![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes > Constitution, government & the state
Now in its third edition, this is a bigger (more than 11,000 entries), updated version of the 1989 original covering the enormous kaleidoscope of changing political boundaries, names, and rulers of Africa. This exhaustive reference allows the user quickly to determine what happened in or to each country and when - changes of names, political systems, rulers, and so on. The term "state" is loosely defined to embrace, throughout the history of Africa, any area of land with recognized borders and evidence of a continuing governmental structure, almost always with a capital city. Entries give official name of country, dates during which it went by that name, location, capital, alternate names including cross-references to previous and later incarnations, and a list of rulers with dates of power when known. A new table details AIDS in the African states.
Civilization and Self-Government is the first systematic attempt to explicitly articulate the key elements of Carlo Cattaneo's pioneering attempt to advance freedom and self-government in nineteenth-century Europe. His public science combined two elements that constitute the two parts of this book: the study of incivilimento, and the art and science of self-governance. Cattaneo argued that people have to learn the arts of incivilimento before they can practice self-governance. Though a distinguishing feature of Italian political thought has been to stress the multiform nature of political rule, it was Cattaneo who first showed that it was possible, through a federal commercial republic, to harmonize and foster liberty, equality, and heterogeneity. Characteristically, he envisioned a federal commercial republic for Europe as well. Cattaneo's ideas recast, enrich, and broaden knowledge of the history of European thought beyond that generally available in English and French.This book reveals a strong affinity between Cattaneo's and Tocqueville's spirit and vision.
This book is one of the first in-depth and systematic studies on the functioning and aspiring federations of South Asia. It examines how federal dynamics in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are impinged on by the nature of their specific constitutions; their societal, political and cultural fabrics; composition of power elites and ruling classes; structures of political economy and market; electoral and party systems; mass media; and information technology. The authors offer a comparative, analytical, conceptual, and theoretical framework to understand patterns and trends as also experiences of and possibilities for federalism in South Asia. They highlight divergences and similarities, successes and key challenges, while indicating federalism's wider regional relevance in the discourse on democracy and governance. The book concludes that the multicultural character of these societies - beset with ethnic and regional conflicts, separatist and military undercurrents - makes federal political solutions the only viable route. Providing a wealth of material, this will deeply interest scholars, students and teachers of comparative politics, political science, federal studies, area studies as well as those interested in political structures and processes in South Asia.
This book explores the interplay between sovereignty, politics and law through different conceptualizations of sovereignty. Despite developments such as European integration, globalization, and state failure, sovereignty proves to be a resilient institution in contemporary international politics. This book investigates both the continuity and change of sovereignty through an examination of the different ways it is understood; sovereignty as an institution, as identity; as a (language) game; and as subjectivity. In this illuminating book, Aalberts examines sovereign statehood as a political-legal concept, an institutional product of modern international society, and seeks an interdisciplinary approach that combines international relations and international law. This book traces the consequences of this origin for the conceptualization of sovereign statehood in modern academic discourse, drawing on key jurisprudence and international treaties, and provides a new framework to consider the international significance of sovereignty. As an innovative approach to a critical institution, Constructing Sovereignty between Politics and Law will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, international relations theory and international law.
As religious polarisation in society deepens, political actors and policy-makers have begun to struggle with questions on the role of the dominant religion and how religion influences constitutional commitments and development. By focusing on Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Constitutions, Religion and Politics in Asia demonstrates how constitution-making and the operation of constitutional arrangements involving religion cannot be separated from the broader political dynamics of society. Although constitutions establish legal and political structures of government institutions and provide tools for rights protection, they do not operate in a vacuum divorced from the games of power and the political realities surrounding them. Here, Shah sets out how constitutions operate and evolve, and demonstrates how constitutional provisions can produce unintended consequences over time. A vital new source of scholarship for students and scholars of law and religion, and comparative constitutional law, and those interested in issues of constitutionalism and legal and political history in Asia.
