This book is the first to establish the nature and causes of violence as key features in the political economy of Australia as an advanced capitalist society. Australia's neoliberal corporate security state in seen to represent the emergence of a post-democratic order, whereby minds and bodies are disciplined to the dominant ideology of market relations. Locating questions of the democracy and of the country's economy at the heart of Australia's political struggle, the author elaborates how violence in Australia is built into a hegemonic order, characterized by the concentration of private power and wealth. Identifying the commodification of people and nature, the construction and manipulation of antagonisms and enemies, and the politics of fear as features of a new authoritarianism and one-party-political state, Erik Paul explores alternatives to the existing neoliberal hegemonic order. Positing that democratization requires a clearly defined counter-culture, based on the political economy of social, economic and political equality, the book draws out the potential in non-violent progressive social movements for a new political economy.

Among American conservatives, the right to own property free from the meddling hand of the state is one of the most sacred rights of all. But the in the American West, the federal government owns and oversees vast patches of land, complicating the narrative of western individualism and private property rights. Hence anti-federal government sentiment, often in the name of private property rights, has animated conservative politics in the West for decades upon decades. In This Land Is My Land, James R. Skillen tells the story of conservative rebellion against federal land management in the America West over the last forty years, which has ranged from legal action to armed confrontations. He traces the most recent waves of conservative rebellion against federal land authority-the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979-1982), the War for the West (1991-2000), and the Patriot Rebellion (2009-2016)-and shows how they evolved from a regional rebellion waged by westerners with material interests in federal lands to a national rebellion against the federal administrative state. Cumulatively, Skillen's account explains how the civil religion and constitutional nationalism in which ranchers, miners, and other traditional federal land users became powerful symbols of conservative American and how federal land issues became inseparably linked to property rights, gun rights, and religious express. Not just a book about property rights battles over western lands, This Land is My Land reveals how evolving rebellions in the west provide insight for understanding the conservative coalition that elected President Donald J. Trump in 2016.

This book critically examines the intersection of religion, public health and human security in Nigeria. Focusing on Christianity, Islam, traditional religions and "intra-religious" doctrinal divergencies, the book explores the impact faith has on health-related decisions and how this affects security in Nigeria. The book assesses the connection between religion and five contemporary major health and medical issues in the country. This includes the issue of epidemics and pandemics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines, contraception, blood transfusion and the controversies associated with "miracle healing". In particular, this book explores situations where individuals have the power of choice but instead embraces faith and religious positions that contradict science in the management of their health and, in the process, expose themselves and others to personal health insecurity. It investigates aspects of human security including the wider international ramifications of health issues, approaches to cures and the interpretation of causes of diseases, as well as the ethno-religious connotations of such interpretations. Exploring key issues that have brought religion into the politics of health and human security in Nigeria, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of African Religion, African Politics, African Studies, public health, security, and Sociology.

Drawing on field-based data and experiences from the practice of democratic decentralization and local governance over the last three decades in Ghana, this book examines whether and how democratic decentralization and local governance reforms in developing countries have produced the anticipated development outcomes. In seventeen related contributions, the authors present four relevant focal themes, including conceptual and historical trajectories of decentralization and local governance; institutional choice, democratic representation, and poverty reduction; local governance, resource capacity, and service delivery; and non-state actors, local governance and sustainable development. The book blends perspectives of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers to provide a holistic analysis of linkages between decentralization, local governance, and sustainable development efforts, presenting a novel and useful guide for science, policy, and practice of bottom-up governance and development. It provides relevant lessons and experiences for scholars, policy-makers, and development practitioners in Africa in particular and developing countries in general.

A definitive study on the decades-long run of high public confidence in the military and why it may rest on some shaky foundations. What explains the high levels of public confidence in the US military and does high confidence matter? In Thanks for Your Service, the eminent civil-military relations scholar Peter D. Feaver addresses this question and focuses on what it means for the military. Proprietary survey data show that confidence is partly based on public beliefs about the military's high competence, adherence to high professional ethics, and a determination to stand apart from the bitter divisions of partisan politics. However, as Feaver argues, confidence is also shaped by a partisan gap and by social desirability bias, the idea that some individuals express confidence in the military because they believe that is the socially approved attitude to hold. Not only does Feaver help us understand how and why the public has confidence in the military, but he also exposes problems that policymakers need to be aware of. Specifically, this book traces how confidence in the institution shapes public attitudes on the use of force and may not always reinforce best practices in democratic civil-military relations.

