Politics and Government in South Africa introduces readers to all aspects of government and politics in South Africa, from local, to provincial, national, and on to international considerations.

The perfect guide for students and general readers, this textbook explains how South Africa’s key institutions are governed and interact with each other, and how important issues such as economics, gender, race, and class shape relations between citizens and government. Grounded in history and leading theories and debates, the book also brings in alternative perspectives from artists, writers, and popular culture, to demonstrate the diverse ways in which issues of politics and social justice are engaged with within South Africa.

Written with the needs of students at the forefront, each chapter includes:

• Review and discussion questions
• Key terms and further resources
• Fun facts in a Did you know? section
• Supplementary sources and quotations in a The Past as Present section

Interactive and engaging, Politics and Government in South Africa invites readers to consider what they would do in tackling issues such as land distribution, peacekeeping, South Africa’s role in the African Union, and military engagement abroad. It is an essential read for undergraduate students studying Political Science, International Relations, and African Studies, and for anyone looking to develop a deeper understanding of South Africa.

This edited volume analyzes how migration, the conformation of urban areas, and globalization impact Latin American geopolitics. Globalization has decisively influenced Latin American nationhood and it has also helped create a global region with global cities that are the result of the urbanization process. Also, globalization and migration are changing Latin America's own vision as a collective community. This book tackles how migration triggers concerns about security, which lead to policies based on the protection of borders as a matter of national security. The contributors argue that economic regionalization-globalization promotes changes in the social and economic geography which refer to social phenomena, the dynamic of social classes and their spatial implications, all of which may impact economic growth on the region. The project will appeal to a wider audience including political scientists, scholars, researchers, students and non-academics interested in Latin American geopolitics.

Political uncertainty and instability characterise many regions around the world and, increasingly, can be observed in more established democracies. The COVID-19 pandemic, national and international tensions, and the proliferation of autocratic, chauvinist, and, at the most extreme, fascist forces around the world all contribute to turbulent political times. Such environments constitute tremendous challenges, but also opportunities for scholars to contribute to an understanding of processes in the political market, using the lens of political branding theories. Authors from various disciplinary backgrounds, including social psychology, marketing, and media and communications, provide commentaries and analyses of branding processes in different national contexts, all characterised by tensions and challenges. The topical and provocative content of the chapters, all focusing on recent political events and phenomena in the political arena, should appeal to researchers, branding practitioners, politicians, and members of the public seeking to deepen their understanding of current events and political branding concepts.

Coming together from across several disciplines, the contributors to this book reflect on the considerable problem of inequality in Zambia, comparing it with other countries both in the region and more broadly. The World Bank consistently ranks Zambia among the countries with the highest levels of poverty and inequality globally, but the problem is not widely studied; and the studies that do exist tend to focus solely on economic measures of inequality. This book uses a multidimensional analysis of inequalities, highlighting the ways in which certain social groups and geographical locations are more likely to suffer multiple inequalities. It investigates key issues around poverty, healthcare, income, law, disability, and power inequalities. Particularly showcasing the work of local researchers, this book will be of interest to researchers of African studies, development, economics, and politics.

This book comprehensively presents the current practice and further development paths of public sector accounting, auditing and control systems in 7 South Eastern European countries based on the contributions of highly-respected researchers. Each chapter is a study of the territorial organisation, public sector scope, formulation and execution of central government and local and regional self-government budgets, accounting and financial reporting reforms and practice, audit and other oversight (supervision) in the public sector, and challenges in the further development of public sector accounting and auditing of each country. It also provides insights into the challenges that SEE countries are faced with as they move towards the adoption of accrual accounting and the implementation of IPSAS and/or EPSAS, and offers a valuable reference resource for academics, researchers, students, auditors, public administrators, policy makers and standard setters.

