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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Embargos & sanctions
When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm
both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious
injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic
climate change, advocates for an international climate policy
development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing
contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes
justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global
climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it
remains an onerous challenge for policymakers.
Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295806570 Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were tasked with governing Xinjiang. This region, inhabited by Uighurs, Kazaks, Hui, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Tajiks, is also the last significant "colony" of the former Qing empire to remain under continuous Chinese rule throughout the twentieth century. By foregrounding the responses of Chinese and other imperial elites to the growing threat of national determination across Eurasia, Justin Jacobs argues for a reconceptualization of the modern Chinese state as a "national empire." He shows how strategies for administering this region in the late Qing, Republican, and Communist eras were molded by, and shaped in response to, the rival platforms of ethnic difference characterized by Soviet and other geopolitical competitors across Inner and East Asia. This riveting narrative tracks Xinjiang political history through the Bolshevik revolution, the warlord years, Chinese civil war, and the large-scale Han immigration in the People's Republic of China, as well as the efforts of the exiled Xinjiang government in Taiwan after 1949 to claim the loyalty of Xinjiang refugees.
The EU is many things: a civilization ideal to emulate, an anchor of geopolitical stabilization, a generous donor and a historical lesson on cooperation across nations. A fixer of national governance problems, however, it is not. In this book, Mungiu-Pippidi investigates the efficacy of the European Union's promotion of good governance through its funding and conditionalities both within EU proper and in the developing world. The evidence assembled shows that the idea of European power to transform the quality of governance is largely a myth. From Greece to Egypt and from Kosovo to Turkey, EU interventions in favour of good governance and anti-corruption policy have failed so far to trigger the domestic political dynamic needed to ensure sustainable change. Mungiu-Pippidi explores how we can better bridge the gap between the Europe of treaties and the reality of governance in Europe and beyond. This book will interest students and scholars of comparative politics, European politics, and development studies, particularly those examining governance and corruption.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has been marginalized at the edge of a Western-dominated political and economic system. In recent years, however, leading Russian figures, including former president Vladimir Putin, have begun to stress a geopolitics that puts Russia at the center of a number of axes: European-Asian, Christian-Muslim-Buddhist, Mediterranean-Indian, Slavic-Turkic, and so on. This volume examines the political presuppositions and expanding intellectual impact of Eurasianism, a movement promoting an ideology of Russian-Asian greatness, which has begun to take hold throughout Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. Eurasianism purports to tell Russians what is unalterably important about them and why it can only be expressed in an empire. Using a wide range of sources, Marlene Laruelle discusses the impact of the ideology of Eurasianism on geopolitics, interior policy, foreign policy, and culturalist philosophy.
The European Union is a political order of peculiar stamp and continental scope, its polity of 446 million the third largest on the planet, though with famously little purchase on the conduct of its representatives. Sixty years after the founding treaty, what sort of structure has crystallised, and does the promise of ever closer union still obtain? Against the self-image of the bloc, Perry Anderson poses the historical record of its assembly. He traces the wider arc of European history, from First World War to Eurozone crisis, the hegemony of Versailles to that of Maastricht, and casts the work of the EU's leading contemporary analysts - both independent critics and court philosophers - in older traditions of political thought. Are there likenesses to the age of Metternich, lessons in statecraft from that of Machiavelli? An excursus on the UK's jarring departure from the Union considers the responses it has met with inside the country's intelligentsia, from the contrite to the incandescent. How do Brussels and Westminster compare as constitutional forms? Differently put, which could be said to be worse?
What configuration of institutions and policies is most conducive to human flourishing? The historical and comparative evidence suggests that the answer is social democratic capitalism - a democratic political system, a capitalist economy, good elementary and secondary schooling, a big welfare state, pro-employment public services, and moderate regulation of product and labor markets. In Social Democratic Capitalism, Lane Kenworthy shows that this system improves living standards for the least well-off, enhances economic security, and boosts equality of opportunity. And it does so without sacrificing other things we want in a good society, from liberty to economic growth to health and happiness. Its chief practitioners have been the Nordic nations. The Nordics have gone farther than other rich democratic countries in coupling a big welfare state with public services that promote high employment and modest product- and labor-market regulations. Many believe this system isn't transferable beyond Scandinavia, but Kenworthy shows that social democratic capitalism and its successes can be replicated in other affluent nations, including the United States. Today, the U.S. lags behind other countries in economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity. If the U.S. were to expand its existing social programs and add some additional ones, many ordinary Americans would have better lives. Kenworthy argues that, despite formidable political obstacles, the U.S. is likely to move toward social democratic capitalism in coming decades. As a country gets richer, he explains, it becomes more willing to spend more in order to safeguard against risk and enhance fairness. With social democratic capitalism as his blueprint, he lays out a detailed policy agenda that could alleviate many of America's problems.
