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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Comparative politics
This Palgrave Handbook provides a definitive account of women's political rights across all major regions of the world, focusing both on women's right to vote and women's right to run for political office. This dual focus makes this the first book to combine historical overviews of debates about enfranchising women alongside analyses of more contemporary efforts to increase women's political representation around the globe. Chapter authors map and assess the impact of these groundbreaking reforms, providing insight into these dynamics in a wide array of countries where women's suffrage and representation have taken different paths and led to varying degrees of transformation. On the eve of many countries celebrating a century of women's suffrage, as well as record numbers of women elected and appointed to political office, this timely volume offers an important introduction to ongoing developments related to women's political empowerment worldwide. It will be of interest to students and scholars across the fields of gender and politics, women's studies, history and sociology.
Why are constitutionalist ideals so prominent in science fiction? Does Independence Day depict self-defence as a legal concept with absolute limits? Is international law lost in space? This innovative interdisciplinary volume represents the first exploration of the relationship between international law and cinema. From Star Wars to Werner Herzog, The Godfather to The West Wing, this book uncovers a diverse range of representations of international law and its norms in film and television. Examining the wider links between international law, cinema, and ideology, the contributions not only examine visual representations of international law, but they offer an essential insight into the functions fulfilled by these cinematic representations. Providing an extraordinary introduction to a variety of perspectives on core international legal questions, Cinematic perspectives on international law extends a valuable methodology by which international lawyers can critique the depiction of international law in film. -- .
Hierarchical relationships-rules that structure both international and domestic politics-are pervasive. Yet we know little about how these relationships are constructed, maintained, and dismantled. This book fills this lacuna through a two-pronged research approach: first, it discusses how great power negotiations over international political settlements both respond to domestic politics within weak states and structure the specific forms that hierarchy takes. Second, it deduces three sets of hypotheses about hierarchy maintenance, construction, and collapse during the post-war era. By offering a coherent theoretical model of hierarchical politics within weaker states, the author is able to answer a number of important questions, including: Why does the United States often ally with autocratic states even though its most enduring relationships are with democracies? Why do autocratic hierarchical relationships require interstate coercion? Why do some hierarchies end violently and others peacefully? Why does hierarchical competition sometimes lead to interstate conflict and sometimes to civil conflict?
A unique examination of the role architecture plays in the media-politico spectacle which plays out in today's mass media. Written by 14 influential academics, it draws on case studies from across timeframes and across nations including the US, UK, China, Eastern Europe, South Korea, Belgium and Austria. Illustrated with over 30 black and white illustrations
This edited volume examines child exploitation in the Global South. It introduces several case studies and interviews articulated around two features: exploitation within the family and exploitation in relation to social contexts. The research shows that both of the features are linked and, generally, they are not separate. It makes several important arguments which challenge the most common view on how children are perceived and exploited in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Additionally, it explores the social representation of exploited children as well as their general well-being.
This book examines post-secession and post-transition state building in Somaliland, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. It explores two intimately linked, yet analytically distinct themes: state building and national identity reconstruction following secession and collapse. In Somaliland and South Sudan, rearranging the state requires a complete metamorphosis of state institutions so that they respond to the needs and interests of the people. In Sudan and Somalia, the reconfiguration of the remains of the state must address a new reality and demands on the ground. All four cases examined, although highly variable, involve conflict. Conflict defines the scope, depth and momentum of the state building and state reconstruction process. It also determines the contours and parameters of the projects to reconstitute national identity and rebuild a nation. Addressing the contested identity formation and its direct relation to state building would therefore go a long way in mitigating conflicts and state crisis.
This book is based on a comparative study of regionalisms in Croatia's regions of Dalmatia and Istria as well as Serbia's Vojvodina. The monograph's main focus is on regionalist political party strategies since 1990, and within that, each case study considers history and historiography, inter-group relations, economics, and region-building. The analysis demonstrates that many of the common assumptions about the causal determinants of territorial autonomy projects and outcomes, as well as about a teleological and unidirectional path from regionalism to nationalism, do not stand up to scrutiny. The author introduces original concepts such as plurinational, multinational and sectional regionalism to theories of nationalism and territorial politics. This book will appeal to scholars and upper-level students interested in territorial politics, federalism, nationalism and comparative politics.
