjaʿs) towards the institution of the marjaʿiyya outside of the Iranian political system. Rather than assuming that the relationship between authority and follower is one-way, it considers that both the marjaʿ and the follower might negotiate the relationship. It examines ‘lay Shiʿis’ commitment towards following a marjaʿ, regional variation, their understanding of religious leadership, and contemporary concerns regarding the marjaʿiyya. Insofar as the marjaʿiyya has undergone roughly three phases of development, a key point of enquiry in this paper is whether or not the marjaʿiyya is undergoing a fourth phase of development as a result of advances in digital technology, the democratisation of knowledge, and the global Shiʿi diaspora. Data for this paper was collected through surveying Shiʿis worldwide as well as interviewing five prominent marājiʿ in Iraq.

Dimensions of the Relationship between the Individual and Her Unique Worldview Construction

Each individual constructs his own private worldview using elements from established worldview traditions. The biographical character of this formation makes this the individual’s “Unique Worldview Construction” (UWC). The purpose of this theoretical study is to analyse the dynamic relationship between the individual and her own UWC. It describes more how than what he believes in or denies. The variation is exceedingly complex. To make it accessible, the complexity is crystallized into seven dimensions: (1) The authority structure deals with the individual’s perception of herself as being superordinate/subordinate to her own UWC. (2) The importance dimension analyses the span from indifference to involvement among a variety of religious/nonreligious, age, and gender cohorts. (3) The certainty dimension explores doubt versus confidence, using theories like confirmation bias, naïve realism, and cognitive dissonance. (4) The dimension of one’s relationship to rejected beliefs describes different ways of being inclusive/exclusive. (5) The emotional dimension depicts the individual’s weak/strong and negative/positive feelings towards different elements of her UWC. (6) The openness dimension sheds light on the respective traits of being introverted/extroverted regarding one’s private worldview. (7) The continuity dimension explores different development patterns, along with complex pre/post-conversion and deconversion processes. The different dimensions partly correlate to each other.

Authority Structures and Single-Party Dominance in Indigenous Communities in Taiwan

Researchers have demonstrated that local institutional contexts such as organizational networks and leadership cohesion explain the lasting support across developing countries for elite parties originating from former authoritarian regimes. But variation in the emergence of party competition in rural underprivileged populations that were once strong supporters of the regime party requires a thorough examination of local power structures. Analysis of aboriginal societies in Taiwan, based on interviews and ethnographic research, demonstrates that the type of authority structure guides how power relations organize communities and how local elites attain their status. In indigenous communities where inherited hierarchy determines social prestige, chiefs and headmen have retained control of contemporary politics. In contrast, in villages without preexisting hierarchies, big men need to build political influence on personal grounds, which creates room for contestation and the emergence of internal competition for political allegiance. Regression analyses provide further support for these findings and imply that authority structures mediate local communities’ linkage with the party and the state during democratization.