Is the process of state building a unilateral, national venture, or is it something more collaborative, taking place in the interstices between adjoining countries? To answer this question, Asymmetrical Neighbors takes a comparative look at the state building process along China, Myanmar, and Thailand's common borderland area. It shows that the variations in state building among these neighboring countries are the result of an interactive process that occurs across national boundaries. Departing from existing approaches that look at such processes from the angle of singular, bounded territorial states, the book argues that a more fruitful method is to examine how state and nation building in one country can influence, and be influenced by, the same processes across borders. It argues that the success or failure of one country's state building is a process that extends beyond domestic factors such as war preparation, political institutions, and geographic and demographic variables. Rather, it shows that we should conceptualize state building as an interactive process heavily influenced by a "neighborhood effect." Furthermore, the book moves beyond the academic boundaries that divide arbitrarily China studies and Southeast Asian studies by providing an analysis that ties the state and nation building processes in China with those of Southeast Asia.
Among scholars who focus on the politics of natural resources, conventional wisdom asserts that resource-scarce states have the strongest interest in securing control over resources. Counterintuitively, however, in Perils of Plenty, Jonathan N. Markowitz finds that the opposite is true. In actuality, what states make influences what they want to take. Specifically, Markowitz argues that the more economically dependent states are on resource extraction rents for income, the stronger their preferences will be to secure control over resources. He tests the theory with a set of case studies that analyze how states reacted to the 2007 exogenous climate shock that exposed energy resources in the Arctic. Given the dangerous potential for conflict escalation in the Middle East and the South China Sea and the continued shrinkage of the polar ice cap, this book speaks to a genuinely important development in world politics that will have implications for understanding the political effects of climate change for many years to come.
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. What is feminist peace? How can we advocate for peace from patriarchy? What do women, globally, advocate for when they use the term 'peace'? This edited collection brings together conversations across borders and boundaries to explore plural, intersectional and interdisciplinary concepts of feminist peace. The book includes contributions from a geographically diverse range of scholars, judges, practitioners and activists, and the chapters cut across themes of movement building and resistance and explore the limits of institutionalized peacebuilding. The chapters deal with a range of issues, such as environmental degradation, militarization, online violence and arms spending. Offering a resource to advance theoretical development and to advocate for policy change, this book transcends traditional approaches to the study of peace and security and embraces diverse voices and perspectives which are absent in both academic and policy spaces.
The accidental shooting of Kathryn Steinle in July of 2015 by an undocumented immigrant ignited a firestorm of controversy around sanctuary cities, which are municipalities where officials are prohibited from inquiring into the immigration status of residents. Some decline immigration detainer requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. While sanctuary cities have been in existence since the 1980s, the Steinle shooting and the presidency of Donald Trump have brought them renewed attention and raised a number of questions. How have these policies evolved since the 1980s and how has the media framed them? Do sanctuary policies "breed crime" as some have argued, or do they help to politically incorporate immigrant populations? What do Americans think about sanctuary cities, and have their attitudes changed in recent years? How are states addressing the conflict between sanctuary cities and the federal government? In one of the first comprehensive examinations of sanctuary cities, Loren Collingwood and Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien show that sanctuary policies have no discernible effect on crime rates; rather, anti-sanctuary state laws may undercut communities' trust in law enforcement. Indeed, sanctuary policies do have the potential to better incorporate immigrant populations into the larger city, with both Latino police force representation and Latino voter turnout increasing as a result. Despite this, public opinion on sanctuary cities remains sharply divided and has become intensely partisanized. Looking at public opinion data, media coverage, and the evolution of sanctuary policies from the 1980s to 2010s, the authors show that conservatives have increasingly drawn on anecdotal evidence to link violent crime to the larger debate about undocumented immigration. This has, in turn, provided them an electoral advantage among conservative voters who often see undocumented immigrants as a threat and has led to a push for anti-sanctuary policies in conservative states that effectively preempt local initiatives aimed at immigrant incorporation. Ultimately, this book finds that sanctuary cities provide important protection for immigrants, helping them to become part of the social and political fabric of the United States, with no empirical support for the negative consequences conservatives and anti-immigrant activists so often claim.