First Amendment Freedoms: A Reference Handbook offers a comprehensive examination of the discourse on First Amendment freedom issues in an objective and unbiased manner and provides valuable data and documents to guide readers to further research on the subject. First Amendment Freedoms: A Reference Handbook provides a comprehensive, objective, and accessible source of critically important information on the First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly, and the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment. Geared for high school and college readers, it covers relevant historical events from the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to the array of Supreme Court cases that further defined the scope and limits of First Amendment freedoms. Composed of seven chapters, plus a glossary and index, the volume will present the background and history of the First Amendment; problems, controversies, and solutions; a perspectives chapter with nine original essay contributions; profiles of the leading actors and organizations involved in First Amendment politics; governmental data and excerpts of primary documents on the topic; and a resources chapter comprising an annotated list of the key books, scholarly journals, and nonprint sources on the topic. It closes with a detailed chronology of major events concerning First Amendment freedoms. Provides readers with a better understanding of the complexity of First Amendment freedoms and how those freedoms have clashed over time Discusses attempts to "solve" problems concerning the fundamental freedoms defined by the First Amendment and how those attempts have changed and expanded over time Arms readers with a detailed list and analysis of all of the major or "landmark" Supreme Court cases pertaining to each of the fundamental First Amendment freedoms Makes a comprehensive but objective review of more than 50 scholarly books on the topic
Interest groups form an important part of the development of political and social systems. This book goes beyond current literature in examining the survival and careers of such groups beyond their formation. The author introduces the concept of organizational form and develops a framework to describe and evaluate organisations, and uncover how they adapt to survive. Using example case studies from the UK, US and Australia, the book presents extensive historical analyses of specific groups, to better understand the organisation and position of such groups within their political system. It analyses how groups differentiate themselves from each other, how they develop differently and what impact this has on policy implementation and democratic legitimacy. The Organization of Political Interest Groups will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics, public representation, and public policy.
Justice in the U.S. is a sequel to Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision, and the second in a trilogy on human rights. The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution explicitly clarifies the personal political and civil rights of persons, and by court interpretation, the rights of corporations. Yet in the twentieth century, following World War II, most world leaders reached the conclusion that political and civil rights were not sufficient and they had to be supplemented with additional rights that would protect their citizens and create more robust societies. By the end of the century, most countries had amended their constitutions to include many other rights, notably those pertaining to social security, health care, housing, decent jobs, women, minorities, cultural and language rights, and environmental protections. This amounted to nothing less than a worldwide constitutional revolution, but it has gone largely unnoticed in the United States. In this volume, the authors compare the constitutional provisions of different nation-states and summarize some of the relevant United Nations' human rights declarations and treaties. To encourage US citizens to think critically about their Constitution in light of the constitutions of other states, the authors present a draft revision of the U.S. Constitution. Of course, revision of the Constitution must be a comprehensively a democratic process, and the authors wish to show how this process might begin.
This book examines how inter- and intra-party coalition-building affects governability in South Korea. Focusing on the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998-2003) as a case study in the failure of a government to turn electoral success into stable governability, or ability to implement reform policies, the book's research draws on two bodies of literature which, though focusing on the same dependent variable (cabinet or government stability), have rarely been used in tandem: coalition research on parliamentary systems and studies of divided government in presidential systems. Youngmi Kim argues that a weak institutionalization of the ruling party and the party-system accounts for political instability and inefficient governability in Korea and in doing so her study makes a number of key contributions to the field. Theoretically it proposes a framework which integrates a rationalist approach with one that acknowledges the role of political culture. It further enhances the understanding of factors affecting governability after coalition-building across regime types and aims to build on recent demands for broader cross-regime analysis of minority/divided government and of the determinants of governability. This has important comparative implications as coalition-building within (semi-) presidential systems has occurred in other post-authoritarian contexts. The book finally provides a new dataset which fills a gap in a field where Western cases constitute the main focus of research. The Politics of Coalition in Korea will be of interest to students and scholars of Korean studies, Korean politics, Asian studies and Asian politics. Youngmi Kim is Assistant Professor at the Departments of Public Policy, and International Relations and European Studies at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
In recent years the agenda of how to 'deal with the past' has become a central dimension of the quality of contemporary democracies. Many years after the process of authoritarian breakdown, consolidated democracies revisit the past either symbolically or to punish the elites associated with the previous authoritarian regimes. New factors, like international environment, conditionality, party cleavages, memory cycles and commemorations or politics of apologies, do sometimes bring the past back into the political arena. This book addresses such themes by dealing with two dimensions of authoritarian legacies in Southern European democracies: repressive institutions and human rights abuses. The thrust of this book is that we should view transitional justice as part of a broader 'politics of the past': an ongoing process in which elites and society under democratic rule revise the meaning of the past in terms of what they hope to achieve in the present. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.
