This book explores the institution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a policy instrument. It argues that after the Cold War the European Union started challenging the unilateral policies of the United States by promoting new norms and institutions, such as the ICC. This development flies in the face of traditional explanations for cooperation, which would theorize institutionalization as the result of hegemonic preponderance, rational calculations or common identities. The book explains the dynamics behind the emergence of the ICC with a novel theoretical concept of normative binding. Normative binding is a strategy that provides middle powers with the means to tie down the unilateral policies of powerful actors that prefer not to cooperate. The idea is to promote new multilateral norms and deposit them in institutions, which have the potential to become binding even on unilateralist actors, if the majority of states adhere to them.

This book provides students with the most comprehensive and incisive introduction available to the intricacies of the Italian political system. Written in an accessible and student-friendly style, this up-to-date textbook features: * an introduction to Italian political history from 1943 to the present day * an explanation of the governmental system, the constitutional framework, the core institutions, the electoral system and the key parties * analysis of the role of the contemporary pressure groups and social movements including environmental, labour and anti-globalization organizations * discussion of important topical issues such as corruption, organized crime, the role of the media and freedom of the press * an exploration of Italian foreign policy towards the EU, the US and the 'War on Terrorism' * innovative use of photographs, boxed biographies, figures, annotated further reading and lists of websites to enliven the text. Contemporary Italian Politics is the perfect introduction for students reading Italian politics, Italian studies and European studies.

Mexican history comes to life in this "fascinating" work by the author of Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (The Christian Science Monitor). Fire & Blood brilliantly depicts the succession of tribes and societies that have variously called Mexico their home, their battleground, and their legacy. This is the tale of the indigenous people who forged from this rugged terrain a wide-ranging civilization; of the Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Aztec dynasties, which exercised their sophisticated powers through bureaucracy and religion; of the Spanish conquistadors, whose arrival heralded death, disease, and a new vision of continental domination. Author T. R. Fehrenbach connects these threads with the story of modern-day, independent Mexico, a proud nation struggling to balance its traditions against opportunities that often seem tantalizingly out of reach. From the Mesoamerican empires to the Spanish Conquest and the Mexican Revolution, peopled by the legendary personalities of Mexican history-Montezuma, Cortes, Santa Anna, Juarez, Maximilian, Diaz, Pancho Villa, and Zapata-Fire & Blood is a "deftly organized and well-researched" work of popular history (Library Journal).

This textbook examines corruption through a macroeconomic lens, exploring the relationship between corruption, fiscal policy, and political economy. It merges macroeconomic growth models with elements of political economic theory to address important applied topics such as income inequality within and across countries, growth slowdowns, and fiscal crises. Revised and updated to include new research findings and recent policy discussions, the second edition contains 15 new sections and 2 new chapters on topics such as public defaults, the wage elasticity of work and the interest elasticity of saving, and the economic and fiscal impact of the 2020 pandemic. Most of the basic ideas are illustrated using a two-period model of government investment that captures the future cost of policies that favor the present. The more subtle and advanced issues are illustrated and, in some cases, quantified, using the overlapping-generations model of economic growth. The models used to illustrate the mechanisms of economic growth are extended to incorporate politics and the behavior of public official. The text concludes with a thorough discussion of policy reforms designed to address the issues discussed in earlier chapters. Intended for students familiar with intermediate-level economics, the second edition contains a technical appendix, expanded end-of-chapter questions and problems, and a complete solutions manual. The second edition also offers updated resources for instructors, including sample syllabi and over 550 multiple choice questions. Offering a unified explanation for the causes and consequences of government failure, fiscal crisis, and needed policy reforms, this text is appropriate for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses in macroeconomics, political economy, and public policy.

The fully updated fourth edition of this lively and accessible book argues for the central role of media in understanding and shaping globalization. By breaking down the economic, cultural, and political impact of media, and through a rich set of case studies, Jack Lule describes a divided global village, its destiny shaped by strife.

This book provides fresh perspectives in the legal study of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In the context of European studies, the Court has mainly been analysed in light of its central role in the process of continental integration. Moreover, the Court has traditionally been studied by specialists for its important role as an agent of comparative law. This book studies the evolution of the Court itself, rather than that of the EU legal order in its judge-made dimension, and addresses several institutional aspects of its structure and organization, selected and constructed as a complete range of symptomatic figures of judicial institutionalisation. In doing so, the author seeks to showcase how the development and the institutional evolution of the CJEU happened through a selective internalization of comparative influences.

