How do societies negotiate the apparently competing agendas of environmental protection and social justice? Why do some countries perform much better than others? Democracy in the Woods answers these questions by explaining the trajectories of forest and land rights-and the fate of forest-dependent peasants-in the forested regions of India, Tanzania, and Mexico. To organize a comparative inquiry that straddles the fields of comparative politics, historical institutionalism, and policy studies, this book develops a political economy of institutions framework. It shows that differences in structures of political intermediation-venues that help peasant groups and social movements engage in political and policy processes-explain the varying levels of success in combining the pursuits of social justice and environmental conservation. The book challenges the age-old notion that populist policies produce uniformly deleterious environmental consequences that must be mitigated via centralized systems of environmental regulation. It shows instead that the national leaders and dominant political parties that must compete for popular support in the political arena are more likely to fashion interventions that pursue conservation of forested landscapes without violating the rights of forest-dependent people. Mexico demonstrates the potential for win-win outcomes, India continues to stumble on both environmental and social questions despite longstanding traditions of popular mobilization for forestland rights, and Tanzania's government has failed its forest-dependent people despite a lucrative wildlife tourism sector. This book's political analysis of the control over and use of nature opens up new avenues for reflecting on nature in the Anthropocene.

Since 1995, Freedom House's Nations in Transit series has monitored the status of democratic change from Central Europe to Eurasia, pinpointing the region's greatest reform opportunities and challenges for the benefit of policymakers, researchers, journalists, and democracy advocates alike. Covering twenty-nine countries, Nations in Transit provides comparative ratings and in-depth analysis of electoral process, civil society, independent media, national and local democratic governance, judicial framework, and corruption. Nations in Transit 2014 evaluates developments in these areas from January 1 to December 31, 2013.

This book deals with large-scale, systemic corruption, a phenomenon that it identifies as part of the political landscape in most, if not all, societies of the contemporary world. While the analysis is grounded in the political thought of earlier thinkers, especially Edmund Burke, and integrates the insights of several modern analysts of corruption, the volume offers a new, updated theoretical perspective on the topic. This perspective reflects deep concerns with corruption in a world facing accelerated social transition, increased economic polarization, and growing distrust toward political elites in many countries. This book approaches corrupt practices both theoretically and empirically, offering the perspectives of scholars who come to the topic from different traditions and cultures. It contains the collective efforts of members of the Research Committee on Political Finance and Public Corruption of the International Political Science Association. In formulating a comprehensive approach on corruption, the volume offers insights in regard to new developments in the United States, in Middle Eastern countries (especially in the wake of the Arab Spring), in several European counties (Austria, Italy, Spain), as well as in the People's Republic of China. The analysis goes beyond the traditional legal definitions of corruption or purely economic views of it and focuses more broadly on institutional, cultural, and normative dimensions of this globally important phenomenon.

In the 21st century, new kinds of challenges resulting from
interdependence among states and globalization have had a determining
impact of the conduct of diplomacy.
Diplomacy has become
multifaceted, pluri-directional, volatile and intensive, due to
the increased complexity in terms of actors, dialogues subjects, modes of
communication, and plurality of objectives. This unique text,
written by a leading scholar and Foreign Service expert, examines all
such factors to provide the definitive guide to diplomacy as it is
practiced today. With a multitude of examples from around the world,
including the US, UK, EU, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book
covers the spectrum of diplomacy practice, including regional diplomacy,
diplomacy of small states, performance management, handling of
decisions and crisis, use of information technology, and reform in foreign
ministries. Also included are chapters on craft skills and practical
exercises.
21st Century Diplomacy
will be essential to anyone learning diplomacy, and will also
support courses in international relations, foreign policy, and
intercultural communication.

This book applies established analytical concepts such as influence, authority, administrative styles, autonomy, budgeting and multilevel administration to the study of international bureaucracies and their political environment. It reflects on the commonalities and differences between national and international administrations and carefully constructs the impact of international administrative tools on policy making. The book shows how the study of international bureaucracies can fertilize interdisciplinary discourse, in particular between International Relations, Comparative Government and Public Administration. The book makes a forceful argument for Public Administration to take on the challenge of internationalization.

