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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > General
This handbook takes stock of the African Union's Vision 2020 to rid the African continent of wars, civil conflicts, human rights violations, and humanitarian disasters - including violent conflicts and genocide - and provides recommendations on how to address contemporary threats to peace and security in Africa. It explores the continent's current peace and security landscape, including new actors, emerging threats, and the prospects for achieving sustainable peace. With contributions from highly respected experts in the field, both academics and practitioners, the volume unpacks the sources of conflict, instability and the challenges of peace and development, and provides research-based policy advice to guide and inform African governments, policy makers, practitioners, and scholarly audiences on the continent and beyond.
This book offers an in-depth historical and technical description of Iran's nuclear program in political, economic, and strategic contexts. The author points out this issue's connections with the evolution of global and regional strategic balances, as well as the stability of the international regime against the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
In recent years several Latin American countries have adopted a more assertive and autonomous stance in their foreign policy. The growing rejection of neo-liberalism as an ideological dogma seems to have given space to more pragmatic stances in favour of national interests. Whilst ideological discourse continues to be directed towards both domestic and international audiences with varying intensities and tones, it appears to be combined with clearly pragmatic policies and aims. This book reviews the foreign policy of eleven Latin American countries and argues that a combination of pragmatism and ideology characterises contemporary Latin American approaches to international relations. It analyses whether this is a permanent or contingent feature, what factors affect the mix of pragmatism and ideology, and whether this is an identifiable new pattern of foreign policy in Latin America
Colonel David T. Twining and his colleagues look at the impact of glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet system on the military. The case study approach used allows for in-depth examination of a number of key issues. Within the former USSR, the remarkable record of sacrifice and valor by women in wartime has not been matched by equal opportunity during peacetime, where they are effectively excluded from meaningful military careers. The KGB, the world's largest security and intelligence organization, proved to be among the most resistant to reform, and this, the book contends, appears to have hastened its doom. The adoption of the rule of law was widely resisted in the Soviet armed forces, and reforms in military service have come from demands by parents and relatives that the military change its lethal ways. Soviet foreign military affairs have also been affected by glasnost. The volume looks at the influence of the war in Afghanistan in the reversal of Moscow's Middle East policy. Equally important, but unheralded, has been the re-establishment of ties with China. Together, the essays in this collection illustrate the impact of a stressed political system struggling to adapt to changing circumstances, caught between the exigencies of reform and revolt. Students and scholars involved in Soviet studies as well as contemporary military studies will find much to ponder.
Did the West win the Cold War? Was it a genuine or a contrived conflict? When did it begin? How was its cause related to its end? These are among the questions considered by the contributors of this volume. Asked to assess the combination of socio-political forces and events they attribute to ending the Cold War, they have come up with diverse theories that challenge the self-serving orthodoxy that claims Western military prowess, economic strength, and ideological superiority produced the triumph. The contributors consider a range of views from the contention that the West's military resolve and economic capacity forced the Soviet Union into submission to arguments focusing on U.S. and West European peace movements and East European dissent movements. Between these diametric positions, they weigh the significance of such factors as the new thinking in the Soviet Union and the intelligentsia of Eastern Europe. Through a range of many views, they provide a broad interpretive framework for understanding the Cold War's end, and suggest how that understanding is related to the solving of future conflicts.
Bartholomew Paudyn investigates how governments across the globe struggle to constitute the authoritative knowledge underpinning the political economy of creditworthiness and what the (neoliberal) 'fiscal normality' means for democratic governance.
Public Administration in the Global Village offers a global and comparative approach to the study of public administration. It examines the ongoing international changes in the field of public administration; it defines the emerging new world order and the promises and challenges that it holds for public administration; and it stipulates the effects and side effects of these changes on developing countries. The volume seeks to promote a global and comparative perspective on public administration to counter the continuing parochialism and ethnocentrism in the field.
Why did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not follow the failure of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union? This book examines this question by studying two crucial strategies that the CCP feels it needs to implement in order to remain in power: ideological reform and the institutionalization of leadership succession.
Since the end of the Cold War, the concept of national security has been widened to include a range of non-military threats to the security of the state. This book explores the underlying tensions between a state-centric concept of security, and the concept of human security with respect to a number of new security threats emanating from situations of forced displacement of populations, terrorism, diseases, food insecurity, and the impacts of climate change, all of which are prevalent in Africa and give a particular resonance to the evolving security discourse. The volume undertakes a thorough interdisciplinary investigation of the tensions between state security and human security in the search for solutions to African crises by the international community and regional actors.