For too long Belgium remained an unexplored terrain by comparative political scientists. Belgium's politics were best known through the writings of Arend Lijphart, who considered it a model case of consociationalism. Over the past ten to fifteen years, the analysis of consociationalism has been complemented by a more detailed coverage of Belgium's spectacular transformation process from a unitary into a federal state, moving rapidly now to disintegration. Likewise, several peculiar aspects of Belgian politics, such as the record fragmentation of its party system, have been covered in edited volumes or international journals. However, given the complexity of the Belgian configuration of political institutions and actors, any inclusion of particular aspects of the Belgian case in comparative work calls for an in depth and integrated understanding of the broader political system. This is the first book which provides such an analysis. It brings together a team of 19 political scientists and sociologists who aim to explain the dynamics and incentives of institutional change and seek to analyze the intricate interplay between the main institutional components of the Belgian body politic. The sociological, political and institutional determinants and the consequences of the "federalisation" process of Belgium is the central theme that links each of the individual chapters. This book will be essential reading for students who want to understand the politics of Belgium and for anyone with a strong interest in West European Politics, comparative politics and comparative federalism. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.
A New York Times bestseller, "The Dying Citizen is essential reading for any American who cares about the fate of our nation" (Mark R. Levin)Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the "citizen" is historically rare-and was among America's most valued ideals for over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns Victor Davis Hanson, American citizenship may soon vanish.In The Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the forces that led to this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class has made many Americans dependent on the federal government. Open borders have undermined allegiance to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our collective sense of self. And a top-heavy state has endangered personal liberty.With a new epilogue that assesses how the events of 2021 have further diminished the meaning of American citizenship, The Dying Citizen is a clarion call to rebuild our collective national identity.
The Constitutional History and Law of Sierra Leone (1961-1995) is a legal analysis of the complex interaction between constitutional norms and institutional and societal forces. Sierra Leone, a new Commonwealth state once regarded as a model of British parliamentary democracy in West Africa, offers both an extraordinary constitutional setting and a fertile source of material for legal analysis in that it has not escaped the wave of revolutionary change and constitutional instability that has swept the new Commonwealth after independence. In this book the author examines, from a comparative perspective, the complex interaction of constitutional standards and institutional and societal forces as a constraining influence on constitutional democracy in Sierra Leone. This book illustrates Sierra Leone's experience with one of constitutional law's most fundamental and enduring problems--the delicate relationship between its legal and political components.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has morphed in ways that would be unrecognizable to its founders. Its mission evolved from improving rail freight to building motor vehicle crossings, airports, office towers, and industrial parks and taking control of a failing commuter rail line. In its early years, the agency was often viewed with admiration; however as it drew up plans, negotiated to take control of airfields and marine terminals, and constructed large bridges and tunnels, the Port Authority became the object of less favorable attention. It was attacked as a “super-government” that must be reined in, while the mayors of New York and Newark argued that it should be broken up with its pieces given to local governments for their own use.Despite its criticisms and travails, for over half a century the Port Authority overcame hurdles that had frustrated other public and private efforts, built the world's longest suspension bridge, and took a leading role in creating an organization to reduce traffic delays in the New York-New Jersey region. How did the Port Authority achieve these successes? And what lessons does its history offer to other cities and regions in the United States and beyond? In a time when public agencies are often condemned as inefficient and corrupt, this history should provide some positive lessons for governmental officials and social reformers. In 2021, the Port Authority marked its 100th birthday. Its history reveals a struggle between the public and private sectors, the challenges of balancing democratic accountability and efficiency, and the tension between regional and local needs. From selected Port Authority successes and failures, Philip Mark Plotch and Jen Nelles produce a significant and engaging account of a powerful governmental entity that offers durable lessons on collaboration, leadership, and the challenge of overcoming complex political challenges in modern America.
The people of Scotland are set to make history in 2014. As the country's future governance continues to provoke debate and inspire opinion, Scotland's Future takes an impartial view of constitutional change and what it means for Scotland. Objective and professionally rigorous, it looks at the questions that must be asked and the realities that must be faced. The analysis supports no political agenda; it injects insight and reflection into every area including all the key macroeconomic and microeconomic themes and the future governance of Scotland.
