2022 University of Michigan Press

Political Science professor Bill Newmann analyzes the successes and failures of administrations from Kennedy to Nixon as they sought to strike a balance between the personal style of the president and the need for a strong interagency structure that could systematically evaluate policy options. The narrative focuses on U.S. decision making on China and Taiwan during the crucial era when the United States was considering moving from a policy of isolating China to a policy of engagement, culminating in Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China. William Waltman Newmann has created an evolution-balance model, tested with case studies focusing on China policy by Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, showing how the relationships between a president and his advisors change based on the weaknesses or pathologies of the president’s management style. The author’s research is based on declassified archival material from the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford presidential libraries.

2022 Routledge 

Andrea Simonelli, professor of political science, and her co-authors systematically explore the emerging legal discipline of Earth System Law (ESL), challenging the closed system of law and marking a new era in law and society scholarship.

2021 Palgrave Macmillan

Simon Okoth, a professor of political science, engages with the current conflict in the Middle East and North Africa over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the biggest in Africa. The project explains why economic, and to some extent political, survival is at the core of the conflict, specifically between Egypt and Ethiopia. Although the problem started with insistence of “no dam” by Egypt and subsequently narrowed down to a filling up period of the reservoir and technical operations of the dam, finding a solution agreeable to both nations has been elusive for the past eight years. Ensuring water for all members in the Basin is consistent with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6, particularly given the looming effects of climate change, increasing population, urbanization and rising consumptive water uses.

2021 Cambridge University Press

Alex Keena, professor of political science, with co-authors Michael Latner, Anthony J. McGann and Charles Anthony Smith, investigate the causes and consequences of state legislative gerrymandering, drawing on an original dataset of 95 state legislative maps from before and after 2011 redistricting. The authors find that partisan gerrymandering increased dramatically after the 2011 redistricting and was most extreme in states with racial segregation where Republicans drew the maps. This bias has had long-term consequences. For instance, states with the most extreme Republican gerrymandering were more likely to pass laws that restricted voting rights and undermined public health, and they were less likely to respond to COVID-19. The authors examine the implications for American democracy and for the balance of power between federal and state government; they also offer empirically grounded recommendations for reform.

2020 Stanford University Press

Jessica Trisko-Darden, professor of Political Science, and co-author Izabela Steflja argue that women are just as capable as men of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. In addition to unsettling assumptions about women as agents of peace and reconciliation, the book highlights the gendered dynamics of law, and demonstrates that women are adept at using gender instrumentally to fight for better conditions and reduced sentences when war ends.

 

2019 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Jason Ross Arnold, professor of political science, clarifies the elusive concept of "whistleblowing." Most who have tried to define or understand it have a sense that whistleblowers are justified secret-spillers—people who make wise decisions about their unauthorized disclosures. But we still have no reliable framework for determining which secret-spillers deserve the positively charged term whistleblower, and which ones should get stuck with the less noble moniker “leaker.” A better understanding can inform our frustratingly endless political debates about important cases—the Snowdens, Mannings, Ellsbergs, Deep Throats, etc.—but it can also provide guidance to would-be whistleblowers about whether or not they and their collaborators should make unauthorized disclosures

2019 Stanford University Press
 
Jessica Trisko Darden, professor of political science, draws on four decades of data on U.S. economic and military aid to explore whether foreign aid does more harm than good. The book challenges long-standing ideas about aid and its consequences, and highlights key patterns in the relationship between assistance and violence.

2019 Georgetown University Press

Jessica Trisko Darden, professor of political science, and co-authors ask, Why do women go to war? This book uses three case studies to explore variation in women's participation in nonstate armed groups in a range of contemporary political and social contexts: The civil war in Ukraine, the conflicts involving Kurdish groups in the Middle East, and the civil war in Colombia. In doing so, they shed light on women's pathways into and out of nonstate armed groups. They also address the implications of women's participation in these conflicts for policy, including postconflict programming. This is an accessible and timely work that will be a useful introduction to another side of contemporary conflict.

