The first systematic analysis of the obstacles to state constitutional reform.

From Sharach Bond, who served as the first governor of Illinois beginning in 1818, to William Ogden, Chicago's first mayor, many powerful men and women have played vital roles in the political life and climate of both Chicago and Illinois. The Governors of Illinois and the Mayors of Chicago provides biographies for the state's most important power brokers.

In this study, author Bradley W. Rasch explores the history of the state, its politics, and its power brokers and details little-known facts about some of the important people:

Edward Coles, who served as governor from 1822 to 1826, was an abolitionist long before it was fashionable.

Gov. Joseph Duncan's (1834-1838) major accomplishment was moving the state capital to Springfield.

William Ogden is called Chicago's founder and served as the first mayor after its incorporation, which he helped facilitate.

Mayor Augustus Garrett served as mayor twice but is best known for having his second election invalidated due to fraud.

Filled with an interesting array of facts and trivia, The Governors of Illinois and the Mayors of Chicago shows how many of the people who served in these positions have gone on to receive national and international acclaim and influence.

A vividly written and timely polemic tackling the burning injustices shaping British society today. ‘Intelligently written and powerfully argued.’ Paul Mason ‘Witty, scathing, and entertaining.’ Danny Dorling Journalist Sam Bright is a Northerner living in London. He is just one of the millions of people clinging on to the coattails of the capital, sucked in by the prospect of opportunities that the rest of the United Kingdom does not enjoy. Our capital is a vast melting pot of languages, cultures, and ideas, and rightly celebrated for it. For many, though, there is no other option. The only place to access the opportunities this country offers is London. Banking, law, politics, advertising, architecture, the arts and the media are all concentrated here. It is almost impossible to reach the heights of any profession without joining the grey hoards queuing for the next tube. As the economic, political, and cultural epicentre of the country, Fortress London acts more like a renaissance city-state like Florence or Venice than the capital of a modern nation-state. And the gluttony of London, compared to the malnourishment of our regions, dramatically affects life chances in Britain. Fortress London argues that to address Britain’s manifold problems, we need first to end the hegemony of its capital. Enriched by a vast array of interviews and statistics, it will examine how our individual destinies, from childhood to death, are determined by the disproportionate power of London. It will explain why regional inequality has fallen off the Left’s radar, even as the Right pays lip service to it, and it will draw on international comparisons to show where we have gone wrong and, crucially, how we can fix it. Sam Bright’s clear-eyed intervention will convince you that regional inequality is the problem — and that now is the time for change. Featuring exclusive interviews with: Andy Burnham, Lisa Nandy, Steve Rotheram, Aditya Chakrabortty, David Blunkett, Jess Phillips, Andrew Adonis and more…

This book can be seen as two different books. The first is a history of political parties in ten nations (with the sections on France and Germany limited to specific periods). The second is an inquiry into the reasons for the different party systems that are found when applying similar proportional rules. In the specific countries that are analyzed, the authors put to the forefront community ties (specifically labor unions, some religious organizations and at times language) that intervene in the apparent political affiliation of a considerable number of voters. In addition, the authors add an explanation of the rise of new parties that hinges largely on whether or not alternatives exist that have not been tainted by having been part of the government or having been closely part of failed political institutions.

This volume provides a unique insight into the ways local governments have maintained financial resilience in the face of the significant challenges posed by the era of austerity. Taking an international perspective, it provides an enlightening and practical analysis of the different capacities and responses that local governments deploy to cope with financial shocks.Moving beyond traditional approaches dealing with financial stress, the financial resilience perspective reveals a wider range of organisational responses and enables consideration of the dynamic role played by internal and external contextual factors. The international case study approach allows for a comparative analysis of financial resilience in the context of different administrative and policy environments. By providing a unifying view of financial resilience, the importance of building resilience into organisational financial management is demonstrated, uncovering the relative effectiveness of different resilience building approaches. This edited volume is a valuable source for practitioners and academics, as well as students of public policy, public management and financial management.

