New Books
- In Theory and in Practice: Harvard's Center for International Affairs, 1958-1983
Written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Center for International Affairs, Atkinson's history of the Center's first twenty-five years traces the institutional and intellectual development of a research center that, decades later, continues to facilitate innovative scholarship. He explores the connection between knowledge and politics, beginning with the Center's confident first decade—distinguished by groundbreaking research and access to influential policy makers in Washington—and concludes with the second decade, which found the CFIA embroiled in the turbulence of Vietnam-era student protests.
Digging deep into unpublished material in the Harvard, MIT, and Kennedy Library archives, the book is punctuated with personal interviews with influential CFIA affiliates. Atkinson describes the relationship between foreign policy and scholarship during the cold war and documents the maturation of a remarkable academic institution. Notwithstanding Harvard's initial reticence, the CFIA has endured for half a century and ultimately has grown into the largest international affairs research center in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
(Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2007)
David C. Atkinson is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Boston University and a former staff member at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
- The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought
In this rich intellectual history, Cemil Aydin challenges the notion that anti-Westernism in the Muslim world is a political and religious reaction to the liberal and democratic values of the West. Nor is anti-Westernism a natural response to Western imperialism. Instead, by focusing on the agency and achievements of non-Western intellectuals, Aydin demonstrates that modern anti-Western discourse grew out of the legitimacy crisis of a single, Eurocentric global polity in the age of high imperialism. Aydin compares Ottoman Pan-Islamic and Japanese Pan-Asian visions of world order from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of World War II. He looks at when the idea of a universal “West” first took root in the minds of Asian intellectuals and reformers and how it became essential in criticizing the West for violating its own “standards of civilization.” Aydin also illustrates why these anti-Western visions contributed to the decolonization process.
(Harvard University Press, 2007)
Cemil Aydin was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (2002–2004) and is currently an assistant professor of history at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
- Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentives to overthrow it. These processes depend on the strength of civil society, the structure of political institutions, the nature of political and economic crises, the level of economic inequality, the structure of the economy, and the form and extent of globalization.
(Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Weatherhead Center Faculty Associate James A. Robinson is Professor of Government at Harvard University. (See Of Note for this book's award details.)