 

2016 Cambridge University Press

Alex Keena, professor of political science, and co-authors Anthony J. McGann, Charles Anthony Smith and Michael Latner investigate congressional redistricting and find that partisan gerrymandering increased dramatically in the 2010 redistricting round. The authors argue that unrestrained partisan gerrymandering stems from the response to the Supreme Court's decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer, and poses a critical threat to a central pillar of American democracy, popular sovereignty. The book argues that the scientifically rigorous partisan symmetry measure is an appropriate legal standard for partisan gerrymandering, as it logically implies the constitutional right to individual equality and can be practically applied.

2016 Palgrave

Andrea Simonelli, professor of political science, provides the first in-depth evaluation of climate displacement in the field of political science, specifically global governance. She evaluates four intergovernmental organizations (UNHCR, IOM, OCHA and the UNFCCC), and the structural and political constraints regarding their potential expansion to govern this new issue area.

2014 University Press of Kansas

Jason Ross Arnold, professor of political science, explores the dark side of the sunshine era in the first comprehensive, comparative history of presidential resistance to the new legal regime, from Reagan-Bush to the first term of Obama-Biden. After examining what makes a necessary and unnecessary secret, Arnold considers the causes of excessive secrecy, and why we observe variation across administrations. While some administrations deserve the scorn of critics for exceptional secrecy, the book shows excessive secrecy was a persistent problem well before 9/11, during Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Regardless of party, administrations have consistently worked to weaken the systems legal foundations.

2008 Taiwan Ministry of National Defense

William Newmann, professor of political science, examines the ways in which presidents make national security decisions, and explores how those processes evolve over time. He creates a complex portrait of policy making, which may help future presidents design national security decision structures that fit the realities of the office in today’s world.

2003 University of Pittsburgh Press

William Newmann, professor or political science, examines the ways in which presidents make national security decisions, and explores how those processes evolve over time. He creates a complex portrait of policy making, which may help future presidents design national security decision structures that fit the realities of the office in today’s world.

2026 Yale University Press

To date, our understanding of women’s participation in Nazi war crimes has been shaped by political decisions made by men, which reflect entrenched gender norms that diminish both women’s agency and their accountability. The Accused offers a corrective to this by providing a groundbreaking holistic account of the variety of atrocities that women of all ages committed during the Nazi era, as well as the range of legal outcomes that they faced in the wake of the Second World War. By analyzing records from German, French, Hungarian, Soviet, and Israeli trials, Jessica Trisko Darden observes that postwar politics contributed to disparities in sentencing between men and women, which in turn allowed some women to receive more lenient sentences than others, or to be acquitted altogether. Her rigorous analysis of these women’s cases makes an important contribution to scholarship on women’s agency and culpability in perpetrating violence.

2025 Palgrave Macmillan

Revisiting the FBI’s controversial Cold War investigations into radical groups like the SDS, this book utilizes newly declassified documents to complicate the traditional narrative of Hoover-era surveillance. While acknowledging the Bureau’s history of political overreach, Dr. Jason Ross Arnold explores how the agency perceived and responded to fragmentary intelligence regarding the New Left’s international ties to Communist powers like Cuba and North Vietnam. By analyzing how counterintelligence operates under conditions of deep uncertainty and limited oversight, the work offers a fresh perspective on foreign influence and the machinery of Cold War security, challenging established historiography to provide a more nuanced understanding of 1960s political history.

2024 Bloomsbury Publishing

The Non-Governmental sector has played a noble role in providing needed support following market failure and government failure all over the world. In developing countries and Africa in particular, this sector has become an important arm of economic development and civic engagement. However, there is growing suspicion, accompanied by increased evidence, that these organizations have been tolerating corrupt practices, such as lack of accountability and transparency, nepotism, and favoritism in their governing systems and finances. Douglas Kimemia’s, Nongovernmental Organization Culture and Ethics in Kenya focuses on the relationship between the intersection of corruption and organizational culture among NGOs in Kenya. Kimemia stresses that NGOs should model strong culture to increase confidence among the various organizational stakeholders to showcase high integrity, transparency, and sound governance that does not tolerate any corrupt practices. This book offers solutions to strengthen the existing culture within NGOs and examines how organizational culture impacts engagement in corrupt practices.

2015 Bloomsbury Publishing