Peaceful legal and political 'changing of the guards' is taken for granted in developed democracies, but is not evident everywhere. As a relatively new democracy, marred by long periods of military rule, Bangladesh has been encountering serious problems because of a prevailing culture of mistrust, weak governance institutions, constant election manipulation and a peculiar socio-political history, which between 1990 and 2011 led to a unique form of transitional remedy in the form of an unelected neutral 'caretaker covernment' (CTG) during electoral transitions. This book provides a contextual analysis of the CTG mechanism including its inception, operation, manipulation by the government of the day and abrupt demise. It queries whether this constitutional provision, even if presently abolished after overseeing four acceptable general elections, actually remains a crucial tool to safeguard free and fair elections in Bangladesh. Given the backdrop of the culture of mistrust, the author examines whether holding national elections without a CTG, or an umpire of some kind, can settle the issue of credibility of a given government. The book portrays that even the management of elections is a matter of applying pluralist approaches. Considering the historical legacy and contemporary political trajectory of Bangladesh, the cause of deep-rooted mistrust is examined to better understand the rationale for the requirement, emergence and workings of the CTG structure. The book unveils that it is not only the lack of nation-building measures and governments' wish to remain in power at any cost which lay behind the problems that Bangladesh faces today. Part of the problem is also the flawed logic of nation-building on the foundation of Western democratic norms which may be unsuitable in a South Asian cultural environment. Although democratic transitions, on the crutch of the CTG, have been useful in moments of crisis, its abolition creates the need for a new or revised transitional modality - perhaps akin to the CTG ethos - to oversee electoral governance, which will have to be renegotiated by the polity based on the people's will. The book provides a valuable resource for researchers and academics working in the area of constitutional law, democratic transition, legal pluralism and election law.

This new 4 volume collection is an authoritative anthology containing the best scholarship on aspects of religion in contemporary China. The articles will focus on religious beliefs, practices and organisations as well as on the interactive relations between religion and other dimensions of communal, social, political and economic life in Mainland China and overseas Chinese communities.

This book brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address critical perspectives on Chinese language social media, internationalizing the state of social media studies beyond the Anglophone paradigm. The collection focuses on the intersections between Chinese language social media and disability, celebrity, sexuality, interpersonal communication, charity, diaspora, public health, political activism and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The book is not only rich in its theoretical perspectives but also in its methodologies. Contributors use both qualitative and quantitative methods to study Chinese social media and its social-cultural-political implications, such as case studies, in-depth interviews, participatory observations, discourse analysis, content analysis and data mining.

This book examines the monetary integration of the group of countries which constitute the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), signalling the emergence of a truly European economy. The authors devote their considerable expertise to the analysis of macroeconomic policies within EMU and the economic analysis underlying the conduct of these policies.The authors first analyse the development of the euro area from a historical perspective. They then examine the criteria for the first eleven countries to qualify for EMU and speculate whether the same countries would have joined if the qualification date had been a year later. The authors go on to examine purely macroeconomic aspects of the euro area including: the degree of real convergence in the euro area the short-run and long-run determinants of the euro area's current account the euro area's financial markets and implications for the international role of the euro the organizational structure and internal procedures of the European System of Central Banks the Eurosystem's single monetary policy strategy fiscal policy and the Stability and Growth Pact exchange rate policy issues. This book will become required reading for scholars and policymakers in the area's of European studies, macroeconomic policy and financial economics.

Are Japanese people religious - and, if so, in what ways? David Lewis addresses this question from the perspective of ordinary Japanese people in the context of their life cycles, and explores why they engage in religious activities. He not only discusses how Japanese people engage in different religious practices as they encounter new events in their lives but also analyses the attitudes and motivations behind their behaviour. Activities such as fortune-telling, religious rites in the workplace, ancestral rites and visits to shrines and temples are actually engaged in by many people who view themselves as 'non- religious' but express their motivations in terms other than the conventional 'religious' ones. This book outlines the religious options available, and assesses why people choose particular religious activities at various times in their lives or in specific circumstances. The author challenges some widespread assumptions about religion in urban and industrial contexts and also shows how some of the underlying motivations behind Japanese behaviour are expressed both in religious and non-religious forms.