The post-Cold War has witnessed enormous levels of western peacekeeping, peacemaking and reconstruction intervention in societies emerging from war. These western-led interventions are often called 'liberal peacebuilding' or 'liberal interventionism', or statebuilding, and have attracted considerable controversy. In this study, leading proponents and critics of the liberal peace and contemporary post-war reconstruction assess the role of the United States, European Union and other actors in the promotion of the liberal peace, and of peace more generally. Key issues, including transitional justice and the acceptance/rejection of the liberal peace in African states are also considered. The failings of the liberal peace (most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in other locations) have prompted a growing body of critical literature on the motivations, mechanics and consequences of the liberal peace. This volume brings together key protagonists from both sides of the debate to produce a cutting edge, state of the art discussion of one the main trends in contemporary international relations. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Society.
Although Indonesia is generally considered to be a Muslim state, and is indeed the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, it has a sizeable Christian minority as a legacy of Dutch colonialism, with Christians often occupying relatively high social positions. This book examines the management of religion in Indonesia. It discusses how Christianity has developed in Indonesia, how the state, though Muslim in outlook and culture, is nevertheless formally secular, and how the principal Christian church, the Java Christian Church, has adapted its practices to fit local circumstances. It examines religious violence and charts the evolution of the state's religious policies, analysing in particular the impact of the 1974 Marriage Law showing how it enabled extensive state regulation, but how in practice, rather than reinforcing religious divisions, inter-religious marriage, involving the conversion of one party, is widespread. Overall, the book shows how Indonesia is developing its own brand of secularism, neither a full-blooded Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, nor an outright secular state like Turkey.
Politicians are reviled. From jokes on late-night TV talk shows to radio show rants and from public opinion polls to ubiquitous conventional wisdom-politicians are among the most despised professional class in modern society. Drawing on seminal work in political science, Stephen K. Medvic convincingly argues to the masses that this blanket condemnation of politicians is both unfair and unwarranted. While some individual politicians certainly deserve scorn for misjudgments, moral failings, or even criminal acts, the assumption that all of them should be cast in a similar light is unjustified. More importantly, that deeply cynical assumption is dangerous to the legitimacy of a democratic system of government. Politicians, as a class, deserve respect, not out of blind obedience to authority but because democratic deliberation requires it. Medvic explains how cognitive biases in the way people reason often lead us to draw unjustified conclusions of politicians in general based on the malfeasance of some. Scandals involving politicians are likely to be remembered and to serve as "evidence" of the belief that "they all do it." Most politicians, in fact, care deeply about their cities, states, and nation. But they face a trap of unrealistic and contradictory expectations from the public about how politicians should behave. Medvic, in turn, demonstrates the necessity of ambition, the utility of politics for resolving conflicts peacefully, and the value of ideology in framing political choices. In the end, citizens must learn to tolerate the inherent messiness of politics as the only viable alternative to violent conflict. In the process, we must embrace our role in the political system as well.
How did the federal government change from the weak apparatus of the antebellum period to the large, administrative state of the Progressive Era? To Enlarge the Machinery of Government explores the daily proceedings of the U.S. House and Senate from 1858 to 1891 to find answers to this question. Through close readings of debates centered around sponsorship, supervision, and standardization recorded in the Congressional Globe and Congressional Record during this period, Williamjames Hull Hoffer traces a critical shift in ideas that ultimately ushered in Progressive legislation: the willingness of American citizens to allow, and in fact ask for, federal intervention in their daily lives. He describes this era of congressional thought as a "second state," distinct from both the minimalist approaches that came before and the Progressive state building that developed later. The "second state" era, Hoffer contends, offers valuable insight into how conceptions of American uniqueness contributed to the shape of the federal government.
First published in 2006. Feudalism is normally associated with eighteenth-century France only in its more bizarre survivals, as in The Marriage of Figaro, when his seigneur claims the rights to spend the first night with the bride. If feudalism menat no more in the eighteenth century than a few quaint customs that could tickle an audence at the Comedie Francaise, why did French writers attack it so furiously? The author suggests that contemporary writers saw remnants of the feudal regime as important less in themselves, than as symbols of an attitude of mind which the 'enlightened' among them would no longer tolerate. Instead of representing the ideas of the eighteenth century through the eyes of a few outstanding writers, Dr Mackrell has tried to reconstitute the intellectual climate of the ancien regime from the works of largely unknown historians, jurists, economists and others. In this way he illuminates the rich texture of eighteenth-century French thought, without which the ideas of Voltaire, Montesquieu and even Rousseau lose much of their meaning. This study breathes life into the fierce controversies that shook the Age of Reason long before the outbreak of Revolution.
