This book presents international experiences in urban network learning. It is vital for cities to learn as it is necessary to constantly adapt and improve public performance and address complex challenges in a constantly changing environment. It is therefore highly relevant to gain more insight into how cities can learn. Cities address problems and challenges in networks of co-operation between existing and new actors, such as state actors, market players and civil society. This book presents various learning environments and methods for urban network learning, and aims to learn from experiences across the globe. How does learning take place in these urban networks? What factors and situations help or hinder these learning practices? Can we move from intuition to a strategy to improve urban network learning?

This book explores new forms of popular organisation that emerged from strikes in India and Brazil between 2011 and 2014. Based on four case studies, the author traces the alliances and relations that strikers developed during their mobilisations with other popular actors such as students, indigenous peoples, and people displaced by dam projects. The study locates the mass strikes in Brazil's construction industry and India's automobile industry in a global conjuncture of protest movements, and develops a new theory of strikes that can take account of the manifold ways in which labour unrest is embedded in local communities and regional networks. "Joerg Nowak has written an ambitious, wide-ranging and very important book. Based on extensive empirical research in Brazil and India and a thorough analysis of the secondary literature, Nowak reveals that numerous labour conflicts develop in the absence of trade unions, but with the support of kinship networks, local communities, social movements and other types of associations. This impressive work may well become a major building block for a new interpretation of global workers' struggles." -Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, The Netherlands "Nowak's book meticulously details the trajectory of strikes and its resultant new forms of organisations in India and Brazil. The central focus of this analytically rich and thought provoking book is to search for a new political alternative model of organising workers. A very good deed indeed!" -Nandita Mondal, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India "Joerg Nowak analyses with critical sense forms of popular organization that often remain invisible. It is an indispensable book for all those who are looking for more effective analytical resources to better understand the present situation and the future promises of the workers' movements." -Roberto Veras de Oliveira, Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil "In this timely and important study, Nowak convincingly challenges the dominant Eurocentric approach to labour conflict and calls for a new theory of strikes. He stresses the need to engage in a wider perspective that includes social reproduction, neighbourhood mobilisations, and the specific traditions of struggles in the Global South." -Edward Webster, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

This book is an in-depth empirical study of four Asian and African attempts to create democratic, decentralised local governments in the late 1980s and 1990s. The case studies of Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Karnataka (India) and Bangladesh focus upon the enhancement of participation; accountability between people, politicians and bureaucrats; and, most importantly, on whether governmental performance actually improved in comparison with previous forms of administration. The book is systematically comparative, and based upon extensive popular surveys and local field work. It makes an important contribution to current debates in the development literature on whether 'good governance' and decentralisation can provide more responsive and effective services for the mass of the population - the poor and disadvantaged who live in the rural areas.

This book discusses the fundamental issues regarding the effect of real estate regulation on housing, urban development, and considerations of justice and efficiency. Bringing together the contributions of prominent scholars representing diverse methodologies and academic disciplines, this book offers new perspectives on core topics such as the effectiveness of land use regulation in terms of housing availability, enhanced equality, and sustainable development; and different modes of regulation and their mutual influences. The book's eleven chapters are divided into five parts which address different aspects of real estate regulation, combining theoretical analysis with a close observation of diverse case studies, from North America and Europe to China, the Middle East, and developing economies. Part I offers cutting-edge analysis on how to measure, model, and understand the impact of zoning and other modes of real estate regulation, from economic and normative theoretical viewpoints. Part II complements Part I by providing historical observations and empirical knowledge on the actual contribution of zoning and historical conservation regulation to cities' shape. Part III considers the outcomes of business and industrial land development policies. Part IV studies urban land development regulation and allows to compare between two relevant case studies-one from Germany, and the other from Poland. Finally, Part V concerns standardization in the real estate market by analyzing the justification and outcomes of such attempts, particularly in the mortgages market. Providing an interface between theory and practice, the book will appeal to a broad audience, consisting of scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, and students, interested in an interdisciplinary overlook on real estate regulation.

This book examines the impacts of fiscal decentralization reforms on the efficiency of local governments in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. By offering a comparative perspective and by applying econometric methods and regression models, it analyses various reform trajectories and their effects on individual CEE countries. Furthermore, the book discusses input and output indicators for evaluating the efficiency of municipalities. Readers will learn about the common features of these countries, the impact of path dependence, and future prospects for decentralization reforms. In closing, the book discusses modern management and administration methods, opportunities for cooperation between municipalities, co-creative service delivery, and other measures that could improve the efficiency of public service provision.

