A New York Times Bestseller To some people, Florida is a paradise; to others, a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground," ...You get the idea. To outsiders, Florida seems baffling. It's a state where the voters went for Barack Obama twice, yet elected a Tea Party candidate as governor. Florida is touted as a carefree paradise, yet it's also known for its perils--alligators, sinkholes, pythons, hurricanes, and sharks, to name a few. It attracts 90 million visitors a year, some drawn by its impressive natural beauty, others bewitched by its manmade fantasies. Oh, Florida! explores those contradictions and shows how they fit together to make this the most interesting state. It is the first book to explore the reasons why Florida is so wild and weird--and why that's okay. But there is far more to Florida than its sideshow freakiness. Oh, Florida! explains how Florida secretly, subtly influences all the other states in the Union, both for good and for ill.

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Local government in Britain is often viewed as being bureaucratic and impersonal. In America or France it can be genuinely local, and permit small communities to determine their future and their standards of basic public services. The quality and nature of local government varies widely between different countries. A full understanding of local government can only be gained by comparing one country to another. This book draws together a range of contributors who outline the structures and workings of local government in England and Wales, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Canada and the US. The book provides students with chapters that have a similar format in order to offer a framework for systematic comparisons of the different case studies. The book also includes a conclusion summarizing major differences and relationships between the structures studied. Contributors include J.A. Chandler, John Kingdom, M. McManus, M.C. Hunt, R.E. Spence, A.R. Peters and Bernard Jones.

This text discusses and compares men's and women's career patterns in state government. It is based upon newly conducted original research surveys in six states. From this research, generalisations are made concerning commonalities and differences between men's and women's experiences in public adminstration at the state level. This is a new area of research: while much has been done at the federal level (and there is a federal database to work from) until now little work has been done and little data is available for the states.

This text discusses and compares men's and women's career patterns in state government. It is based upon newly conducted original research surveys in six states. From this research, generalisations are made concerning commonalities and differences between men's and women's experiences in public adminstration at the state level. This is a new area of research: while much has been done at the federal level (and there is a federal database to work from) until now little work has been done and little data is available for the states.

The right to development (RTD) seeks to address global inequities hidden in world politics and global institutions through the game of influences played by powerful actors. The negative impacts of the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and the subjugation of Africa through globalisation and its institutions are key factors that have caused Africa and African people claiming their RTD.

This book examines how the African continent protects the right to development, examining the nature of the RTD and controversies surrounding it and how it is implemented. The book then goes onto explore the RTD at the regional level including through the jurisprudence of the African Commission and the African Court on Human Rights, at the sub-regional level including in sub-regional courts and tribunals, at the national levels through case studies and through the African Union governance institutions. Through this examination, the author unveils what are the prospects and challenges to the realisation of the RTD in Africa.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Unpacking the right development

3. The implementation of the right to development

4. The right to development in the African human rights architecture

5. The African Commission and the realisation of the right to development

6. The African Union governance institutions and the right to development

7. The way forward for the realisation of the right to development in Africa

First Published in 1992. The federal budget has attained unparalleled significance at the heart of American politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The modern budget system has become the mechanism by which a distinctively American administrative state was put in place and made operative. The growth of the administrative state has transformed politics in America, but many Americans are unaware of its existence. This study looks at budget control within the realms of Congress, the Presidency and the development of the Administrative State.

Since the mid-1990s, Morocco has sought to present itself as a model of genuine and gradual reform, with decentralisation as a key tenet of this. Here, Sylvia Bergh investigates the dynamics of popular participation and local governance, testing the extent to which the current structure builds local capacity, or whether it is, in fact, a tool for 'soft' state control. She narrates the realities of local administration and civil society to shed critical light on questions of democratic transition in North Africa. Her assessment of decentralisation and participatory development projects in rural Morocco, and the legal and policy frameworks in which they operate, leads to the conclusion that they have generally not yet led to an expansion of a civil society able to build local capacity or enhance bottom-up empowerment. Grounded in an approach of the 'anthropology of policy', this book makes an important contribution to literature on the democratisation, development and governance in North Africa.