Set against the backdrop of tensions in East Asia, this book analyzes how East Asia's "new middle powers" and emerging powers employ public diplomacy as a key element of their foreign policy strategy and in so doing influence regional power dynamics. The volume brings together contributions from an international and influential group of scholars, who are leading debates on public diplomacy within East Asia. Where the study of public diplomacy has so far focused primarily on the West, the essays in this book highlight the distinct strategies of East Asian powers and demonstrate that understanding public diplomacy requires studying its strategies and practices outside as much as within the Western world. A focus on public diplomacy likewise gives us a more varied picture of state-to-state relations in East Asia.

The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land ("land-lost farmers") and local government. Particularly, it applies the extended case method to answer the following two questions: first, in what ways do the forces of integration and conflict manifest themselves in the relationship between land-lost farmers and local government? Second, how do land-lost farmers and local government apply respective modalities in the context of their interplay? The main finding is that the two groups, land-lost farmers and officials, are engaged in a complex and dynamic relationship. That relationship is played out locally within a network of power-interest structures, which not only manifests itself as forces of integration and conflict, but also as an ongoing process, a game played by knowledgeable agents, whose strategies are enacted, and in so doing, both reproduce that game and alter it. Readers will gain an ethnographic understanding of the relationship based on an in-depth examination of perspectives on both sides of the equation.

Since the first elections of 1994, the South African constitution officially guarantees and promotes a wide range of political and civil rights and institutionalizes the separation of powers with an independent judiciary. This has made South Africa a political symbol of change, hope and democracy in Africa and around the world. However, since the introduction of free and fair electoral processes and with ANC dominating the presidency and the parliamentary seats, the political scene has been scattered by democratic challenges. South Africa remains a flawed democracy, combining free elections and respect for basic civil liberties with problems of governance, an underdeveloped political culture, and low levels of public participation. Today, South Africa stands at a crossroads. While the constitutional democracy has survived, South African democracy seems to have weakened by state capture, internal ANC implosion, corruption, societal polarization, social exclusion, xenophobia, and threats of state economic bankruptcy. South Africa faces growing discontent symbolized in intensified societal and political debates, protests and demonstrations providing for the question if this is a sign of dissatisfied citizens demanding deeper democracy or activities questioning the established constitutional democracy from an anti-democratic, populist, and radical point of view. South Africas Democracy at the Crossroads explores the question; what are the challenges to future democratization in South Africa?

This volume covers a wide spectrum of governance issues relating to small states in a global context. While different definitions of governance are given in the chapters, most authors associate governance with the setting and implementation of policies aimed at managing a country or territory, and with the related institutional structures and interventions by political actors. Generally, good governance is associated with concepts such as policy effectiveness, accountability, transparency, control of corruption, encouragement of citizens' voice and gender equality-factors which are, in turn, linked with democracy. What emerges from the book is that the societies of small states are being re-shaped by various forces outside their control, including the globalization process and climate change, rendering their governance ever more complex. These problems are not solely faced by small states, but small country size tends to lead to a higher degree of exposure to external factors. The chapters are grouped into four sections broadly covering political, environmental, social and economic governance. Governance is influenced by many, often intertwined, factors; the division of the book into four parts therefore does not detract from the fact that governance is multifaceted, and such division was based on the primary focus of each particular study and its main disciplinary background. The expert authors have, moreover, used a variety of approaches in the studies, the subject of small states being well suited to scholarly work from different disciplines using qualitative, quantitative and mixed approaches to arrive at useful conclusions.

This book analyses efforts of Bangladeshi government and NGOs to strengthen local governance, and identifies the challenges posed by collaboration with NGOs. Presenting a dominantly qualitative study, the analysis explores whether engagement between the Sharique project to strengthen local governance and the Union Parishads has translated into success. In doing so, it argues that evidence points to a positive impact on institutionalising good governance and fiscal autonomy through widening participation in planning and decision-making, reinforcing accountability of functionaries and enhancing tax collection. Furthermore, this book demonstrates that the collaboration has aided the process of development of social capital between officials of councils and NGOs, as well as amongst the community members, encouraging future partnership governance. However, with the phasing out of the project as a propelling force, it also shows that the results fall short of being sustainable and, as such, that statuary support, unequivocal political commitment, and incentivising engagements are required to stabilise outcomes. Bridging a gap in the Development Studies literature, this book presents new findings on the collaboration of NGOs at the local level. It will be of interest to academics working in the field of South Asian Studies, Development Studies, and Asian Politics.