'Old Oligarch' is a label often applied to the unknown author of the Athenian Constitution preserved with the works of Xenophon. Probably written in the mid 420's B.C., it is the earliest surviving Athenian prose text, and its author was probably a young pupil of the teachers known as sophists. It is an essay which replies to oligarchic criticisms of the Athenian democracy by agreeing with the critics that democracy is distasteful but arguing that it is appropriate for Athens as a city whose power depends on the poorer citizens who row the navy's ships, and that it is successful and could not easily be overthrown. This edition provides a Greek text and English translation, with Introduction, Commentary and Appendixes which discuss the date, authorship and character of the work, the historical background, the statements and arguments presented by the author and features of the author's style.
This book studies the role of the EU in peace and security as a regional actor with global aspirations, in the context of challenged and changing multilateralism. Multilateralism, governance and security are three concepts that have attracted a great deal of attention in the past decade and attempts to redefine them have produced lively conceptual debates. More recently, different strands of the literature have found common ground in the investigation of the EU s role in what has been labelled multilateral security governance . Despite being frequently used, the term is yet to be fully clarified, and empirically explored. To contribute further our understanding of it, this book presents a conceptual and empirical exploration of multilateral security governance and the EU s role in it. Expert contributors in the field analyze both traditional and non-traditional security areas, to investigate if and how multilateral security governance functions, and how the EU contributes (or fails to contribute) to the functioning of multilateral governance. The EU and Multilateral Security Governance will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of EU politics, security studies and governance.
At the end of an industrious political career in conflictriven Italy, the Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli composed his masterpiece The Prince, a classic study of power and politics, and a manual of ruthlessness for any ambitious ruler. Controversial in his own time, The Prince made Machiavelli's name a byword for manipulative scheming, and had an impact on such major figures as Napoleon and Frederick the Great. It contains principles as true today as when they were first written almost five centuries ago.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, property rights law is an especially potent source of instability. As the worldwide post-Cold War era trend toward state-run property rights expansion clashes with longstanding customs and what many would consider bureaucratic incapacity, conflicts are inevitable. Many advocates from NGOs have argued that the region's manifold governance problems stem at least in part from the state's inability to enforce property rights. Instead, 'private' property rights regimes, largely independent of the state, have flourished. In recent years, there has, in fact, been a concerted effort to create stronger property rights laws, and in Where There is No Government, Sandra Joireman traces how this has played out in Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya. The problem is that while new, better laws might now be on the books, they effectively do not exist if they are not enforced-a fact that causes major problems for development. Those who possess land cannot legally prove it's theirs, and those who are often culturally prohibited from owning property, like women and migrants, have trouble exercising their legal rights to property. While there are those who may argue that African understandings of property law are relatively efficient and adaptable because they have evolved organically, Joireman contends that this view discounts one very likely possibility-that such systems are in fact predatory and favor elites. Operating from this assumption, she employs a series of novel measures to determine which types of property regimes promote social welfare and which hinder it. She concludes that while the sub-Saharan states usually have a monopoly over the use of force, they typically do not have control over property law. Bowing to customary understandings of property, they have largely ceded it to private actors (many of whom are criminal). If Africa is to develop in a manner that promotes broad social well being, a legalistic approach is inadequate-changes in statutes and laws are not enough. State institutions must be able and willing to enforce property rights if development is to occur. Where There is No Government is at once an authoritative and powerful account of this central dilemma in Africa, and a prescription for addressing it. |
You may like...
A Practical Guide To Labour Law
J.V. Du Plessis, M.A. Fouche
Paperback
R1,347
Discovery Miles 13 470
Occupationally-Directed Education…
Marius Meyer, Mark Orpen, …
Paperback
R1,086
Discovery Miles 10 860
German Employment Law - 618 Questions…
Nicole Elert, Christopher T Brooks
Hardcover
R2,783
Discovery Miles 27 830
A Research Agenda for the Gig Economy…
Valerio De Stefano, Ilda Durri, …
Hardcover
R3,410
Discovery Miles 34 100
The Balance Gap - Working Mothers and…
Sarah Cote Hampson
Hardcover
Law for Business Students
Alix Adams, Stephanie Caplan, …
Paperback
|