In The Gun Gap, Mark R. Joslyn advances gun owners as a new classification for understanding political behavior and attitudes. He demonstrates a "gun gap," which captures the differences between gun owners and non-gun owners, and shows how this gap improves conventional behavioral and attitudinal models. The gap represents an important explanation for voter choice, voter turnout, perceptions of personal and public safety, preferences for gun control policies, and support for the death penalty. Moreover, the 2016 presidential election witnessed the largest recorded gun gap in history. The Gun Gap thus affords a new and compelling vantage point to evaluate modern mass politics.

This book examines three cases of democratic transitions by self-transformation of the non-democratic regimes in Southern Europe-the Spanish reforma pactada-ruptura pactada of 1976-77, the Greek "Markezinis experiment" of 1973, and the Turkish democratic transition of 1983-in a comparative perspective. The author argues that a democratic transition initiated by the regime elites is, in contrast to widely held assumptions and notwithstanding some reservations on whether democracy can be (re-)introduced by non-democrats, worth viewing as a "window of opportunity" for democratisation. It is up to the democratic counter-elites to respond to it, using the civil society and the international factor as allies to achieve their goal of acquiring more concessions from the regime.

This edited volume builds and expands on the groundbreaking work of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood on the origins of capitalism. Whereas Brenner and Wood focused mostly on the emergence of capitalism in the English countryside (agrarian capitalism), this book utilizes their approach to offer original, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically informed accounts of transitions to capitalism - both agrarian and industrial - in a wide range of countries in order to provide within a single volume a diverse collection of relatively brief yet detailed case studies of the historical transition to capitalism distributed across three continents. Offering a new and highly original analysis of the global spread of capitalism, this book will be a unique contribution to the longstanding debate on the transition to capitalism.

This book argues that the unresolved stateness in the republics of the former Yugoslavia played a key role in determining the course and dynamics of their turbulent democratic transition. To support this claim, the authors develop a series of causal mechanisms. Subsequently, they analyze to what extent these causal mechanisms could be applied to other cases, like the one of Ukraine's democratization. The book presents a theoretical framework, as well as conclusions and arguments that are instrumental for the better understanding of the democratization process in general, which could be useful for other countries to avoid the mistakes that were made in the cases of former Yugoslav republics. It, therefore, is a must-read for researchers and scholars of political science, as well as practitioners and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of democratization, transformation processes, nation-building, and stateness.

In the global imagination, Paris is the city's glamorous center, ignoring the Muslim residents in its outskirts except in moments of spectacular crisis such as terrorist attacks or riots. But colonial immigrants and their French offspring have been a significant presence in the Parisian landscape since the 1940s. Expanding the narrow script of what and who is Paris, Laila Amine explores the novels, films, and street art of Maghrebis, Franco-Arabs, and African Americans in the City of Light, including fiction by Charef, Chraibi, Sebbar, Baldwin, Smith, and Wright, and such films as La haine, Made in France, Chouchou, and A Son. Spanning the decades from the post-World War II era to the present day, Amine demonstrates that the postcolonial other is both peripheral to and intimately entangled with all the ideals so famously evoked by the French capital-romance, modernity, equality, and liberty. In their work, postcolonial writers and artists have juxtaposed these ideals with colonial tropes of intimacy (the interracial couple, the harem, the Arab queer) to expose their hidden violence. Amine highlights the intrusion of race in everyday life in a nation where, officially, it does not exist.

Follow your favorite caped crusaders (and foes) to learn about the current world order. Mariano Turzi explains the main theories of international relations through Batman, Two-Face, and the Justice League. The Hulk illuminates Russia's foreign policy and Aquaman sheds light on climate change. The X-Men experience the same dramas as refugees and Tony Stark personifies modern warfare. How is Spiderman like the UN and Wonder Woman's soft power comparable to the European Union? You will learn about globalization through Flash and about American hegemony with Superman and Captain America. Even Bane and his face mask appear, anticipating the effects of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Taking superheroes and supervillains as myths or modern archetypes, the book invites you to a super-journey through the fascinating universe of structures, themes, protagonists, and problems of world affairs.

