This new volume presents a wealth of fresh data documenting and analyzing the different positions taken by governments in the development of the European Constitution. It examines how such decisions have substantial effects on the sovereignty of nation states and on the lives of citizens, independent of the ratification of a constitution. Few efforts have been made to document constitution building in a systematic and comparative manner, including the different steps and stages of this process. This book examines European Constitution-building by tracing the two-level policy formation process from the draft proposal of the European Convention until the Intergovernmental Conference, which finally adopted the document on the Constitution in June 2004. Following a tight comparative framework, it sheds light on reactions to the proposed constitution in the domestic arena of all the actors involved. It includes a chapter on each of the original ten member states and the fifteen accession states, plus key chapters on the European Commission and European Parliament. This book will be of strong interest to scholars and researchers of European Union politics, comparative politics, and policy-making.

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.

With the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe and the related imposition of colonial rule in much of East Asia, both Europe and East Asia have intertwined histories that continue to shape their political thinking and political decision making. The contemporary interactions of the two regions ? now once again major trading partners ? will both depend upon and facilitate deeper understandings of their respective sets of national pasts. This book compares national pasts as well as the current processes of change taking place in Europe and East Asia, including the dynamics of the European Union in Europe and the re-emergence of the historical centre of China in East Asia. It argues that as the change unfolds in the economic, social and political fields, the various national pasts embedded with the polities of the two regions will also need to be revisited and reworked. This book makes an invaluable contribution to research on comparative politics, as well as studies on South East Asia and Europe.

Originally published in 1967, reissued now with a new introduction, Africa in Search of Democracy in the author's words was 'a humble contribution to Africa's search for political wisdom whereby to avoid destruction'. Written by the author during his time in voluntary exile, he was leader of the Parliamentary Opposition and of the United Party in Ghana which opposed the tyrannical rule of Nkrumah and his Convention People's Party. In this book he proposed to examine the problems facing contemporary Africa within the context of the search for democracy; that is, for the establishment of societies which provide the best possible conditions for individual as well as social development within the widest measure of democratic freedom. The burning questions of nation building, of modernization, of raising standards of living, of achieving African unity, or harmonizing race relations and world peace, are discussed in relation to the quest for democracy.

Civil wars are the biggest danger to world peace today - this book shows us why they happen, and how to avoid them. Most of us don't know it, but we are living in the world's greatest era of civil wars. While violence has declined worldwide, civil wars have increased. This is a new phenomenon. With the exception of a handful of cases - the American and English civil wars, the French Revolution - historically it has been rare for people to organise and fight their governments. This has changed. Since 1946, over 250 armed conflicts have broken out around the world, a number that continues to rise. Major civil wars are now being fought in countries including Iraq, Syria and Libya. Smaller civil wars are being fought in Ukraine, India, and Malaysia. Even countries we thought could never experience another civil war - such as the USA, Sweden and Ireland - are showing signs of unrest. In How Civil Wars Start, acclaimed expert Barbara F. Walter, who has advised on political violence everywhere from the CIA to the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, explains the rise of civil war and the conditions that create it. As democracies across the world backslide and citizens become more polarised, civil wars will become even more widespread and last longer than they have in the past. This urgent and important book shows us a path back toward peace.

Social pacts - policy agreements between governments, labor unions and sometimes employer organizations - began to emerge in many countries in the 1980s. The most common explanations for social pacts tend to focus on economic factors, influenced by industrial relations institutions such as highly coordinated collective bargaining. This book presents, and tests, an alternative and complementary explanation highlighting the electoral calculations made by political parties in choosing pacts. Using a dataset covering 16 European countries for the years 1980-2006, as well as eight in-depth country case studies, the authors argue that governments' choice of social pacts or legislation is less influenced by economic problems, but is strongly influenced by electoral competition. Social pacts will be attractive when party leaders perceive them to be helpful in reducing the potential electoral costs of economic adjustment and wage restraint policies. Alternatively, parties may forgo negotiations with social partners and seek to impose such policies unilaterally if they believe that approach will yield electoral gain or minimize electoral costs. By combining the separate literatures on political economy and party politics, the book sheds new light on the dynamics of social pacts in Western Europe. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, economics, political economy, European Studies and comparative politics.