Over the last ten years mobile payment systems have revolutionised banking in some countries in Africa. In Kenya the introduction of M-Pesa, a new financial services model, has transformed the banking and financial services industry. Giving the unbanked majority access to the financial services market it has attracted over 18 million subscribers which is remarkable given that fewer than 4 million people in Kenya have bank accounts. This book addresses the legal and regulatory issues arising out of the introduction of M-Pesa in Kenya and its drive towards financial inclusion. It considers the interaction between regulation and technological innovation with a particular focus on the regulatory tools, institutional arrangements and government decisional processes through the examination as a whole of its regulatory capacity. This is done with a view to understanding the regulatory capacity of Kenya in addressing the vulnerabilities presented by technological innovation in the financial industry for consumers after financial inclusion. It also examines the way that mobile payments have been regulated by criticising the piecemeal approach that the Central Bank of Kenya has taken in addressing the legal and regulatory issues presented by mobile payments. The book argues there are significant gaps in the regulatory regime of mobile banking in Kenya.

The focus of this book is to examine the growing impact of globalization on education policy and development in the Asia Pacific region. It analyzes the reaction of selected societies and the strategies that their governments have adopted in response to the tidal wave of marketization, corporatization, commercialization, and privatization. Particular attention is paid to educational restructuring in the context of globalization.

This handbook provides a thorough treatment of the various mechanisms African Americans have used to participate in U.S. political affairs from the colonial era to the present. With contributions by several of the field's experts, this concise, provocative volume explores the evolution and current status of African American political action. Focusing on distinct types of activity (protest politics, grassroots movements, electoral politics, political office holding), it charts the unique development of African Americans as they progressed from enslavement by whites to empowerment as citizens to an ever-growing influence on elections. As the book vividly demonstrates, African Americans' efforts to act on their own political behalf didn't begin in the 1960s. Even while enslaved, black people courageously launched petitions, instigated strikes on plantations, and staged full-blown revolts, creating a legacy of activism that expanded through the abolition movement, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the post-World War II civil rights movement, and into the present.

Economic transformation in traditional development economics refers to the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Based on the practical conditions and the experience since reform and opening up in the late 1970s, the author observes that the path China's economy takes is a dual transformation, namely, developmental transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial economy, and institutional transformation from planned economy to market economy. Centering on property ownership reform which is the supreme reform of the dual transformation, this book discusses land ownership approval, stock-holding system reform and the maintaining ownership of private enterprises, etc. Besides, the book expounds on the urbanization in China, believing that it is not only the outcome of the dual transformation but also the booster that will help China's economy continue to develop at a high speed. Independent innovation and industrial upgrading which is the key to the enhancement of enterprises' competitiveness is also covered. The combination or overlapping of the two types of transformations in China has had no precedent in history, and it has not been discussed in traditional development economics. Scholars and students in China's economic studies and development economics studies will be attracted by this book. In addition, this book will be a valuable reference for other developing countries which are undergoing economic transformation.

The issue of Taiwan is the single most difficult factor in the relationship between China and the United States. Any cross-straits conflict between China and Taiwan is likely not only to pit the world's two leading powers against each other, but also to suck in many other countries. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of other countries' foreign policies towards Taiwan. It considers the position of the United States and key regional powers including Japan and South and North Korea, examines the attitude of Russia and other countries which support China on this issue, and discusses the surprising policies of some smaller countries, which have recognised Taiwan's independence. The book also relates the overall picture to various international relations theories.

This innovative book provides an original approach to the analysis of the representation of myth, ritual, and magic in African literature. Emphasizing the ambivalent nature of the sacred, it advances work on the religious dimension of canonical African texts and attends to the persistence of pre-colonial cultures in postcolonial spaces.

What kinds of human individuals, events, things and commodities can best represent China? How have those representative symbols evolved in Chinese history? How have they been highlighted, disseminated and accepted? In this book, a full range of symbols and seemingly discrete social phenomena, hidden in diverse fields of Chinese society, are given lucid explanations based on the interdisciplinary theories of semiotics and communication. It studies the evolution of classic Chinese symbols through history and investigates the root causes for the communication of negative Chinese images in modern times. Besides, this book explicates the pattern of interaction between groups communication and mass communication in the Chinese society by exploring the different paths of transmutation and communication for the symbol of the "APEC Blue." How the image of China is constructed via non-government symbols is also addressed. By pointing out that classic semiotics has been reduced to an embarrassing dilemma of "a severe lack of historical sense," this book seeks to make Western semiotic findings bear closely on Chinese social reality and accomplish an updated contribution to this academic discipline. This book will appeal to scholars and students of semiotics and communication. Readers who are interested in modern Chinese society will also benefit from it.