This book analyzes the transformation of ethnic and religious political parties in Turkey with special focus on their role in the country's democratization and regime changes. Turkey went through a process of autocratization under the rule of the AKP government over the last two decades. Scholars question the structural, agent-centered and cultural factors that led the country on this path, and provide the lessons learnt from this case for other cases of democratic decline or breakdown. This book contributes to this debate. It treats the three national elections (2002, 2007, 2015-June) as opportunities for democratization, in which the Islamist-successor AKP (in 2002, 2007) and the Kurdish-successor HDP (in 2015-June) managed to overcome identity politics and received the organized support from social groups outside of their traditional constituency. This book argues that in a semi-democratic context where repressive acts of the state (e.g. banning of parties, arresting politicians) have been subject to widespread public criticism, confronting the state becomes a salient issue. When these parties manage to frame this issue as one of democracy, they take ownership of it, and this then becomes an opportunity for democratizing the regime. This opportunity, yet, can be missed if the party follows an office-seeking strategy rather than a policy-seeking one.

Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe seeks to clarify the relevance, problems and consequences of operating federal systems of government in Western Europe. It discusses the institutional features of federalism and regionalism and brings in recent insights from the viewpoint of neo-institutional scholarship. Rather than providing a case-by-case approach, the book offers a thematic analysis of federalism and regionalism. In addition, the book also analyzes and explains varieties in the allocation of resources, in the political decision-making process and in the policy content and problem-solving capacity of West-European federal and regional states.

How do the environments, in which businesses operate, condition their success or failure? Such questions have long been of interest in the fields of business, economics and politics. This book thoroughly examines the main claims of the most important contribution - the Varieties of Capitalism paradigm - to this debate in recent years.

This volume explores South Korea's successful transition from an underdeveloped, authoritarian country to a modern industrialized democracy. South Korea's experience of foreign aid gives a unique perspective on how to use foreign aid for economic development as well as how to build a strong partnership between developed and developing countries.

Inspired by the democratic origins of the Greek naval victory at Salamis, the book discusses the current pressing issues of democracy worldwide. In 12 carefully selected chapters, well-renowned scholars from around the globe discuss topics such as Brexit, Euroscepticism, or the rise of populism. The authors further analyze various aspects of democracy, as well as various types of democratic regimes, such as mixed government, direct democracy, and cases of quasi democracies. While doing so, they relate this discussion to the pivotal question of how the quality of democracy today can be improved, seeking answers and solutions to current pending problems at the global level. This book is the second out of two edited volumes as a sequel of an international academic conference titled Salamis and Democracy: 2500 Years After that took place between October 3rd and October 5th, 2020, on the occasion of the 2500th anniversary of the great historical event of the Battle of Salamis, which saved Greek culture and the newly founded democratic regimes throughout the Hellenic world during the Classical period (508-323 BCE). The book is a must-read for scholars and students of political science, economics, and law, as well as policy-makers interested in a better understanding of democracy, governance, populism, social choice, and constitutional law.

Though geographically far apart, Turkey and Australia are much closer than many would think. This collection provides a relevant, comparative and comprehensive study of two countries seeking to reconcile their history with their geography.

Where is feminist state theory today? This book offers novel insights into social science debates by analyzing feminist theories of the state. It argues that we need feminist tools for analyzing states and focuses on two debates, domestic violence and childcare, as areas where feminists discursively construct the state. These themes are developed within a comparative perspective. Focusing on devolution in Scotland and the European Union, the book further explores how feminist state theories conceive multi-level governance.

This book develops a novel way of thinking about crises in world politics. By building on ontological security theory, this work conceptualises critical situations as radical disjunctions that challenge the ability of collective agents to 'go on'. These ontological crises bring into the realm of discursive consciousness four fundamental questions related to existence, finitude, relations and autobiography. In times of crisis, collective agents such as states are particularly attached to their ontic spaces, or spatial extensions of the self that cause collective identities to appear more firm and continuous. These theoretical arguments are illustrated in a case study looking at Serbia's anxiety over the secession of Kosovo. The author argues that Serbia's seemingly irrational and self-harming policy vis-a-vis Kosovo can be understood as a form of ontological self-help. It is a rational pursuit of biographical continuity and a healthy sense of self in the face of an ontological crisis triggered by the secession of a province that has been constructed as the ontic space of the Serbian nation since the late 19th century.

