Here are 100 books that Environmentalism and Global International Society fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was initially drawn to economics as a way to understand and address global problems of poverty and hunger, like those I saw in Africa with the Peace Corps and later as a researcher. As my interests broadened toward environmental and other social problems, again I found that economics provides valuable insights about their causes and possible solutions. Economics is unfortunately often misunderstood and defined too narrowly: but as a social science, it encompasses a broad framework to comprehend individuals, families, cities, nations. It encompasses philosophical thought, normative questions, and intangibles like humans’ desire for respect. After decades as an economics professor I still find its insights fascinating and powerful.
Private property or the commons? Free enterprise or public ownership?
Arguably the most substantive contribution to such debates in the past 50 years has come from Elinor Ostrom for her decades of study of common-pool resource management.
From case studies around the world and from centuries past, she proves that collective ownership need not end in a “tragedy of the commons,” but can succeed.
In work that won her the Nobel Prize in Economics (she is a political scientist) studying community-managed fisheries, forests, grazing lands, and watersheds, Ostrom describes and evaluates successes and failures in great detail and with attention to the role of rules, monitoring, and enforcement, and leadership, in determining the kinds of governance that are most likely to succeed.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of…
I have been interested in the environment my entire life. I studied international environmental politics in college at the University of Michigan and in graduate school at MIT. I research and taught international environmental politics at the University of Massachusetts for 33 years. I have published extensively on global environmental governance, focusing on the role played by science, international organizations, transnational actors, and governments. I have consulted for the United Nations, and the governments of the USA, France, and Portugal.
Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth is one of the most important foundational texts in global environmental governance.
The authors recognize the urgency and scope of global environmental problems, and identify their salient properties along with developing a novel holistic approach which reflects the complexity of ecosystems.
They stress the need for scientific knowledge, the challenges to the international system from environmental threats, and the probabilistic nature of human behavior.
They also introduced the concept of an “ecological world view” which has come to inform much of global environmental governance.
"No one can possibly forsee all the changes in store for individuals, for social classes, for sovereign national communities, and for the world community as a whole. The future will surely bring many surprises. But as we speculate on these matters, the thought keeps recurring that we may just possibly be already far advanced in a historic transformation in the management of human affairs upon our increasingly crowded, denuded, depleted, and polluted planet". Thus the authors of Toward a Politics of the Planet Earth set the stage for an in-depth examination of international politics with a socio-ecological perspective. This unique…
I have been interested in the environment my entire life. I studied international environmental politics in college at the University of Michigan and in graduate school at MIT. I research and taught international environmental politics at the University of Massachusetts for 33 years. I have published extensively on global environmental governance, focusing on the role played by science, international organizations, transnational actors, and governments. I have consulted for the United Nations, and the governments of the USA, France, and Portugal.
Newell’s Globalization and the Environment provides a thorough overview of the international political economy forces which shape global environmental governance.
He applies a critical gaze to the roles of capitalism, trade, finance, and multinational corporations, along with a focus on the power exercised by the private sector which makes effective global environmental governance difficult.
Globalization and the Environment critically explores the actors, politics and processes that govern the relationship between globalization and the environment. Taking key aspects of globalisation in turn - trade, production and finance - the book highlights the relations of power at work that determine whether globalization is managed in a sustainable way and on whose behalf. Each chapter looks in turn at the political ecology of these central pillars of the global economy, reviewing evidence of its impact on diverse ecologies and societies, its governance - the political structures, institutions and policy making processes in place to manage this relationship…
I have been interested in the environment my entire life. I studied international environmental politics in college at the University of Michigan and in graduate school at MIT. I research and taught international environmental politics at the University of Massachusetts for 33 years. I have published extensively on global environmental governance, focusing on the role played by science, international organizations, transnational actors, and governments. I have consulted for the United Nations, and the governments of the USA, France, and Portugal.
Kate O’Neill’s The Environment and International Relations provides a thorough overview of the actors and processes involved in global environmental governance.
She deftly captures the political nature of global environmental threats, and looks at the roles of states and transnational actors in the governance of a variety of global environmental issues.