This book explores how public opinion is used to design, monitor and evaluate government programmes in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Using information collected from the media and from international practitioners in the public opinion field, as well as interviews in each of the 4 countries, the author describes how views of public opinion and governance differ significantly between elites and the general public. Bennett argues that elites generally risk more by allowing the creation of new data, fearing that its analysis may become public and create communications and political problems of various kinds. The book finds evidence that recent conservative governments in several countries are changing their perspective on the use of public opinion, and that conventional public opinion studies are facing challenges from the availability of other kinds of information and new technologies. This book is a hugely valuable contribution to a hitherto little explored field and will appeal to academics and practitioners alike.

This study describes and analyzes the significant political events that occurred between the fiftieth anniversary of Indian Independence and the coming of the third millennium. It challenges much of the prevailing public image of India based upon the mistaken notion that it is still the country of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru's principle that India should be a secular state has been lost, and it has become a country dominated by Hindu communalism. Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence has been forgotten, and India has built what will soon be the third largest military force in the world, including nuclear weapons. The caste-less society that was identified in its Constitution as one of free India's goals has become a society in which the salience of caste membership is greater today than in 1947.

Dettman examines events during the thirty months from August 1997 to January 2000 on the political, economic, and military fronts. During this period, the continuing skirmishes with Pakistan along the Line of Control in Kashmir escalated into a short, high altitude war that ended with Indo-Pakistan relations at their lowest ebb since the Bangladesh War of 1971. India's decision to allocate vast resources to building up its armed forces and supplying them with nuclear weapons will greatly diminish the government's support for the demographic, environmental, and social welfare programs that are needed to avoid a long-term degradation of its quality of life.

Canadian politicians, like many of their circumpolar counterparts, brag about their country's "Arctic identity" or "northern character," but what do they mean, exactly? Stereotypes abound, from Dudley Do-Right to Northern Exposure, but these southern perspectives fail to capture northern realities. During decades of service as a legislator, mediator, and negotiator, Tony Penikett witnessed a new northern consciousness grow out of the challenges of the Cold War, climate change, land rights struggles, and the boom and bust of resource megaprojects. His lively account of clashes and accommodations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders not only retraces the footsteps of his hunt for a northern identity but tells the story of an Arctic that the world does not yet know.

This book establishes a nexus between corruption in public procurement and the prevailing crisis of governance in Africa. The African continent is characterised by the growing concern for the deteriorating human security. In the midst of these woes, African political leaders are known for their stupendous wealth and riches through expropriation of national resources for personal benefits. This growing inequality in the continent has become a major driver for a series of violent and criminal activities, which have added to the worsening governance crisis. Thus, the abuse of public power for advancing private gain constitutes an impediment to effective public service delivery, thereby engendering a crisis of governance. The consequence of this is not limited to the socio-economic growth and welfare of citizens, but it often also jeopardizes the democratic credentials and objectives of the state.

This book assesses the impact of the May 2019 European elections as well as the Covid-19 pandemic on the EU's politics, institutions, and policies. Special attention is paid to the impact of these events on the different political forces as well as on the Union's institutional balance, its priorities and the reform of its budget and policies. Because of the many post-electoral uncertainties, the book also takes into account how the relations between the Parliament, the European Council and the new Commission have developed. Furthermore, it analyses the capacity of the von der Leyen Commission to implement an ambitious programme, especially in the context of an unfolding pandemic. The objective of this book is to study the 2019 electoral sequence (parliamentary elections, appointment of EU institutions leaders, investiture of the Commission, new legislative programme) and determine its influence on the main institutional and political challenges for the 2019-2024 legislature. In other words, the volume deals with the question of who holds the EU's leadership after the 2019 elections and how it handles the 2020-2021 pandemic.

While Western modern political thought has been a story of inclusion, it has also been one of continued exclusion and new forms of political oppression and silencing. This is why political theory is so necessary today. Political thought is diverse. From liberal theories laying out ideal democratic institutions, to critical analyses of postcolonial settler states, to conceptual analyses of the nature of freedom, there are very different approaches, topics and aims within the tradition of Western political theory. What binds these diverse forms of thinking together? How do how do they help us to understand political institutions, life, behaviour and events? How do they help us to make decisions in the complex world of politics? This book, significantly revised and reconceptualized, introduces you to the modern discipline of political theory in the Western tradition, tackling its key debates, concepts, problems and traditions: - What is the nature of political concepts? What problems do they pose to thinkers and political actors? - How have modern political thinkers usually approached thinking about politics? How has this been problematized in contemporary debates? - Has modern politics fundamentally ignored economically impoverished groups, women, indigenous peoples, racialized groups and the natural environment? - How have ideas like freedom, equality, sovereignty and the state been conceptualized in the modern tradition? What tensions has this given rise to? Delving into topics as diverse as Maoism, postcolonialism and white supremacy, boxed features give you room to explore and expand in political theorising: -Focusing on the texts: helps you deal with difficult texts and arguments -Tradition: introduces you to major approaches to political theory -Thinker: allows you to understand the contributions of major figures in political thought -Thinking globally: gives insight into how political theory is adapting to global interconnectedness -Beyond the West: makes you reflect on what can be learnt from non-Western approaches. Spanning the development of Western political thought, from Thucydides through to John Rawls and beyond, with a focus on Modern and contemporary debates, this is an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on political thought and political philosophy.

