On July 1st, 2007, Hong Kong celebrated the 10th anniversary of its return to the People's Republic of China, but the past decade has been a bumpy ride for both the Hong Kong people and the central leaders in China. In fact, in 2003 Beijing had already succumbed to public pressure within the fairly short period of its rule by abruptly replacing its handpicked first Chief Executive with a British-groomed civil servant.

This book examines the origin and evolution of Hong Kong's political system, analyses the current contradictions in the system, and discusses how the system might develop in future. It focuses in particular on the office of Chief Executive in the context of Hong Kong's transformation from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region in China. The dualistic structure of the Chief Executive's office embodies a dilemma between two competing imperatives - Communist China's imperative to retain a colonial political system where executive power is concentrated at the top; alongside the need to accommodate new, increasing demands for democratic representation within the territory.

The Political Future of Hong Kong demonstrates how the British legacy left its imprint on Hong Kong's political system. It analyses the strategies adopted by the Sovereign state as it attempted to cope with demands for representative government in the post-handover years, and the strains placed on Hong Kong's political institutions by the uneasy relationship between central government and local forces of liberal autonomy. Kit Poon examines the possibility of the introduction of universal suffrage for the selection of the Chief Executive, and considers how Hong Kong can secure ademocratic future in the context of broader Beijing-Hong Kong relations.

Contents:
Introduction 1. The Histories of Karelian Space
2. The Structures of Karelian Autonomy, 1920-1928: Borders, Boundaries and Spatial Ambitions
3. 3. The Limits of Karelian Autonomy, 1920-1928: Economy, Population and the Origins of the Gulag
4. The First Five-Year Plan, 1928-1932: Economic Development and Forced Labour on the Periphery
5. The Second Five-Year Plan, 1933-1937: Visions and Realities of Peripheral Developments
6. Production and Terror on the Periphery, 1935-1937
Conclusion

This book tracks the phases of Singapore's economic and political development, arguing that its success was always dependent upon the territories links with the surrounding region and the wider global system, and suggests that managing these links today will be the key to the country's future. Singapore has followed a distinctive historical development trajectory. It was one of a number of cities which provided bases for the expansion of the British empire in the East. But the Pacific War provided local elites with their chance to secure independence. In Singapore the elite disciplined and mobilized their population and built successfully on their colonial inheritance. Today, the city-state prospers in the context of its regional and global networks, and sustaining and nurturing these are the keys to its future. But there are clouds on the elite's horizons; domestically, the population is restive with inequality, migration and surplus-repression causing concern; and internationally, the strategy of constructing a business-hub economy is being widely copied and both Hong Kong and Shanghai are significant competitors. This book discusses these issues and argues that although success is likely to characterize Singapore's future, the elite will have to address these significant domestic and international problems.

This book provides an innovative examination of the European Union as it departs from its path of integration. Indeed so far has it departed that it could be described as having entered a new reality. The original reality was that captured in the evocative phrase in its founding agreement, the Treaty of Rome, that it should be an ever-closer union of peoples. Largely that was the path followed until the 1990s, but by the early twenty-first century there have been signs that it is turning into an ordinary international organization in which there is little overriding sense of purpose.

This book discusses the indications of this development and explains why it happened only a decade or so after a peak of popular enthusiasm in the early 1990s. The question was whether the EU would become less important for the member states, as seemed to be the case for the British, or whether the German pattern, in which the EU remained important, would prevail. This book concludes that the former is more likely in part because of problems with the policies of the European Union and its conduct, but more specifically because of the current prevailing political culture in Western Europe. Paul Taylor warns that the current problems are underestimated and that there is the risk of casually throwing away the considerable achievements of the integration process.

The End of European Integration will be of interest to all those with an interest in European integration, whether for or against. It will also interest students of European studies, European politics, and politics and international relations in general.

An extremely timely translation of a seminal text on the role of women in Muslim society by the early twentieth century thinker al Taher al-Haddad. Considered as one of the first feminist works in Arab literature, this book will be of considerable interest to scholars of an early "feminist" tract coming from a Muslim in Arab society. Awarded the 2008 "World Award of the President of the Republic of Tunisia for Islamic Studies"

Japanese Economic Development presents three distinct approaches to understanding how and why Japan made the transition from a relatively low-income country mainly focused on agriculture to a high-income nation centered on manufacturing and services.

In offering an eclectic account of Japana (TM)s economic development, this book appeals to students in a broad group of disciplines including economics, political science, sociology, geography and history.

The book makes a case for 'over determination' in economic behavior. Because individual, firm level, and governmental behavior is simultaneously determined by the interaction of markets, norms, and structures, change over time is rarely if ever limited to the economy operating in isolation from social norms and structures.

Japanese Economic Development presents three distinct approaches to understanding how and why Japan made the transition from a relatively low-income country mainly focused on agriculture to a high-income nation centered on manufacturing and services.