The new edition of this exciting textbook introduces students to the ways in which the theories and tools of international relations and other social science disciplines can be used to analyse and address global environmental problems. Kate O'Neill develops an innovative historical and analytical framework for understanding global environmental issues, integrating insights from different disciplines, and she identifies the main actors and their roles, thereby encouraging readers to engage with the issues and equip themselves with the knowledge they need to apply their own critical insights. Revised and updated, the new edition features new figures, examples, textboxes, and a new…
I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.
This book has worthwhile attributes, such as clear writing on the nature of uranium poisoning and its history, personal interviews, and vital coverage of local peoples’ reactions to damage done to their lands and their families, as well as their homelands by profit-mined mining companies.
Vasquez’s coverage centers on the Amazon with a focus on several extractive industries. This book stands alone in its coverage of resource extraction issues in the Amazon Valley because this area has so many other important issues to cover.
For decades, studies of oil-related conflicts have focused on the effects of natural resource mismanagement, resulting in great economic booms and busts or violence as rebels fight ruling governments over their regions' hydrocarbon resources. In Oil Sparks in the Amazon, Patricia I. Vasquez writes that while oil busts and civil wars are common, the tension over oil in the Amazon has played out differently, in a way inextricable from the region itself.
Oil disputes in the Amazon primarily involve local indigenous populations. These groups' social and cultural identities differ from the rest of the population and the diverse disputes over…
The events/developments that unsettle international politics of the Gulf are two kinds: internal and external to the region. Yet, no matter whether it is internal or external, its consequences concern us all, no matter where we live in. What happens in the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf. It unleashes ripple effects that reach directly or indirectly into our pockets and hence our lives. I am one of them and a non-resident scholar in the Middle East Institute, broadly speaking, writing on Turkey, the Persian/Arab Gulf, and the Middle East.
After the US it is Iran. In fact the US is in the Gulf thanks and due to Iran. Iran poses a, real or perceived, security risk to other littoral states of the Gulf and balancing it constitutes the latter’s sublime foreign policy objective. It is also due to Iran that the Arab Gulf states spend billions of dollars on their armaments and engage in proxy-power struggles in other parts of the Middle East. Why is Iran a pariah in the Gulf? For a solid account read this book.
The study is based on Persian, Arabic, English, French and German newspaper reports, as well as interviews with Iranian and Arab diplomats - adds a novel and interesting aspect to the study
Will appeal to the general reader interested in the Modern Middle East, as well as policy-makers and students of Modern Middle Eastern studies and International Relations
There have been no extended studies on the Persian Gulf Policy of the Islamic Republic covering the first two decades of its existence
Since 2008, I have conducted research on themes related to International Political Economy. I am currently the co-chair of the research committee on this topic at the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and am passionate about making sense of the interplay between material and symbolic factors that shape capitalism and globalisation. Being based in Brazil, I was stuck when the country—which did not have salient identity cleavages in politics—came to be, after 2008, a hotspot of religious-based right-wing populism associated with the defence of trade liberalisation as globalisation started to face meaningful backlash from White-majority constituencies who are relatively losers of the post-Cold War order in the advanced industrialised democracies.
Being one of the first books to scrutinize the origins of Trumpism and its impact beyond U.S. borders, I very much appreciate the argument that right-wing populism in the West—which includes the forces that culminated in the Brexit process—shall be a catalyser for the power transition to the East.
Hence, the likely end of Western dominance does not arise only from Asian continuous economic growth but would also stem from the centrifugal forces that emerged at the heart of the advanced industrial democracies.
From the winner of the 2016 Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize for Commentator of the Year, a provocative analysis of how a new era of global instability has begun, as the flow of wealth and power turns from West to East.
Easternization is the defining trend of our age — the growing wealth of Asian nations is transforming the international balance of power. This shift to the East is shaping the lives of people all over the world, the fate of nations, and the great questions of war and peace.