The authors explore the many ways that gender and communication intersect and affect each other. Every chapter encourages a consideration of how gender attitudes and practices, past and current, influence personal notions of what it means not only to be female and male, but feminine and masculine. The second edition of this student friendly and accessible text is filled with contemporary examples, activities, and exercises to help students put theoretical concepts into practice.

Love, Sex and Teenage Sexual Cultures in South Africa interrupts the relative silence around teenage constructions of love in South Africa. Against the backdrop of gender inequalities, HIV and violence, the book situates teenage constructions of love and romance within the wider social and cultural context underwritten by the histories of apartheid, chronic unemployment, poverty, and the endless struggle to survive.

By drawing on focus group discussions with African teenage men and women, the book addresses teenage Africans as active agents, providing a more nuanced picture of their desires and their dilemmas through which sexuality and love are experienced. The chapters in the book conceptualise desiring love, material love, pure love, forced love and fearing love. It argues that love is intrinsically linked to cultural practices and material realities which mold particular formations of teenage masculinities and femininities.

This book will be of interest to academics, undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in sociology, HIV, health and gender studies, development and postcolonial studies and African studies.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Teenagers Expressing Love: Regulating Gender and Sexuality

3. Girls want Money, Boys want Virgins: Culture and the Materiality of Teenage Love

4. ‘Pure Love’: Virgins, Virtue and Desire

5. "I’m the one who says I love you first, and I’m the one to break up with you." Masculinity, Forced Love and Resistance

6. "Girls are not free." Feelings of Love, Feelings of Fear

7. Conclusion: Calling for Compassion, Care and Change

Regional associations have become major players in international politics and economics. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), composed of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, is considered as a player which will strengthen the international influence and international trade of the post-socialist countries. It is intended to become a parallel association to the European Union. This comprehensive volume considers the potential global role of the EEU. A major problem outlined is the balancing of relations between the EU and the West on the one hand, and China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on the other. The book explores the impact of the global crisis as well as a consideration of the EEU in the world system of states. It also examines the EEU's relationship with other regional developments, in relation to the EU and to the outer circle of post-socialist states that joined neither the EU nor the EEU. It concludes by considering Eurasia in the Asian context, looking at the two central Asian countries (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), relations with China and the relationship between the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the EEU. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Politics and Society.

A deepening ecological crisis is rearing its head in sub-Saharan Africa, as it faces a myriad of challenges in regards to the development of its energy sector. The ‘dirty now and clean up later’ approach to the environment has a strong appeal, particularly because it is often thought of as the last place to try to edge in another priority - especially if that priority is perceived by many to be an economic luxury.

Asuelime and Okem bring together a team of specialist contributors who investigate to what extent sub-Saharan Africa has displayed foresight or politico-economic integrity. The book shows that the state’s ability to meet the demands of provision of energy in sub-Saharan Africa has led to heavy investments in infrastructure, transmission and distribution of energy to the citizens. However, the inefficiencies, corruption and unhealthy bureaucratic challenges that accompany this have led to urgent problems, which are thoroughly explored in this book.

The Political Economy of Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African Studies, Development Studies, political science and environment.

Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction

1. Expanding the Frontiers of the Political Economy of Sub-Sahara Africa’s Energy

Part II: Theories and Concepts

2. Deliberative Theory and the Politics of the Natural Resource Economy in Southern Africa

3. In Pursuit of Pro-Poor Development in Ghana: Is Accessible, Affordable and Reliable Energy Supply the Missing Link

4. Ecological Social Work: Reconnoitering Socio-Cultural and Socio-Political Patterned Ecological Conservation Awareness and Benefits at the Big 5 False Bay Municipality

