To understand fully the process of European integration, it is necessary to consider developments at the sub-national and local level. EU integration scholars have been examining the local level using the concept of multi-level governance (MLG) since the 1990s. While MLG was the first concept to scrutinize the position of local levels of public administration and other actors within the EU polity, it overestimates the degree of influence it ascribes to local levels, particularly as far as the rural is concerned. Focusing on Germany and Finland, with country specific information from all EU member states, this book combines MLG with the concept of structural constructivism, in order to reveal some of the hidden aspects of EU integration. Bringing together these concepts and methodologies and replacing mainstream theories of integration with this new approach, offers a more accurate picture of multi-level interaction in rural policy and of the impacts of European integration at the local level. By examining the Community Initiative LEADER+ and setting this within a discussion of the state and structure of rural development policy, this book looks at the challenges, opportunities and policy options which are available and have been implemented in rural development. It shows that these are often context dependent and that the future of rural development policies, their shape and institutional configuration depend on reforms put in place at all levels of governance. Finally, it argues that the MLG of rural development policy must be built with people who have the know-how and the (local) knowledge to implement development projects and who have made LEADER a success in the past.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the question remains 'Do good fences still make good neighbours'? Since the Great Wall of China, the Antonine Wall, built in Scotland to support Hadrian's Wall, the Roman 'Limes' or the Danevirk fence, the 'wall' has been a constant in the protection of defined entities claiming sovereignty, East and West. But is the wall more than an historical relict for the management of borders? In recent years, the wall has been given renewed vigour in North America, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Israel-Palestine. But the success of these new walls in the development of friendly and orderly relations between nations (or indeed, within nations) remains unclear. What role does the wall play in the development of security and insecurity? Do walls contribute to a sense of insecurity as much as they assuage fears and create a sense of security for those 'behind the line'? Exactly what kind of security is associated with border walls? This book explores the issue of how the return of the border fences and walls as a political tool may be symptomatic of a new era in border studies and international relations. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this volume examines problems that include security issues ; the recurrence and/or decline of the wall; wall discourses ; legal approaches to the wall; the 'wall industry' and border technology, as well as their symbolism, role, objectives and efficiency.

Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2019 'Anyone who wishes to understand why Brexit is so intractable should read this book. I can think of several MPs who ought to.' The Times For the past two decades, you could cross the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic half a dozen times without noticing or, indeed, turning off the road you were travelling. It cuts through fields, winds back-and-forth across roads, and wends from Carlingford Lough to Lough Foyle. It is frictionless - a feat sealed by the Good Friday Agreement. Before that, watchtowers loomed over border communities, military checkpoints dotted the roads, and smugglers slipped between jurisdictions. This is a past that most are happy to have left behind but might it also be the future? The border has been a topic of dispute for over a century, first in Dublin, Belfast and Westminster and, post Brexit referendum, in Brussels. Yet, despite the passions of Nationalists and Unionists in the North, neither found deep wells of support in the countries they identified with politically. British political leaders were often ignorant of the conflict's complexities, rarely visited the border, and privately disliked their erstwhile unionist allies. Southern leaders' anti-partition statements masked relative indifference and unofficial cooperation with British security services. From the 1920 Government of Ireland Act that created the border, the Treaty and its aftermath, through the Civil Rights Movement, Thatcher, the Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement up to the Brexit negotiations, Ferriter reveals the political, economic, social and cultural consequences of the border in Ireland. With the fate of the border uncertain, The Border is a timely intervention by a renowned historian into one of the most contentious and misunderstood political issues of our time.

European-East Asian Borders is an international, trans-disciplinary volume that breaks new ground in the study of borders and bordering practices in global politics. It explores the insights and limitations of border theory developed primarily in the European context to a range of historical and contemporary border-related issues and phenomena in East Asia. The essays presented here question, rather than assume, the various borders between inclusion/exclusion, here/there, us/them, that condition the (im)possibility of translating between histories, cultures and identities. Contributors suggest that the act of translation offers new ways of thinking about how border logics operate, taking on the concept of translation itself as border problematic and therefore raising questions of power and authority, such as who gets to act as a translator, or who benefits from the outcome. The book will appeal not only to upper-level students and scholars with a geopolitical-historical interest in East Asia, but also to those who work in the inter-disciplinary field of border studies and others with an interest more generally in translation and the extent to which theory 'travels' across time and space.

