![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes > General
This volume offers new, convincing empirical evidence on topical risk- and risk management-related issues in diverse settings, using an interdisciplinary approach. The authors advance compelling arguments, firmly anchored to well-accepted theoretical frameworks, while adopting either qualitative or quantitative research methodologies. The book presents interviews and surveys with risk managers to gather insights on risk management and risk disclosure in practice. Additionally, the book collects and analyzes information contained in public reports to capture risk disclosure and perceptions on risk management impacts on companies' internal organization. It sheds light on financial and market values to understand the effect of risk management on actual and perceived firm's performance, respectively. Further, it examines the impacts of risk and risk management on society and the economy. The book improves awareness and advances knowledge on the complex and changeable risk and risk management fields of study. It interweaves among topical, up-to-date issues, peculiar, under-investigated contexts, and differentiated, complementary viewpoints on the same themes. Therefore, the book is a must-read for scholars and researchers, as well as practitioners and policy makers, interested in a better understanding of risk and risk management studies in different fields.
This book provides a pre-history of Russia's war on Ukraine and Europe's relations to it, illuminating the deep roots of the EU's neighbourhood crisis as well as the migration crises it created in the last decade. To do so, the book employs a new and innovative framework that allows for a comprehensive, yet nuanced analysis of borders and a more cogent interpretation of their socio-political consequences. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship the book analytically examines the key common elements of borderscapes and links them in related arrays to allow for nuanced evaluation of both their particular and cumulative effects, as well as interpretation of their overall consequences, particularly for issues of identities and orders. The book offers a significant conceptual and theoretical advance, providing a transferable conceptualization of borderscape to guide research, analysis, and interpretation. Drawing on the author's experience in policy, practice and academia, it also makes a methodological contribution by pushing the boundaries of reflexivity in interpretive International Relations (IR) research. Analyzing three main sites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the book challenges conventional critical wisdom on EU bordering in the Schengen zone, at its external frontiers, and in its Eastern neighborhood. In so doing, it sheds new light on the post-communist transitions as well as the contemporary politics of CEE. It also shows how European Union bordering and its relations to identities and orders created great benefits for many Europeans, but also hindered the lives of many others and became self-defeating. This book is a must-read for scholars, students, and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of Critical Border Studies (CBS) in particular, and International Relations in general. It will also appeal to anyone interested in CEE or wishing to get a deeper understanding of Russia's war and the fight for Europe's future.
This book is a rarity in that it opens a genuinely creative new vista for understanding global politics as distinguished from international politics, enhancing the vision for understanding global subjects such as multilateral treaties and the Covid-19 virus. Six hundred multilateral treaties deposited in the UN are conceptualized as a bundle of quasi-social contracts by sovereign states. A state's participation in multilateral treaties is envisaged as digitized statecraft. Using a state's physical actions and treaties' attributes, 193 profiles of statecraft are analyzed with the implications for the future of global politics. This book demonstrates that multilateral treaties are both a vehicle and an agency in the globalization trend; thus, both state and international actors influence a state's joining multilateral treaties. The book represents a marriage of international law and applied information science. It provides a framework for empirical modeling based on artificial intelligence and analyzes this framework in terms of international law and international relations. This book thus creates a new understanding of global politics.
The Korean peninsula underwent a continuous number of earth-shaking events in the 20th century. North and South Korea are situated among China, Japan, and Russia; they are also profoundly influenced by the United States because of the circumstances of the Korean War (1950-1953). Issues of war and peace, left over from the Korean war, remain unresolved; two separate states are the residue of the Cold War. This anomaly still poses ominous prospects for war or peace in Asia and American national security interests. At the same time, the complexity of the division places the future at risk. There was one terrible war that divided the 20th century in half and there are threats of more trouble to come. This study of the history of the past century provides some answers and opens the way to informed speculations as the two Koreas struggle over unification.
