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The end of the Cold War announced a new world order. Liberal democracy prevailed, ideological conflict abated, and world politics set off for the promised land of a secular, cosmopolitan, market-friendly end of history. Or so it seemed. 30 years later, this unipolar worldview- premised on shared values, open markets, open borders and abstract social justice - lies in tatters. What happened? David Martin Jones examines the progressive ideas behind liberal Western practice since the end of the 20th century, at home and abroad. This mentality, he argues, took an excessively long view of the future and a short view of the past, abandoning politics in favour of ideas, and failing to address or understand rejection of liberal norms by non-Western 'others'.

The end of the Cold War announced a new world order. Liberal democracy prevailed, ideological conflict abated, and world politics set off for the promised land of a secular, cosmopolitan, market-friendly end of history. Or so it seemed. 30 years later, this unipolar worldview- premised on shared values, open markets, open borders and abstract social justice - lies in tatters. What happened? David Martin Jones examines the progressive ideas behind liberal Western practice since the end of the 20th century, at home and abroad. This mentality, he argues, took an excessively long view of the future and a short view of the past, abandoning politics in favour of ideas, and failing to address or understand rejection of liberal norms by non-Western 'others'.

Sacred Violence and Religious Violence examines the place that ideology or political religion plays in legitimizing violence to bring about a purer world. In particular, the book examines Islamism and the western secular, liberal democratic responses to it.

"Sacred Violence" examines the place that ideology or political religion plays in legitimizing violence to achieve a condition of worldly perfection. In particular, the book focuses upon Islamism as a post modern political religion that considers violence both necessary and purificatory. It also examines the western democratic states' response to the threat political religion poses to its secular politics. As Jones and Smith show, the western state response consistently misunderstands and misreads the nature of the appeal of political religion and the leaderless form of resistance it legitimates, which has consequences for its internal and external policy responses. This book offers a unique insight on terrorism, a perspective that is much needed in contemporary internal relations and policy debates. Given the shift from state-based to non-state-based violence and warfare in the post-Cold War era, it provides a timely rethink of the links between ideology, violence and strategic theory which will be of great benefit to the foreign policy and defence communities as well as IR scholarship more broadly

Recent events in world politics, from the implosion of Syria and the Ukraine to China's growing assertiveness in the East and South China Seas, have exposed the limitations of the dominant idealist and normativist paradigms in the study of international relations. In a world that is more Metternich than Rawls, it is necessary once again to examine statecraft from a realist perspective and to focus on the reasons of state that have informed its practice since the sixteenth century. Attention, here, is also focused on the rhetoric that informed political counsel and how a form of prudential reasoning shaped the art of diplomacy. In this context, casuistry, which involved applying principles of case law in particular circumstances, offered a mode of practical reasoning very different from contemporary normative approaches whose rhetoric seems increasingly divorced from the real practice of power and interest. Casuistry can be seen, as Stephen Toulmin has argued, as a form of situational or practical ethics. Casuistry, prudence and a particularist ethical practice might offer a more illuminating way of interpreting our increasingly complicated, interconnected but by no means integrated world.