Part III: Sustainable Energy, Land and Food Security

5. Global Energy Demand and its Implications for Sub-Saharan Africa

6. Governance Institutions for Sustainable Energy Resources Management in Nigeria: Issues, Perspectives and Policy Agenda for Action

7. The Political Economy of Gendered Relationships and the Land Use Interaction between Natural Resources and Human Agency in Zimbabwe

8. Degradation and Climate Change: Implications for sustainable energy supply in Zambia

Part IV: The Political Economy of Oil and Coal in Nigeria

9. Nigerian Coal Industry: Focus on Effects of Under-utilization to the Economy, 1909-2015

10. Exploring the Political Economy of Fuel Subsidy in Nigeria

11. The Impact of Oil Exploration and Exploitation in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Part V: Conclusion

12. The Political Economy of Oil, Clean Energy and Environmental Transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons for the Future

A detailed case study of provincial politics during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, which analyzes the form and changing nature of mass organizations established in China by 1966. The text traces their evolution, activities and ultimate dissolution ten years later.

Mining has played a key role in the growth of many towns in South Africa. This growth has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal settlements, by pressure to provide basic services and by institutional pressures in local government to support mining. Fragile municipal finance, changing social attributes, the pressures of shift-work on mineworkers, the impact on the physical environment and perceived new inequalities between mineworkers, contract workers and original inhabitants have further complicated matters. Mining growth has however also led to substantial local economic benefits to existing business and it has contributed to a mushrooming of new enterprises.

While the relationship between mining and economic development at the country level has received adequate attention in existing literature, less is known about the consequences of mining at the local level. This book investigates the local impacts of mining in South Africa, focusing on employment, inequality, housing, business development, worker well-being, governance, municipal finance, planning and the environment.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Mining and Community in South Africa will be of interest to scholars of South Africa, economic development, labour and industry, politics and planning.

Table of Contents

Part I

1. The background to the Postmasburg study

2. The literature on mining communities and mining growth and decline

3. Migration and mine labour in South Africa

Part II: Governance, planning, the environment and power

4. The Tsassamba Committee

5. Spatial planning for Postmasburg

6. Government, mining and community relations

7. Mining and municipal finance

8. Environmental legislation, mining and ecosystems

Part III: To own or to rent?

9. Mineworker housing

10. The Khumani approach to homeownership in Postmasburg

IV: Working and doing business

11. Work, wages and welfare in Postmasburg

12. Psychological well-being on the mine

13. Businesses in Postmasburg: Tshipe e lokile (‘iron is good’) – but what about business?

Part V: Conclusion

14. The way forward for Postmasburg

Creating metropolitan regions that are more efficient, equitable, and sustainable depends on the willingness of local officials to work together across municipal boundaries to solve large-scale problems. How do these local officials think? Why do they only sometimes cooperate? What kind of governance do they choose in the face of persistent problems? The Risk of Regional Governance offers a new perspective on these questions. Drawing on theory from sociology and anthropology, it argues that many of the most important cooperative decisions local officials make-those about land use planning and regulation-are driven by heuristic, biased reasoning driven by cultural values. The Risk of Regional Governance builds a sociocultural collective action framework, and supports it with rich survey and interview data from hundreds of local elected officials serving in the suburbs of Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is a story of the Rust Belt, of how local officials think about their community and the region, and-most importantly-of how we might craft policies that can overcome biases against regional governance.

In many respects, New York City is an unnatural wonder, quite unlike any other American city and also unlike megacities in other industrial countries. Its government and politics, its physical attributes-like the celebrated skyline and high population density-and many of its social characteristics-like the extraordinarily high percentage of the city's population that is foreign-born-are different. But New York City at the same time shares with other American cities an array of political and governmental institutions, practices, traditions, and pressures, ranging from the long dominance and then long decline in the role of party organizations in local government to the city's ultimate dependence on outside actors and forces to shape its political destiny.

