This book addresses the paradox of uneven electricity in one of the fastest growing and now petro rich economies, Ghana, by addressing the question of why one of the most hydro rich countries in sub-Saharan Africa produces irregular access for all but 'swing' voter regions of the country. The book questions why targeted rural electricity initiatives over the course of the last two decades have yielded uneven benefits for what is a substantial portion of the country's population. Using Ghana as an emblematic case-study that speaks to broader regional concerns, including those of Nigeria and South Africa, this book contextualizes the variegated nature of how power sector reforms could not be undertaken without significant political costs. Indeed, the book situates an unfolding political landscape that prompted the successful but partial implementation of power sector reforms in part prompted by the Washington consensus and undergirded by a shrinking role for the state in the wider economy.

Eight years after the Arab Spring there is still much debate over the link between Internet technology and protest against authoritarian regimes. While the debate has advanced beyond the simple question of whether the Internet is a tool of liberation or one of surveillance and propaganda, theory and empirical data attesting to the circumstances under which technology benefits autocratic governments versus opposition activists is scarce. In this book, Nils B. Weidmann and Espen Geelmuyden Rod offer a broad theory about why and when digital technology is used for one end or another, drawing on detailed empirical analyses of the relationship between the use of Internet technology and protest in autocracies. By leveraging new sub-national data on political protest and Internet penetration, they present analyses at the level of cities in more than 60 autocratic countries. The book also introduces a new methodology for estimating Internet use, developed in collaboration with computer scientists and drawing on large-scale observations of Internet traffic at the local level. Through this data, the authors analyze political protest as a process that unfolds over time and space, where the effect of Internet technology varies at different stages of protest. They show that violent repression and government institutions affect whether Internet technology empowers autocrats or activists, and that the effect of Internet technology on protest varies across different national environments.

This book discusses the impact of China's rise on regional order at three levels: Sino-US relations, East Asia's contested sub regions and regional institutions. Sino-US relations provide a framework to examine macro-regional relations. In East Asia's contested sub regions-Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the eastern Indian Ocean region-the author explores the crucial role regional powers and local states play in maintaining effective governance and stability. The author shows how regional institutions attempt to develop cooperation and shared norms that work toward regional community. The inclusion of leading experts from China, the US, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, and India gives this collection a unique viewpoint, and reveals how China's rise looks from inside and outside China, as well as inside and outside the region.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011 led Japan, and many other countries, to change their energy policies. David Elliott reviews the disaster and its global implications, asking whether, despite continued backing by some governments, the growing opposition to nuclear power means the end of the global nuclear renaissance.

Worldviews of Aspiring Powers provides a serious study of the domestic foreign policy debates in five world powers who have gained more influence as the US's has waned: China, Japan, India, Russia and Iran. Featuring a leading regional scholar for each essay, each essay identifies the most important domestic schools of thought--nationalists, realists, globalists, idealists/exceptionalists--and connects them to the historical and institutional sources that fuel each nation's foreign policy experience. While scholars have applied this approach to US foreign policy, this book is the first to track the competing schools of foreign policy thought within five of the world's most important rising powers. Concise and systematic, Worldviews of Aspiring Powers will serve as both an essential resource for foreign policy scholars trying to understand international power transitions and as a text for courses that focus on the same.

The first volume of IDS Companions to Development Studies focuses on pivotal writing emerging from the IDS fellowship during the last 50 years. It includes five topics: perspectives and paradigms, debunking myths, development policy, gender and international perspectives, and policy, as well as names like Seers, Singer, Lipton, Reg Green.

Why do some countries have 'Culture Wars' over morality issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage while other countries hardly experience any conflict? This book argues that morality issues only generate major conflicts in political systems with a significant conflict between religious and secular parties.

Is the process of state building a unilateral, national venture, or is it something more collaborative, taking place in the interstices between adjoining countries? To answer this question, Asymmetrical Neighbors takes a comparative look at the state building process along China, Myanmar, and Thailand's common borderland area. It shows that the variations in state building among these neighboring countries are the result of an interactive process that occurs across national boundaries. Departing from existing approaches that look at such processes from the angle of singular, bounded territorial states, the book argues that a more fruitful method is to examine how state and nation building in one country can influence, and be influenced by, the same processes across borders. It argues that the success or failure of one country's state building is a process that extends beyond domestic factors such as war preparation, political institutions, and geographic and demographic variables. Rather, it shows that we should conceptualize state building as an interactive process heavily influenced by a "neighborhood effect." Furthermore, the book moves beyond the academic boundaries that divide arbitrarily China studies and Southeast Asian studies by providing an analysis that ties the state and nation building processes in China with those of Southeast Asia.