In offering an eclectic account of Japan's economic development, this book appeals to students in a broad group of disciplines including economics, political science, sociology, geography and history.

The book makes a case for 'over determination' in economic behavior. Because individual, firm level, and governmental behavior is simultaneously determined by the interaction of markets, norms, and structures, change over time is rarely if ever limited to the economy operating in isolation from social norms and structures.

This book addresses the growing academic concerns of the market-religion convergences in Asia.

Bringing together a group of leading scholars from Asia, Europe, Australia and North America, it discusses multiple issues regarding religious commodifications and their consequences across Asia's diverse religious traditions. Covering key issues in the anthropology and sociology of contemporary Asian religion, it draws theoretical implications for the study of religions in the light of the shift of religious institutions from traditional religious beliefs to material prosperity. The fact that religions compete with each other in a 'market of faiths' is also at the core of the analysis. The contributions show how ordinary people and religious institutions in Asia adjusted to, and negotiated with, the penetrative forces of a global market economy into the region's changing religio-cultural landscapes.

An excellent contribution to the growing demands of ethnographically and theoretically updated interpretations of Asian religions, Religious Commodifications in Asia will be of interest to scholars of Asian religion and new religious movements.

With urbanism becoming the key driver of socio-economic change in China, this book provides much needed up-to-date material on Chinese urban development.

Demonstrating how it transcends the centrally-planned model of economic growth, and assessing the extent to which it has gone beyond the common wisdom of Chinese a ~gradualisma (TM), the book covers a wide range of important topics, including:

• local land development
• the local state
• private-public partnership
• foreign investment
• urbanization
• ageing
• home ownership.

Providing a clear appraisal of recent trends in Chinese urbanism, this book puts forward important new conceptual resources to fill the gap between the outdated model of the a ~Third Worlda (TM) city and the globalizing cities of the West.

With Saudi Arabia being of immense importance both politically and economically in the Middle East, this book provides a much needed, broad ranging survey of the development of the Saudi economy from the 1960s to the present day.

Written by a highly reputable author, the book includes an analysis of how political and social factors have shaped policy, and how the Saudi state is coping with the dynamics of a rapidly changing economic and political situation.

With Saudi Arabia being of immense importance both politically and economically in the Middle East, this book provides a much needed, broad ranging survey of the development of the Saudi economy from the 1960s to the present day. Written by a highly reputable author, the book includes an analysis of how political and social factors have shaped policy, and how the Saudi state is coping with the dynamics of a rapidly changing economic and political situation.

Islamic Culture Through Jewish Eyes analyzes the attitude towards Muslims, Islam, and Islamic culture as presented in sources written by Jewish authors in the Iberian Peninsula between the tenth and the twelfth centuries. By bringing the Jewish attitude towards the other into sharper focus, this book sets out to explore a largely overlooked and neglected question - the shifting ways in which Jewish authors constructed communal identity of Muslims and Islamic culture, and how these views changed overtime.

The book's methodological sophistication and wide range of sources make it a valuable resource for scholars and researchers of comparative literature and cultural studies.

Though usually forgotten in general surveys of European colonization, the Russians were among the greatest colonizers of the Old World, eventually settling across most of the immense expanse of Northern Europe and Asia, from the Baltic and the Pacific, and from the Arctic Ocean to Central Asia. This book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the Eurasian past by examining the policies, practices, cultural representations, and daily-life experiences of Slavic settlement in non-Russian regions of Eurasia from the time of Ivan the Terrible to the nuclear era. The movement of tens of millions of Slavic settlers was a central component of Russian empire-building, and of the everyday life of numerous social and ethnic groups and remains a crucial regional security issue today, yet it remains relatively understudied. Peopling the Russian Periphery redresses this omission through a detailed exploration of the varied meanings and dynamics of Slavic settlement from the sixteenth century to the 1960s. Providing an account of the different approaches of settlement and expansion that were adopted in different periods of history, it includes detailed case studies of particular episodes of migration. Written by upcoming and established experts in Russian history, with exceptional geographical and chronological breadth, this book provides a thorough examination of the history of Slavic settlement and migration from the Muscovite to the Soviet era. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Russian history, comparative history of colonization, migration, interethnic contact, environmental history and European Imperialism.

This book is concerned with the rationality and plausibility of the Muslim faith and the Qur'an, and in particular how they can be interrogated and understood through Western analytical philosophy. It also explores how Islam can successfully engage with the challenges posed by secular thinking.

The Quran and the Secular Mind will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic philosophy, philosophy of religion, Middle East studies, and political Islam.

This book is concerned with the rationality and plausibility of the Muslim faith and the Qur'an, and in particular how they can be interrogated and understood through Western analytical philosophy. It also explores how Islam can successfully engage with the challenges posed by secular thinking.