American foreign policy has long been caught between conflicting desires to influence world affairs yet at the same time to avoid becoming entangled in the burdensome conflicts and damaging rivalries of other states. Clearly, in the post-1945 context, the United States has failed in the attaining the latter. As this new, expanded edition illustrates, the term "doctrine" seemingly (re)attained a charged prominence in the early twenty-first century and, more recently, regarding the many contested debates surrounding the controversial transition to the Biden administration. Notwithstanding such marked variations in the discourse, presidential doctrines have crafted responses and directions conducive to an international order that best advances American interests: an almost hubristic composition encompassing "democratic" states (in the confidence that democracies do not go to war with one another), open free markets (on the basis that they elevate living standards, engender collaboration, and create prosperity), self-determining states (on the supposition that empires were not only adversative to freedom but more likely to reject American influence), and a secure global environment in which US goals can be pursued (ideally) unimpeded. Of course, with the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, the doctrinal "commonalties" between Republican and Democratic administrations of previous times were significantly challenged if not completely jettisoned. In seeking to provide a much-needed reassessment of the intersections between US foreign policy, national security, and doctrine, Aiden Warren and Joseph M. Siracusa undertake a comprehensive analysis of the defining presidential doctrines from George Washington through to the epochal post-Trump, Joe Biden era.

This book develops a detailed, disaggregated theoretical and empirical framework that explains variations in mass killing by authoritarian regimes globally, with a specific focus on Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Using a combination of game-theoretic, statistical, and qualitative approaches, this project explicates when civilians within nondemocratic states will mobilize against the ruling elite, and when such mobilization will result in mass killing. In doing so, it illustrates the important role urbanization and food insecurity historically played, and will continue to play, in generating extreme forms of civilian victimization.

How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes. In Making Meritocracy, Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi have gathered over a dozen experts from a range of intellectual perspectives-political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics-to discuss how the two most populous societies in the world have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. They focus on how contemporary policy makers, educators, and private-sector practitioners seek to promote it today. Importantly, they also discuss Singapore, which is home to large Chinese and Indian populations and the most successful meritocracy in recent times. Both China and India look to it for lessons. Though the past, present, and future of meritocracy building in China and India have distinctive local inflections, their attempts to enhance their power, influence, and social well-being by prioritizing merit-based advancement offers rich lessons both for one another and for the rest of the world-including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of political identity formation. Partisan modes of political representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct democratic voting opportunities are emphasised on this model. There is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres. This view is referred to as the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT). Inadequate democratic institutions and acute demands to divide the political system (through devolution or secession), are predicted by this thesis. By combining an original normative democratic theory with a comparative analysis of how Belgium and Switzerland have variously managed to sustain themselves as multilingual democracies, this book identifies the main institutional features of a democratically legitimate European Union and the conditions required to bring it about. Part One presents a novel theory of democratic legitimacy and political identity formation on which subsequent analyses are based. Part Two defines the EU as a demoi-cracy and provides a thorough democratic assessment of this political system. Part Three explains why Belgium has largely succumbed to the centrifugal logic predicted by the LFT, while Switzerland apparently defies this logic. Part Four presents a model of centripetal democracy for the EU, one that would greatly reduce its democratic deficit and ensure that this political system does not succumb to the centrifugal forces expected by the LFT.

This volume presents a selection of the most compelling political writings from early colonial Latin America that address the themes of conquest, colonialism, and enslavement. It will be invaluable for students and scholars of Latin American political thought and other fields in the social sciences and humanities. Katherine Hoyt prepared extensive introductory material that introduces readers to each of the writers, contextualizing their ideas and the controversies surrounding them. The anthology centers the voices of Indigenous peoples, whose writings constitute six of the fifteen chapters while also including women's, African, and Jewish perspectives. Included among the writings are the foundation narrative of the Kaqchiquel Maya and an example of "mirror of princes" literature in which Inca writer Guaman Poma advises the King of Spain on how to better govern Peru. Spanish priests Bartolome de Las Casas and Alonso de la Vera Cruz make contributions to the philosophical writings of the School of Salamanca on natural law as they relate to the peoples of the Americas. Other writers protest the inhumanity of the trade in enslaved Africans and the Inquisition. A volume such as this one brings greater nuance to our understanding of the continent's past, helping us to envision a more inclusive future.