Writers, observers, and practitioners of international politics frequently invoke the term "geopolitics" to describe, explain, or analyze specific foreign policy issues and problems. Such generalized usage ignores the fact that geopolitics as a method of understanding international relations has a history that includes a common vocabulary, well-established if sometimes conflicting concepts, an extensive body of thought, and a recognized group of theorists and scholars. In Geopolitics, Francis P. Sempa presents a history of geopolitical thought and applies its classical analyses to Cold War and post-Cold War international relations.
Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the normalisation of relations between Iran and America has appeared unrealistic if not inconceivable, given that the Iranian state has vigorously pursued an anti-American ideology. This account of US-Iranian relations examines the efficacy of external pressure such as sanctions, as well as domestic grassroots reform movements within the Islamic Republic. The Obama presidency marked a rare high point in the Washington-Tehran relationship, as negotiations between the two countries and other powers produced an unprecedented nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. However, the Trump administration's unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, and re-imposition of new sanctions in pursuit of 'maximum pressure', had devastating economic consequences, undermining the Iranian middle class, which has consistently been the voice of political moderation and supported Iran's integration into the global economy. Crucially, sanctions have also driven Iran further into the arms of China, while rendering it an even more recalcitrant and aggressive adversary. Monshipouri's central conviction is that negotiations are pivotal to dismantling the mistrust that has long characterised US-Iranian relations, and to seeking detente between Iran and its Arab neighbours--a critical priority, since gradual US withdrawal from the region is all but certain.
Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in the media and largely decontextualized in scholarly and policy works. It examines the root causes of piracy in Somalia, its impact on coastal communities, local views about it, and the measures taken against it. Drawing on six years' worth of extensive fieldwork, Awet Tewelde Weldemichael amplifies the voices of local communities who have suffered under the heavy weight of illegal fishing, piracy and counter-piracy and makes their struggles comprehensible on their own terms. He also exposes complex webs of crimes within crimes of double-dealing pirates, fraudulent negotiators, duplicitous intermediaries, and treacherous foreign illegal fishers and their local partners. In so doing, this book will help inform regional and global counter-piracy endeavors, avoid possible reversals in the gains so far made against piracy, and identify the gains that need to be made against its root causes.
Now in its sixty-ninth edition, this title continues to provide the most up-to-date geopolitical and economic information for this important world area. Key Features: - covers the Middle East and North Africa from Algeria to Yemen - includes topical contributions from acknowledged experts on regional affairs - accurately and impartially records the latest political and economic developments - provides comprehensive data on all major organizations active in the countries of the region. General Survey - introductory essays cover a wide range of topics relating to the region as a whole. Country Surveys Individual chapters on each country incorporating: - essays on the physical and social geography, recent history and economy - an extensive statistical survey of economic and social indicators, which include area and population, health and welfare, agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining, industry, finance, trade, transport, tourism, communications media and education - a full directory with names, addresses and contact details covering the constitution, government, legislature, political organizations, election commissions, diplomatic representation, judiciary, religious groups, the media, finance, trade and industry (including petroleum and natural gas), tourism, defence and education - a country-specific bibliography, providing suggestions for further research. Regional Information - includes all major international organizations active in the Middle East and North Africa; research institutes specializing in the region; and select bibliographies of books and periodicals.
This work is a summation of all of Robert D. Kaplan's provocative work and travel over the decades. It brings to life the great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past, explaining their theories, and then applying them to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, and the Arab Middle East.
China's Belt and Road strategy is acknowledged to be the most ambitious geopolitical initiative of the age. Covering almost seventy countries by land and sea, it will affect every element of global society, from shipping to agriculture, digital economy to tourism, politics to culture. Most importantly, it symbolises a new phase in China's ambitions as a superpower: to remake the world economy and crown Beijing as the new centre of capitalism and globalisation. Bruno Macaes traces this extraordinary initiative's history, highlighting its achievements to date, and its staggering complexity. He asks whether Belt and Road is about more than power projection and profit. Might it herald a new set of universal political values, to rival those of the West? Is it, in fact, the story of the century?