The Quran and the Secular Mind will be of interest to students and scholars of Islamic philosophy, philosophy of religion, Middle East studies, and political Islam.

This book examines China's creative economy - and how television, animation, advertising, design, publishing and digital games are reshaping traditional understanding of culture. Since the 1950s, China has endeavoured to catch-up with advanced Western economies. 'Made in China' is one approach to global competitiveness. But a focus on manufacturing and productivity is impeding innovation. China imports creativity and worries about its 'cultural exports deficit'. In the cultural sector Chinese audiences are attracted to Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese culture, as well as Hollywood cinema. This book provides a fresh look looks at China's move up the global value chain. It argues that while government and (most) citizens would prefer to associate with the nationalistic, but unrealized 'created in China' brand, widespread structural reforms are necessary to release creative potential. Innovation policy in China has recently acknowledged these problems. It considers how new ways of managing cultural assets can renovate largely non-competitive Chinese cultural industries. Together with a history of cultural commerce in China, the book details developments in new creative industries and provides the international context for creative cluster policy in Beijing and Shanghai.

Genetic engineering is changing the terrain of development studies. Technologies with unprecedented potential - the capacity to move genes across species - have created widely politicized phenomena: 'Frankenfoods', 'GMOs', and 'The Terminator'. En masse, the public has reacted with equanimity or appreciation to genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, beginning with insulin, but transgenics in food and agriculture have raised a globally contentious politics. This book begins with the needs of the poor - for income, nutrition, environmental integrity - and evaluates the theory and evidence for contributions from transgenic crops. Social scientists with expertise in regional studies, economics, sociology, agriculture and political science join biologists to bring specialized knowledge on genuinely new questions created by the genomics revolution; questions of: ecological integrity biodiversity international trade the costs and effectiveness of biosafety protocols. The authors collectively conclude that predictions of disaster for the poor from transgenic technology are uninformed by empirical results, rest on misunderstandings of biotechnology or the poor or both, or get the science wrong. Yet the triumphalism of pro-transgenic forces, however, must be tempered by serious unanswered questions: much is unknown, but the transgenic genie is out of the bottle. In this much-needed book, an emergent empirical literature allows scholars in disciplines ranging from micro-biology to economics and political science to assess the potential effects of transgenic organisms on poverty through multiple dynamics of property, yields, prices, biodiversity, environmental integrity and nutrition. The Journal of Development Studies awards an annual prize in memory of the late Dudley Seers, for the best article to appear in each volume of the Journal. Transgenics and the Poor:Biotechnology in Development Studies" has been adjudged to be the winner of the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for Volume 43.

The Parsis are India's smallest minority community, yet they have exercised a huge influence on the country. As pioneers in education in nineteenth century India, and as leading figures in banking and commerce, medicine, law and journalism, they were at the forefront of India's industrial revolution. Parsis were also at the heart of the creation of the Indian National Congress in the nineteenth century and contributed some of the great leaders through into the twentieth century.

This book, written by notable experts in the field, explores various key aspects of the Parsis. It spans the time from their arrival in India to the twenty-first century. All contributions are based on original research and most of them use hitherto unexplored primary sources. The first part of the book analyzes the topic of Parsi migration from very different points of view; the second part presents leading Parsi personalities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final part is a set of studies of the Parsi traditional community in Bombay and an examination of three different diasporas. The concluding chapter, by John R. Hinnells, shows the range of contributions of Parsis to modern India and also in the diasporas, where the Zoroastrian religion is practiced in more countries around the globe than at any time in its history of more than 3,000 years.

This book examines the rise of welfare markets in Western societies and explores their functioning, regulation and embeddedness by addressing the particular field of old age provision, including both retirement provision and elderly care. It goes beyond a mere social policy analysis by investigating major cultural underpinnings of the new (quasi-)markets, with these underpinnings embracing collective normative representations of how societies (should) institutionally handle old age. The book looks at whether pension and care systems are converging under the influence of globalization - with marketization being a key phenomenon - and to what extent this is creating a transnational culture of welfare markets. This book, the first book to systematically describe and analyse the phenomenon of welfare markets, elucidates the complex cultural underpinnings of care and pensions systems in an era of marketization, arguing that we are facing a cultural struggle over the way late modern societies conceptualize institutional old-age provision.

In this book David Wittner situates Japan's Meiji Era experience of technology transfer and industrial modernization within the realm of culture, politics, and symbolism, examining how nineteenth century beliefs in civilization and enlightenment influenced the process of technological choice.