This comprehensive book unravels the complexities of the grassland systems of Mongolia and northern China to identify the ways in which policies and incentives can be strengthened to improve grassland condition and herder livelihoods. Through an interdisciplinary lens, combining environmental economics and grassland science, contributors unpack the preferences, attitudes and behavioural responses of Asian grassland actors to new and alternative policies. Offering a comparative analysis of policies and incentives in China and Mongolia, chapters focus on understanding ex ante behavioural responses, arguing convincingly for a mix of incentives and associated policy measures that can both improve grassland conditions and align with the preferences of herders and officials. Featuring a unique interdisciplinary focus and comparative approach, this book is crucial reading for grassland and rangeland scientists in China, Mongolia and beyond as well as grassland officials seeking new policies and a better understanding of their impact. Academics and researchers of the environment and ecology in China, Mongolia and Asia more broadly will also find this book a fascinating insight into environmental livelihoods and contemporary grassland experiences. Contributors include: J. Addison, K. Behrendt, J. Bennett, C. Brown, D. Bukhbat, L. Dorjburegdaa, U. Gombosuren, Q. Guanghua, H. Guodong, X. Hou, G. Jargalsaihan, D. Kemp, P. Li, E.-O. Lkhagvadorj, S. Waldron, B. Zhang, J. Zhang, Y. Zhang, M. Zhao Mengli, W. Zhongwu

Despite being Africa's largest economy and most populous country, with abundant natural resources, Nigeria still faces substantial development challenges. This book argues that corruption lies at the heart of many of the country's problems. Drawing on a range of different disciplinary perspectives, this volume explores the relationship between corruption and development, investigating the causes, contexts, and consequences of corruption, and the pathways for addressing it. As well as covering the wider background and theory surrounding corruption in the country, the book will investigate different sectors: the media, the judiciary, the health sector, industry, the criminal justice system, and of course politics and governance. The book concludes by considering attitudes and perceptions to corruption within Nigeria, current approaches to countering corruption, and future pathways to addressing the problem. This book's critical investigation of the links between corruption and development in Nigeria will be of interest to researchers of corruption, development and African Studies, as well as to policy makers, practitioners, and local stakeholders.

American foreign policy has long been caught between conflicting desires to influence world affairs yet at the same time to avoid becoming entangled in the burdensome conflicts and damaging rivalries of other states. Clearly, in the post-1945 context, the United States has failed in the attaining the latter. As this new, expanded edition illustrates, the term "doctrine" seemingly (re)attained a charged prominence in the early twenty-first century and, more recently, regarding the many contested debates surrounding the controversial transition to the Biden administration. Notwithstanding such marked variations in the discourse, presidential doctrines have crafted responses and directions conducive to an international order that best advances American interests: an almost hubristic composition encompassing "democratic" states (in the confidence that democracies do not go to war with one another), open free markets (on the basis that they elevate living standards, engender collaboration, and create prosperity), self-determining states (on the supposition that empires were not only adversative to freedom but more likely to reject American influence), and a secure global environment in which US goals can be pursued (ideally) unimpeded. Of course, with the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, the doctrinal "commonalties" between Republican and Democratic administrations of previous times were significantly challenged if not completely jettisoned. In seeking to provide a much-needed reassessment of the intersections between US foreign policy, national security, and doctrine, Aiden Warren and Joseph M. Siracusa undertake a comprehensive analysis of the defining presidential doctrines from George Washington through to the epochal post-Trump, Joe Biden era.