This book analyses the challenges facing the European Union through the frame of the rule of law. It shows how over the last decades the increased dissensus and contestation of the rule of law has given rise to heightened tensions between national and EU institutions, leading to the establishment of new soft and hard policy tools to safeguard it at the supranational level. The book proposes a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of the current state of debates by exploring how EU institutional actors seek to uphold the Union's values. It shows that European integration in core state powers is the outcome of the clash between liberal and anti-liberal ideas, between dissensus and contestation over how collective problems should be solved, in a community of voices featuring assent and dissent, all of which give democracy its substance. Beyond the analysis of the emerging EU's rule of law policy, the book will help readers to better understand the EU's fragilities and resilience and the potential challenges for the future of EU integration.
This book is the first attempt to rethink and appraise the role of temporary commoning experiences that develop in contexts of crisis. Activist and urban planner, Angelos Varvarousis, argues that there is a certain type of commons - the liminal commons - which despite their often short lives play a crucial function in contemporary societies; they demarcate and facilitate transitions at the individual, collective and ultimately the societal level. Through an intense exploration of grassroots projects such as occupied squares, self-organised refugee camps, solidarity food structures and social clinics in crisis-ridden Greece, the author observes that humans still invent such collectively performed rituals in order to prepare, symbolize and practically explore the possibility of transformation and transition. In a period in which traditional rites of passage have faded away but many changes are urgently needed, liminal commons can be a key element in the process of claiming awareness and control over the mechanisms of individual, collective and societal emancipation.
This book is authored by some of the renowned scholars in Africa who take on the task to understand how Kenya is governed in this century from a public policy perspective. The book's public policy approach addresses three general and pertinent questions: (1) how are policies made in a political context where change is called for, but institutional legacies tend to stand in the way? (2) how are power and authority shared among institutional actors in government and society? and, (3) how effective is policymaking at a time when policy problems are becoming increasingly complex and involving multiple stakeholders in Africa? This book provides an updated and relevant foundation for teaching policy, politics and administration in Kenya. It is also a useful guide for politicians, the civil society, and businesses with an interest in how Kenya is governed. Furthermore, it addresses issues of comparability: how does the Kenyan case fit into a wider African context of policymaking? 'This volume is a major contribution to comparative policy analysis by focusing on the policy processes in Kenya, a country undergoing modernization of its economic and political institutions. Written by experts with a keen eye for the commonalities and differences the country shares with other nations, it covers a range of topics like the role of experts and politicians in policymaking, the nature of public accountability, the impact of social media on policy actors, and the challenges of teaching policy studies in the country. As a first comprehensive study of an African nation, Governing Kenya will remain a key text for years to come'. -Michael Howlett, Burnaby Mountain Chair of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada 'A superb example of development scholarship which sets aside 'best practice' nostrums and focuses on governance challenges specific to time and place while holding on to a comparative perspective. Useful to scholars and practitioners not only in Kenya but across developing areas. I strongly recommend it!' -Brian Levy teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, USA, and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. 'This book is an exploration of important deliberations - of interest for those of us interested in deepening the understanding of public policy theories and their application within a specific African setting'. -Wilson Muna, Lecturer of Public Policy, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya 'This collection of think pieces on public policy in Kenya gives the reader theoretical and practical hooks critical to the analysis of the implementation of the sovereign policy document in Kenya, the 2010 Constitution'. -Willy Mutunga, Chief Justice & President of the Supreme Court, Republic of Kenya, 2011-2016 'Governing Kenya provides a comprehensive analysis of public policymaking in Kenya. The book integrates public policy theory with extensive empirical examples to provide a valuable portrait of the political and economic influences on policy choices in this important African country. The editors have brought together a group of significant scholars to produce an invaluable contribution to the literature on public policy in Africa'. -B. Guy Peters, Maurice Folk Professor of American Government, University of Pittsburgh, USA
The study of Regal and Republican Rome presents a difficult and yet exciting challenge. The extant evidence, which for the most part is literary, is late, sparse, and difficult, and the value of it has long been a subject of intense and sometimes heated scholarly discussion. This volume provides students with an introduction to a range of important problems in the study of ancient Rome during the Regal and Republican periods in one accessible collection, bringing together a diverse range of influential papers. Of particular importance is the question of the value of the historiographical evidence (i.e. what the Romans themselves wrote about their past). By juxtaposing different and sometimes incompatible reactions to the evidence, the collection aims to challenge its readers and invite them to join the debate, and to assess the ancient evidence and modern interpretations of it for themselves.
