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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Comparative politics
This title examines Sub-Saharan Africa's relations with states such
as the US, India, China, the EU, and Britain as well as with
non-state actors. "The International Relations of Sub-Saharan
Africa" is an in-depth examination Africa's place in global
politics. The book provides a comprehensive and critical appraisal
of the ways in which peace, prosperity, and democracy are being
advanced (or restricted) by the activities of the great powers in
Africa, including non-state actors, as well as who benefits from
these policies and who does not. The book is a needed comparative
study of the role of great powers and 'new' actors such as China
and India in Africa within the wider context of neo-liberal
hegemony. It fills a gap in the literature and will be of interest
to any student of the continent. Its focus on external actors
contributes to providing a fuller picture of Africa's place in the
global political economy and how the continent interacts with the
rest of the world. This is an essential work for anyone researching
issues in international relations, comparative foreign policies,
and African politics.
Voting Advice Applications - VAAs - have become a widespread online
feature of electoral campaigns in Europe, attracting growing
interest from social and political scientists. But until now, there
has been no systematic and reliable comparative assessment of these
tools. Previously published research on VAAs has resulted almost
exclusively in national case studies. This lack of an integrated
framework for analysis has made research on VAAs unable to serve
the scientific goal of systematic knowledge accumulation. Against
this background, Matching Voters With Parties and Candidates aims
first at a comprehensive overview of the VAA phenomenon in a truly
comparative perspective. Featuring the biggest number of European
experts on the topic ever assembled, the book answers a number of
open questions and addresses debates in VAA research. It also aims
to bridge the gap between VAA research and related fields of
political science.
By revealing the contextual conditions which promote or hinder
democratic development, "Comparative Politics" shows how democracy
may not be the best institutional arrangement given a country's
unique set of historical, economic, social, cultural and
international circumstances. Addresses the contextual conditions
which promote or hinder democratic developmentReveals that
democracy may not be the best institutional arrangement given a
country's unique set of historical, economic, social, cultural and
international circumstancesApplies theories and principles relating
to the promotion of the development of democracy to the
contemporary case studies
How do governments make key decisions on vital economic questions
of national importance? Can they advance the national interest on
issues that are highly politicized? How do they respond to
competing pressures from the international and domestic
environments? Forming Economic Policy explores these and other
questions in Canada and Mexico, two very different countries which
share a common vulnerability to the world economy. Using the case
of energy, the book argues that policymakers will address the
national interest, but only episodically with the onset of major
national crises that invoke a higher and sustained sense of
national priorities. These crises are frequently induced by the
interaction of domestic and foreign political and economic forces.
The conclusions are surprising. Despite profound political and
economic differences between these two countries, policymakers have
behaved in remarkably similar ways when arriving at key policy
decisions. The explanation - which integrates two competing views
of politics, the pluralist and the statist - has important
implications with regard to the political processes in those states
which, like Canada and Mexico, are exposed to the world economy and
face problems of political legitimacy at home. Forming Economic
Policy will appeal to students and teachers of political economy
and comparative politics as well as to those interested in the
politics of energy policy.
This book deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy
of law and constitutional thought: how to understand clashes of
fundamental rights, such as the conflict between free speech and
privacy. The main argument of this book is that much can be learned
about the nature of fundamental legal rights by examining them
through the lens of conflicts among such rights, and criticizing
the views of scholars and jurists who have discussed both
fundamental legal rights and the nature of conflicts among them.
Theories of rights are necessarily abstract, aiming at providing
the best possible answers to pressing social problems. Yet such
theories must also respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the
day. Taking up the problem of conflicting rights, Zucca seeks a
theory of rights that can guide us to a richer, more responsive
approach to rights discourse.
The idea of constitutional rights is one of the most powerful
tools to advance justice in the Western tradition. But as this book
demonstrates, even the most ambitious theory of rights cannot
satisfactorily address questions of conflicting rights. How, for
instance, can we fully secure privacy when it clashes with free
speech? To what extent can our societies assist people in dying
without compromising the protection of life? Exploring the
limitations of the rights discourse in these areas, Zucca questions
the role of law in settling ethical dilemmas helping to clarify
thinking about the limitations of rights discourse.