Originally published in 1957, the first part of the book discusses the general problems of approach, classification, typology and terminology, and examines ancillary fields of study and the methods of teaching comparative government. Part Two is concerned with studies of particular areas, democratic control of foreign policy, political parties, contemporary revolutionary movements, parliamentary procedures, electoral systems and elections, and nationalized industries.

This book challenges conventional conceptions of politics which focus largely on the institutions of government and the associated struggles for power around them. It argues that politics is involved in all the activities of cooperation and conflict whereby people organize the use, production and distribution of human, natural and material resources. Found in all human groups, institutions and societies, politics everywhere influences and reflects the structures of power, social organization, culture and ideology. These central themes are illustrated by drawing on a wide range of societies, including the Kung hunter-gatherers, the pre-Columbian Aztecs and the Pastoral Maasai, as well as modern Britain and Third World societies from Chile to China. Other examples - of village communities, a typical university department and the World Bank - show how institutions may also be analyzed in terms of the definition of politics used here. It is equally central to the argument that many of the most critical problems occurring in societies can be attributed to their politics, and this theme is explored looking at such problems as poverty, famines, epidemics, violence and unemployment in Britain and throughout the world.

In a radical break with its past, democratic South Africa established a system of devolution that was confirmed in the 1996 Constitution. In reaction to a system of highly centralised government that had seen the abuse of power, spatial inequality and underdevelopment, Kenya has also opted for devolution. This system was embodied in the 2010 Constitution and implemented with the establishment of 47 counties after the general elections in March 2013. Devolution lies at the heart of Kenya's new constitutional dispensation and provides a means of addressing past injustices. The Kenyan Constitution largely copied the structure, approach and principles of provincial and local government from South Africa. Since the Kenyan system is still in the process of being fully implemented, Kenyan-South African dialogue on devolution compares the two systems with reference to their legal provisions. Comparing how the two systems have functioned is more difficult. However, the principal value of this comparison at this stage lies in the lessons that Kenya can learn from South Africa's 21 years of experience of devolution as Kenya proceeds with establishing its system: What routes to follow and what pitfalls to avoid. Kenyan-South African dialogue on devolution includes South African and Kenyan chapters on the reasons for devolution; the levels, number, size and character of devolution units; the demarcation of devolution units; political structures; powers and functions; finances; metropolitan governance; intergovernmental relations; marginalised groups; and transitional arrangements. This book is the first to discuss and compare the Kenyan and South African systems at length, and will be of value to other African countries that have embarked on devolution or decentralisation with the aim of curbing the centralised abuse of power and promoting political stability and development.

Given the recent focus on the challenges to representative democracy, and the search for new institutions and procedures that can help to channel increasing participation, this book offers empirical insights on alternative conceptions of democracy and the actors that promote them.

With a focus on the conceptions and practices of democracy within contemporary social movements in Europe, this volume contributes to the debate on the different dimensions of democracy, especially in its participative and deliberative forms. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of European Social Forums, gathering thousands of social movement organizations and tens of thousands of activists from all Europe, the book explores the transnational dimension of democracy and addresses a relevant, and little analyzed aspect of Europeanization: the Europeanization of social movements. From a methodological point of view, the research innovates by covering a group of individuals traditionally neglected in previous studies: social movement activists. Qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to research individual motivations as well as environmental dynamics. The various chapters combine analysis of the individuals attitudes and behavior with that of the organizational characteristics, procedures and practices of democracy.

Providing a cross-national comparison on the global justice movement, the theoretical challenges of the new wave of protest and offering rich empirical data on contemporary activism, this book will appeal to students and scholars of comparative politics, sociology, political sociology, social movement studies, as well as transnational relations.

Now in its fourth edition, this textbook gives a clear and concise account of the government and politics of democratic states, comprehensively updated with recent developments. It provides an ideal guide for undergraduate students who want to understand how and why democratic systems differ between countries and how they are changing in the modern world. It is written and structured in an easy to follow style, enabling students to gain a thorough understanding of the explanations behind complex ideas and theories. The 'Briefings' and 'Controversies' sections give life to the analyses with illustrations drawn from around the globe, whilst its 'Key Term' entries provide students with a route through the concepts of political science. The fourth edition has been fully revised to reflect recent changes in political attitudes and behaviour, voting, parties, party systems and ideologies. The final chapter addresses the future of democratic states facing with these changes and challenges, by examining democratic crisis, populism and post-democracy.

Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach have made a significant contribution to our contemporary understanding of global politics. This collection contains some of their classic essays and many unpublished articles which have been edited into a coherent and stimulating collection. Subjects covered include: Theory and method in global politics; The role of values and the postmodern challenge; The complex roles of actors in global politics 9/11 and its aftermath; and, The changing nature of war US unilateralism, hegemony and empire. A World of Polities will be essential reading for all advanced students and scholars in international relations.

This book deals with the theoretical and empirical questions of federalism in the context of five case studies: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland.

The central argument is that in the long run the political institutions of federalism adapt to achieve congruence with the underlying social structure. This change could be in the centralist direction reflecting ethno-linguistic homogeneity, or in decentralist terms corresponding to ethno-linguistic heterogeneity. In this context, the volume:

• fills a gap in the comparative federalism literature by analyzing the patterns of change and continuity in five federal systems of the industrial west, this is done by an in-depth empirical examination of the case studies through a single framework of analysis
• illustrates the shortcomings of new-institutionalist approaches in explaining change, highlighting the usefulness of society-based approaches in studying change and continuity in comparative politics.

Explaining Federalism will be of interest to students and scholars of federalism, comparative government, comparative institutional analysis and comparative public policy.

Population ageing and slower economic growth have raised serious questions about the willingness and ability of governments to maintain current social policies. Within this new reality, discussions on the future of public pensions have been predominant in political debates across Europe. This book explains why certain countries have been able to radically transform their pension system while others have simply altered parameters. To answer this question an extensive comparative analysis, including more than 60 interviews, was conducted in Belgium, France, Sweden and the UK. This empirical data provides an interesting contrast between reforms. Parametric reforms have stemmed from the creation of pension administrations outside the traditional state apparatus in France and Belgium and the resulting inclusion of social partners; while the state administrations of Sweden and the UK where debates have been internalised have led to programmatic reforms. Two controversial findings of this book include an explanation for the lack of influence on the part of the labour movement in the 1994/98 Swedish reform and a rejection of arguments claiming that policy change will be minimal with coalition governments. Finally the conclusion seeks to extend the applicability of the model to other industrialized countries. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of public policy, specifically social policy, political economy, the welfare state and comparative politics.

Why the world's most resilient dictatorships are products of violent revolution Revolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution-such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam-are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass discontent, and intense external pressure. Few other modern autocracies have survived in the face of such extreme challenges. Drawing on comparative historical analysis, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that radical efforts to transform the social and geopolitical order trigger intense counterrevolutionary conflict, which initially threatens regime survival, but ultimately fosters the unity and state-building that supports authoritarianism. Although most revolutionary governments begin weak, they challenge powerful domestic and foreign actors, often bringing about civil or external wars. These counterrevolutionary wars pose a threat that can destroy new regimes, as in the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia. Among regimes that survive, however, prolonged conflicts give rise to a cohesive ruling elite and a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus. This leads to the downfall of rival organizations and alternative centers of power, such as armies, churches, monarchies, and landowners, and helps to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest-three principal sources of authoritarian breakdown. Looking at a range of revolutionary and nonrevolutionary regimes from across the globe, Revolution and Dictatorship shows why governments that emerge from violent conflict endure.