This is a study of Soviet policy in six West African countries: Ghana, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal. Robert Legvold analyzes the awakening of Soviet Interest in sub-Saharan Africa and the growth, problems, and influences of the Soviet involvement from Ghana's independence in 1957 to 1968. Those nations are significant not only because they were the first African colonies to achieve independence and therefore have had the longest involvement with the Soviet Union, but also because together they supply illustrations of every problem that Black Africa poses for an outside nation's foreign policy: from hypersensitive nationalism to what has been called neo-colonial dependence; from relative long-term stability to fundamental instability; from military coups d'etat to civil war. From the Soviet viewpoint the six countries range from the most progressive to the most reactionary. Each has had an interesting relationship with the Soviet Union. The author considers several basic questions: How has the Soviet Union coped with the problems and opportunities created by Black Africa? How have its perceptions of Black Africa evolved during the first decade of its involvement there? Has policy shifted correspondingly with changes In these perceptions? Mr. Legvold explains why Black Africa lay largely ignored for years while Soviet leaders turned their attention to struggle and revolution in the Far East and South Asia. He has examined the Soviet and African press to trace the full evolution of Soviet attitudes and action in these countries, and has interviewed Soviet, African, and other officials. He compares Soviet policy as between one African nation and another, as well as between Africa and other continents.
Connecting the 'English School' approach to International Relations with the increasingly important region of Southeast Asia, this book is the first comprehensive assessment of this region-theory linkage. Surveying a range of areas, including interstate relations, the community-building goals of the region's foremost international organization, relations with civil society, the impact of non-state actors, and the role of individuals in regional dynamics, it concludes that both region and theory can gain from a broader dialogue than has yet been attempted. On the one hand, English School ideas can project a more nuanced and integrated picture of the region. On the other, the region can challenge English School thinking, input different ideas and practices, and encourage refinements and innovations. This book takes a fresh look at the international and transnational dynamics of Southeast Asia and explores the theoretical possibilities of the English School approach, signaling productive ways forward for the theory.
In a society where the role of corporations and the state is in flux, this volume explores how the concept of citizenship has been transformed with the entrance and involvement of other actors, primarily corporations and non-governmental organizations, in the protection and provision of citizenship without the nation-state. Examining the economic effects of globalization and citizenship, this interdisciplinary collection questions what ideas on corporate citizenship may say about the ongoing publicization of the corporation. What is the role of the corporate citizen in the public domain? How does that new role transgress traditional notions of what corporations are and ought to be? And what are the implications of these developments for the welfare state and democracy at large?This book uses the notion of a citizenship for corporations as a devise for delineating and analyzing the political role of the corporation in the public domain. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars in political science, organization and management, business and society and political economy. Its international contributors include Paula Blomqvist, Celine Cholez, Andrew Crane, Steven Gerencser, Boris Holzer, Uwafiokun Idemudia, Dirk Matten, Jeremy Moon, Fabrizio Panozzo and Pascal Trompette.
The origins of the First World War continue to be a matter of controversy after the Fischer Debate. New perspectives are being developed; older ones are being reviewed. This volume excels by the breadth of its approach, combing essays by Fritz Fischer, Immanuel Geiss and Willibald Gutsche, and East German historian.
This is a study of great power relations - China, India, and Russia - among themselves and with the hegemon (United States). Ahrari argues that the next decade may witness the emergence of a bipolar order where China's dominance in economics is certain; however, China will not seriously challenge the military dominance of the US.
What is the role of peace support operations in managing non-traditional crises? This is the central focus of Sloan's analysis of peacekeeping and the changing nature of the international community's involvement in Bosnia following the outbreak of civil war in 1992. The key players in this drama are three institutions-the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations-and five major powers, including Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States. Sloan examines their actions and undertakings through the prism of several perspectives, including the peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace enforcement, and peace building dimensions. This study advances current thinking on peacekeeping and related operations by distinguishing key characteristics of the forms of operation and indicating how they best relate to one another. It also challenges the notion that the international response to conflict in Bosnia was haphazard or confused, suggesting instead that the international community's actions can be readily understood as a reflection of the evolution of great power interests. The overall effect is to shed light on two timely, complex, and interrelated subjects. The reader comes away with a clear understanding of what went wrong (and right) and why in Bosnia, and what lessons the experience holds for the future. This is must reading for military and peacekeeping planners and for scholars and researchers in the fields of strategic studies, international security, and international relations.