Bajo el gobierno del MAS el movimiento indigena boliviano logro emanciparse politicamente, penetrando las estructuras del poder estatal, pero al mismo tiempo paso por su crisis, desmovilizandose paulatinamente. El objetivo del libro es explorar la relacion entre la institucionalizacion del movimiento y su siguiente desmovilizacion. Aplicando el metodo "process tracing", el libro infiere primero que el impacto de la institucionalizacion en la dinamica del movimiento es condicionado por su caracter, asi el movimiento se pacifica cuando goza de la politica favorable y representacion gubernamental mas bien que parlamentaria; segundo, una vez el movimiento sea la parte de la maquinaria estatal, su disidencia potencial causa dilemas estrategicos para el gobierno que reacciona con estrategias para suprimirlo.

"This is a very rich monograph, based on impressive fieldwork in China, which demonstrates excellent qualitative and ethnographic research skills, research integrity, and cultural perceptiveness in the analysis. This book will make a great contribution to the literature on policy transfer and and policy mobilities, and on urban politics in contemporary China, as it offers a rich understanding of the nitty-gritty practices of transferring and learning 'from abroad'."Claire Colomb, Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University College London, UK. This book explores the concept of Careful Urban Renewal, a concept of urban renewal that originated in Berlin in the 1980s and that was proposed to Yangzhou, a Chinese city of the wealthy province of Jiangsu, in the early 2000s. It sets out to understand whether knowledge and ideas originating in a specific setting can be transferred to another locality thousands of miles away from the point of origin, and have the chance to change the policies and the practices of the destination city. The book shows that foreign ideas can inspire ambitious reforms of the policies of a single city, but that there also exist multiple challenges to policy learning and to the rooting of new ideas in local practices. To explore these challenges, this book develops an analysis of the micro-dynamics of policy transfer, showing that there exist multiple hierarchies to which a Chinese city can be subjected, intermittently opening or closing "windows for policy learning".

Holy Toledo is the first biography of one of the most remarkable social reformers of this century. It is the story of one man's attempts to remake himself, the workplace, and the city along Christian democratic lines. Jones was a deeply divided man: the successful businessman turned reformer who, after more than a decade of remarkable fidelity to the Golden Rule, still believed he had failed. Unlike most progressive reformers, Jones was in a position to initiate real change. His factory workers shared in the profits and took advantage of day-care facilities for their children. As mayor, he was a nationally revered public figure who supported municipal ownership of utilities, ended the practice of jailing the homeless, and made available free legal counsel to those who needed it. Marnie Jones relies upon a rich collection of unpublished documents to tell the compelling story of the only man in America to have run a city on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.

"Grounded in the urban politics of the 21st Century world-wide, this thoughtful volume hooks urban food - and especially its production - to social justice in a realistic and manageable way." -Diana Lee-Smith, Mazingira Institute, Kenya "An excellent international overview of urban food democracy and governance, with impressive geographical reach." -Andre Viljoen, University of Brighton, UK This edited collection explores urban food democracy as part of a broader policy-based approach to sustainable urban development. Conceptually, governance and social justice provide the analytical framework for a varied array of contributions which critically address issues including urban agriculture, smart cities, human health and wellbeing and urban biodiversity. Some chapters take the form of thematic, issue-based discussions, where others are constituted by empirical case studies. Contributing authors include both academic experts and practitioners who hail from a wide range of disciplines, professions and nations. All offer original research and robust consideration of urban food democracy in cities from across the Global North and South. Taken as a whole, this book makes a significant contribution to understanding the potential enabling role of good urban governance in developing formal urban food policy that is economically and socially responsive and in tune with forms of community-driven adaptation of space for the local production, distribution and consumption of nutritious food.

This book examines urbanization and migration processes in South Asia. By analyzing the socio-economic impacts and infrastructural, environmental and institutional aspects of different conurbations, it highlights conflicts over agricultural land as well as the effects on health, education, poverty and the welfare of children, women and old people. The authors also explore issues of mobility; connectivity and accessibility of public services, and discuss the effective use of new urban-management tools, such as the concept of smart cities and urban spatial monitoring.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the regional development strategies of east, west, northeast and central China and the development of important economic regions including the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Chengdu-Chongqing and central-southern areas of Liaoning Province. The book reveals some key issues faced in China's regional development and analyzes their causes while delving into new trends of regional development since the 18th CPC National Congress. The book concludes by proposing new ideas for regional development under the new normal and analyzing experiences of other major powers in carrying out coordinated regional development. This book will be of interest to urbanists, journalists, and China scholars.