This book compares British, French, and American legislative debates on woman suffrage and women's rights. Beginning with an analysis of Tocqueville and J.S. Mill on the impact of suffrage, the book continues with analysis of floor debates, comparing gender style, the French on parity and the Americans on the ERA and concluding with modern debates.

This book examines the practice of international election observation in a Caribbean context. It presents a survey of the Commonwealth Caribbean perspective and a concise case study of Guyana between 1964 and 2015. This research traces the roots of election observation and how this practice became integrated into the landscape of Caribbean electoral politics. More specifically, the study examines the process by which election observers have become key actors in elections in the Commonwealth Caribbean. One of the issues the book contemplates is why Caribbean countries accept the imposition of observation within the context of sovereignty. The case of Guyana and other Anglophone Caribbean states shows the costs of not having observers have been multidimensional and have eclipsed concerns of respecting state sovereignty.

The Legacy of Eric Williams provides an indispensable and significant understanding of Eric Williams's contributions to the now independent nation of Trinidad and Tobago and his impact on the broader international understanding of the Caribbean. This book stands out because of its simultaneous investigation into Eric Williams as a scholar/intellectual, a political leader, and, most importantly, a key postcolonial figure. Most previous studies have treated these as separate arenas. The essays here confront the relevance of postcolonialism in understanding Williams's role both in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago and in newer understandings of Caribbean globalization. The volume divides into three broad sections--""Becoming Eric Williams,"" ""Political Williams,"" and ""Textual Williams."" ""Becoming Eric Williams"" provides background on Williams and the Caribbean's ontological quest, addressing what it means to be West Indian and Caribbean. ""Political Williams"" engages with his policies and their consequences, describing the impact of Williams's political policies on several areas: integration, color stratification, and labor and public sector reform. Williams's far-reaching political influence in these aspects cements his legacy as one of the main public intellectuals responsible for creating the modern Caribbean. ""Textual Williams"" examines his scholarly contributions from a more traditional academic perspective. These sections allow for a comprehensive understanding of Williams as a man, a scholar, and a politician.

Language policies impact language choice, language prestige, and language spread. Rising regional integration, both formal and informal, adds to the sensitivity and complexity of language politics, whether in North America, South America or Europe. This book shows how language politics vary across the Americas and contrast with Europe.

This edited volume revolves around two sets of questions. First, what do the 2019 European elections suggest about the extent to which the mainstream parties of the left are attempting to deal with their decline through an increased, common, emphasis on their project for a more integrated, 'social Europe' as opposed to an emphasis on the more 'traditional', domestically-focussed, issues? Given the heightened profile of Europe in domestic politics; given the polarisation around Europe; given the way in which (especially in the countries of the Eurozone) media discussion of the domestic implications of EU decision-making can influence the climate of opinion regardless of the actions of domestic party actors themselves, we would expect the social democrats among them to seek to reassert control over the conditions of opinion formation through a renewed emphasis on integration (as well as its benefits and its potential as a source of identities to rival national, exclusionary identities) in opposition to their populist and Eurosceptical adversaries. To what extent do the campaigns waged by these parties bear out this expectation? Second, how well are the parties coping with the internal and external, institutional and political obstacles in the way of pursuit of this agenda?

More than 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, European integration remains a work in progress, especially in those Eastern European nations most dramatically reshaped by democratization and economic liberalization. This volume assembles detailed, empirically grounded studies of eleven states-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and the former East Germany-that went on to join the European Union. Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformations that have taken place in these nations, using a comparative approach to identify structural similarities and assess outcomes relative to one another as well as the rest of the EU.