This region - which marks the meeting of China and post-Soviet Central Asia - is increasingly important militarily, economically and geographically. Yet we know little of the people that live there, beyond a romanticised 'Silk Road' sense of fraternity. In fact, relations between the people of this region are tense, and border violence is escalating - even as the identity and nationality of the people on the ground shifts to meet their new geopolitical realities. As Steven Parham shows, many of the world's Soviet borders have proved to be deeply unstable and, in the end, impermanent. Meanwhile, the looming presence of Modern China and Russia, who are funneling money and military resources into the region - partly to fight what they see as a growing Islamic activism - are adding fuel to the fire. This lyrical, intelligent book functions as part travelogue, part sociological exploration, and is based on a unique body of research - five months trekking through the checkpoints of the border regions. As China continues to grow and become more assertive, as it has been recently in Africa and in the South China Seas - as well as in Xinjiang - China's borderlands have become a battleground between the Soviet past and the Chinese future.
This book addresses the necessary developments and adjustments that can be regarded as a promising starting point for making accrual accounting a more practice-relevant for the public sector entities. Specifically, the main focus is on Reshaping the application of accrual accounting principles and assumptions to fit the context of public sector entities; Developing a practice-relevant holistic accounting approach for governmental capital assets, which has been based on developing and reshaping the assets recognition criteria; Scope of general purpose financial reporting from an accountability perspective; Suggesting a sustainable accounting approach for reporting on the long-term fiscal sustainability; Developing a dynamic model for making public sector accrual accounting a more user practice relevant; and finally, Developing a theory of accounting information usefulness, which explains how cognitive aspects do influence the use/non-use of accounting information by the politicians. Fundamentally, the book has tackled these necessary developments and adjustments from both the producer's and the user's perspectives.
This book tackles the question of how to characterise and account for recentralisation in Colombia between central and lower levels of government across a 26-year period. Around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has once again put the distribution of responsibilities, resources, and authority between different levels of government at the heart of political debate. This book brings this issue to light as a topic central to the study of public administration.Drawing on extensive fi eldwork with more than a hundred interviews with former presidents, ministers, members of congress, governors, local mayors and subnational public offi cials, as well as documentary sources, it begins with a historical account of recentralisation processes in the world. It then proposes a theoretical framework to explain these processes, before tracing and carefully comparing recentralisation episodes in Colombia using theory-guided process tracing.
Political responses to climate change are shaped by beliefs and ideas. How does discourse on climate action and its contestation affect policy-making? Addressing this question, the book compares EU and US policy-making since the Paris Agreement and its framing by key political institutions. The empirical part analyses the structure, linkages and contestation of frames to evaluate the contrasting spaces of climate politics in both systems. As the first direct comparison of EU and US climate governance since the Paris Agreement, the book advances current research on the politics of climate change, the politicization of multi-level governance and the role of discourse for policy change.
This handbook comprehensively explores the European Union's institutional and policy responses to crises across policy domains and institutions - including the Euro crisis, Brexit, the Ukraine crisis, the refugee crisis, as well as the global health crisis resulting from COVID-19. It contributes to our understanding of how crisis affects institutional change and continuity, decision-making behavior and processes, and public policy-making. It offers a systematic discussion of how the existing repertoire of theories understand crisis and how well they capture times of unrest and events of disintegration. More generally, the handbook looks at how public organizations cope with crises, and thus probes how sustainable and resilient public organizations are in times of crisis and unrest.
The Convention on the Future of Europe served to galvanize debate about the nature and future developmental trajectory of the European Union. More specifically, it engendered discussion over the degree to which the process resembled that which had occurred in Philadelphia some two hundred years earlier, and, more broadly, over the extent to which the European Union does, or should, resemble the United States. Partly as a consequence of such debates, comparative federalism is now an important topic, with scholarly work comparing the US and EU proliferating rapidly. The present volume seeks to build on and contribute to this growing literature, by developing a systematic comparison of the institutions, policies and developmental patterns of the European Union and the United States.