"Contesting Peace in the Postwar City is key reading for urban and peace and conflict scholars. In this impressive and meticulously researched book, Gusic reflects on the ways in which divisions are routinised in the everyday landscape of divided cities and skilfully investigates how change and continuity are governed in postwar urban spaces. The book provides rich empirical material from the cities of Mostar, Mitrovica and Belfast, drawing on nuanced fieldwork insights." -Stefanie Kappler, Durham University, UK "Ivan Gusic sets out a powerful, theoretically critical and empirically rich account of the trajectories of cities after war. The strength of the work is that it brings an understanding of the urban condition into relation with ethno-national conflict and the survival of violence. Gusic unsettles dominant narratives in peace studies by offering a grounded evaluation of three cities coming out of violence and points to the importance of place in peacebuilding processes." -Brendan Murtagh, Queen's University Belfast, UK "Detailed case studies of Belfast, Mitrovica and Mostar show how cities are often engines of what Ivan Gusic calls 'war in peace'. This on-trend study combines the latest research from critical urban studies with peace and conflict studies to produce a very accessible and internationally relevant book. It is highly recommended." -Roger Mac Ginty, Durham University, UK This book explores why the postwar city reinforces rather than transcends its continuities of war in peace. It theorises war-to-peace transitions as conflicts over how to socio-politically order society and then analyses different urban conflicts over peace(s) in postwar Belfast (Northern Ireland), Mitrovica (Kosovo) and Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Focusing on themes such as educational segregation, clientelism, fear, paramilitaries, and infrastructure, it shows how conflict lines from war are perpetuated in and by the postwar city. Yet it also discovers instances where antagonisms are bridged by utilising the postwar city's transcending potential. While written in the nexus between peace research and urban studies, this book also speaks to political geography, international relations, anthropology, and planning.

En este libro Arturo Santa Cruz desarrolla una concepcion del poder como relacion social y la aplica consistentemente al ambito economico de las relaciones de Estados Unidos con otros paises del hemisferio occidental. Siguiendo el debate academico y popular acerca de los altibajos de la hegemonia estadounidense, este trabajo centra su analisis en un caso critico para el ejercicio del poder estadounidense a traves de su diplomacia economica (o economic statecraft): el continente americano, su zona de influencia historica. La racionalidad del enfoque regional es metodologico: si se puede demostrar que la influencia de Washington ha disminuido en el area desde inicios de la decada de los anos 70 del siglo pasado (cuando la discusion sobre la materia inicio) puede asumirse que lo mismo ha ocurrido en otras latitudes. El analisis se concentra en tres regiones: Norteamerica, Centroamerica y Sudamerica. Puesto que cada region contiene estados que en ocasiones han mantenido muy diferentes relaciones con Estados Unidos, los hallazgos contribuyen a un major entendimiento de la practica del poder en la subregion en cuestion, anadiendo variabilidad a los resultados generales. La hegemonia estadounidense y el continente americano: Poder y diplomacia economica en las relaciones internacionales es una fuente invaluable para estudiantes y academicos interesados en la politica y la historia de America Latina, en la integracion regional en America del Norte, en la teoria de Relaciones Internacionales, en la Diplomacia Economica, en Economia Politica, y en Politica Comparada.

En este libro Arturo Santa Cruz desarrolla una concepcion del poder como relacion social y la aplica consistentemente al ambito economico de las relaciones de Estados Unidos con otros paises del hemisferio occidental. Siguiendo el debate academico y popular acerca de los altibajos de la hegemonia estadounidense, este trabajo centra su analisis en un caso critico para el ejercicio del poder estadounidense a traves de su diplomacia economica (o economic statecraft): el continente americano, su zona de influencia historica. La racionalidad del enfoque regional es metodologico: si se puede demostrar que la influencia de Washington ha disminuido en el area desde inicios de la decada de los anos 70 del siglo pasado (cuando la discusion sobre la materia inicio) puede asumirse que lo mismo ha ocurrido en otras latitudes. El analisis se concentra en tres regiones: Norteamerica, Centroamerica y Sudamerica. Puesto que cada region contiene estados que en ocasiones han mantenido muy diferentes relaciones con Estados Unidos, los hallazgos contribuyen a un major entendimiento de la practica del poder en la subregion en cuestion, anadiendo variabilidad a los resultados generales. La hegemonia estadounidense y el continente americano: Poder y diplomacia economica en las relaciones internacionales es una fuente invaluable para estudiantes y academicos interesados en la politica y la historia de America Latina, en la integracion regional en America del Norte, en la teoria de Relaciones Internacionales, en la Diplomacia Economica, en Economia Politica, y en Politica Comparada.