This volume chronicles the policy challenges and adaptations faced and made by the South Korean government during the post-industrialization and democratization period. Following the model set by the first volume in the series, which covered the economic and social development during the developmental period from the 1960s to the 1980s, this volume examines how and to what extent the South Korean government has adapted to a variety of political, economic and social transformations since the 1990s. The book is divided in two parts. Part I reviews the changing policy environments and government policy paradigms in the wake of industrialization and democratization, focusing on the reorganization and coordination of government ministries and agencies. Part II explores key public policy areas, such as economics, social welfare, and foreign relations, where the South Korean government has successfully adapted to new policy challenges and environments. Drawing policy implications for the future actions of the South Korean government as well as for those countries wishing to replicate South Korea's success and avoid its errors, this book of interest to both scholars and policy-makers concerned with development in the Asia-Pacific.

Increased investment in the mining sector in Africa is often presented as a key strategy to leverage growth and development on the continent. It has been described as a "motor for growth," which will contribute to poverty reduction. Massive investment has taken place, but the results in crucial areas such as sustainable economic and social development have been extremely disappointing. These outcomes are most frequently attributed to dysfunctional internal governance processes, mismanagement and corruption. Much attention has been given in recent years to the issue of "the poor resource governance" in mineral rich countries. In this volume, academics, policy-makers and practitioners from Africa and beyond aim to achieve a better understanding of these issues by proposing a renewal of approaches. Discussing the cases of Ghana, Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo they explore new ways of thinking about issues concerning governance and revenue flows.

For decades Foucault was mostly known for his diagnosis of modernity as a form of entrapment, both in our modes of thought and our behaviors. This book argues that Foucault's reappraisal of modernity occurs with the 1978 and 1979 lectures, in which he sketches modern power as governmentality and neoliberalism. From this perspective, Foucault's once surprising studies on the Greeks' constitution of the 'self' can be seen as a continuation of his diagnosis of late modernity, and as an attempt to retrieve a form of autonomy for our modern selves. One finds in the late Foucault a postmodern conception of reason and not a destruction of reason; but this is possible only if postmodernity is seen as a critical exercise of reason in the analysis of norms.

This is a thought-provoking analysis on why democracy succeeds in some countries but not others, comparing the post-transition experiences of two cases of contemporary democratisation: Russia and Indonesia. Following authoritarian regimes, democracy eroded in Russia but flourished in Indonesia - so confounding dominant theories of democratisation that predicted the opposite outcomes based on their levels of socioeconomic development and histories of statehood. Identifying key behaviours and patterns of political participation as a factor, Lussier interweaves ethnographic interview and quantitative public opinion data to expand our understanding on how mass political participation contributes to a democracy's survival. The integration of both micro- and macro-level data in a single study is one of this project's most significant contributions, and will enhance its appeal to both researchers and instructors.

Using the conceptual framework of populism as discourse, Ritchie Savage provides a comparative analysis of U.S. and Latin American speeches and articles covering Betancourt's Accion Democratica, Chavez, McCarthyism, and the Tea Party. In so doing, he reveals an essential structure to populist discourse: reference to the "opposition" as a representation of the persistence of social conflict, posed against a collective memory of the origins of democracy and struggle for equality, is present in all cases. This discursive formation of populism is carried out in comparisons of political discourse in the United States and Venezuela, two countries that are typically classified as empirically specific in their economic and political development and ideological orientation. Populist Discourse in Venezuela and the United States explores how instances of populism, once exceptional phenomena within modern forms of political rule, are becoming increasingly integrated with the structure of democratic politics.