This powerful book provides a nuanced comparison of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle as they thought, spoke, and acted through two world wars and the subsequent Cold War. Will Morrisey frames geopolitics as the realm of necessity, and his book will help those who want to learn the art of statesmanship from two of its most accomplished practitioners. Morrisey credits their success in defending political liberty to their ability to frame successful geopolitical strategies. As leaders in and out of power, they defended their countries against the rising superpowers of the twentieth century: the tyrannies of Germany and the Soviet Union, but also, in a different way, the challenge of America's rise to worldwide stature and eventual dominance. Along with these similarities, there were two crucial differences: Churchill stood at the head of a maritime nation while de Gaulle led a land power situated on the dangerous northern European plain; Churchill enjoyed a stable political foundation and concentrated his attention on its defense while de Gaulle needed first to build such a foundation, even as he defended ill-founded regimes. Both leaders understood their supreme task to be the protection of their citizens as civil or political beings who should not be subject to tyranny. Although geopolitics focuses the attention of statesmen on political realities, Churchill and de Gaulle showed how moral principle and prudence can continue to widen the scope of human liberty. Although the world is vastly different today, this nuanced book shows how thinking along with these giants of the twentieth century as they responded to the crises of their own time will make us more thoughtful citizens now and in the future.

There is now emerging across the world a group of scholars whose work crosses the conventional disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences. Their model combines the breadth of vision of the classical political economy with analytical advances of modern social science. This innovative two volume collection brings together the key papers that comprise the new political economy of globalisation, identifying a competing range of concepts and theories. It will prove an invaluable source of reference to students and researchers alike.

In A Theory of Ecological Justice, Baxter argues for ecological justice - that is, for treating species besides homo sapiens as having a claim in justice to a share of the Earth's resources. It explores the nature of justice claims as applied to organisms of various degrees of complexity and describes the institutional arrangements necessary to integrate the claims of ecological justice into human decision-making.

The global geopolitics of sport is being transformed in and by East Asia. Sport in recent decades has been avidly embraced by East Asian nations, with implications both for their image on the international stage and their domestic national identities. The three post-war East Asian Olympic Games, the 'glittering' Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 and the march of Asia into the global sport market illustrate the fact that a new global sports order has emerged. This collection uniquely discerns the 'tectonic' shift of global power in the geopolitical, economic, cultural and social dynamics of sport from West to East. It also reveals 'that the global empire of commerce' is similarly shifting eastwards. The chapters, written by leading authorities on East Asia, widens the focus, advances the knowledge and sharpens the appreciation of both global sport and regional current transformation in the making and, in doing so, contributes to an understanding of profound changes in global sport. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The Gulf is a major global destination for migrant workers, with a majority of these workers coming from South Asia. In this book, a team of international contributors examine the often-overlooked complex governance of this migration corridor. Going beyond state-centric analysis, the contributors present a multi-layered account of the 'migration governance complex.' They offer insights not only into the actors involved in the different components of migration governance, but also into the varying ways of interpreting and explaining the meaning and value of these interactions. Together, they enable readers to better understand migration in this important region, while also providing a model for analyzing global migration governance in practice in different parts of the world.

Reflecting the revival of interest in a social theory that takes place and space seriously, this book focuses on geographical place in the practice of social science and history. There is significant interest among scholars from a range of disciplines in bringing together the geographical and sociological 'imaginations'. The geographical imagination is a concrete and descriptive one, concerned with determining the nature of places, and classifying them and the links between them. The sociological imagination aspires to explanation of human activities in terms of abstract social processes. The chapters in this book focus on both the intellectual histories of the concept of place and on its empirical uses. They show that place is as important for understanding contemporary America as it is for 18th-century Sri Lanka. They also show how the concept can provide insight into 'old' problems such as the nature of social life in Renaissance Florence and Venice. The editors are leading exponents of the view of place as a concept that can 'mediate' the geographical and sociological imaginations.