This book analyses the crucial role that guns play in the dynamics of extreme violence engulfing Latin America and the policies that are being implemented to confront it. Gun control is surprisingly not a prominent issue in most countries of the region, but this situation is rapidly changing as proliferation and violence dramatically increase. The book adopts an extended version of John Kingdon's influential Multiple Streams Framework to explore how gun control enters political agendas and why some countries act to end gun violence and others do not. In this effort, the Brazilian Disarmament Statute and the Uruguayan Responsible Firearm Ownership Law serve as in-depth case studies that exhibit the region's heterogeneity and put Kingdon's policy theory to the test. Gun Control Policies in Latin America is an essential reading for anyone interested in Latin American security and public policies.

Cloud-Dienste gewinnen mit dem stetigen Wandel der Technik immer groessere praktische Bedeutung. Fehlten bislang ausdruckliche Regelungen zu Cloud-Computing-Vertragen im deutschen Recht, konkretisiert nunmehr die Digitale-Inhalte-Richtlinie spezifische Rechte und Pflichten der Vertragsparteien eines Cloud-Computing-Vertrags. Die Autorin befasst sich vor diesem Hintergrund mit der Frage, inwieweit sich die Rechte und Pflichten der Vertragsparteien bei Mangelhaftigkeit der Cloud-Dienste mit der Verabschiedung der Digitale-Inhalte-Richtlinie verandern. Ein besonderes Augenmerk legt die Autorin hierbei auf die Mangelrechte des Nutzers, die Beweislast fur das Bestehen eines Mangels sowie auf die Moeglichkeit des Anbieters, seine Haftung zu begrenzen.

Filme sind auf staatliche Filmfoerderung angewiesen. Die Autorin stellt in einem Rechtsvergleich die Filmfoerdersysteme in Deutschland und England einschliesslich der Foerderung auf UK-Ebene mit ihren unterschiedlichen Foerderinstrumenten gegenuber. Erstmalig wird das englische Filmfoerdersystem in seiner Gesamtheit dargestellt. Die Foerderungen werden auf eine Vereinbarkeit mit dem europaischen Beihilfenrecht untersucht, insbesondere das Tatbestandsmerkmal der staatlichen Mittel und die Rechtfertigungsgrunde. Die Autorin gibt als Resultate wertvolle Hinweise zur Korrektur von Foerdergesetzen und -richtlinien. Hervorgehoben wird das Film Tax Regime der britischen Steuererleichterungen, das sowohl Vorbild als auch Warnfunktion fur eine Weiterentwicklung des deutschen Filmfoerdersystems sein kann.

Swiss Maid: Verborgene Krafte und Schatze in der Erfolgsgeschichte der Schweiz untersucht die Arbeit und Leistungen von einfachen Frauen und wie sie die Schweiz mitgestaltet haben. Frauen waren tatig in religioesen Institutionen, in der Hauswirtschaft, auf Bauernhoefen, im Handwerk und Gewerbe, in der Madchenbildung, im Pflegebereich, in der Fursorge, im Militar, in der Industrie und im Dienstleistungssektor. Obwohl judischchristliche Traditionen die Frauen in untergeordneten Rollen einschlossen, entwickelten die Frauen ihre eigenen Starken und trugen zur erfolgreichen Volkswirtschaft des Landes bei. Allerdings wurde die Arbeit dieser Frauen nicht in die Staatsbuchhaltung aufgenommen und in Produktivitatsmodellen bewertet und anerkannt. In diesem Buch werden qualitative und quantitative Daten vorgestellt, die zur Ermittlung von soziooekonomischen Aussagen erforderlich sind. Ausbildung, Arbeitsteilung und soziale Strukturen vergangener Jahrhunderte werden in Bezug auf die Produktivitat von Frauen ebenso diskutiert wie die sozialen Veranderungen in jungerer Zeit. Multifaktor- Produktivitatskonzepte und soziale Wohlstandsmessungen beleuchten den enormen Wert der Arbeit von Frauen. Portrats von wegweisenden und gewoehnlichen Frauen zeugen von ihrem unerschrockenen Mut und ihren aussergewoehnlichen Beitragen, ohne die die Marke "Swiss Made" und das Image der Schweiz nicht erfolgreich waren. Nur wenn wir die Frauen-einschliessende Geschichte kennen, verstehen wir die Gegenwart. Dieses Buch schliesst die Lucke im Schweizer Erfolgsmodell.