This book questions the view of the current orthodoxy which argues that the Soviet Union and the United States were binary opposites in the 1930s. The Shaping of Popular Consent presents a comparative analysis of one specific facet of the USSR and the US, namely the manner in which their ruling elites sought to win popular consent. A key dimension in the analysis of any political order, this issue recommends itself precisely because the assumption that, in this the two were quite dissimilar, is the virtual point of departure for the current thinking. To sharpen the focus of the comparison, the book concentrates on the role of the visual arts and the manner and extent to which those in power employed them to attempt to win popular consent. Therefore, this book poses two questions. Firstly, to what extent did the ruling elites in both the USSR and the US believe they needed the people's faith/trust in the system? Secondly, different as the two societies were, to what extent might they have employed similar use of visual cultural media in their attempts to win "hearts and minds"? The study explores the interwar years, specifically 1929-1941. This was an era of great upheaval in both the USSR and the US and marks the beginning of the age of mass communication. The book examines if, how, and to what extent Soviet and American cultural producers, during the years 1929-1941, employed the visual arts, cinema in particular but also painting, the plastic arts, theatre and architecture, to promote, essentially, the establishments' rights and wrongs, heroes and villains. It does so exploring both the domestic and the international scene. It illustrates that, despite giant differences between the two countries, in the way the two establishments sought to win popular consent the binary view is simply inaccurate. Perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates the need for a plethora of wide-ranging comparative studies of the Soviet Union and the United States. Indeed, through recognizing the importance of comparing and contrasting the USSR and the US, and by attempting to do just that, we might learn to better understand how, in what ways and for what purposes these two countries, so central to our understanding of the modern world, were organized. Thus, this work is genuinely comparative, inter-disciplinary and cultural. Indeed, the study is part of a vanguard movement. It is of significant value to scholars of both the USSR, Stalinism and Soviet art and the US, the New Deal and Hollywood. Finally, building on work by Noam Chomsky, Anotonio Gramsci and others such as Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities, the book will be of tremendous interests to many (both students and interested parties alike) who have an interest in how identities are constructed, how propaganda is manufactured and just how the (ostensibly) divergent philosophies of modern governments are represented in popular culture.

This book provides an overview of governance and development in the Mesoamerican Region (MAR), the design and scope of the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), its relationship to pre-existing regional organisms and its transformation into Proyecto Mesoamerica. The PPP was introduced as a holistic project that would reverse the cycles of poverty in Mesoamerica. However, the plan incited huge opposition from many groups within Mesoamerica, and throughout its duration few of its objectives were met. The author analyses the plan and describes the regional setting and precursors, as well as the US policy towards the Mesoamerican countries. Using this approach with an analysis of governance in Mesoamerica, this monograph shows a more complete picture of why this ambitious development project did not reach its goals and draws applicable insights to other regions where governance is complex.

This book is an examination of minority government performance in conjunction with the territorial distribution of state power and the territorial interests of political parties. It examines political institutions, and the reconcilability of party goals and the contingent bargaining circumstances, in multilevel and territorial perspectives.

Linking Citizens and Parties addresses familiar questions about political representation: Are parties responsive to their core supporters or to the public in general? Do parties that adopt centrist policy positions benefit in elections? Does proportional representation encourage party extremism? These fundamental questions about democracy are paired with the empirical observation of Western European democracies during the last thirty years. The study highlights the pathways (mainstream and niche) through which citizens' political preferences are expressed by their political parties. It concludes with a positive evaluation of these democracies as their citizens have access to at least one, and possibly both niche and mainstream pathways.

Intellectual traditions are commonly regarded as cultural variations, historical legacies, or path dependencies. By analyzing road junctions between different traditions of Public Administration this book contests the dominant perspective of path-dependent national silos, and highlights the ways in which they are hybrid and open to exogenous ideas. Analyzing the hybridity of administrative traditions from an historical perspective, this book provides a new approach to the history of Public Administration as a scientific discipline. Original and interdisciplinary chapters address the question of how scholars from the U.S., Germany and France mutually influenced each other, from the closing years of the 19th Century, up until the neo-liberal turn of the 1970s. Offering a thorough analysis of the transatlantic history of Public Administration, the conclusion argues that it is vital to learn from the past, in order to make Public Administration more realistic in theory, as well as more successful in practice. Advanced undergraduate and postgraduate political science scholars will find this to be a valuable tool in understanding the foundations of transatlantic Public Administration. This book will also greatly benefit researchers on comparative and transnational history with a keen interest in Public Administration.

Development economists and practitioners agree that close collaboration between business and government improves industrial policy, yet little research exists on how best to organize that. This book examines three necessary functions--information exchange, authoritative allocation, and reducing rent seeking--across experiences in Latin America.