The transformation from traditional war between nation-states to conflict between nation-states and nonstate actors requires decision makers, policy analysts, military commanders, intelligence officials, and legislators to answer the question: is there a strategy for an unwinnable conflict? This question takes on particular urgency given the extraordinary number of conflict points that define the current state of international relations. Modern Geopolitics and Security: Strategies for Unwinnable Conflicts draws on the author's extensive experience in counterterrorism, negotiation, and the implementation of the Oslo Peace Process with his more recent work in academia. The book uses an interdisciplinary case study model to illustrate valuable lessons learned and best practices in strategic analysis and decision making that are based on international relations, international law, and negotiation/intervention. The book defines sovereignty, intervention, geopolitics, security, and what they mean in a global landscape. It examines historical examples of global crises and security concerns as well as contemporary geopolitical issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, intervention in Libya, non-intervention in Syria, the Good Friday Agreement, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the Arab Spring. We are entering a new era, where disaffected individuals who are willing and able to act, have more power and potential influence than ever before. Conflicts like those occurring in Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere are all complex organisms-nuanced as never before. Add in increasing regional asymmetrical conflicts, increasing global economic strain, social media and the accelerating speed of communication, ideological and regional state versus nonstate conflicts-such as in the case of al-Qaeda and other such movements-and traditional "business as usual" geopolitics is being somewhat turned on its head. Modern Geopolitics and Security addresses topics that aren't currently covered anywhere-establishing a new paradigm to rethink modern geopolitics, given new and emerging challenges to traditional schools of thought. View an article by Amos N. Guiora that recently appeared in the The New York Times..

Drawing on scholarly and life experience on, and over, the historically posited borders between "West" and "East," the work identifies, interrogates, and challenges a particular, enduring, violent inheritance - what it means to cross over a border - from the classical origins of Western political thought. The study has two parts. The first is an effort to work within the Western tradition to demonstrate its foundational and enduring, violent conception of crossing over borders. The second is a creative effort to explore and encourage a fundamentally different outlook towards borders and what it means to be on, at, or over them. The underlying social theoretical disposition of the work is a form of post-Orientalist hermeneutics; the textual subject matter of the two parts of the study is linked using Walter Benjamin's concept of the storyteller. The underlying premise of the work is that the sense of violent possibility on the borders between "West" and "East" existed well before the more recent "age of imperialism" and even before there was a "West" or an "East" to speak of. That sense is constitutive of a political imagination about borders developed deep within the revered sources of Western culture. On the other hand, confronting the influence of such violent imaginaries requires truly novel modes of hermeneutical openness, hospitality and solidarity. Seeking to offer a new understanding and opening in the study of borders, this work will provide a significant contribution to several areas including international relations theory, border studies and political theory.

Examining international water allocation policies in different parts of the world, this book suggests that they can be used as a platform to induce cooperation over larger political issues, ultimately settling conflicts. The main premise is that water can and should be used as a catalyst for peace and cooperation rather than conflict. Evidence is provided to support this claim through detailed case studies from the Middle East and the Lesotho Highlands in Africa. These international cases - including bilateral water treaties and their development and formation process and aftermath - are analyzed to draw conclusions about the outcomes as well as the processes by which these outcomes are achieved. It is demonstrated that the perception of a particular treaty as being equitable and fair is mainly shaped by the negotiation process used to reach certain outcomes, rather than being determined mechanistically by the quantitative allocation of water to each party. The processes and perceptions leading to international water conflict resolutions are emphasized as key issues in advancing cooperation and robust implementation of international water treaties. The key messages of the book are therefore relevant to the geo-political and hydro-political aspects of water resources in the context of bilateral and multilateral conflicts, and the trans-boundary management of water resources, which contributes insights to political ecology, geo-politics, and environmental policy.