The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism provides an international, intersectional, and interdisciplinary overview of, and approach to, Pan-Africanism, making an invaluable contribution to the ongoing evolution of Pan-Africanism and demonstrating its continued significance in the 21st century. The handbook features expert introductions to, and critical explorations of, the most important historic and current subjects, theories, and controversies of Pan-Africanism and the evolution of black internationalism. Pan-Africanism is explored and critically engaged from different disciplinary points of view, emphasizing the multiplicity of perspectives and foregrounding an intersectional approach. The contributors provide erudite discussions of black internationalism, black feminism, African feminism, and queer Pan-Africanism alongside surveys of black nationalism, black consciousness, and Caribbean Pan-Africanism. Chapters on neo-colonialism, decolonization, and Africanization give way to chapters on African social movements, the African Union, and the African Renaissance. Pan-African aesthetics are probed via literature and music, illustrating the black internationalist impulse in myriad continental and diasporan artists' work. Including 36 chapters by acclaimed established and emerging scholars, the handbook is organized into seven parts, each centered around a comprehensive theme: Intellectual origins, historical evolution, and radical politics of Pan-Africanism Pan-Africanist theories Pan-Africanism in the African diaspora Pan-Africanism in Africa Literary Pan-Africanism Musical Pan-Africanism The contemporary and continued relevance of Pan-Africanism in the 21st century The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism is an indispensable source for scholars and students with research interests in continental and diasporan African history, sociology, politics, economics, and aesthetics. It will also be a very valuable resource for those working in interdisciplinary fields, such as African studies, African American studies, Caribbean studies, decolonial studies, postcolonial studies, women and gender studies, and queer studies.

This comprehensive book brings together reflections, lessons and insights relating to the post Covid-19 era in Zimbabwe. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has immensely affected all facets of humanity globally. Its impact on Zimbabwe is evident through its effect on socio-economic and education systems, politics, religion, infrastructural development, and health delivery systems. This book provides scholarly introspections into the lessons drawn from the pandemic in an effort to re-imagine the future possibilities of public health in Zimbabwe and beyond. Providing a platform for research that seeks to re-think global public health matters from a Decolonial school of thought, the book asks questions such as: What is the role of religion, linguistics, communication, education, economics, politics, and science in preparing Zimbabwe for possible future pandemics? How can the lessons drawn from the pandemic inform scholars to re-imagine the future trajectories of the country in the various domains? How can researchers evaluate the power and economic dialectics of COVID-19, navigate the tumultuous challenges generated, and come up with appropriate systems for future pandemics? Offering a realistic picture of the post COVID-19 era in Zimbabwe, the book will be a key resource to students and researchers across the fields of political communication, science communication, decolonial discourse, language and culture, as well as African Studies more broadly.

Named one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2022 "An authoritative and intelligent portrait of the global spread of authoritarianism and its dangers...what sets [this] work apart from books like Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny and Michiko Kakutani's The Death of Truth is its unusually comprehensive armada of facts about the international drift over the past two decades toward authoritarian leaders, whether old-style dictators like Kim Jong Un or nominally elected presidents like Vladimir Putin." --Kirkus An urgent, thrilling, and original look at the future of democracy that illuminates one of the most important battles of our time: the future of freedom and how to contain and defeat the autocrats mushrooming around the world. In his bestselling book The End of Power, Moises Naim examined power-diluting forces. In The Revenge of Power, Naim turns to the trends, conditions, technologies and behaviors that are contributing to the concentration of power, and to the clash between those forces that weaken power and those that strengthen it. He concentrates on the three "P"s--populism, polarization, and post-truths. All of which are as old as time, but are combined by today's autocrats to undermine democratic life in new and frightening ways. Power has not changed. But the way people go about gaining it and using it has been transformed. The Revenge of Power is packed with alluring characters, riveting stories about power grabs and losses, and vivid examples of the tricks and tactics used by autocrats to counter the forces that are weakening their power. It connects the dots between global events and political tactics that, when taken together, show a profound and often stealthy transformation in power and politics worldwide. Using the best available data and insights taken from recent research in the social sciences, Naim reveals how, on close examination, the same set of strategies to consolidate power pop up again and again in places with vastly different political, economic, and social circumstances, and offers insights about what can be done to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail. The outcomes of these battles for power will determine if our future will be more autocratic or more democratic. Naim addresses the questions at the heart of the matter: Why is power concentrating in some places while in others it is fragmenting and degrading? And the big question: What is the future of freedom?