This Handbook brings together a collection of leading international authors to reflect on the influence of central contributions, or classics, that have shaped the development of the field of public policy and administration. The Handbook reflects on a wide range of key contributions to the field, selected on the basis of their international and wider disciplinary impact. Focusing on classics that contributed significantly to the field over the second half of the 20th century, it offers insights into works that have explored aspects of the policy process, of particular features of bureaucracy, and of administrative and policy reforms. Each classic is discussed by a leading international scholars. They offer unique insights into the ways in which individual classics have been received in scholarly debates and disciplines, how classics have shaped evolving research agendas, and how the individual classics continue to shape contemporary scholarly debates. In doing so, this volume offers a novel approach towards considering the various central contributions to the field. The Handbook offers students of public policy and administration state-of-the-art insights into the enduring impact of key contributions to the field.
Reclaiming migration critically assesses the EU's migration policy by presenting the unheard voices of the so-called migrant crisis. It undertakes an extensive analysis of a counter-archive of migratory testimonies, co-produced with people on the move across the Mediterranean during 2015 and 2016, to document how EU policy developments create precarity on the part of those migrating under perilous conditions. The book draws attention to the flawed assumptions embedded within the policy agenda, while also exploring the claims and demands for justice that are advanced by people on the move. Written collectively by a team of esteemed scholars from across multiple disciplines, Reclaiming migration makes an important contribution to debates surrounding migration, borders, postcolonialism and the politics of knowledge production. -- .
This book explores to what extent China has drawn lessons from Singapore, both in terms of its ruling ideology and through the policy-specific learning process. In so doing, it provides insights into the opportunities but also the challenges of this long-term learning process, focusing attention to how non-democratic regimes deal with modernization. The stellar line-up of international contributors, from China, Singapore, Europe, and the US, offer a variety of perspectives on Singapore as a model of "authoritarian modernism" for China. The book discusses how the small Southeast Asian city-state became a major reference point for China, how mainland observers often misunderstood the nature of Singapore's governance and instrumentalized it to bolster the CCP's legitimacy, and why the Singapore model appears to be in decline under Xi Jinping. The chapters also analyze policy-specific learning processes, including bilateral mechanisms of policy exchange, the Chinese "mayor's class" in Singapore, and joint industrial projects and lessons in social welfare provision. The book will be of interest to academics working on Chinese politics; development in China; state society and economy in the Asia-Pacific; international relations in the Asia-Pacific; and Southeast Asian politics.
This book revisits the discourse theories of Habermas and Foucault in a Chinese context. After arguing that Habermas's Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy is too normative and idealistic, it presents Foucault's Discourse Theory of Power Relations to illustrate the tensions between different Western discourse theories. The book then draws on the normative concept of Confucian Rationality from traditional Chinese cultural sources in order to investigate how adaptable these two discourse theories are to the Chinese society, and to balance the tension between them. Presenting these three dimensions of discourse theory, as well as the relations between them, it also uses empirical descriptions of certain facts of political-legal discussion both in traditional China and in the country's new media age to explain, supplement and question this theoretic framework. The book asserts that, because of the diverse modes of thinking in specific cultures, there might be different normative paradigms of discorse and different political-legal discussion modes across corresponding cultural contexts. Normative discourse theories provide guidance for the practices of deliberative democracy and legal discussions, which can in turn verify, supplement, improve and challenge the normative discourse theories. In addition to demonstrating the multiple dimensions of discourse theories, this research also promotes an approach to the Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy that combines elements of both Chinese and modern society.
Transformative democratic politics are necessary to the advance of substantive democratization. They are vital to the improvement of popular control over public affairs and for promoting economic growth and social welfare. In this diverse collection, the authors examine the political dynamics of democratization in the Global South, and the potential and problems of transformative strategies in new growth economies, as well as the benefits for post-clientelist transformations. If the contemporary challenge for democratization in the Global South is to substantiate formal and minimalist democracy, the contribution of this book is to point to the centrality of transformative democratic politics.