Through case studies of the iron and silk industries, Wittner argues that the Meiji government's guiding principle was not simply economic development or providing a technical model for private industry as is commonly claimed. Choice of technique was based on the ability of a technological artifact to import Western "civilization" to Japan: Meiji officials' technological choices were firmly situated within perceptions of authority, modernity, and their varying political agendas. Technological artifacts could also be used as instruments of political legitimization. By late the Meiji Era, the former icons of Western civilization had been transformed into the symbols of Japanese industrial and military might.

A fresh and engaging re-examination of Japanese industrialization within the larger framework of the Meiji Era, this book will appeal to scholars and students of science, technology, and society as well as Japanese history and culture.

With the region of the Caucasus with its ongoing, and even deteriorating, crisis and instability and its strategic and economic importance increasingly at the front of the world's attention, this volume presents and discusses some of the complexities and problems arising in the region such as Islamic terrorists and al-Qaida.

Scholars from different disciplines who specialise in the Caucasus analyze key topics such as:

• discussions of grass root perceptions
• the influence of informal power structures on ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus
• Russian policies towards Islam and their destabilising influence
• the influence of Islamic revival on the legal and social situations
• nationalism and the revival of pre- and sub-national identities
• shifts in identity as reflected in demography
• reasons for the Chechen victory in the first Chechen war
• the involvement of Islamic volunteers in Chechnya.

With the situation in Chechnia likely to spread across the entire North Caucasus, this cutting edge work will be of great value in the near future and will interest political scientists and regional experts of Russia, Central Asia, Caucasus, Middle East and Turkey, as well as NGOs, government agencies and think tanks.

This book explores the political games of the Moroccan democratization process in the period from independence in 1956 until 2006. By combining a great degree of political theory with empirical material on Morocco, it analyzes the strategies and actions of the various political actors and evaluates the level of democracy present in the country after the adoption of new constitutions in 1962, 1970, 1972, 1980, 1992 and 1996.

Lise Storm demonstrates that in at least some instances, democratization has been more than simply a survival strategy - every so often, key figures within the political elite have taken the democratization process further than strictly needed for them to stay in power. In the case of Morocco, it has been the monarch who on more than one occasion has moved the country further towards the democratic ideal than he necessarily had to, and that sometimes even against the wishes of one or more of the established political parties. This book illustrates how the Moroccan political parties, like so many of their counterparts in the region, have become the main obstacle to further democratization as most of them have never honoured - or appear to have abandoned - the key function of political parties: popular representation.

Democratization in Morocco will be a very valuable contribution to students and researchers interested in the dynamics behind the Moroccan democratization and the role of electoral politics in North African and Middle Eastern politics.

Since the late nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Chinese have moved to Russia and Eastern Europe. However, until now, very little research has been done about the initial migrants in the nineteenth century, the presence of the Chinese in Europe and Russia in the twentieth century before the collapse of the 'socialist' regimes or about the great wave of Chinese migration to Eastern Europe and Russia which occurred after 1989.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the Chinese in Russia and Eastern Europe from the nineteenth century to the present day. Particularly important is the movement of entrepreneurs in the early 1990s, who took advantage of unmet demand, inadequate retail networks and largely unregulated markets to become suppliers of cheap consumer goods to low-income Eastern Europeans. In some villages, Chinese merchants now occupy a position not unlike that of Jewish shopkeepers before the Second World War. Although their interactions with local society are numerous, the degree of social integration and acceptance is often low. At the same time, they maintain close economic, social, and political ties to China.

Empirical in focus, and full of rich ethnographic data, Pal Nyiri has produced a book that will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, international migration, diaspora and transnationalism.

This is an introduction to the best available scholarship within Irish politics, featuring the most influential and significant articles which have been published on Irish politics during the past twenty years. Each article is accompanied by a new commentary by another leading scholar which addresses the impact and contribution of the article and discusses how its themes remain crucial today. The book covers all the most important topics within Irish politics including political culture and traditions, political institutions and parties and the peace process. The combination of the best original scholarship and contemporary commentaries on the core political issues makes Irish Political Studies Reader an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of Irish politics.

In the absence of democratic state institutions, eastern European countries were considered to possess only myths of democracy. Working on the premise that democracy is not only an institutional arrangement but also a civilisational project, this book argues that mythical narratives help understanding the emergence of democracy without 'democrats'. Examining different national traditions as well as pre-communist and communist narratives, myths are seen as politically fabricated 'programmes of truth' that form and sustain the political imagination. Appearing as cultural, literary, or historical resources, myths amount to ideology in narrative form, which actors use in political struggles for the sake of achieving social compliance and loyalty with the authority of new political forms. Drawing on a wide range of case studies including Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, this book argues that narratives about the past are not simply 'legacies' of former regimes but have actively shaped representations and meanings of democracy in the region. Taking different theoretical and methodological approaches, the power of myth is explored for issues such as leadership, collective identity-formation, literary representation of heroic figures, cultural symbolism in performative art as well as on the constitution of legitimacy and civic identity in post-communist democracies.