This book presents the changing roles of urban governments and how local governments struggle to gain administrative, fiscal, and political power to combat current urban challenges in Kazakhstan. Focusing on the cities and regions selected by the national government of Kazakhstan to be the drivers of national economic development, the author analyses the impact of decentralization on the role of local governments. The book examines the practical experiences of city and regional governments with an emphasis on urban planning, public investment in national projects, and management of urban transport. Due to the complexity and irregular distribution of political reforms at different levels of local government in Kazakhstan, three separate studies are presented, each looking at a specific aspect of decentralization reform and local government function related to physical urban development and distribution of public investment. The author argues that, if the national government of Kazakhstan wants to concentrate economic resources in urban agglomerations, it is not enough to assume that local governments are ready to play the role of efficient planners and managers of urban development. A useful analysis illustrating cities and urban conglomerations as engines of growth in economic development, this book will be of interest to academics studying Central Asian Studies, in particular political and economic development, Development Studies, and Urban Studies.

Regulation has become a front-page topic recently, often referenced by politicians in conjunction with the current state of the U.S. economy. Yet despite regulation's increased presence in current politics and media, The Politics of Regulatory Reform argues that the regulatory process and its influence on the economy is misunderstood by the general public as well as by many politicians. In this book, two experienced regulation scholars confront questions relevant to both academic scholars and those with a general interest in ascertaining the effects and importance of regulation. How does regulation impact the economy? What roles do politicians play in making regulatory decisions? Why do politicians enact laws that require regulations and then try to hamper agencies abilities to issue those same regulations? The authors answer these questions and untangle the misperceptions behind regulation by using an area of regulatory policy that has been underutilized until now. Rather than focusing on the federal government, Shapiro and Borie-Holtz have gathered a unique dataset on the regulatory process and output in the United States. They use state-specific data from twenty-eight states, as well as a series of case studies on regulatory reform, to question widespread impressions and ideas about the regulatory process. The result is an incisive and comprehensive study of the relationship between politics and regulation that also encompasses the effects of regulation and the reasons why regulatory reforms are enacted.

* This book is comprehensive in nature, challenging in concept, written in the context of the current and future situation faced by public services and informed by relevant academic research findings where available. * Grounded in practical experience in public services policy and implementation. * Incorporates consideration of practices in other countries. * The authors have extensive experience of academic research, policy development and publications, coupled with extensive direct experience of public services, at a senior level, in the areas that they write about.

* This book is comprehensive in nature, challenging in concept, written in the context of the current and future situation faced by public services and informed by relevant academic research findings where available. * Grounded in practical experience in public services policy and implementation. * Incorporates consideration of practices in other countries. * The authors have extensive experience of academic research, policy development and publications, coupled with extensive direct experience of public services, at a senior level, in the areas that they write about.

This book examines the national legal frameworks in place for internally displaced people in Nigeria and considers how they can be extended to provide further legal protection.

Despite a growing global awareness of the importance of developing solutions to the problem of internal displacement, how that translates to national level response is often under-researched. This book focuses on Nigeria, where conflict and violence continue to drive high levels of displacement. The book begins by examining the definitions and causes of internal displacement in the national context, before considering the state of national law, and the applicability of the Kampala Convention for furthering protection and assistance for internally displaced persons.

This book will be of interest to researchers of African studies and internal displacement, as well as to policy makers, civil society organizations, humanitarian actors and other regional and international stakeholders.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Context

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Migrants, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Clarification

1.3 The Essence of Law

1.4 Sources of Nigerian Law

1.5 Scope and Objective

Chapter 2. Internal Displacement in Nigeria

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Definition

2.3 Causes

2.4 Conclusion

Chapter 3. Applicable Frameworks on Internally Displaced Persons in Nigeria

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The 1999 Nigerian Constitution

3.3 Relevant Legal Frameworks

3.4 Legal Stopgap: the Kampala Convention as supplementary law

3.5 Conclusion

Chapter 4. Reflection on the National Policy on internally displaced persons, 2021