This collection of original essays explores policy perspectives on selected contemporary issues as they relate to black Americans and provides an analysis of recent policy decisions in terms of the resultant benefits and burdens to the black community. The major concern of Contemporary Public Policy Perspectives and Black Americans is to determine whether the current public policy objectives are meeting the needs of America's black population. The issues examined herein include public policies in the areas of urban crisis, Reaganomics, public employment, minority business enterprise, energy, the military, police, affirmative action, health, the economy, and futures and ethics policies. In discussing policy issues and their distributional benefits and results, opportunities for individual advancement are scrutinized. This scrutiny, Rice and Jones contend, is the only way to consider and discuss the equity of policy issues for black Americans.

This book includes collective research by the Institute of Political Science of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which is an important research institution of political science and a think-tank in China. The book was completed by the expert team of "China's Political System" headed by Director Fang Ning for several years and after several changes in their manuscripts. This book covers the core political systems of China, such as the leadership system of the Communist Party of China, the decision-making system of the Party and government in Chinese politics, the system of the people's congress, the relationship between the central and local authorities, the system of officials training and selection, the system of discipline inspection and supervision, the system of consultative democracy and the system of community-level self-governance, etc. This book aims to build a new paradigm of empirical research and introduction of the contemporary Chinese political system by using the description and research method of materialization and dynamics of the political system.

The Politics of Major Policy Reform in Postwar America examines the politics of recent landmark policy in areas such as homeland security, civil rights, health care, immigration and trade, and it does so within a broad theoretical and historical context. By considering the politics of major programmatic reforms in the United States since the Second World War - specifically, courses of action aimed at dealing with perceived public problems - a group of distinguished scholars sheds light not only on significant efforts to ameliorate widely recognized ills in domestic and foreign affairs but also on systemic developments in American politics and government. In sum, this volume provides a comprehensive understanding of how major policy breakthroughs are achieved, stifled, or compromised in a political system conventionally understood as resistant to major change.

"If one wants to understand why, from its modest beginnings, the European Parliament has become a major player in EU decision-making, look no further than this book. It presents, to date, the theoretically most compelling, methodologically disciplined and empirically richest account of parliamentary self-empowerment over time, across key functions and policy areas. This volume will be a main point of reference for work on the European Parliament, the dynamics of inter-institutional politics, and EU integration more generally for years to come."-Berthold Rittberger, Professor of International Relations, University of Munich, Germany "Anyone interested in the rise of the European Parliament as a significant actor in the EU should read this book. It offers a fascinating insight into the strategies used by the Parliament to achieve its aims and the conditions for its success or failure. It ranges widely across time and policy areas to give a comprehensive analysis of the Parliament's changing institutional position."-Michael Shackleton, Professor of European Institutions, Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and former EP official This book analyses the European Parliament's strategies of self-empowerment over time stretching across cases of new institutional prerogatives as well as substantive policy areas. It considers why and how the Parliament has managed to gain formal and informal powers in this wide variety of cases. The book provides a systematic and comparative analysis of the European Parliament's formal and informal empowerment in two broad sets of cases: on the one hand, it examines the EP's empowerment since the Treaty of Rome in three areas that are characteristic of parliamentary democracies, namely legislation, the budget, and the investiture of the executive. On the other hand, it analyses the European Parliament's role in highly politicised policy areas, namely Economic and Monetary Governance and the shaping of EU trade agreements.

This book examines the functions of conferences within Arctic governance, as a third dimension between sovereign states and formalized cooperative arrangements. It analyzes conferences against the background of three main empirical topics. Firstly, the functions of conferences for different actor groups, both Arctic rights holders and emerging non-Arctic state actors claiming stakeholder status. From this, the book also analyzes how conferences contribute to altering the actor composition of Arctic governance as a whole. Secondly, conferences as agenda setting arenas - whether conference activities can contribute to influencing the broader agenda in the region, and conferences as arenas for agenda setting - whether participants can bring with them topics that are picked up and brought into other processes. Thirdly, the book considers the space for conferences within broader governance architectures, as links between units in the regime complex. The book further presents an in-depth case study of the two largest conferences on Arctic issues: the Arctic Frontiers and Arctic Circle Assembly. It illustrates the diverse functions conferences can have for elements within a broader governance system, beyond serving as meeting places and networking arenas. Therefore, it is a must-read for researchers, students, and policy-makers interested in a better understanding of Arctic governance in particular, and International Relations in general.