In recent decades, the issue of gender-based violence has become
heavily politicized in India. Yet, Indian law enforcement personnel
continue to be biased against women and overburdened. In Capable
Women, Incapable States, Poulami Roychowdhury asks how women claim
rights within these conditions. Through long term ethnography, she
provides an in-depth lens on rights negotiations in the world's
largest democracy, detailing their social and political effects.
Roychowdhury finds that women interact with the law not by
following legal procedure or abiding by the rules, but by deploying
collective threats and doing the work of the state themselves. And
they behave this way because law enforcement personnel do not
protect women from harm but do allow women to take the law into
their own hands.These negotiations do not enhance legal
enforcement. Instead, they create a space where capable women can
extract concessions outside the law, all while shouldering a new
burden of labor and risk. A unique theory of gender inequality and
governance, Capable Women, Incapable States forces us to rethink
the effects of rights activism across large parts of the world
where political mobilization confronts negligent criminal justice
systems.
That Indonesia's ongoing occupation of West Papua continues to be
largely ignored by world governments is one of the great moral and
political failures of our time. West Papuans have struggled for
more than fifty years to find a way through the long night of
Indonesian colonization. However, united in their pursuit of
merdeka (freedom) in its many forms, what holds West Papuans
together is greater than what divides them. Today, the Morning Star
glimmers on the horizon, the supreme symbol of merdeka and a
cherished sign of hope for the imminent arrival of peace and
justice to West Papua. Morning Star Rising: The Politics of
Decolonization in West Papua is an ethnographically framed account
of the long, bitter fight for freedom that challenges the dominant
international narrative that West Papuans' quest for political
independence is fractured and futile. Camellia Webb-Gannon's
extensive interviews with the decolonization movements' original
architects and its more recent champions shed light on complex
diasporic and inter-generational politics as well as social and
cultural resurgence. In foregrounding West Papuans' perspectives,
the author shows that it is the body politic's unflagging
determination and hope, rather than military might or influential
allies, that form the movement's most unifying and powerful force
for independence. This book examines the many intertwining strands
of decolonization in Melanesia. Differences in cultural performance
and political diversity throughout the region are generating new,
fruitful trajectories. Simultaneously, Black and Indigenous
solidarity and a shared Melanesian identity have forged a
transnational grassroots power-base from which the movement is
gaining momentum. Relevant beyond its West Papua focus, this book
is essential reading for those interested in Pacific studies,
Native and Indigenous studies, development studies, activism, and
decolonization.
Studying paradiplomacy comparatively, this book explains why and
how sub-state governments (SSG) conduct their international
relations (IR) with external actors, and how federal authorities
and local governments coordinate, or not, in the definition and
implementation of the national foreign policy. Sub-state diplomacy
plays an increasingly influential international role as regions,
federal states, provinces and cities seek to promote trade,
investments, cooperation and partnership on a range of issues. This
raises interesting new questions about the future of the state
system. Schiavon conducts a comparative study of paradiplomacy in
11 federal systems which are representative of all the regions of
the world, stages of economic development and degree of
consolidation of their democratic institutions (Argentina,
Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico, Russia,
South Africa and the United States). The author constructs a
typology to measure and explain paradiplomacy based on domestic
political institutions, especially constitutional provisions
relating foreign affairs and the intergovernmental mechanisms for
foreign policy decision making and implementation. This
comparative, systematic and theoretically based analysis of
paradiplomacy between and within countries will be of interest to
scholars and students of comparative politics, diplomacy, foreign
policy, governance and federalism, as well as practitioners of
diplomacy and paradiplomacy around the world.
European governments have re-discovered labor migration, but are
eager to be perceived as controlling unsolicited forms of
migration, especially through asylum and family reunion. The
emerging paradigm of managed migration combines the construction of
more permissive channels for desirable and actively recruited labor
migrants with ever more restrictive approaches towards asylum
seekers. Non-state actors, especially employer organizations, trade
unions, and humanitarian non-governmental organizations, attempt to
shape regulatory measures, but their success varies depending on
organizational characteristics. Labor market interest associations'
lobbying strategies regarding quantities and skill profile of labor
migrants will be influenced by the respective system of political
economy they are embedded in. Trade unions are generally supportive
of well-managed labor recruitment strategies. But migration
policy-making also proceeds at the European Union (EU) level. While
national actors seek to upload their national model as a blueprint
for future EU policy to avoid costly adaptation, top-down
Europeanization is re-casting national regulation in important
ways, notwithstanding highly divergent national regulatory
philosophies.