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Brief background

4.3 The Policy framework

4.4 Conclusion

Chapter 5. Conclusion

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The United States was founded on principles enshrined in the Constitution. One of the foremost of these principles is religious freedom. Unfortunately, this freedom has not been shared by all equally. The place of Islam in the United States has always been controversial. This controversy expanded following the attacks on 9/11 and the rise of nationalist movements that aimed to narrowly define American identity. The hatred of Islam, otherwise known as Islamophobia, has risen to new heights fueled by recurring events and various anti-Muslim hate groups. This has manifested in anti-mosque protests, hate crimes and prejudicial legislation. This book is focused on one form of this legislation, the anti-Sharia laws, otherwise known as the foreign law bans. Sharia is also known as Islamic law and as the physical manifestation of Islam in practice. Several states have passed these laws with many other states introducing them several times with the intention of banning the use of Sharia in civil courts. This book is a study of the factors most closely associated with whether a state has this law and how many times this bill has been introduced in the legislature. These include political, demographic, religious and ideological factors.

This book examines the factors which contribute to local green development in China and employs political ecology to analyze the relationship between power and the environment. Specifically, it looks at which actors control access to resources and are therefore able to promote environmental progress. Following the reform and opening-up of China in the 1970s, entrepreneurs and local officials profited economically and politically and formed close relationships, known as guanxi in China. As a result, they have also been criticized as those responsible for the associated ecological damage. This book does not contest this association, but instead argues that the current literature places too much emphasis on their negative influence and the positive influence of their environmental work has been neglected. Building on three case studies where local green development is being pursued, Shanghai Pudong New Area, Baoding, and Wuning, this book shows how local officials and entrepreneurs can also be the crusaders of a greener environment at the local level in China. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, with a particular interest in environmental policy and politics, business and society, as well as those interested in sustainable development more broadly.

Distance, in its traditional sense, connotates "estrangement" and "division". But in the context of modern political studies, it means a controllable resource that can be manipulated to change the relationship between the government and the public. Drawing on this concept from Western political science, the author explores the law and mechanisms of China's political communication. In this volume, the author introduces a creative theoretical framework of distance, which is a dynamic system comprised of physical and psychological distance, ideal distance and real distance, and natural distance and consequent distance. Psychological distance is the core, because it signifies not only whether there is trust between a government and the public, but also whether the political community can maintain a high degree of harmony, stability, unity, and vitality. Events in the past five years in China are used as cases to illustrate the point. Students and scholars who are interested in political science and political communication, especially Chinese politics, would find this title a useful reference.

Originally published in 1974, this study concerns the politics of local government reform between 1942-1974 and describes the struggles between the Ministries, the Local Government Associations and political parties. The political manoeuvrings of the various groups involved are analysed and a theory proposed about the reform of political structures in general.

Distance, in its traditional sense, connotates "estrangement" and "division". But in the context of modern political studies, it means a controllable resource which can be manipulated to change the relationship between the government and the public. Drawing on this concept from western political science, the author explores the law and mechanisms of China's political communication. In this volume, the author introduces the empirical investigation of the distance between government and the public in China. First, it discusses how the use of online social media, such as Weibo, can be used strategically to mediate the distance of offline communication. Then, it points out that social media can also lead to unlimited expression of general will, to which governments should pay attention. An empirical study on how rural residents of five provinces in China obtain political information is used to illustrate the point. Students and scholars who are interested in political science and political communication, especially Chinese politics, would find this title a useful reference.

While French laicite is often considered something fixed, its daily deployment is rather messy. What might we learn if we study the governance of religion from a dynamic bottom-up perspective? Using an ethnographic approach, this book examines everyday secularism in the making. How do city actors understand, frame and govern religious diversity? Which local factors play a role in those processes? In Urban Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe, Julia Martinez-Arino brings the reader closer to the entrails of laicite. She provides detailed accounts of the ways religious groups, city officials, municipal employees, secularist actors and other civil-society organisations negotiate concrete public expressions of religion. Drawing on rich empirical material, the book demonstrates that urban actors draw and (re-)produce dichotomies of inclusion and exclusion, and challenge static conceptions of laicite and the nation. Illustrating how urban, national and international contexts interact with one another, the book provides researchers with a deeper understanding of the multilevel governance of religious diversity.