Recognized scholars from 15 countries offer rich political analyses of 71 European leaders chosen for the significant roles that they have played nationally, regionally, or internationally since 1945. Each in-depth political and intellectual biography assesses the leader's achievements and failures in historical context, key career moments, major allies and opponents and their impact, and the leader's interplay with different political institutions. The profiles cover representative types of political leaders across the political spectrum from left to right, heads of state and chiefs of government, and political figures that have been important in European history over the last 50 years. Leaders describe important political moments in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The essays arranged alphabetically also give a few primary and secondary sources for further research. A short chronology and bibliographical essay on the subject of European political leadership and a full index further enhance this major reference designed for undergraduates and graduate students and for scholars, government officials, and journalists in political affairs, European studies, world history, and international relations.

This open access book presents an actor-centered study on Europeanization, based on the assumption that EU-driven reforms are highly dependent on the behavior and interests of the key domestic actors. Whether or not a state pursues a European and democratic agenda depends on domestic lawmakers. Further, political elites are pre-eminent in deciding on the nature, form and content of any law, and on the extent to which the rule of law is actually enforced. Elites can overcome structural or institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving their goals. The empirical study on Romania presented here lends this observation a more profound meaning: it shows how, in contexts where high level corruption is the norm rather than the exception, self-serving political elites cannot be expected to genuinely commit to adopting sound anti-corruption reform. The book is an inquiry into the motivations that drive legislators to make particular decisions, but also into the structural characteristics and dynamics of the elite that invite a selfish rather than responsible and responsive behaviour.This publication was supported by funds from the Publication Fund for Open Access Monographs of the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany.

The intersection of risk and trade has resulted in protracted and acrimonious trade conflict that questions the right of sovereign states to address the threat of harm. When regions such as Canada, the US and the EU have disagreed over the legitimacy of risk perceptions, they have placed science at the centre of international trade conflict. In these moments, scholarly attention has focused on the WTO's Dispute Settlement System. However, formal trade disputes occur as a last resort after states have exhausted other avenues for trade conflict resolution. By looking across cases disputed and informally resolved, David Hornsby offers to deepen understanding of how interests, institutions and ideas involved in risk based trade conflict interact and explain transatlantic differences. Through giving explicit attention to the role of science in these moments, a new variable for understanding trade conflict over risk based issues is considered.

David G. Haglund's Sister Republics tells the story of the unique relationship between the United States and its first ally, France. Historians and political scientists have characterized interactions between the two countries in the spheres of security and defense policy in radically different ways: either the two comport themselves in a highly cooperative fashion, befitting their status as old allies and steadfast friends, or they act as bitter rivals, revealing their alliance to be at best dysfunctional and at worst destructive. Haglund uses a fresh approach to reconcile these divergent positions, examining the Franco-American bond through the prism of strategic culture. In doing so, he reveals the cultural factors that have contributed to the suboptimal relationship between the two nations.

In this pioneering volume, leading scholars from a diversity of backgrounds in the humanities, social sciences, and different area studies argue for a more differentiated and self-reflected role of area-based science in global knowledge production. Considering that the mobility of people, goods, and ideas make the world more complex and geographically fixed categories increasingly obsolete, the authors call for a reflection of this new dynamism in research, teaching, and theorizing. The book thus moves beyond the constructed divide between area studies and systematic disciplines and instead proposes methodological and conceptual ways for encouraging the integration of marginalized and often overseen epistemologies. Essays on the ontological, theoretical, and pedagogical dimension of area studies highlight how people's everyday practices of mobility challenge scholars, students, and practitioners of inter- and transdisciplinary area studies to transcend the cognitive boundaries that scholarly minds currently operate in.

This book studies political leadership at the local level, based on data from a survey of the mayors of cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants in 29 European countries carried out between 2014 and 2016. The book compares these results with those of a similar survey conducted ten years ago. From this comparative perspective, the book examines how to become a mayor in Europe today, the attitudes of these politicians towards administrative and territorial reforms, their notions of democracy, their political priorities, whether or not party politicization plays a role at the municipal level, and how mayors interact with other actors in the local political arena. This study addresses students, academics and practitioners concerned at different levels with the functioning and reforms of the municipal level of local government.