This book develops a new approach in explaining how a nation's Grand Strategy is constituted, how to assess its merits, and how grand strategies may be comparatively evaluated within a broader framework. The volume responds to three key problems common to both academia and policymaking. First, the literature on the concept of grand strategy generally focuses on the United States, offering no framework for comparative analysis. Indeed, many proponents of US grand strategy suggest that the concept can only be applied, at most, to a very few great powers such as China and Russia. Second, characteristically it remains prescriptive rather than explanatory, ignoring the central conundrum of why differing countries respond in contrasting ways to similar pressures. Third, it often understates the significance of domestic politics and policymaking in the formulation of grand strategies - emphasizing mainly systemic pressures. This book addresses these problems. It seeks to analyze and explain grand strategies through the intersection of domestic and international politics in ten countries grouped distinctively as great powers (The G5), regional powers (Brazil and India) and pivotal powers hostile to each other who are able to destabilize the global system (Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia). The book thus employs a comparative framework that describes and explains why and how domestic actors and mechanisms, coupled with external pressures, create specific national strategies. Overall, the book aims to fashion a valid, cross-contextual framework for an emerging research program on grand strategic analysis.
In this engaging book, David M. McCourt makes the case for New Constructivist approaches to international relations scholarship. The book traces constructivist work on culture, identity, and norms within the historical, geographical, and professional contexts of world politics, and reflects on recent innovations in fields including practice theory, relationalism, and network analysis. Copiously illustrated with real-world examples from the rise of China and US foreign policy, it illuminates the processes by which international politics are built. This is both an accessible tour of Constructivism to date and a persuasive declaration for its continuing application and value.
War does not stop when the armed conflict ends. This compelling eyewitness account of a key political crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007 demonstrates how interventions from foreign powers to end armed conflict can create new forms of conflict that are not only as determined and resilient, but can lead groups to challenge the power of fragile states through political and legal means. Countering such challenges is an integral but often ignored part of peace processes. How do these nonviolent wars evolve? How can the power of fragile states be challenged through nonviolent means in the aftermath of armed conflict? And what is the role of diplomacy in countering such challenges? This book offers key insights for policy makers dealing with fragile states who seek answers to such questions.
Being insulated by two immense oceans makes it hard for Americans to appreciate the concerns of more exposed countries. American democracy's rapid rise also fools many into thinking the same liberal system can flourish anywhere, and having populated a vast continent with relative ease impedes Americans' understanding of conflicts between different peoples over other lands. Paul R. Pillar ties the American public's misconceptions about foreign threats and behaviors to the nation's history and geography, arguing that American success in international relations is achieved often in spite of, rather than because of, the public's worldview. Drawing a fascinating line from colonial events to America's handling of modern international terrorism, Pillar shows how presumption and misperception turned Finlandization into a dirty word in American policy circles, bolstered the "for us or against us" attitude that characterized the policies of the George W. Bush administration, and continue to obscure the reasons behind Iraq's close relationship with Iran. Fundamental misunderstandings have created a cycle in which threats are underestimated before an attack occurs and then are overestimated after they happen. By exposing this longstanding tradition of misperception, Pillar hopes the United States can develop policies that better address international realities rather than biased beliefs.
In 2011, Egypt witnessed more protests than any other country in the world. Counter to the received narrative, Amy Austin Holmes argues that the ousting of Mubarak in 2011 did not represent the culmination of a revolution or the beginning of a transition period, but rather the beginning of a revolutionary process that would unfold in three waves, followed by two waves of counterrevolution. This book offers the first analysis of both the revolution and counterrevolution in Egypt from January 2011 until June 2018. The period of revolutionary upheaval played out in three uprisings against three distinct forms of authoritarian rule: the Mubarak regime and the police state that protected it, the unelected military junta known as the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, and the religious authoritarianism of the Muslim Brotherhood. The counterrevolution occurred over two periods: the first under Adly Mansour as interim president and the second after El Sisi was elected president. While the regime imprisoned or killed the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and many secular activists during the first wave of the counterrevolution, it turned against civil society at large during the second: NGOs, charities, media, academia, and minority groups. In addition to providing new and unprecedented empirical data, Coups and Revolutions makes two theoretical contributions. First, it presents a new framework for analyzing the state apparatus in Egypt based on four pillars of regime support that can either prop up or press upon whoever is in power. These are the Egyptian military, the business elite, the United States, and the multi-headed opposition. Secondly, the book brings together the literature on bottom-up revolutionary movements and top-down military coups, and it introduces the concept of a coup from below in contrast to the revolution from above that took place under Gamal Abdel Nasser.
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. |
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