After working on the writings of the 15th-century French writer Christine de Pizan for a while I turned to researching the queen of France whom Christine addresses in some of her works. As I read the primary sources, it quickly became clear to me that poor Isabeau of Bavaria’s terrible reputation had been produced by misogynistic and nationalistic nineteenth-century French historians who promulgated images of political women as promiscuous harridans. I was astounded. How could it be that we were still circulating simplistic old narratives of incompetence and debauchery without critically examining what people of the times had to say?
I have been studying the afterlives of infamous noblewomen ever since.
Mariana of Austria (1634-96) has long been underestimated. Regent for her young son, Carlos II, last Habsburg ruler of Spain, she is reputed to have been pig-headed, incompetent, and not very bright. The famous Velasquez painting showing her in a skirt too wide to fit through a door and hair stretching out like an accordion has not helped her reputation. But Silvia Mitchell has mined the archives and produced a wonderful revision of this queen’s regency, showing how, over the course of her regency, Mariana led the Spanish monarchy into transformative military and diplomatic alliances with the English and the Dutch and, through her style of ruling, helped bring about a new political culture. This study makes clear how much our picture of pre-modern politics has been distorted by the failure to take female roles seriously.
When Philip IV of Spain died in 1665, his heir, Carlos II, was three years old. In addition to this looming dynastic crisis, decades of enormous military commitments had left Spain a virtually bankrupt state with vulnerable frontiers and a depleted army. In Silvia Z. Mitchell's revisionist account, Queen, Mother, and Stateswoman, Queen Regent Mariana of Austria emerges as a towering figure at court and on the international stage, while her key collaborators-the secretaries, ministers, and diplomats who have previously been ignored or undervalued-take their rightful place in history.
Mitchell provides a nuanced account of Mariana of Austria's ten-year regency…
Bann Seng Tan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Ashoka University. His research interests are on the causes and effects of democratization, the politics of foreign aid, the political economy of natural disasters, aid in decentralization, resurgent authoritarianism, and the democratic peace. His policy proclivities revolve around the defence of the liberal world order. Democracy promotion is but one way to push against authoritarianism.
Besides foreign aid, there is also military aid. Brownlee’s book is a study of the American-Egyptian alliance during the 30 years of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. His insight is that the US strategic interests are better met with an authoritarian, instead of a democratic, Egypt. Pay attention to his account of the Egyptian parliamentary elections in 2005-2007 and the 2006 Gaza War. Both are instances where US and Egyptian preferences diverge. In the first case, the US backed down once it realized further liberalization could allow the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-American party to come to power. In the latter case, the US was able to arm-twist a reluctant Egypt as Israeli security was at stake. These eye-opening examples support his claim that the American-Egyptian alliance supports authoritarian survival.
When a popular revolt forced long-ruling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to resign on February 11, 2011, US President Barack Obama hailed the victory of peaceful demonstrators in the heart of the Arab World. But Washington was late to endorse democracy - for decades the United States favored Egypt's rulers over its people. Since 1979, the United States had provided the Egyptian regime with more than $60 billion in aid and immeasurable political support to secure its main interests in the region: Israeli security and strong relations with Persian Gulf oil producers. During the Egyptian uprising, the White House did not…
I have been shocked in recent years by the bitter partisanship in America, and by how our politics have turned into a sort of sports grudge match – my team versus yours, no matter what – with very little interest in seeking the truth or working for the national good. So when I discovered a number of years ago that Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt built an alliance with Republicans that led the country to victory in World War II, I immediately set out to understand how such an extraordinary bipartisan alliance could take place – and whether America might do such a thing again. Uniting Americaprovides an answer.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, cast together by the rising tide of fascism, became allies to fight their common enemy.
Their politics, however, in some ways stood in sharp contrast. FDR was a liberal Democrat who believed in using the levers of government to help those thrown out of work by the Great Depression. Churchill was a Conservative who had fought many a battle against Britain’s liberals.
Yet the two men broke the rules of rigid adherence to any party.
As Jon Meacham puts it in his masterful Franklin and Winston, “Churchill changed parties from Conservative to Liberal and back again, and the vicissitudes of his views did not surprise those closest to him.” As for FDR, who built an alliance with prominent Republicans during the war, one associate pointed to the “flexibility of the Roosevelt mind.”
The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leaders
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one—a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in…