Reconfiguring European States in Crisis offers a ground-breaking analysis by some of Europe's leading political scientists, examining how the European national state and the European Union state have dealt with two sorts of changes in the last two decades. Firstly, the volume analyses the growth of performance measurement in government, the rise of new sorts of policy delivery agencies, the devolution of power to regions and cities, and the spread of neoliberal ideas in economic policy. The volume demonstrates how the rise of non-state controlled organizations and norms combine with Europeanization to reconfigure European states. Secondly, the volume focuses on how the current crises in fiscal policy, Brexit, security and terrorism, and migration through a borderless European Union have had dramatic effects on European states and will continue to do so.

This book seeks to understand the role of regions in the provision of security (and insecurity) practices across the globe. Specialists with expertise in the regions they examine present eight case studies and analyses of the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Europe. Discussing both The State and people in the context of security, this book examines four categories; inter-state security, transnational criminal practices (the drugs trade, human trafficking migration), proliferation issues (both nuclear and non-nuclear), and issues of domestic/state collapse. The book uses an inclusive definition of security to include traditional and non-traditional conceptions, and incorporates the use of force and the threat of the use of force, as well as issues related to the integrity of peoples. The chapters weave theory and case studies to provide a rich description of a variety of regional governance forms; and, where applicable, the absence of them to move beyond regionalism to consider the key determining features of regional governance. Comparative Regional Security Governance will be of interest to students and scholars of international security, international relations and governance.

A complete guide for how small states can be strikingly successful and influential-if they assess their situations and adapt their strategies. Small states are crucial actors in world politics. Yet, they have been relegated to a second tier of International Relations scholarship. In A Small State's Guide to Influence in World Politics, Tom Long shows how small states can identify opportunities and shape effective strategies to achieve their foreign policy goals. To do so, Long puts small states' relationships at the center of his approach. Although small states are defined by their position as materially weaker actors vis-a-vis large states, Long argues that this condition does not condemn them to impotence or irrelevance. Drawing on typological theory, Long builds an explanation of when and how small states might achieve their goals. The book assesses a global range of cases-both successes and failures-and offers a set of tools for scholars and policymakers to understand how varying international conditions shape small states' opportunities for influence.

This edited book provides a first overview of how populist parties responded to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Europe. Although populism would normally benefit from crisis situations (e.g., political representation or economic crises), the peculiar nature of this health crisis does not make the benefit obvious. For it to be exploited, a crisis must be politicized. While populists have tried to take advantage of the crisis situation, the impossibility of taking ownership of the COVID-19 issue has made the crisis hard to be exploited. In particular, populists in power have tried to depoliticize the pandemic, whereas radical right-populists in opposition tried to politicize the crisis, though failing to gain the relevant public support. This book considers populist parties in eight European democracies, providing a framework of analysis for their responses to the COVID-19 crisis. It does so by engaging with the literature on crisis and populism from a theoretical perspective and through the lens of the politicization process.

Mufti argues that Turkey's security policy is dominated by an insular and risk-averse 'Republican' strategic culture paradigm, that this paradigm has fallen into crisis, bringing some of its core elements in conflict with others, and that this crisis has permitted the reassertion of a more cosmopolitan and risk-taking 'Imperial' counter-paradigm.

Kenya is a country of geopolitical and economic importance in East Africa. It shares borders with unstable states such as Somalia and Sudan while being a hub for trade, communication, finance, and transportation across the region. Although relatively stable since its independence in 1963, the country still faces poverty, inequality, and corruption. In addition, the contested election of 2007 led to severe ethnic strife that tested its political stability, leading to a new constitution in 2010. This unique survey by a leading expert on the region provides a critical analysis of the socio-economic development in Kenya from a political economy perspective. It highlights Kenya's transition from being a centralized state to having a clear separation of powers and analyzes key issues such as economic growth, urbanization, corruption, and reform. The book identifies Kenya's key socio-development problems and offers solutions to improve both governance and economic performance, making it an essential resource to researchers, academics, and policy makers working on development issues and African politics.

Democracy in Southeast Asia seems to be in crisis. The contributors to this volume argue that this is a crisis of democratic governance. They look into its causes, consequences and prospects, comparing themes of democratic governance in Southeast Asia such as political culture, civil society, political parties and institutions and human rights

Political methodology has changed dramatically in the past thirty years. Not only have new methods and techniques been developed, but the Political Methodology Society and the Qualitative Methods Section of the American Political Science Association have engaged in ongoing research and training programs that have advanced both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology is designed to reflect these developments. It provides comprehensive overviews and critiques of all the key specific methodologies.
The volume emphasizes three things. Firstly, techniques should be the servants of improved data collection, measurement, conceptualization, and the understanding of meanings and the identification of causal relationship in social science research. Techniques will be described with the aim of showing how they contribute to these tasks, and the emphasis will be upon developing good research designs--not upon simply using sophisticated techniques.
Second, there are many different ways that these tasks can be undertaken in the social sciences through description and modeling, case-study and large-n designs, and quantitative and qualitative research.
Third, techniques can cut across boundaries and be useful for many different kinds of researchers. The chapter authors ask how their methods can be used by, or at least inform, the work of those outside those areas where they are usually employed. For example, those describing large-n statistical techniques should ask how their methods might at least inform, if not sometimes be adopted by, those doing case studies or interpretive work, and we want those explaining how to do comparativehistorical work or process tracing to explain how it could inform those doing time-series studies.