A History of Rwanda: From the Monarchy to Post-genocidal Justice provides a complete history of Rwanda, from the precolonial abanyiginya kingdom, through the German and Belgian colonial periods and subsequent independence, and then the devastating 1994 genocide and reconstruction, right up to the modern day. Based on extensive archival research, this book provides new insights and corrects many popular stereotypes about Rwanda, aiming to go beyond the polarized and heated debates focused on the genocide and the events that followed. Readers will get a clear and broad picture of Rwanda's history and the social and political contexts that have defined the county from the pre-colonial period onwards. Embedding Rwanda's history in the regional context, this book avoids simple moral judgements and instead shows where and when Rwanda differed from its neighbours and how the country's history fits into larger debates about colonialism, genocide, ethnicity, race and development. Offering a full and balanced exploration of Rwanda's rich and paradoxical history, this book will be an important read for researchers and students of African history, genocide studies, transitional justice, colonialism, and political and social anthropology.

"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture, geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the "natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck between state and society. There is a Western myth that political liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of "enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue. In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society: The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe's early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE, and Lagos's efforts to uproot corruption and institute government accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history, colonialism in the Pacific, India's caste system, Saudi Arabia's suffocating cage of norms, and the "Paper Leviathan" of many Latin American and African nations to show how countries can drift away from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to ruin.

A unique examination of the role architecture plays in the media-politico spectacle which plays out in today's mass media. Written by 14 influential academics, it draws on case studies from across timeframes and across nations including the US, UK, China, Eastern Europe, South Korea, Belgium and Austria. Illustrated with over 30 black and white illustrations

This book takes stock of Belgium's exceptional and - for some foreign observers -schizophrenic position in the political world and explains its idiosyncrasy to a non-Belgian audience. Offering a broad and comprehensive analysis of Belgian politics, the guiding questions throughout each of the chapters of this book are: Is Belgium a political enigma, and why? Along which axes is Belgium "exceptional" compared to other countries? And what insights does a comparative study of Belgian politics have to offer? The book therefore provides a critical assessment of how Belgian politics "stands out" internationally, both in good and bad ways - including consociationalism, federalism, democratic innovations, Euroscepticism, government formation, gender equality, among others - and which factors can explain Belgium's exceptional position. Based on cutting-edge research findings, the book will be of wide interest to scholars and students of Belgian politics, European Politics and Comparative politics. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

'A truly global perspective of the past. A fantastic achievement' Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Silk Roads 'Bright, expansive, and iconoclastic, this deliciously witty book has the potential to upset the applecart of "Western Civilisation" itself... Magnificent' Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb _________________ A radical new account of how the idea of the West has shaped our history, told through the stories of fourteen fascinating lives. We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread, leading through the centuries from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern West - a cultural genealogy that connects Plato to NATO. It is an idea often invoked in the speeches of politicians and the rhetoric of journalists, and which remains deeply embedded in popular culture. But what if it is wrong? In an epic sweep through the ages, prize-winning archaeologist and historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney charts the history of this idea - an idea of enormous political significance, but which is nonetheless factually incorrect and obscures the wondrous, rich diversity of our past. She reveals how this particular version of Western history was invented, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and why it is no longer ideologically fit for purpose today. Told through the lives of fourteen fascinating historical figures - including a formidable Roman matriarch, an unconventional Islamic scholar, an enslaved African American poetess and a British prime minister with Homeric aspirations - The West is a groundbreaking retelling of Western history and a powerful corrective to one of the greatest myths of all: Western Civilisation.

Narendra Modi has been a hundred years in the making, and this book provides the backstory. It begins with the creation of Hindu nationalism, moves on to the 1980 formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and ends with its first national administration, from 1998 to 2004. By revisiting these events, we can trace the Modi government's current dominance of Indian politics all the way back to its origins. Vinay Sitapati follows this journey through the entangled lives of the party's founding fathers: Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. Over their six-decade-long relationship, Vajpayee and Advani worked as a team, despite differences in personality and beliefs. Bound together by RSS discipline and shared ambition-for a Hinduised Indian polity- their partnership explains the nature of the BJP before Modi, and why it won power. In supporting roles are a colourful cast of characters, from the warden's wife who made room for Vajpayee in her family to the billionaire grandson of Pakistan's founder, who happened to be a major early BJP benefactor. Based on private papers, party documents, newspapers and over 200 interviews, this is a must-read for all those interested in the Hindu nationalist ideology that now rules India.