The key aspect of the changing fortunes of British towns explored in this book is the ability of individual localities to exercise any control over their growth and decline. Arising out the the Changing Urban and Regional System in the UK research program, this book examines local political initiatives seeking to influence economic and social development. The books states that the 1980s have seen local government in the UK facing two challenges: to survive in the face of Thatcher government hostility and to adapt to the powerful forces of economic restructuring. This book examines what has happened in a range of seven selected localities, identifies the conditions that make for successful policy interventions, and explores the future role of local government. The book is intended for students and lecturers of urban and regional studies, sociology and urban geography.

Over the past few decades and throughout the world, numerous government-initiated experiments and attempts at directly engaging and including citizens have emerged as remedies for a variety of problems faced by modern democracies, including political disaffection and insufficient capacity to deal with the complexity inherent in many contemporary public problems, such as climate change and segregation. In practice, these attempts are given many names, such as citizen panels, deliberative fora, collaborative dialogues, etc. In the academic literature as well, the phenomenon falls under many different headings, for instance collaborative, deliberative or interactive governance. Participatory Governance and Representative Democracy refers to this empirical phenomenon as local participatory governance, that is, government-sponsored direct participation between invited citizens and local officials in concrete arrangements and concerning problems that affect them. Participatory governance, we argue, may take many forms, regarding (1) type of interaction and type of communication between participants within the specific participatory arrangement (e.g., deliberative vs. aggregative) as well as regarding (2) the relation and connection between the specific arrangement and the more traditional representative structures (e.g., compatible, incompatible, transformative or irrelevant). The proposed edited volume addresses the matter of institutionalization, highlighting the difficulties associated with establishing stability and a shared understanding of the roles and rules among citizens, local politicians and administrators in participatory arrangements.

The past ten years have seen local government in the UK facing two major challenges: to survive in the face of Thatcher government hostility, and to adapt to enormously powerful forces of economic restructuring which have also been encouraged by government policies. The key aspects of these changing fortunes of British towns explored in this important new book is the ability of individual localities to exercise any control over their own growth and decline. Place, Policy and Politics examines local political initiatives seeking to influence economic and social development in seven sharply contrasting localities, ranging from the outer council estates of Merseyside to the boom towns of Cheltenham and Swindon. Throughout their analysis, the contributors, drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, address the vital questions in the debate over local policy initiatives, including: To what extent are localities able to harness trends in the national and international economy to provide jobs and a better standard of living for their inhabitants? Why do local authorities vary in their capacity to initiate economic policy? To what extent do national urban and other policies inhibit or encourage their efforts? How might central government modify its policies to facilitate the prospering of localities?

This book examines the historical FeesMustFall (FMF) university student protests that took place in South Africa and shows how the enduring historical construction, representation and conceptualisation of South African youth (as typically radical and political) contributed to the (mis)interpretation of FMF protests, and led to a discourse on an African National Congress-toppling revolution.

Arguing that the student protests were not the revolutionary movement they have been represented as, Ndlovu demonstrates that ideological divisions amongst the protestors, the declining economy, and reduced youth participation in the political public sphere cannot lead to a new revolution in South African politics.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in South African politics, higher education, democracy and protest movements.