Utilizing a new and original framework for examining the role of intellectuals in countries transitioning to democracy, Bozoki analyses the rise and fall of dissident intellectuals in Hungary in the late 20th century. He shows how that framework is applicable to other countries too as he forensically examines their activities. Bozoki argues that the Hungarian intellectuals did not become a 'New Class'. By rolling transition, he means an incremental, non-violent, elite driven political transformation which is based on the rotation of agency, and it results in a new regime. This is led mainly by different groups of intellectuals who do not construct a vanguard movement but create an open network which might transform itself into different political parties. Their roles changed from dissidents to reformers, to movement organizers and negotiators through the periods of dissidence, open network building, roundtable negotiations, parliamentary activities, and new movement politics. Through the prism of political sociology, the author focuses on the following questions: Who were the dissident intellectuals and what did they want? Under what conditions do intellectuals rebel and what are the patterns of their protest? This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and public intellectuals around the world aiming to promote human rights and democracy.
Justice and harmony have long been two of the world's most treasured ideals, but much of modern moral and political philosophy puts them on opposite sides of the divide between liberal theories of the right and communitarian theories of the good. Joshua Mason argues that the encounter with their Chinese counterparts, zhengyi and hexie, can overcome this opposition, revealing a pattern of interrelated concerns that reframes justice and harmony as mutually interdependent concepts in a three-part framework of root harmony (benhe), harmonic justice (heyi), and just harmony (zhenghe). Broadly surveying the histories of western and Chinese moral and political philosophies and taking on the insights of philosophical hermeneutics, Justice and Harmony: Cross-Cultural Ideals in Conflict and Cooperation explores our cross-cultural conceptual inventories and develops a comparative framework that can overcome entrenched binary oppositions and reconcile these grand global values.
Since the 'migration crisis' of 2016, long-simmering tensions between the Western members of the European Union and its 'new' Eastern members - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary - have proven to be fertile ground for rebellion against liberal values and policies. In this startling and original book Ivan Kalmar argues that Central European illiberalism is a misguided response to the devastating effects of global neoliberalism, which arose from the area's brutal transition to capitalism in the 1990s. Kalmar argues that dismissive attitudes towards 'Eastern Europeans' are a form of racism and explores the close relation between racism towards Central Europeans and racism by Central Europeans: a people white but not quite.
This edited collection gathers together Canadian and non-Canadian scholars to reflect on and celebrate the 20thanniversary of the Quebec Secession Reference, delivered by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1998. It opens withtwo Canadian scholars exchanging thoughts on the legacy of the reference from a domestic perspective as one ofthe most questioned decisions of the Canadian Supreme Court. To follow, non-Canadian scholars discuss theimpact of this reference abroad, reflecting upon its influence in European and non-European contexts (Spain,Scotland, the EU after Brexit, Eastern European Countries, Ethiopia, and Asia). Two final chapters, one by a lawyerand one by a political scientist, explore the democratic theory behind that reference.
Precariousness has become a defining experience in contemporary society, as an inescapable condition and state of being. Living with Precariousness presents a spectrum of timely case studies that explore precarious existences – at individual, collective and structural levels, and as manifested through space and the body. These range from the plight of asylum seekers, to the tiny house movement as a response to affordable housing crises; from the global impacts of climate change, to the daily challenges of living with a chronic illness. This multidisciplinary book illustrates the pervasiveness of precarity, but furthermore shows how those entanglements with other agents, human or otherwise, that put us at risk are also the connections that make living with (and through) precariousness endurable.
This book critically interrogates the neoliberal peacebuilding and statebuilding model and proposes a popular progressive model centred around the lived realities of African societies. The neoliberal interventionist model assumed prominence and universal hegemony following the demise of state socialism at the end of the Cold War. However, this book argues that it is a primarily short-term, top-down approach that imposes Western norms and values on conflict and post-conflict societies. By contrast, the popular progressive model espoused by this book is based on stringent examination and analysis of the reality of the socio-economic development, structures, institutions, politics and cultures of developing societies. In doing so, it combines bottom-up and top-down, popular and elite, and long-term evolutionary processes of societal construction as a requisite for enduring peacebuilding and statebuilding. By comparing and contrasting the dominant neoliberal peacebuilding and statebuilding model with a popular progressive model, the book seeks to empower locals (both elites and masses) to sit in the driver's seat and construct their own societies. As such, it is an important contribution to scholars, activists, policymakers, civil society organisations, NGOs and all those who are concerned with peace, stability and development across Africa and other developing countries.
This timely book presents fresh, forward-looking analyses of key regions across the globe, organized around power transition theory. Tracking political and economic trajectories broadly, the contributors use cutting-edge data to forecast general trends in regional politics, economics, and diplomacy. Their collective insights into the likely directions of regional dynamics within a changing global order comprise an invaluable guidebook for forward-thinking readers considering where the world is headed in the coming decades and the implications for strategy, politics, and policy.