Making use of a unique data set that includes more than 1000 leadership elections from over 100 parties in 14 countries over an almost 50 year period, this volume provides the first comprehensive, comparative examination of how parties choose their leaders and the impact of the different decisions they make in this regard. Among the issues examined are how leaders are chosen, the factors that result in parties changing their selection rules, how the rules affect the competitiveness of leadership elections, the types of leaders chosen, the impact of leadership transition on electoral outcomes, the factors affecting the length of leadership tenures, and how leadership tenures come to an end. This volume is situated in the literature on intra-party decision making and party organizational reform and makes unique and important contributions to our understanding of these areas. The analysis includes parties in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu.

This book examines how European issues have played out in Serbian and Croatian party politics since 2000, in the context of significant challenges brought by European integration of the Western Balkans. It provides a comprehensive analysis of how political parties in these countries have determined and shifted their positions on the EU, by exploring the effect and interaction of party ideology and strategy, position within the party system, relations with the general public and voters as well as transnational party linkages. The author argues that the particular nature of European issues, closely related to crucial identity and statehood dilemmas in these post-conflict societies, largely determined party stances on the EU, feeding significant Eurosceptic sentiments. At the same time, a number of core parties underwent a rapid pro-EU conversion, pragmatically responding to internal and external incentives in the context of dynamic electoral competition and strong EU presence, and aimed at maximising their chances of securing executive office. The book will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, Western Balkan politics, and EU studies.

"Weak Institutions and the Governance Dilemma is especially important and welcome since it offers a very incisive analysis of the role of NGOs in transitional democracies and the effect of institutional setting on NGO effectiveness in representing citizen interests. This book offers a very creative conceptual framework and timely, penetrating case studies which provide valuable insights on NGO strategy, governmental capacity, and the possibilities for social change."Steven Rathgeb Smith, Executive Director, American Political Science Association, and Georgetown University, USA This book provides a novel analytical perspective on policymaking, policy effects and NGOs in hybrid regimes. It examines the sources and patterns of gaps between formal rules, political practice and longer term effects, and explores how NGOs navigate the tension-laden environments that gaps represent. The book shows how weak institutions and malfunctioning policies turn NGOs into ambivalent actors. Empirically, it covers criminal justice and social protection policies in post-Soviet Georgia and Armenia. The findings from the in-depth case studies are then extended by a discussion of gaps in hybrid regimes as diverse as Malaysia, Kenya and Russia. The book's approach and findings will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners interested in NGOs, institutional theory and public policy.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays focuses on the ways in which movements of people across natural, political, and cultural boundaries shape identities that are inexorably linked to the geographical space that individuals on the move cross, inhabit, and leave behind. As conflicts over identities and space continue to erupt on a regular basis, this book reads the relationship between migration, identity, and space from a fresh and innovative perspective.

The articles included in this book deal with various aspects of international migration analyzed from different methodological perspectives. What unites this collection of articles is that they deal with peripheral borders, separating rich and poor regions of our globe. They analyze the challenges and problems faced by the European Union and its member states, including Spain and Poland - states with external sea and land borders of the EU. The position of a peripheral country causes a number of problems related to illegal immigration, experienced by Poland and Spain alike. The United States face a similar problem on the border with Mexico. Undoubtedly, as a result of migration pressure, both the European Union and the United States increasingly resemble a besieged fortress.

The book presents the subject of the Polish political system, which, not unlike many others, is subject to dynamic political and social change. The ever-modernizing Polish state seeks ways to improve its institutions and increase coordination of crucial policies. Poland also exhibits effects symptomatic of a crisis of liberal democracy, undermining the legacy of its democratic transformation. The authors of this volume answer questions on identity of Polish systemic solutions, the nature of change in constitutionalism and the modern political system of Poland, all in the light of Polish political tradition. Moreover, they analyze the roles of various state authorities, political leadership dilemmas, the legitimization of power, and the question of Polish membership in the EU.