After the Second World War, the international migration regime in Europe took a course different from the global migration regime and the migration regimes in other regions of the world. Cumbersome and arbitrary administrative practices prevailed in the late 1940s in most parts of Europe. The gradual implementation of regulations for the free movement of people within the European Community, European citizenship, and the internal and external dimensions of the Schengen agreements profoundly transformed the European migration regime. These instruments produced a regional regime in Europe with an unparalleled degree of intraregional openness and an unparalleled degree of closure towards migrants from outside Europe. This book relies on national and international archives to explain how German strategies during the Cold War shaped the openness of that original regime. This migration regime helped Germany to create a stable international order in Western Europe after the war, conducive to German Reunification and supported German economic expansion. The book embraces the whole period of development of this regime, from 1947 through 1992. It deals with all types of migrants between and towards European countries: unskilled labourers, skilled professionals, self-employed workers, and migrant workers' family members, examining both their access to economic activity and their social and political rights.

Sufism is generally perceived as being spiritually focused and about the development of the self. However, Sufi orders have been involved historically as important civic and political actors in the Muslim world, having participated extensively in inter-faith dialogue and political challenges to religious orthodoxy. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the Sufi political tradition, both historically and in its present form. It outlines how Sufi thought has developed, examines how Sufism has been presented both by scholars and by Sufis themselves, and considers Sufis' active political roles. It argues that Sufis - frequently well educated, well travelled and imaginative - have been well placed to engage with other faiths and absorb their ideas into Islam; but that they have also been, because they understand other faiths, well placed to understand the distinctiveness of Islam, and thereby act as the guardians of Islam's core ideas and values.

This volume presents detailed analyses of the role and significance of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the economies of East Asia. Various aspects of SME operations are studied, including: * the role and significance of networking in the conduct of business * the contribution of culture to business acumen and entrepreneurialism * human resource development constraints and issues * technology transfer processes * the utilisation and application of information technology by SMEs * the impact of electronic commerce * the policy framework needed to stimulate the growth of the SME sector. A common framework is adopted between the different studies, enabling substantive lessons to be derived and policy measures to be identified. The Role of SMEs in National Economies in East Asia will be of interest to academics and researchers of industrial organisation, Asian economics and Asian studies as well as policymakers concerned with SME growth in the area.

The first definitive book on researching gay and lesbian market behavior, Untold Millions: The Truth About Gay and Lesbian Consumers in America will help marketers, advertisers, and public relations managers learn how to successfully market and research products for gay and lesbian consumers. Author Grant Lukenbill, a leading consultant on the cultural and motivational aspects of gay and lesbian consumer behavior, provides you with important procedures, research, and guidelines that businesses today are following in order to develop successful marketing strategies to this growing target audience. From this updated and revised edition, you'll receive current methods, new data, and sure-fire strategies that will help your company break into this market segment, satisfy intended customers, and boost company sales.Providing you with statistics and data from the first market research study of its kind, the Yankelovich MONITOR's Gay and Lesbian Perspective, this book gives you suggestions on what things need to be done within your company before planning your marketing strategies. You'll benefit from ideas and suggestions in Untold Millions that will help you create consumer-driven market strategies to gays and lesbians, including: recognizing that there are families and relationships in society that are not heterosexual acknowledging age differences and the needs of particular generations attracting customers by circulating non-discriminatory hiring policies through press releases and company memos, installing domestic partner health care plans, and identifying cultural reference points to which gays and lesbians can relate remembering that many gays and lesbians may look at business with cynicism and doubt and may be quick to interpret actions as victimization referring to the Wall Street project before addressing gay- and lesbian-specific issues focusing on the areas of individuality, a need for association, and the need to allevia

This book is the first in-depth exploration of the relationship between Latin American and European modernisms during the long twentieth century. Drawing on comparative, historical, and postcolonial reading strategies (including archival research), it seeks to reenergize the study of modernism by putting the spotlight on the cultural networks and aesthetic dialogues that developed between European and non-European writers, including Pablo Neruda, James Joyce, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo, Roberto Bolano, Julio Cortazar, Samuel Beckett, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, and Malcolm Lowry. The book explores a wide range of texts that reflect these writers' complex concerns with questions of exile, space, empire, colonization, reception, translation, human subjectivity, and modernist experimentation. By rethinking modernism comparatively and by placing this intricate web of cultural interconnections within an expansive transnational (and transcontinental) framework, this unique study opens up new perspectives that delineate the construction of a polycentric geography of modernism. It will be of interest to those studying global modernisms, as well as Latin American literature, transatlantic studies, comparative literature, world literature, translation studies, and the global south.