Ecology and Revolution: Global Crisis and the Political Challenge is an in-depth exploration and analysis of the global ecological crisis (going far beyond the issue of global warming) in the larger context of historical conditions and political options shaped by the failure (and incapacity) of the existing political system to adequately confront the crisis.
Spain's former African colonies-Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara-share similar histories. Both are under the thumbs of heavy-handed, postcolonial regimes, and are known by human rights organizations as being among the worst places in the world with regard to oppression and lack of civil liberties. Yet the resistance movement in one is dominated by women, the other by men. In this innovative work, Joanna Allan demonstrates why we should foreground gender as key for understanding both authoritarian power projection and resistance. She brings an ethnographic component to a subject that has often been looked at through the lens of literary studies to examine how concerns for equality and women's rights can be co-opted for authoritarian projects. She reveals how Moroccan and Equatoguinean regimes, in partnership with Western states and corporations, conjure a mirage of promoting equality while simultaneously undermining women's rights in a bid to cash in on oil, minerals, and other natural resources. This genderwashing, along with historical local, indigenous, and colonially imposed gender norms mixed with Western misconceptions about African and Arab gender roles, plays an integral role in determining the shape and composition of public resistance to authoritarian regimes.
This book reflects on the rapid rise of social media across the African continent and the legal and extra-legal efforts governments have invented to try to contain it. The relentless growth of social media platforms in Africa has provided the means of resistance, self-expression, and national self-fashioning for the continent's restlessly energetic and contagiously creative youth. This has provided a profound challenge to the African "gatekeeper state", which has often responded with strategies to constrict and constrain the rhetorical luxuriance of the social media and digital sphere. Drawing on cases from across the continent, contributors explore the form and nature of social media and government censorship, often via antisocial media laws, or less overt tactics such as state cybersurveillance, spyware attacks on social media activists, or the artful deployment of the rhetoric of "fake news" as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices. The book also reflects on the Chinese influence in African governments' clampdown on social media and the role of Israeli NSO Group Technologies, as well as the tactics and technologies which activists and users are deploying to resist or circumvent social media censorship. Drawing on a range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, this book will be an important contribution to researchers with an interest in social media activism, digital rebellion, discursive democracy in transitional societies, censorship on the Internet, and Africa more broadly.
National Identity Identity and Partisan Polarization examines how national identity has become a central issue in political and social life across the world. Questions of identity-who should be counted as a "true member" of a society and who deserves assistance from the government-have displaced other social and economic issues across nations in many countries. This study considers the role of identity theoretically and in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, Israel, and Taiwan. Identity varies over time and over countries. Some such as Sweden have a more "inclusive" sense of identity-one does not need to be born in the country or have ancestry to be considered a "true Swede." Other countries, such as Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Israel, and Taiwan, have a more "exclusive" notion of identity-where one was born and a common heritage (race, religion, ethnicity) are seen as essential for seeing others as "true" members of society. "Outsiders" are viewed negatively, often as threatening a national culture and not deserving of government assistance. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, the major political parties take opposing positions on identity. In the United States and the United Kingdom, issues of identity have become highly correlated (polarized) with social and economic issues. In the former Communist countries of Hungary and Poland, the dominant parties have taken nationalist positions on identity but favor generous welfare policies for people of their own background. In Israel and Taiwan, social and economic issues have become less important than nationalism.
This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of EU support between 2006 and 2015, and of electoral behavior during the European Parliament elections. In light of the Eurozone financial and debt crisis, it also examines how political and economic turbulences have affected EU citizens' stance on democracy and their support for EU institutions. It explores measures taken in the context of the Euro crisis management and the reactions of EU citizens, in order to shed new light on the determinants and developments of EU support. The author highlights the heterogeneity of the developments between the member states and identifies social, political, and economic facets of the crisis that have changed the ways citizens form their political attitudes towards the EU. The book delivers a profound account of the Euro crisis, integrating approaches from political economy, psychology, sociology, and public opinion research. It will appeal to scholars and anyone interested in learning more about the declining citizen support in the EU and the heterogeneous developments in the member states, which may significantly endanger the long-term existence of the European Union. |
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