A groundbreaking study of the foundations of nationalism, exposing its antiquity, strong links with ethnicity and roots in human nature.

Based on a detailed study of 35 cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and post-communist Eurasia, this book explores the fate of competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2008.

'Religion's Sudden Decline' provides evidence of a major decline in religion in most of the world, based on surveys of over 100 countries containing 90 percent of the world's population, carried out from 1981 to 2020 - the largest base of ...

Explains the theory of political survival, particularly in cases of dictators and despotic governments, arguing that political leaders seek to stay in power using any means necessary, most commonly by attending to the interests of certain ...

The Politics Book charts the development of long-running themes, such as attitudes to democracy and violence, developed by thinkers from Confucius in ancient China to Mahatma Gandhi in 20th-century India.

This revised edition includes a new preface in which the author links the enormous changes that have taken place in Africa over the past fifteen years to long-term state consolidation.

The book reveals why most of today’s authoritarians are spin dictators—and how they differ from the remaining “fear dictators” such as Kim Jong-un and Bashar al-Assad, as well as from masters of high-tech repression like Xi Jinping.

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By looking at how these methods of protest promoted regime change in some countries but not in others, this book provides rare insight into the often overlooked and little understood power of nonviolent action.

The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight.