Topics of the week:
Profiling Political Leaders:
Dr. Henry A. Murray. 1943. Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler: With Predictions of His Future Behavior and Suggestions for Dealing with Him Now and After Germany's Surrender. Cornell University Law Library.
Political Psychology:
Vladimir Shlapentokh. The Major Cause of Aggressive Xenophobia: A Case of Russian anti-Americanism
Professor Shlapentokh elegantly argues that the roots of Russia's anti-Americanism are not hidden in most complicated entanglements of the country's political culture. It's simple: both love and hate of Washington and the West are boiled primarily in the Kremlin's kitchen.
International Relations-Comparative Politics:
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way. Democracy and a Level Playing Field. Presented at George Washington University, October 15, 2009. Competitive authoritarian and other hybrid regimes have become a major feature of the post-Cold War landscape. Notwithstanding the proliferation of multiparty elections, autocrats in much of the world continue to find ways of thwarting opposition challenges. Among the most effective of these is a skewed playing field. In many countries today democratic competition is undermined less by electoral fraud or repression than by unequal access to resources, media, and state institutions.
Critical Thinking:
David Levy. Pervasive Labeling Disorder.
This disorder is widespread throughout all sectors of society, but many people have found a means to obtain reinforcement for this disorder in socially acceptable ways by becoming “experts”, consultants, authors of self-help books, politicians, and interview guests on radio and television shows.
My New (Forthcoming) Textbook:
Russian Politics and Government. London / New York: Macmillan
Table of Contents (draft)
Three books released in 2008-2009:
Counting Every Vote: The Most Contentious Elections in American History
What would have happened if Aaron Burr, rather than Jefferson, had become president? What if Nixon had defeated Kennedy in 1960? What if Al Gore had become president in 2001 instead of George W. Bush? Using six cases, we argue that engaging in this counterfactual exercise provides an excellent opportunity to revisit history, learn from its lessons, and relate to contemporary elections. Publisher: Potomac Books (co-authored with Robert Dudley)
The fourth edition of Cross-Cultural Psychology (with Dr. David Levy). Used in more than 120 universities in North America and around the world. In 2009, this book has been released in India. A Chinese edition will be published soon (translated).
The Soviet Union: Internal and External Perspectives on Soviet Society
Publisher: Palgrave, New York. Co-authored with Vladimir Shlapentokh and Eero Carroll
This book is our attempt to make a small contribution to social sciences and history. This is a brief study of how people perceived, explained, and interpreted information available to them about the social and political developments in a country that no longer exists. We chose the Soviet Union as an example to demonstrate to our readers how different observers at different times looked at the same society, the same political institutions, and the same facts, and yet perceived everything they saw so differently. Which of these perceptions were accurate, correct?
An article in Harvard International Review about Russia's reactions to Obama's electoral victory:
http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1811/
Contact:
Email: eshiraev@cox.net or eshiraev@gmu.edu
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