Based on field work in and analysis of primary documents from six
European countries (France, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland,
Germany, and Poland), The Political Economy of Managed Migration
makes an important contribution to the study of a rapidly
Europeanized policy domain. Combining insights from the literature
on comparative political economy, Europeanization, and migration
studies, the book makes important contributions to all three, while
demonstrating how migration policy can be fruitfully studied by
employing tools from mainstream political science, rather than
treating it as a distinct subfield.
The early twenty-first century is witnessing both an increasing
internationalization of many markets, firms, and regulatory
institutions, and a reinforcement of the key role of nation states
in managing economic development, financial crises, and market
upheavals in many OECD and developing economies. Drawing on a
variety of interdisciplinary perspectives from leading US and
European scholars, this book analyses how capitalism and national
capitalisms are changing in this context. It focuses on the
economic rise of new countries such as the BRICs, the increasing
influence of regional organizations such as the EU and NAFTA, and
new forms of private and public international regulation. It also
considers how states are adapting their economic policies and
processes in this new environment, and the consequences of these
adaptations for inequality and risk within different societies.
These changes are linked to how firms are developing new strategies
for organizing global value chains and the application of
scientific knowledge to the commercialization of products in
contexts where financial markets are becoming more uncertain and
crisis prone, and where different groups are making new demands for
more effective forms of corporate governance and corporate social
responsibility. Drawing on examples from Europe, North and Latin
America, and Asia, it illustrates the complex ways in which
different forms of national capitalism are adapting and changing
their institutions in response to international financial markets,
the global financial crisis, the development of cross-border value
chains, and expansion of multinational firms.
The quality of working life has been central to the sociological
agenda for several decades, and has also been increasingly salient
as a policy issue, and for companies. This book breaks new ground
in the study of the quality of work by providing the first rigorous
comparative assessment of the way it has been affected by the
economic crisis. It examines the implications of the crisis on
developments in skills and training, employees' control over their
jobs, and the pressure of work and job security. It also assesses
how changing experiences at work affect people's lives outside of
work: the risks of work-life conflict, the motivation to work,
personal well-being, and attitudes towards society. The book draws
on a rich new source of evidence-the European Social Survey-to
provide a comparative view over the period 2004 to 2010. The survey
provides evidence for countries across the different regions of
Europe and allows for a detailed assessment of the view that
institutional differences between European societies-in terms of
styles of management, social partnership practices, and government
policies-lead to very different levels of work quality and
different experiences of the crisis. This comparative aspect will
thus forward our understanding of how institutional differences
between European societies affect work experiences and their
implications for non-work life.
The biggest contemporary challenge to democratic legitimacy
gravitates around the crisis of democratic representation. To
tackle this problem, a growing number of established and new
democracies included direct democratic instruments in their
constitutions, enabling citizens to have direct influence on
democratic decision-making. However, there are many different
empirical manifestations of direct democracy, and their diverse
consequences for representative democracy remain an understudied
topic. Let the People Rule? aims to fill this gap, analysing the
multifaceted consequences of direct democracy on constitutional
reforms and issues of independence, democratic accountability
mechanisms, and political outcomes. Chapters apply different
methodological approaches to study the consequences of direct
democracy on democratic legitimacy. These range from single
in-depth case studies, like the Scottish independence referendum in
2014, to cross-national comparative studies, such as the direct
democratic experience within the European Union.
Written by a team of experts, this text introduces all of the main
competing theoretical approaches to the study of the state,
including pluralism, Marxism, institutionalism, feminism, green
theory and more. A brand new 'issues' section enables readers to
apply these key concepts and theoretical approaches to important
developments in the state today. This new edition offers: -
Coverage of all key empirical and theoretical developments in the
field, with analysis of the impact of globalisation, global
financial upheavals, Brexit, Covid-19 and social movements such as
Black Lives Matter - A wide range of voices, perspectives,
contemporary and historical examples, giving readers a holistic
overview of the field, as well as deeper dives into key issues -
Brand new chapters on sovereignty, security, territory, capital,
nationalism and populism - Guided further reading suggestions at
the end of each chapter Providing both a firm grounding in the key
concepts and critical engagement with contemporary controversies
and debates, this text is ideal for those studying all aspects of
the state.