The European Union (EU) is often portrayed as sacrificing national diversity for European unity. This book explores the alternative of a flexible EU based on differentiated rather than uniform integration. The authors combine normative theory with empirical research on political party actors to assess the desirability and political acceptability of differentiated integration as a means of accommodating heterogeneity in the EU. They examine the circumstances and institutional design needed for flexibility to promote rather than undermine fairness and democracy within and between member states. Clear, balanced, and accessible, the book provides fresh thinking on the future of the EU.

This book investigates US foreign policy and tests the hypothesis that transition-inspired democracy promotion will successfully establish liberal democracy around the world, and thus fulfil the aims of the American mission and its application of the democratic peace. It features two detailed case studies exploring political liberalization in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and suggests that the conclusions are applicable to other cases by highlighting the US mission in Iraq. The author critically examines US foreign policy in a theoretical and historical context, focusing on the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) democracy assistance. It demonstrates that if liberal democracy is the end-goal of USAID's strategy then the theoretical and practical limitations of transition-inspired assistance will impede the attainment of this goal. In examining US democracy promotion in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq during the Clinton and Bush administrations, the book concludes by considering its future during the Obama administration. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, US Foreign Policy and Democratization Studies. A video of a panel discussing Matthew Hill's book and associated topics in more detail can be found here: http://www.sas.ac.uk/videos-and-podcasts/politics-development-human-rights/old-wine-new-bottle-democratisation-lessons-af

In the context of COVID-19, the production and governance of urban space has experienced a rapid digitalization and datafication, creating new challenges for citizenship. The urban realm is not only the environment where a new standard for digital development is set but also the realm from which rescaling nation-states are pervasively emerging. Emerging Digital Citizenship Regimes: Postpandemic Technopolitical Democracies explores the roles played by digital citizenship in the context of changing geographies of the nation-state in Europe in the aftermath of the global pandemic; and reframes the concept of digital citizenship amid the rescaling of nation-states in Europe by connecting it to the increasing digitalisation of urban environment as a corollary of pandemic. By theorising the concept of citizenship in the digital age through the lens of the evolutionary character of its classical concept or by drawing upon the narratives regarding the democratising potential and risks of the Internet, Emerging Digital Citizenship Regimes explores the complex interaction of social and political variables shaping offline and online civic practices and their intertwined relation to the urban environment, analysing the way it is produced and governed in the COVID-19 new context.

Many emerging market countries are bank-based economies and are increasingly affected by geopolitical risks, U.S. dollar dynamics, regulations, preferential trade agreements (PTAs), MNCs (that often function like international organizations), social networks, labor dynamics, cross-border spillovers and the inefficient expansion of formal/informal microfinance. Country risks, informal economies (that account for 20-50 percent of the national economy of many emerging market countries), investor protection, enforcement commitment, compliance costs, sustainability (environmental, social, economic and political sustainability), economic growth, political stability, financial stability, geopolitical risk, social networks, household economics, inequality and international trade outcomes can vary dramatically across many DECs and LDECs due to these phenomena. The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the many problems inherent in political systems, economic policy and governments' emergency powers during pandemics/epidemics and economic/financial crisis. This second volume focuses on geopolitical risks that are intertwined with constitutional political economy and labor issues, alongside addressing some of the financial and constitutional crises that occurred in Europe, Asia and the U.S. during 2007-2020. This book provides analysis of complex systems and the preferences and reasoning of state/government and corporate actors in order to develop better artificial intelligence and decision-system models of geopolitical risk, public policy and international capital flows, all of which are increasingly important decision factors for investment managers, boards-of-directors and government officials.

In this enlightening analysis, Julia Gurol unpicks the complex security relations between the European Union (EU) and China. She investigates the principles, rationales and shifting dynamics of collaboration on a range of security issues, and their consequences for China, the EU and other regions. She pays particular attention to EU-China relations in the realm of anti-terrorism, anti-piracy and energy security, and disentangles their cooperation efforts in the context of increasing political and economic tensions. Systematic and accessible, this is an essential guide to the past, present and future of one of the world's most important, yet most complicated, security relationships.