During the next few years, most European and World cities will be developing urban agendas. Materials published on the subject have been relatively scarce until now. This edited volume introduces a case study implementation of the European Urban Agenda (EUA) in a cross-border region in the Iberian Peninsula between Spain (Galicia) and Portugal. It explores the implementation of a number of urban core principles in two distinctive regions, serving as the basis for a comparative analysis on how such galvanizing principles work, contained in the EUA. The case presented in this edited volume is the first cross-border urban agenda to be drafted. It is a unique piece that contributes to our understanding of the complexities of implementing and translating a common set of urban European principles to variety of different local milieus. The chapters of the book closely examine the various strands of the implementation of urban policies through the lenses of land use, economic competition, innovation, culture and creative industries, energy, ecology, demographic challenges, housing, social inclusion and democratic governance. These chapters are written by international renowned scholars who were involved in the drawing up of the urban agenda for this territory. The ideas, principles and concepts that they impart can be extrapolated to most cities.

"The Mississippi Secession Convention" is the first full treatment of any secession convention to date. Studying the Mississippi convention of 1861 offers insight into how and why southern states seceded and the effects of such a breech. Based largely on primary sources, this book provides a unique insight into the broader secession movement.

There was more to the secession convention than the mere act of leaving the Union, which was done only three days into the deliberations. The rest of the three-week January 1861 meeting as well as an additional week in March saw the delegates debate and pass a number of important ordinances that for a time governed the state. As seen through the eyes of the delegates themselves, with rich research into each member, this book provides a compelling overview of the entire proceeding.

The effects of the convention gain the most analysis in this study, including the political processes that, after the momentous vote, morphed into unlikely alliances. Those on opposite ends of the secession question quickly formed new political allegiances in a predominantly Confederate-minded convention. These new political factions formed largely over the issues of central versus local authority, which quickly played into Confederate versus state issues during the Civil War. In addition, author Timothy B. Smith considers the lasting consequences of defeat, looking into the effect secession and war had on the delegates themselves and, by extension, their state, Mississippi.

The book investigates how teenage girls in South Africa encounter and consume pornography, situating their experiences within wider sociocultural and affective relations of power. It focuses on girls’ online playful and pleasurable pursuits as they explore and expand upon their sexual curiosities.

In this digital moment, the book directs us to the multi-layered meanings around porn, as an everyday normative experience. The book takes on an interdisciplinary approach drawing from and inspired by new feminist materialism and assemblage theorising. For teenage girls porn is freely available to see in billboards, magazines, books, on television, music videos, games, online streaming and social media sites. Girls do not have to view hardcore porn to see porn: it is everywhere. It argues that girls’ online playful adventures are a critical site for learning, developing, and negotiating gender and sexuality. These meanings are constitutive of pleasure and the pursuit of learning sexually, but they also provide a launchpad for girls to contest race, gender, and heterosexual domination while opening up online porn to broader interrogation and critique.

The book will be of interest to researchers across African studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, youth, gender and sexuality studies, porn studies, and childhood studies.

'An intimate, insightful portrait of an extraordinarily private leader' WALTER ISAACSON From the bestselling author of Enemies of the People An intimate and deeply researched account of the extraordinary rise and political brilliance of the most powerful - and elusive - woman in the world. Angela Merkel has always been an outsider. A pastor's daughter raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany, she spent her twenties working as a research chemist, only entering politics after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And yet within fifteen years, she had become chancellor of Germany and, before long, the unofficial leader of the West. Acclaimed author Kati Marton sets out to pierce the mystery of this unlikely ascent. With unparalleled access to the chancellor's inner circle and a trove of records only recently come to light, she teases out the unique political genius that is the secret to Merkel's success. No other modern leader has so ably confronted authoritarian aggression, enacted daring social policies and calmly unified an entire continent in an era when countries are becoming only more divided. Again and again, she's cleverly outmanoeuvred strongmen like Putin and Trump, and weathered surprisingly complicated relationships with allies like Obama and Macron. Famously private, the woman who emerges from these pages is a role model for anyone interested in gaining and keeping power while staying true to one's moral convictions. At once a riveting political biography, an intimate human portrait and a revelatory look at successful leadership in action, The Chancellor brings forth from the shadows one of the most extraordinary women of our time.