Table of Contents



1. Construction of South African youth before #FeesMustFall

2. Were the 2015 student protests a revolution?

3. What the 2015 protests actually were and how they were possible?

4. Ikhohlisan’ihlomile:# FMF students’ engagement with power and their ideological differences

5. Can South Africa’s declining economy inspire a student-led new revolution?

6. Youth’s declining news consumption levels and ideologically-divided media: the (im) possibility of the new revolution

7. Youth’s polysemic interpretation of the ANC regime text and (im) possibility a new revolution

8. Youth’s declining participation levels in the public sphere and (im) possibility a new revolution

9. Conclusion: #FMF protests will not lead to a revolution per se (at least yet), but to wide ranging reforms

Competitive elections have become an institutionalized feature of contemporary Indonesia's politics. This, together with other considerations, makes it reasonable to call Indonesia the world's third largest democracy. Nonetheless, democratic elections in Indonesia are both more complex and interesting than is commonly understood. This book explores how local elections in Indonesia have affected the development and dynamics of Indonesia's fledgling democracy. Based on fine-grained analyses of elections in five localities, the book shows how Indonesia's transition to direct elections of local government executives has transformed party politics and elite development at local levels of governance. Employing the methods of political anthropology and informed by a critical reading of theories of democracy and decentralization, the book presents detailed analyses of elections in five localities across four Indonesian provinces. The book calls attention to the ambiguous relation between formal democratic reforms and political behavior. It illustrates how local elite politics has evolved within the context of political and administrative reforms, whose announced goals are to improve the representativeness and responsiveness of political institutions. This book provides a window onto local political processes that will be of interest to students and scholars of politics in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Over the past three decades, decentralization has been seen as the means for allowing local governments to become more accountable, and for encouraging the deepening of democracy and the building of village communities. By drawing on original village-level case studies of six villages in three different Indian states, this book presents a systematic analysis of the impact of decentralization on the delivery of social services at the local level within India. Supplementing national and state-level data and analyzing the different historical legacies in each state, the book argues that decentralization is not simply a function of the structure of the decentralization program or of the relationship between higher-tiered and local government. Rather, the possibility of decentralization affecting social outcomes depends on several interacting factors, including the distribution of power among local elites, the dynamics of political competition, and the level of civil society mobilization. By examining constitutionally-mandated political decentralization across India, this book identifies the circumstances under which local government structures can lead to improved social services and societal wellbeing, as well as presenting a substantial contribution to studies on South Asian Politics and Local Government.

In England, it has been possible since 2013 to convert an office building into residential use without needing planning permission (as has been required since 1948). This book explores the consequences of this central government driven deregulation on local communities. The policy decision was primarily about boosting the supply of housing, but reflects a broader neoliberal ideology which seeks to reform public planning in many countries to reduce perceived interference in free markets. Drawing on original research in the English local authorities of Camden, Croydon, Leeds, Leicester and Reading, the book provides a case study of the implementation of planning deregulation which demonstrates the lowering of standards in housing quality, the reduced ability of the local state to proactively steer development and plan for their places, and the transfer of wealth from the public to private spheres that has resulted. Comparative case studies from Glasgow and Rotterdam call into question the very need for the deregulation in the first place.

Whether in the northern provinces of Argentina, the central states of Mexico, or the southern states of the United States, less-than-democratic subnational regimes are often found within democratic national political systems. However, little is known about how or if these subnational pockets foster political attitudes and behavior that threaten the democratic norms that exist at the national level. Life in the Political Machine offers one of the first systematic explorations of the ways in which subnational "dominant-party enclaves" influence citizens' political attitudes and behaviors through a focus on the provinces and states of Argentina and Mexico. Specifically, the authors find starkly divergent patterns of political attitudes and behaviors among citizens in dominant-party enclaves as opposed to those living in competitive multiparty systems. In the latter, the authors find a political culture that approximates what scholars have long documented in established democracies. In the former, they uncover three factors-the politicization of the rule of law, an uneven electoral playing field, and the partisan cooptation of state resources-that strongly shape citizens' understanding of democratic principles, accountability, and political participation. The authors argue that this environment erodes public support for democracy at the national level and that these local strongholds of illiberalism thus provide added fuel to the recent drift from democracy globally. Ultimately, this book calls for greater attention to subnational variations in citizens' political attitudes and behaviors in order to more fully understand the process through which a national democratic political culture can emerge.

This fully updated second edition of the "Politico's Guide to Local Government" is a comprehensive guide to every aspect of British local government. As well as outlining the role of councillors and local government officers, it contains a full history of local government in Britain. It examines the politicisation of local government and analyses New Labour's policies and attitudes to local government.