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of human well-being outcomes by analyzing the role of domestic and international political factors. The well-being outcomes under study are the building blocks of development, and play a crucial developmental role in the lives of citizens, states, and the global community. The project introduces cases from Brazil, Japan, China, and Iraq, and proposes to answer some of the pressing questions that scholars and policy-makers alike have pondered over for years. Why are there large disparities between countries in the quality of life people lead? What factors account for the general well-being of mankind? How do we improve human lives?

This book offers a critical analysis of the rise of the US to global hegemony against a background of increased erosion of democracy and rule of law, and a rising linear pattern of near-absolute capitalist development. The author argues that the significant shrinkage of the ideological spectrum globally, as a result of worrisome levels of business and government interpenetration, has created a dangerous 'prefascist configuration' whereby unthinkable levels of violence have been normalized through the use of technologies such as drones, increasingly condoned even by 'liberal' groups and the so-called political left. Using the example of the Obama administration and its increased reliance on drone assassinations, the volume makes a case for the dangers that lie in today's unique convergence of lack of transparency in government, business-government interpenetration, informal social regimentation, and militarization of capitalism.

This book provides a comparative analysis of performance budgeting and financing implementation, and examines failures and successes across both developed and developing countries. Beginning with a review of theoretical research on performance budgeting and financing, the book synthesises the numerous studies on the subject. The book describes the situation in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Netherlands and Italy, as well as in seven developing countries - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Russia and South Africa, at the national, and at the local level. Each chapter provides historical and descriptive details of successful or failed experiments in performance budgeting and performance financing.

This book explores how community influences civic engagement, focusing on the case of Ghana. It offers an interdisciplinary perspective to those studying psychology, political development and civic engagement in African countries. Previous research has shown that the social and economic context in which an individual interacts influences their political behaviors and attitudes, and that personal characteristics account for differences in political behavior and attitudes. This work moves away from the cultural demographics of a person, which often take center stage in existing investigations of partisan political behavior in the African context, and addresses the following five questions: (1) To what extent do individual traits influence civic engagement in Ghana? (2) To what extent is community identity similar or different in small rural villages versus large metropolitan areas in Ghana and how does community identity influence civic engagement? (3) To what extent does trust influence civic engagement in Ghana? (4) What factors and activities influence political knowledge and how does political knowledge influence civic engagement? (5) What is the status of women in civic engagement?

Analysing the conditions under which governments are more likely to present an executive law or a government bill, this book addresses a central aspect of the decision-making process of public policies. Drafting legislation is an important action to achieve specific policy goals, and the path chosen for this process is part of governmental strategy. This book presents a new theoretical explanation of how executives wield legislative power, based in a formal model. The model is tested using new data from Portugal. It shows that in political systems where one of the political actors has veto powers which can easily be overridden, the type of parliamentary majority is the main consideration for the government's choice of legislative instrument. More specifically, when a government does not have the majority in parliament it is more likely to propose an executive law, and contrary, when a government has a majority in parliament, it is more likely to propose a government bill.

This open access book examines how digital technologies are used to promote citizen participation in democratic urban development. It assesses the emergence, use, applicability and functions of digital modes of citizen participation in multiple cities around the world, where political regimes invite ordinary citizens to partake in policy processes through information technologies. The book also explores these initiatives alongside issues of democracy, social justice and power. It is an essential reference for practitioners, policymakers and academics interested in the relationship between citizen participation, technology and urban governance.

This book brings together the theory and practice of managing public trust. It examines the current state of public trust, including a comprehensive global overview of both the research and practical applications of managing public trust by presenting research from seven countries (Brazil, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Portugal, Taiwan, Turkey) from three continents. The book is divided into five parts, covering the meaning of trust, types, dimension and the role of trust in management; the organizational challenges in relation to public trust; the impact of social media on the development of public trust; the dynamics of public trust in business; and public trust in different cultural contexts.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) from a government and public policy perspective. Since 2011, federal spending on IoT has been growing at a compound annual rate of ten percent. New technologies, such as sensors, and new kinds of data, such as big data, are creating new ways to systematically capture data and to use it to respond to complex problems. Some of these new technologies and applications have been identified and studied in recent literature in terms of their relevance to government. This volume adds to the literature by presenting sound theories and concepts for understanding the opportunities and challenges governments face when seeking to improve public services and government operations through the use of IoT. It also includes innovative methodologies for building understanding of the potential of a smart and connected government. In addition, the book offers relevant case studies and practical recommendations for the development, management, and evaluation of public policies and government programs.