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Meeting her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for the first time as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton famously presented him with a red, plastic 'reset' button. 'We want to reset our [...]

Recent work in international relations has problematized state-centric assumptions of governance to explore variations in authority by a range of nonstate actors (e.g. nongovernmental organizations, criminal syndicates, gangs). This forum centers on the phenomenon of rebel group governance during civil wars and leverages the concept to advance our understanding of current theories and conceptualizations of governance. The nature of rebel organizations provides a unique opportunity for researchers to expand the state-centric focus on governance because rebel actors differ from states in their comparative position within the global state system, the contexts in which they operate, and their lack of legitimizing principles that permit consistent membership as a class of political actors. These differences allow for meaningful extensions of how we theorize and conceptualize governance beyond the state. Furthermore, variation across these differences allows our findings in the study rebel governance to speak directly to the broader literature in international relations on governance by state actors. In our introduction to this forum, we detail the ways in which rebel groups have chosen to address the central components of governance through a variety of governance strategies. We then devote three essays in the forum to the concepts of legitimacy, capacity, and territorial control. In each of the three essays, authors discuss the ways in which rebel governance problematizes and advances these concepts for the broader study of governance. In the conclusion, this forum synthesizes extant and emerging work in the field of rebel governance in order to raise new questions of the governance and state building literatures. In this way, we show how investigating governance by rebel groups in particular advances our understanding of governance more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jeffrey Gedmin has, since February 2007, been president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where he directs broadcasting and Internet operations in twenty-eight languages and where, with an annual budget [...]

There is a tendency in Western capitals to dismiss adversarial Iranian behavior as the work of rogue regime factions, which are not representative of Tehran's true intentions. Following a Baghdad [...]

No trends in the U.S. foreign-policy debate are more dangerous than self-flagellation and defeatism. Lt. Gen. William Odom is guilty of both ('21 Solutions to Save the World: The Nuclear [...]

The Iraq war has pumped adrenaline into the publishing industry. Whereas five years ago, few bookstores included any selections on Iraq, today dozens of Iraq books line the shelves. There [...]

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Reconciliation Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) swept to victory in Turkey's parliamentary elections on November 3, 2002. More than two years later, the Islamic-oriented [...]

Ahmad Chalabi is the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). He was born in Baghdad in October 1944 to one of Iraq's most prominent families. (His father, 'Abd al-Hadi, [...]

Jalal Talabani has been president of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) since the organization's founding in 1977. Born in Kelkan in 1933, he actively participated in the Iraqi Kurdish [...]

On September 11, the world changed--or at least some of it did. Iraq did not. While the rest of the world mourned, or at least nominally condemned the terrorist attack, [...]

Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict. Edited by Markus E. Bouillon, David M. Malone, and Ben Rowswell. Boulder: Rienner Press, 2007. 351 pp. $24.50. The International Peace Academy (IPA), [...]

The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace. By Ali A. Allawi. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.518 pp. $28. There is no shortage of accounts by U.S. [...]

The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq. Edited by Brendan O'Leary, John McGarry, and Khaled Salih. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.355 pp. $45. The Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, Iraq, [...]

In April 2004, followers of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched a well-coordinated uprising across southern Iraq. While Western media focused on events in Sadr City, Najaf, and Karbala, violence [...]

Architects of Delusion Europe, America, and the Iraq War by Simon Serfaty Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 170 pp. $45. Serfaty, a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Old [...]

Still Broken A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon by A.J. Rossmiller New York: Presidio Press, 2008. 236 pp. $24.95 Rossmiller dedicates the first half [...]

Muhammad's Grave Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society by Leor Halevi New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 400 pp. $38 Western policymakers and academics often concern themselves with [...]

Nights in the Pink Motel An American Strategist's Pursuit of Peace in Iraq by Robert Earle Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008. 256 pp. $34.95. Hundreds of U.S. diplomats and officials [...]

Circle in the Sand The Bush Dynasty in Iraq by Christian Alfonsi New York: Vintage, 2007. 470 pp. $15.95. "Bush derangement syndrome"--the irrational hatred of George W. Bush and the [...]

Baghdad at Sunrise by Peter R. Mansoor New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 376 pp. $28. Few soldiers who write narratives of war attain a perspective that transcends their own [...]

British Policy in Mesopotamia, 1903-1914 by Stuart A. Cohen Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 2008. 265 pp. $34.50. As U.S. forces occupied Iraq in 2003, numerous historians scrambled to elucidate lessons [...]

Swimming Up the Tigris by Barbara Nimri Aziz Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2007. 314 pp. $24.95 Aziz, a freelance reporter and host of an Arab-interest radio show in New [...]

The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East by Olivier Roy New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. 160 pp. $24.95 Roy, research director at the Centre National de la Recherche [...]

Losing the Golden Hour An Insider's View of Iraq's Reconstruction by James Stephenson Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007. 174 pp. $23.95 Insider accounts of Iraq's occupation are a dime a [...]

War and Decision by Douglas J. Feith New York: Harper, 2008. 674 pp. $27.95 Former U.S. officials, military officers, and journalists have penned dozens of books about the decision to [...]