A Classic Study of Early Constitutional Law. First published in
1914, this is one of the most important studies of early
constitutional law. Kern observes that discussions of the state in
the ninth, eleventh and thirteenth centuries invariably asked whose
rights were paramount. Were they those of the ruler or the people?
Kern locates the origins of this debate, which has continued to the
twentieth century, in church doctrine and the history of the early
German states. He demonstrates that the interaction of "these two
sets of influences in conflict and alliance prepared the ground for
a new outlook in the relations between the ruler and the ruled, and
laid the foundations both of absolutist and of constitutional
theory" (4). " A] pioneering and classic study." --Norman F.
Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 106. Fritz Kern 1884-1950] was a
professor, journalist and state official. From 1914 to 1918 he
worked for the Foreign Ministry and the General Staff in Berlin.
One of the leading medieval historians of his time, his works
include Die Anfange der Franzosischen Ausdehnungspolitik bis zum
Jahr 1308 (1910) and Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter (1919).
This major new study examines the nature of Chinese power and its
impact on the international order. Drawing on an extensive range of
Chinese-language debates and discussions, the book explains the
roles of different actors and interests in Chinese international
interactions, and how they influence the nature of Chinese
strategies for global change. It also gives a unique perspective on
how assessments of the consequences of China's rise are formed, and
how and why these understandings change. Providing an important
challenge to scholars and policy makers who seek to engage with
China, the book demonstrates just how far starting assumptions can
influence the questions asked, evidence sought and conclusions
reached.
This book examines the political costs of monetary union in Europe.
It does so by gauging the degree to which four small European
states - Iceland, Latvia, Hungary and Ireland - employed their
monetary policies in response to the financial crisis. Contrary to
popular and academic perception, Moses finds that small states in
Europe still enjoy monetary policy autonomy, and this autonomy was
used to prioritise the needs of domestic constituents over those of
international markets. Eurozone member states, by contrast, pursued
policies that prioritised the (long-term) needs of international
lenders and European institutions, at the (short-term) expense of
their own constituents. By illustrating the degree to which
monetary policy autonomy still plays an effective role in
responding to economic shocks, this book documents the substantial
sacrifices that states have made in joining a suboptimum currency
area. These are the political costs of monetary union in Europe.
While most scholarship on public administration in Latin America
has taken an overtly legal approach, this handbook examines the
subject from a political and public management perspective. In so
doing, this handbook brings the study of public administration in
Latin America more in line with studies conducted in other parts of
the world, providing a basis for much more fruitful comparison. The
handbook is divided into two parts. The first section contains
chapters that explore a range of administrative systems in
existence across Latin America, including the major representative
types of public administration. The second portion of the book
presents comparative examinations of important issues relating to
public administration across the region, including accountability,
public personnel management, policy coordination and the politics
of bureaucracy. In providing an in-depth examination of public
administration in contemporary Latin America, this handbook is a
vital resource for scholars interested in the fields of public
administration in both a Latin American and comparative context, as
well as practitioners in government.
This is the first comprehensive journey of its kind throughout the
modern world of ideas and institutions relating to legislative and
other features of sovereignty and state. Following A. London Fell's
previous book on the Western Hemisphere (Volume Seven, Book I),
Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State:
Volume Seven: World Perspectives and Emergent Systems for the New
Order in the New Age, the present Book II: Eastern Hemisphere deals
in sequence with each continent, from Europe to the Middle East,
from Asia to Africa. Taken together, the two books offer an
exhaustive examination of emergent systems for the new order in the
new age. As in Book I, Fell explores numerous issues that bear on
the present world order. For example, he examines how current
fundamentalist "laws" drive Islamic radicals in their ideological
struggles with Western legal systems of democracy. And he shows how
the broad, diverse spectrum of African nations can be viewed from
the common theme of their legislative statehoods. The main subjects
and sources of both halves of Volume Seven revolve around current
news history, with issues and viewpoints uppermost in the public
mind as expressed in the public press.