In this book, Shaul Mishal and Ori Goldberg explore the ways in which Shiite leaderships in Iran and Lebanon approach themselves and their world. Contrary to the violent and radical image of religious leaderships in the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanese Hizballah, the political vision and practice of these leaderships view the world as a middle ground, shying away from absolutist and extremist tendencies. The political leadership assumed by Shiite religious scholars in Iran and Lebanon has transformed Shiite Islam from a marginalized minority to a highly politicized avant garde of Muslim presence, revitalized the practice and causes of political Islam in its struggle for legitimacy and authority, and reshaped the politics of the Middle East and the globe in its image. Utilizing approaches from social theory, history, theology, and literary criticism, the book presents these leaderships as pragmatic, interpretative entities with the potential to form fruitful relationships between Shiite leadership and the non-Shiite world.
Previously published literature often comments pessimistically on International Environmental Governance (IEG) and, as a result, many proposals to reform IEG are criticized. Although such critiques may acknowledge the social, economic and political factors underlying environmental problems, they do not sufficiently appreciate the extent to which the pursuit by multiple actors and their diverse agendas and interests affect the outcome of IEG. Reforms to IEG are therefore likely to have difficulties in achieving more effective outcomes. Policy-makers and others involved in the policy processes frame environmental problems in ways that represent their beliefs and agendas, shaping the design of policy and setting the direction of the rest of the policy process. This book identifies such practices by examining the policy processes of two case study institutions of IEG-UNEP and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), following the policy process from the international level to local levels. Policy processes occur in every institution of IEG, which is why this theme as a subject for study has broad implications for IEG. The author concludes by presenting how policy processes could be better structured to produce more effective outcomes for IEG given multiple, competing social, political and economic objectives of actors.
This book compares the cross-border integration of infrastructures in Europe such as post, telecommunication and transportation in the 19th century and the period following the Second World War. In addition to providing a unique perspective on the development of cross-border infrastructures and the international regimes regulating them, it offers the first systematic comparison of a variety of infrastructure sectors, identifies general developmental trends and supplies theoretical explanations. In this regard, integration is defined as international standardization, network building and the establishment of international organizations to regulate cross-border infrastructures.
Are Muslims threatening the core values of the West? Jocelyne Cesari examines this question through the lens of testimonies from Muslims in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Her book is an unprecedented exploration of Muslim religious and political life based on several years of field work in Europe and in the United States. It provides original insights into the ways Muslims act as believers and citizens and into the specifics of western liberalism and secularism, particularly after 9/11, and how the specific constraints of Islam in secular spaces trigger a western politics of fear. Its unique interdisciplinary scope allows for an in depth analysis of data polls, surveys, political discourses, policy programs, interviews, and focus groups with Muslims.
A recollection of the most significant events in the constitutional development of Switzerland. Has the experience of Switzerland in the matters of collective security and federalism any lesson to teach those who would today place international relations on a firmer basis? That is the question to which a cautious reply is hazarded by the author.
As national governments continue to disagree over how to respond to the aftermath of the global financial crisis, two of the few areas of consensus were the decisions to increase the IMF's capacity to respond and remove the policies designed to limit the use of its resources. Why was this massive increase in the size of the IMF, accompanied by the removal of policies designed to limit moral hazard, such an easy point of consensus? Michael Breen looks at the hidden politics behind IMF lending and proposes a new theory based on shareholder control. To test this theory, he combines statistical analysis with a sweeping account of IMF lending and conditionality during two global crises; the European sovereign debt crisis and the Asian financial crisis.
William Mott examines the relationships between economic growth and international conflict in history and theory, developing and analyzing a set of observed empirical modern growth-conflict relationships over long periods, and presenting an explanation of the observations. After introducing the growth-conflict relationship as the unit of analysis, he identifies historical perceptions of the growth-conflict relationship from ancient times through the modern era. Mott offers an alternative theoretical construct for further investigation, and speculates about the impact of these results on orthodox political-economic theory. The results of this work carry powerful implications for national management of foreign direct investment and trade in both home countries and host nations.
The idea of national unification has long been a powerful mobilizing force for nationalist thinkers and ethnic entrepreneurs since the rise of nationalist ideology in the late 1700s. This phenomenon came to be known as "irredentism." During the Cold War, irredentist projects were largely subordinated to the ideological struggle between East and West. After the Cold War, however, the international system has witnessed a proliferation of such conflicts throughout Europe and Asia. Ambrosio integrates both domestic and international factors to explain both the initiation and settlement of irredentist conflicts. His central argument is that irredentist states confront two potentially contradictory forces: domestic nationalism and pressure from the international community. Irredentist leaders are forced to reconcile their nationalist policies with pressures from the international plane. At the same time, irredentist leaders exploit perceived windows of opportunity in pursuit of their nationalist goals. Ambrosio examines in depth the past, present, and possible irredentist projects of Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, and Armenia within a theoretical and comparative framework. His conclusions yield signficant theoretical findings and important policy implications for both scholars of ethnic conflicts, nationalism, and international relations and policy makers. |
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