This book aims to explore precisely how modern Japanese poetry has remained central to public life in both Japan and its former colony of Taiwan. Though classical Japanese poetry has captivated the imagination of Asian studies scholars, little research has been conducted to explore its role in public life as a discourse influential in defining both the modern Japanese empire and contemporary postcolonial negotiations of identity. This book shows how highly visible poetry in regular newspaper columns and blogs have in various historical situations in Japan and colonial Taiwan contested as well as promoted diverse colonial imaginaries. This poetry reflects both contemporary life and traditional poetics with few counterpoints in Western media. Methodologically, this book offers a defense of the public influence of poetry, each chapter enlisting a wide range of social and media theorists from Japan, Europe, and North America to explore specific historical moments in an original recasting of intertextuality as a vital feature of active inter-evental material engagements. In this book, rather than recite a standard survey of literary movements and key poets, the approach taken is to examine uses of poetry shown not only to support colonialism and imperialism, emerging objectionable forms of exploitation as well as the destruction of ecologies (including old-growth forests in Taiwan and the Fukushima Disaster), but also to present a medium of resistance, a minor literature for registering protest, forming transnational affiliations, and promoting grass-roots democracy. The book is based on years of research and fieldwork partially in conjunction with the production of a documentary film, Horizons of the Rising Sun: Postcolonial Nostalgia and Politics in the Taiwan Tanka Association Today (2017).

The book describes the context within which the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has been established, the basic mechanisms of the policy for the main sectors of agricultural production, and their adaptation over time in line with changes in the broader world economy; the changes in Eastern Europe, the problems of developing countries and the GATT—WTO Agreement in particular. An introduction by Franz Fischler, European Commissioner with responsibility for Agriculture, sets the scene for Community policy beyond 2000.

The present Korean public administration and policy system has shown very significant differences compared to the system in 1970s. This book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the development of Korean public policy and administration. Instead of dichotomizing the policy and administration, this book integrates two fields to provide a more holistic view on the Korean public sector. The book also attempts to overcome simplified explanations on the developmental state theory. The book aims to explain who the key actors are during the post-democratization period, how the administrative systems reform, and what kinds of social problems are transformed into public policies. This explanation suggests that the role of government shifts from a dominant actor to an actor within a complex network governance. This book will be a useful reference to anyone who wishes to learn more about the experience of the Korean development and the role of administration and policy.

The recent modification of the European Antitrust Law system, which concerns both the substance of the prohibitions and the system of enforcement, called for a thorough re-examination of this sector. Against this background, this book offers a new and coherent organisation of the subject. It takes into consideration the changes not only to the interpretation of Articles 81 and 82 EC, but also to the procedural aspects related to Reg. 1/03. In this context, the reform of Reg. 139/04 on European merger control is also fully taken into consideration. European Antitrust Law places current EC antitrust and merger control rules in their historical context, considering both the economic foundations and guiding principles of the law. It will therefore be an invaluable and stimulating guide to EC antitrust for scholars, students and practitioners alike.

This book contributes to an increasingly important branch of critical security studies that combines insights from critical geopolitics and postcolonial critique by making an argument about the geographies of violence and their differential impact in contemporary security practices, including but not limited to military intervention. The book explores military intervention in Libya through the categories of space and time, to provide a robust ethico-political critique of the intervention. Much of the mainstream international relations scholarship on humanitarian intervention frames the ethical, moral and legal debate over intervention in terms of a binary, between human rights and state sovereignty. In response, O'Sullivan questions the ways in which military violence was produced as a rational and reasonable response to the crisis in Libya, outlining and destabilising this false binary between the human and the state. The book offers methodological tools for questioning the violent institutions at the heart of humanitarian intervention and asking how intervention has been produced as a rational response to crisis. Contributing to the ongoing academic conversation in the critical literature on spatiality, militarism and resistance, the book draws upon postcolonial and poststructural approaches to critical security studies, and will be of great interest to scholars and graduates of critical security studies and international relations.

Leading experts on German-American relations, German politics and German Studies from both sides of the Atlantic are contributing to this volume in honor of Gerry Kleinfeld, founder and executive director of the German Studies Association, founder and long-time editor of the German Studies Review. The essays cover a broad spectrum of German-American political, economic, and cultural relations, offering an up-to-date survey of recent developments in this highly topical field.

Economic growth and its relevant subjects have been given the first priority in the research agenda since China initiated economic reforms in 1978, while the topics of social protection and gender equality have been largely left at the periphery for a long period. This book is a collection of evidence-based studies conducted mainly in poor areas of rural China during the recent two decades. Based on individual interviews and sample data analyses, this book emphasizes the importance of cooperative organizations to poverty reduction, and puts forward that gender equality is closely related with sustainable development. In addition, it addresses the issues of food security and elimination of social exclusion - the key to bridging economic divide. It also studies social protection, including basic health protection system, nutrition and healthcare for children, old age security for landless farmers and rural migrant workers. By providing first-hand accounts of different vulnerable groups, such as the poor, women, migrant workers, ethnic minorities and small farmers, this book offers valuable insights into studies of contemporary Chinese society and economy.