The importance of public opinion in the determination of public policy is the subject of considerable debate. Whether discussion centres on local, state or national affairs, the influence of the opinions of ordinary citizens is often assumed yet rarely demonstrated. Other factors such as interest group lobbying, party politics and developmental, or environmental, constraints have been thought to have the greater influence over policy decisions. Professors Erikson, Wright and McIver make the argument that state policies are highly responsive to public opinion, and they show how the institutions of state politics work to achieve this high level of responsiveness. They analyse state policies from the 1930s to the present, drawing from, and contributing to, major lines of research on American politics. Their conclusions are applied to central questions of democratic theory and affirm the robust character of the state institution.

The COVID-19 virus outbreak has rocked the world and it is widely accepted that there can be no return to the pre-pandemic society of 2019. However, many suggestions for the future of society and the planet are aimed at national governments, international bodies and society in general. Drawing on a decade of research by an internationally renowned expert, this book focuses on how cities and communities can lead the way in developing recovery strategies that promote social, economic and environmental justice. It offers new thinking tools for civic leaders and activists as well as practical suggestions on how we can co-create a more inclusive post COVID-19 future for us all.

The meteoric rise of the mayor of a small Midwest city, who defied every pundit's odds with his electrifying run for the presidency, created one of the most surprising candidacies in recent American history. The fact that his New York Times best-selling memoir, Shortest Way Home, didn't read like your typical campaign book only added to "Mayor Pete's" transcendent appeal. Readers everywhere, old and young, came to appreciate the "stirring, honest, and often beautiful" (Jill Lepore, New Yorker) personal stories and gripping mayoral tales, which provided, in lyrical prose, the political and philosophical foundations of his historic campaign. Now featuring a new introduction and a "Back Home" afterword, in which Buttigieg movingly returns with the reader to his roots in his hometown city of South Bend, Indiana, as well as a transcript of the eulogy for his father, Joseph Buttigieg, Shortest Way Home, already considered a classic of the political memoir form, provides us with a beacon of hope at a time of social despair and political crisis.

Examining the startling revival of the Scottish Conservative Party under Ruth Davidson's leadership Key features First book to examine the recent revival of the Scottish Conservative Party Analyses the Scottish Conservative Party and Ruth Davidson's leadership in ground-breaking ways, for example in the context of gender and LGBT politics; its relationships with the SNP, Northern Ireland, the Scottish media and the UK Tory Party; its use of Scottish national identity in promoting itself electorally Complements and updates David Torrance's 2012 edited volume for Edinburgh University Press on the decline of the party, Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? Helps inform Scottish political and academic discourse ahead of the 2021 Holyrood elections When Ruth Davidson was elected leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party in 2011, it was considered something of a joke: in electoral decline for decades, politically irrelevant and apparently beyond the point of no return. But by 2017, 'Ruth Davidson's Conservatives' had become Scotland's second party at Holyrood and Westminster, and its leader spoken of as a future leader of the UK Conservative Party, if not the next Scottish First Minister. This book, which brings together leading academics and analysts, examines the extraordinary revival of the Scottish Conservative Party between 2011 and Ruth Davidson's shock resignation in 2019. Contributors look at the importance of gender and sexuality, the 2014 independence referendum, the Scottish media and the UK Conservative Party's 'territorial code' to the changing fortunes of the party and its leader, asking if it can be sustained amid the turbulence of two ongoing constitutional debates.

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Marco Just Quiles offers new perspectives on how domestic and external factors interact to shape variations in local state capacity. Using Bolivia as a case, he applies quantitative and qualitative methods to decode the nexus between global interdependencies, subnational bargaining processes, and diverging configurations of public service provision at the local level. Relying in part on newly compiled indicators, the author presents the ways in which shifting distributional coalitions between regional elites, central governments and their connections with international markets in different periods of the last century have produced the contemporary fragmentation of stateness in Bolivia.

This book studies political leadership at the local level, based on data from a survey of the mayors of cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants in 29 European countries carried out between 2014 and 2016. The book compares these results with those of a similar survey conducted ten years ago. From this comparative perspective, the book examines how to become a mayor in Europe today, the attitudes of these politicians towards administrative and territorial reforms, their notions of democracy, their political priorities, whether or not party politicization plays a role at the municipal level, and how mayors interact with other actors in the local political arena. This study addresses students, academics and practitioners concerned at different levels with the functioning and reforms of the municipal level of local government.