The definitive and jaw-dropping account of Liz Truss's calamitous 49 days in office by the Sunday Times bestselling author of Johnson at 10. The shortest-serving prime minister in history. The first former leader to lose their seat since 1935. An inside look at how it all went so wrong. Liz Truss's disastrous premiership was the shortest and most chaotic in British history. In the space of just 49 days, Truss witnessed the death of the longest-reigning monarch, attempted to remould the economy, triggered a collapse in the value of Sterling and was forced on a series of embarrassing U-turns that ultimately led to her resignation. The aftershocks of her time in office are still felt today. How did she blow her opportunity so spectacularly? Based on exclusive interviews with key aides, allies and insiders, and focusing on the critical steps that led to her demise, this gripping behind-the-scenes work of contemporary history gives the definitive account of Truss's premiership.
This book analyzes recent advances, trends, challenges and potentials of the role of media in disaster risk reduction. Collaboration, co-design and co-delivery with other stakeholders in science technology, private sectors, and civil society are found to be effective in reaching people and communities.The media is considered to be of utmost importance in all phases of disasters, before, during and after, with different types of media having different proactive roles to play in disaster risk reduction. Before disasters, they play essential roles not only in bringing early warning to people but also in enhancing their perception of the need to take action. At during- and post-disaster response recovery phases, community radio and social media are the key. These necessitate a resilient media infrastructure as the core of uninterrupted coverage. Media literacy has become an important issue for several stakeholders, including governments. In addition, more focus is placed on media governance to look at the priorities of disaster risk reduction initiatives within the media. All of these are considered to lead to trust in the media, which further improves people's disaster response actions based on information from the media, before and during disasters. Covering different aspects of media, this book is a valuable source for students, researchers, academics, policy-makers and development practitioners.
Recent political science research into the American legal academy has been 'captured by conservatism'-this research has framed the institutional and ideological developments occurring within the law schools over the past forty years solely through the prism of modern conservatism. As a result, political scientists have ignored the political struggles of one of the most important legal reform movements of the 1980s and overlooked the hope for leftist reform that existed within American law schools during this period. Critical Legal Studies and the Campaign for American Law Schools tells the story of the critical legal studies movement. This formidable movement sought to fundamentally reconstruct law schools, train a new generation of leftist lawyers, and replace the dominant form of legal consciousness governing the American legal system. Instead of projecting a fatalism onto leftist reform, this book relies on extensive archival research and interviews to illuminate the radical potential that lived in the American legal academy of the 1980s. The critical legal studies movement was a towering presence in the law schools, and its legacy continues to hold out political possibilities and reform lessons for leftist legal scholars today.
For nearly as long as there have been electoral districts in America, politicians have gerrymandered those districts. Though the practice has changed over time, the public reaction to it has remained the same: gerrymandering is reviled. There is, of course, good reason for that sentiment. Gerrymandering is intended to maximize the number of legislative seats for one party. As such, it is an attempt to gain what appears to be an unfair advantage in elections. Nevertheless, gerrymandering is not well understood by most people and this lack of understanding leads to a false sense that there are easy solutions to this complex problem. Gerrymandering: The Politics of Redistricting in the United States unpacks the complicated process of gerrymandering, reflecting upon the normative issues to which it gives rise. Tracing the history of partisan gerrymandering from its nineteenth-century roots to the present day, the book explains its legal status and implementation, its consequences, and possible options for reform. The result is a balanced analysis of gerrymandering that acknowledges its troubling aspects while recognizing that, as long as district boundaries have to be drawn, there is no perfect way to do so.
This book details the relationship between culture and the language used by public figures, including politicians, political candidates, and government officials, in the broad context of political behavior and communication. Employing a variety of perspectives, theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and analytical approaches, chapters focus specifically on the question of HOW cultural factors (such as religion, history, economy, majority/minority relations, social structure, and values) shape the content, nature, and characteristics of the rhetoric that public figures utilize in selected countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East. The chapters enable comparison of the cultural effects on the different structures, styles, and contents of public speaking in societies from West to East. That is, of WHAT leaders say, HOW they say it (e.g., degree of openness, directness, usage of metaphors and slogans, xenophobic and racial expressions), under WHICH specific circumstances (e.g., National Days addresses, national or local assemblies' debates, during election campaigns appeals, press conferences' briefings, and in international meetings' speeches), and for WHAT specific audiences (e.g., supporters and voters, media representatives, or the global community).