Taking a fresh thematic approach to politics and society in Latin America, this introductory textbook analyzes the region's past and present in an accessible and engaging style well-suited to undergraduate students. The book provides historical insights into modern states and critical issues they are facing, with insightful analyses that are supported by empirical data, maps and timelines. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text considers critical topics relevant to all countries within the region such as the expansion of democracy and citizenship rights and responses to human rights abuses, corruption, and violence. Each richly illustrated chapter contains a compelling and cohesive narrative, followed by thought-provoking questions and further reading suggestions, making this text a vital resource for anyone encountering the complexities of Latin American politics for the first time in their studies.

As most Americans know, conflicts of interest riddle the US health care system. They result from physicians practicing medicine as entrepreneurs, from physicians' ties to pharma, and from investor-owned firms and insurers' influence over physicians' medial choices. These conflicts raise questions about physicians' loyalty to their patients and their professional and economic independence. The consequences of such conflicts of interest are often devastating for the patients--and society--stuck in the middle.
In Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine, Marc Rodwin examines the development of these conflicts in the US, France, and Japan. He shows that national differences in the organization of medical practice and the interplay of organized medicine, the market, and the state give rise to variations in the type and prevalence of such conflicts. He then analyzes the strategies that each nation employs to cope with them.
Unfortunately, many proposals to address physicians' conflicts of interest do not offer solutions that stick. But drawing on the experiences of these three nations, Rodwin demonstrates that we can mitigate these problems with carefully planned reform and regulation. He examines a range of measures that can be taken in the private and public sector to preserve medical professionalism--and concludes that there just might be more than one prescription to this seemingly incurable malady.

Since their independence in 1991, the former Soviet Republics have gone through difficult transition processes to achieve cultural, economical and political transformations. Diverse internal dynamics have produced diverse outcomes for the countries and peoples of the former Soviet space. While there are different results of transition, there are also similarities due to many common concerns and expectations. The most important question is, What have these new states transformed into where democracy, free market, and functioning civil society are concerned? Or, Has the transformation led to greater polarisation in terms of rich and poor divide, authoritarianism and withdrawal of the state from providing social security, contested geopolitics and increasing external influence? Apart from discussing the challenges that the post-Soviet states face and their coping strategies, the articles in this book also look at how the Eurasian countries participate in the globalisation process while using the energy and natural resources to their benefit.

Recent years have witnessed widespread changes in state voting and registration laws. These include same day registration, automatic voter registration, early voting, mail voting, and no-excuse absentee voting where people mail in their ballots. Most research on these voting reforms has downplayed their effects, showing that they generally benefit educated, older, and more affluent people. This book shows the positive effects that these reforms have on overall voter turnout, and among voters of disadvantaged groups. Specifically, it emphasizes the ways that state governments are making it easier to participate in elections in an effort to strengthen democratic government. In Accessible Elections, Michael Ritter and Caroline J. Tolbert explore the wide variation from state to state in convenience voting methods and provide new empirical analysis of the beneficial effects of these policies, not only in boosting participation rates overall, but in increasing voter turnout for disadvantaged groups. The authors measure both convenience methods and implementation of the laws, and explore how elections are conducted across the fifty states, where average turnout has varied more than 25 percentage points over the past four decades. The authors also draw on national voter files with millions of cases and vote histories of the same individuals over time in order to show the real effects of election reform and to make a case for how state governments can modernize their electoral practices, increase voter turnout, and make the experience of voting more accessible and equitable. Ritter and Tolbert assert that in the wake of covid-19 and efforts to maintain social distancing, early voting and absentee/mail voting are of particular importance to avoid election-day crowds and ensure equitable elections in states with large populations. With important implications for the 2020 general election and beyond, Accessible Elections underscores how state governments can modernize their electoral procedures to increase voter turnout, address inequalities, and influence campaign and party mobilization strategies.

In recent years, lifelong learning has become one of the most prominent education policy goals. This book shows how international organizations have promoted this idea and disseminated the need for it to countries all over the world. As a consequence of their activity, lifelong learning has become a central element of modern education policy.This book analyzes the global spread of lifelong learning policies since the 1970s, emphasizing the role of international organizations.

An investigation of recent developments and trends within the Yugoslav successor states since the signing of the Dayton Agreements in Autumn 1995. This book offers a distinctive and desirable perspective on the seven successor states, their cultures, politics and identities by providing an internal perspective on the region and its developments.

Through a range of international case studies from the USA, UK, France, Germany and Italy, this text assesses the conditions necessary for effective leadership and emphasizes the part played by uncertainty and division amongst followers.