This book builds upon our knowledge of the far-reaching economic, political and social effects of the Euro crisis on the European Union by providing a unique study of European identities. In particular, it considers the impact on the construction of European identities in political and media discourse in Germany, Ireland and Poland-three countries with profoundly different experiences of the crisis and never before compared in a single study. Offering an original insight into the dynamics of identity change at moments of upheaval, the author argues that political and media actors in the early stages of the crisis drew on long-standing identities in order to make sense of the crisis in the public sphere. European identity discourses are thus resilient to change but become central to legitimising and contesting bailouts and further economic integration. As such, the author challenges the commonly held view that identities change dramatically at times of crisis but argues that this very resilience helps to understand the EU's current divisions. The study of identity during the Euro crisis sheds important light on the prospects for European solidarity as well as on the future of the single currency as an identity-building project. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of EU politics, comparative European politics, and identity politics.

How do interstate actors negotiate their interests? What do 'common interests' look like from their historically and culturally contingent perspectives? What happens when actors work for their private, professional, public, personal or institutional interests? Honing in on the role of diplomats and lobbyists during negotiations for Turkey's contentious EU membership bid, this book presents intricate, backstage conflicts of power and interests and negotiations of compromises, which drove this candidate country both closer to and farther apart from the EU. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Brussels, this first book-length account of Turkish Europeanisation argues that public, private and corporate actors voicing economic, political and bureaucratic interests from all corners of Europe sought access to markets and polities through the Turkish bid instead of facilitating Turkey's EU accession, earning recognition & power. -- .

This book investigates right-wing populism in Brazil. It is a unique study of the major protest movements of the New Right that dominated the streets of Sao Paulo from 2014 to 2018 and acted as a prelude to Jair Bolsonaro's election. Examining the populist rhetoric that circulated among the movements' online followers, McLean reveals the formation of different right-wing publics and gives insight into the topics that have the greatest impact on public political debate. Through interviewing multiple activists and observing them at political events, McLean also exposes motivations for engaging in political action and demonstrates how the movements act as media vehicles of the New Right. Such an intimate study on the Brazilian New Right has never before been carried out in such in-depth detail.

This book examines the problem of accountability in two African political systems, South Africa and Nigeria. Despite the principle of separation of powers and the doctrine of checks and balances among the institutions of governance, a burgeoning governance crisis stifles the potential of accountability and good governance. Legislative oversight in the two countries remains largely ineffective while citizens are left to face the consequences of the mismanagement of public resources by political elites. This book critically assesses how the legislative institutions in South Africa and Nigeria have been unable to harness the requisite constitutional powers to ensure accountability in government and explores the feasibility of their effectiveness. The book begins with a comparative analysis of the principles, tradition, and powers associated with legislative capability in South Africa and Nigeria. The chapters explore constitutional provisions and analyze the capacity of each legislature to function within its respective political environment. The book also examines the process and challenges associated with the various measures and mechanisms available for legislatures to ensure accountability in the two countries. Researchers, scholars and students of African politics will find this book useful in their understanding of the problems associated with the simmering governance crisis in South Africa and Nigeria.

This Handbook provides a comprehensive and authoritative account of the movement towards co-production of public services and outcomes, a topic which has recently become one of the most intensely debated in public management and administration, both in practice and in the academic literature. It explores in depth the processes of co-commissioning, co-design, co-delivery and co-assessment as major approaches to co-production through citizen voice and citizen action and as key mechanisms in the co-creation of public value. The key debates in the field are fully explored in chapters from over 50 eminent authors in the field, who examine the roots of co-production in the social sciences, the growth of co-production in policy and practice, its implementation and management in the public domain, and its governance, including its negative aspects (the 'dark side' of co-production). A final section discusses different aspects of the future research agenda for co-production.

In the context of the 'global war on terror, ' the issue of security has come to affect more and more intimate elements of people's everyday lives. This is the starting point of this interdisciplinary collection, which focuses on how the line between security and insecurity is negotiated through changing concepts of 'community' and 'citizenship.'