A Short History of the Labour Party is the classic account of the rise of the Labour Party from its foundation through to Tony Blair's second term as Prime Minister. Thoroughly revised and updated, it describes the events that led to the inception of the party, the role of the trade unions within the party, the successes and failures of the twentieth century and the revival of the party's fortunes under Kinnock, Smith and then Blair. It closes with an analysis of the current crisis that the Party faces over its foreign policy choices since 9/11 including the war in Iraq. This book thus provides the essential background for an understanding and appreciation of today's political debates.
Labor law in state and local government is often characterized as a patchwork of inconsistent and contradictory statutes. The purpose of this book is to present the labor law in state government in a concise and understandable manner. To date, there has been no systematic treatise on the subject that is generally applicable. The authors have collected and analyzed the laws of each state that have enacted collective bargaining statutes. Comparisons are drawn with the National Labor Relations Act and the evidence suggests that there is a significant area of consistency, suggesting that many jurisdictions have modelled their statutes after the federal law; making only those modifications necessary to local conditions. Rather than focus on minute details of specific statutes, the authors have presented a general analysis of the major aspects of the state collective bargaining laws. The book begins with an introduction and overview of the states' labor laws. An analysis of why states must act if collective bargaining rights for public employees are to be protected is presented together with an analysis of the political and economic reasons for inconsistent treatment of public sector employees collective bargaining rights. The discussion then turns to the structure and functions of administrative law agencies, the rights of employers and employees, the scope of bargaining, bargaining in good faith, impasse resolution and its impact, and contract enforcement and administration.
This collection addresses key issues in the critique of Eurocentrism and racism regarding debates on the production of knowledge, historical narratives and memories in Europe and the Americas. Contributors explore the history of liberation politics as well as academic and political reaction through formulas of accommodation that re-centre the West.
Has male dominance in political life been broken? Will gender balance in elected assemblies soon be reached? Around 100 years after women's suffrage was gained, and in spite of much effort, most countries are still at some distance from this goal. In 2013, the average representation of women in the world's parliaments was around 20 per cent. This book analyses the longitudinal development of women's political representation in eight old democracies, where women were enfranchised before and around World War I: Denmark, Iceland, Germany, The Netherlands, New Jersey (USA), New South Wales (Australia), Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These countries/states have all followed an incremental track model of change in women's position in political life, but have followed different trajectories. This slow development stands in contrast to recent examples of fast track development in many countries from the Global South, not least as a result of the adoption of gender quotas. Furthermore, the book discusses in four separate chapters the common historical development in old democracies, the different trajectories and sequences, the framing of women politicians, and the impact of party and party system change. In this book an innovative model of male dominance is developed and defined in terms of both degree and scope. Four stages are identified: male monopoly, small minority, large minority, and gender balance. The book then reconceptualizes male dominance by looking at horizontal and vertical sex segregation in politics, at male-coded norms in the political workplace and at discourses of women as politicians. According to the time-lag theory, gender balance in politics will gradually be achieved. However, this theory is challenged by recent stagnation and drops in women's representation in some of the old democracies. A new concept of conditional irreversibility is developed in the final discussion about whether we are heading for gender balance in politics.
This book examines developments in governance reform in Britain, with a particular focus on the period since 2010. We argue that the experiences of the past decade mean that public value-based ideas are required to inform governance reform for the coming years. This needs to be prioritised due to the twin challenges of managing the aftermath of Brexit and navigating through the recovery phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The volume outlines key themes, issues and debates relevant to contemporary public sector reform including: modes of state governance, evidence-based policy-making debates, the challenges and possibilities of public sector innovation, accountability issues, and the implications of Brexit. The overall conclusion of the book is that the coming decade presents an opportunity for more paradigmatic changes to UK governance but, for this to happen, political leaders need to prioritise a 'reinventing government' agenda underpinned by public value-based thinking and approaches. This book will be of particular interest to students of politics and public administration and relevant for those with general research interests in British governance and public policy. |
You may like...
The Death Of Democracy - Hitler's Rise…
Benjamin Carter Hett
Paperback
(1)
Nuclear - Inside South Africa's Secret…
Karyn Maughan, Kirsten Pearson
Paperback
|