Government did not create our social problems and it can't solve
them for us. This book explores in detail the who and how of real
social change. The Real Change-Makers: Why Government Is Not the
Problem or the Solution is based on a straightforward premise: it
is everyday Americans who have always been the real change-makers
and whose efforts are now more necessary than ever given the
financial squeeze that local, state, and federal governments
confront. In this provocative and timely book, Brown explains why
solutions to social problems won't come from just more litigation,
more legislation, more regulation, or more funding. His focus is
not upon theory but everyday social practices-pursuing health care
beyond the doctor's office, educating young people beyond the
school zone, and pooling resources in new ways that take into
account what Americans own, what they know, and what free time they
have. Despite living in an age of media distraction, this book
calls on citizens to renew their social attention, self-organize,
and tackle the social problems that plague us. Most important, it
is a book that leads the way to our future.
To deal with the climate crisis we need a new paradigm of
technological and social development aimed at the restoration of
ecological systems-the bio-digital energy paradigm-and China is the
world power best positioned to lead this change. The climate and
energy crisis requires a strong state to change the direction,
speed, and scale of innovation in world capitalism. There are only
a few possible contenders for catalyzing this governance of
survival: China, the European Union, India, and the United States.
While China is an improbable leader-and in fact the world's biggest
emitter of greenhouse gasses-Peter Drahos explains in Survival
Governance why this authoritarian state is actually more likely to
implement systemic change swiftly and effectively than any other
power. Drawing on more than 250 interviews, carried out in 17
countries-including the world's four largest carbon emitters-Drahos
shows what China is doing to make its vast urban network
sustainable and why all states must work toward a "bio-digital
energy paradigm" based on a globalized, city-based network of
innovation. As Drahos explains, America is incapable of reducing
the power of its fossil fuel industry. For its part, the European
Union's approach is too incremental and slowed by complex internal
negotiations to address a crisis that demands a rapid response.
India's capacity to be a global leader on energy innovation is
questionable. To be sure, China faces hurdles too. Its coal-based
industrial system is enormous, and the US, worried about losing
technological superiority, is trying to slow China's development.
Even so, China is currently urbanizing innovation on a historically
unprecedented scale, building eco-cities, hydrogen cities, forest
cities, and sponge cities (designed to cope with flooding). This
has the potential to move cities into a new relationship with their
surrounding ecosystems. China-given the size of its economy and the
central government's ability to dictate thoroughgoing policy
change-is, despite all of its flaws, presently our best hope for
implementing the sort of policy overhaul that can begin to slow
climate change.
Delegating Rights Protection explores bill-of-rights outcomes in
four "Westminster" countries - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and
the United Kingdom - whose development exhibit an interesting
combination of both commonality and difference. Comparative
analysis of some thirty-six democracies demonstrates that the
historic absence of a bill of rights in Westminster countries is
best explained by, firstly, the absence of a clear political
transition and, secondly, their strong British constitutional
heritage. Detailed chapters then explore recent and much more
diversified developments. In all the countries, postmaterialist
socio-economic change has resulted in a growing emphasis on legal
formalization, codified civil liberties, and social equality.
Pressure for a bill of rights has therefore increased.
Nevertheless, by enhancing judicial power, bills of rights conflict
with the prima facie positional interests of the political elite.
Given this, change in this area has also required a political
trigger which provides an immediate rationale for change. Alongside
social forces, the nature of this trigger determines the strength
and substance of the bill of rights enacted. The statutory Canadian
Bill of Rights Act (1960), New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990),
and the Human Rights Act (UK) (1998) were prompted politically by a
relatively weak and backward-looking 'aversive' reaction against
perceived abuses of power under the previous administration.
Meanwhile, the fully constitutional Canadian Charter (1982) had its
political origins in a stronger, more self-interested and
prospective need to find a new unifying institution to counter the
destabilizing, centripetal power of the Quebecois nationalist
movement. Finally, the absence of any relevant political trigger
explains the failure of national bill of rights initiatives in
Australia. The conclusionary section of the book argues that this
Postmaterialist Trigger Thesis (PTT) explanation of change can also
explain the origins of bills of rights in other internally stable,
advanced democracies, notably the Israeli Basic Laws on human
rights (1992).
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