One of the most remarkable stories of immigration in the last half century is that of Indians to the United States. People of Indian origin make up a little over one percent of the American population now, up from barely half a percent at the turn of the millennium. Not only has its recent growth been extraordinary, but this population from a developing nation with low human capital is now the most-educated and highest-income group in the worlds most advanced nation. The Other One Percent is a careful, data-driven, and comprehensive account of the three core processesselection, assimilation, and entrepreneurshipthat have led to this rapid rise. This unique phenomenon is driven byand, in turn, has influencedwide-ranging changes, especially the ongoing revolution in information technology and its impact on economic globalization, immigration policies in the U.S., higher education policies in India, and foreign policies of both nations. If the overall picture is one of economic success, the details reveal the critical issues faced by the immigrants stemming from the social, linguistic, and class structure in India, the professional and geographic distribution in the U.S., the simultaneous expressions of pan-Indian and regional identities and simultaneous leadership in high-skill industries (like computers and medicine) and low-skill industries (like hospitality and retail trade), and the multi-generational challenges of a diverse group from the worlds largest democracy fitting into its oldest.

Over the last few years Asian governments have taken a stronger approach to the Arctic, culminating with permanent-observer status to the Arctic Council for China, India, Japan, Singapore and South-Korea in May 2013. This groundbreaking book brings together the latest research in emerging Asian interests for the Arctic region, and the implications thereof this change has for the future.This book covers Arctic shipping, fisheries and mineral extraction. It analyzes key Asian countries' policies, positions and activities. The book also demonstrates that there are common aspects which attract Asian countries to the Arctic, such as a concern for climate change, but there are also important national differences. From the Arctic Council to UNCLOS, Arctic governance mechanisms are thoroughly presented and analyzed.Contributed by scholars from both Asia - China, India, Japan, Singapore and South-Korea - as well as Arctic countries - Norway and USA, this book is an essential source of reference for both academics and government professionals, as well for the readers keen on understanding the dynamic change in the Arctic region.

Addressing and conceptualizing the changing character of borders in contemporary Europe, this book examines developments occurring in the light of European integration processes and an on-going tightening of Europe's external borders. Moreover, the book suggests new ways of investigating the nature of European borders by looking at border practices in the light of the mobility turn, and thus as dynamic, multiple, diverse and best expressed in everyday experiences of people living at and with borders, rather than focusing on static territorial divisions between states and regions at geopolitical level. It provides border scholars and researchers as well as policymakers with new empirical and theoretical evidence on the de- and re-bordering processes going on in diverse border regions in Europe, both within and outside of the EU.

Future War and the Defence of Europe offers a major new analysis of how peace and security can be maintained in Europe: a continent that has suffered two cataclysmic conflicts since 1914. Taking as its starting point the COVID-19 pandemic and way it will inevitably accelerate some key global dynamics already in play, the book goes on to weave history, strategy, policy, and technology into a compelling analytical narrative. It lays out in forensic detail the scale of the challenge Europeans and their allies face if Europe's peace is to be upheld in a transformative century. The book upends foundational assumptions about how Europe's defence is organised, the role of a fast-changing transatlantic relationship, NATO, the EU, and their constituent nation-states. At the heart of the book is a radical vision of a technology-enabling future European defence, built around a new kind of Atlantic Alliance, an innovative strategic public-private partnership, and the future hyper-electronic European force, E-Force, it must spawn. Europeans should be under no illusion: unless they do far more for their own defence, and very differently, all that they now take for granted could be lost in the maze of hybrid war, cyber war, and hyper war they must face.

Developing an original theoretical approach to understanding the roots of regional conflict and cooperation, International Relations in the Middle East explores domestic and international foreign policy dynamics for an accessible insight into how and why Middle Eastern regional order has changed over time. Highlighting interactions between foreign policy trajectories in a range of states including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, Ewan Stein identifies two main drivers of foreign policy and alignments: competitive support-seeking and ideological externalisation. Clearly linking political, ideological and foreign policy dynamics, Stein demonstrates how the sources of regional antagonisms and solidarities are to be found not in the geopolitical chessboard, but in the hegemonic strategies of the region's pivotal powers. Making the case for historical sociology - in particular the work of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser - as the most powerful lens through which to understand regional politics in the Middle East, with wider implications for the study of regional order elsewhere.