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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > General
This book explores the meaning of local ownership in peacebuilding and examines the ways in which it has been, and could be, operationalized in post-conflict environments. In the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, the idea of local ownership is based upon the premise that no peace process is sustainable in the absence of a meaningful degree of local involvement. Despite growing recognition of the importance of local ownership, however, relatively little attention has been paid to specifying what precisely the concept means or how it might be implemented. This volume contributes to the ongoing debate on the future of liberal peacebuilding through a critical investigation of the notion of local ownership, and challenges conventional assumptions about who the relevant locals are and what they are expected to own. Drawing on case studies from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, the text argues that local ownership can only be fostered through a long-term consensus-building process, which involves all levels of the conflict-affected society. This book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, development studies, security studies and IR.
The US government spends billions of dollars every year to reduce
uncertainty: to monitor and forecast everything from the weather to
the spread of disease. In other words, we spend a lot of money to
anticipate problems, identify opportunities, and avoid mistakes. A
substantial portion of what we spend--over $50 billion a year--goes
to the US Intelligence Community.
Cutting through the haze of hatred and polarizing politics of our time, The Freedom Paradox offers an unexpected solution to re-unite America. It was the best of times, and it now seems like the worst of times. The chaos, discord and hostility gripping America today are evident to all. The root cause of these woes, however, is not so obvious. Using his keen sense of cultural awareness, Bobby Albert answers the questions that are on our hearts and minds, "What happened to the America of our youth?" and "How can we re-claim it?". Many are fighting for and celebrating their freedoms, but few realize that unrestrained freedom today results in chaos and constraints tomorrow. Within The Freedom Paradox, readers discover: The "Life and Liberty Equation" and why it's out of balance The competing approaches of principle and expediency The contrasts and consequences associated with scarcity and abundance mindsets The impact of what they say and how they say it The root cause of the problems of their great nation and how they can help
In this book, Paul Midford engages claims that since 9/11 Japanese
public opinion has turned sharply away from pacifism and toward
supporting normalization of Japan's military power, in which
Japanese troops would fight alongside their American counterparts
in various conflicts worldwide.
In 1966 the United States Congress passed the landmark Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) giving the public the right to access government documents. This "right to know" has been used over the intervening years to challenge overreaching Presidents and secretive government agencies. This example of governmental transparency has served as an inspiring case in point to nations around the world, spawning similar statutes in fifty-nine countries. Yet, despite these global efforts to foster openness in government, secrecy still persists--and in many cases--sometimes thrives. Alasdair Roberts, a prominent lawyer, public policy expert, and international authority on transparency in government, examines the evolution of the trend toward governmental openness and how technological developments have assisted the disclosure and dissemination of information. In the process he offers a comprehensive look at the global efforts to restrict secrecy and provides readers with a clearly written guide to those areas where the battle over secrecy is most intense. Drawing on cases from many different countries, Roberts goes further than the popular view that secrecy is simply a problem of selfish bureaucrats trying to hide embarrassing information by showing how such powerful trends as privatization, globalization, and the "networking" of security agencies are complicating the fight against secrecy. In our time when new terror threats provoke potentially counter-productive measures that impede openness, the need for a thorough and dispassionate discussion of openness in democratic societies is especially acute. Written in an engaging style, Blacked Out powerfully illustrates why transparency matters and whythe struggle for openness is so difficult. Alasdair Roberts is Associate Professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University. An internationally-recognized specialist on open government, he has written over thirty journal articles and book chapters. He is a 2005 recipient of the Johnson Award for Best Paper in Ethics and Accountability in the Public Sector. He has been a fellow of the Open Society Institute and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, and is a member of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue's Transparency Task Force.
This edited volume explores and evaluates the roles of corruption in post-conflict peacebuilding. The problem of corruption has become increasingly important in war to peace transitions, eroding confidence in new democratic institutions, undermining economic development, diverting scarce public resources, and reducing the delivery of vital social services. Conflict-affected countries offer an ideal environment for pervasive corruption. Their weak administrative institutions and fragile legal and judicial systems mean that they lack the capacity to effectively investigate and punish corrupt behaviour. In addition, the sudden inflow of donor aid into post-conflict countries and the desire of peacebuilding actors (including the UN, the international financial institutions, aid agencies, and non-governmental organisations) to disburse these funds quickly, create incentives and opportunities for corruption. While corruption imposes costs and compromises on peacebuilding efforts, opportunities for exploiting public office can also be used to entice armed groups into signing peace agreements, thus stabilising post-war environments. This book explores the different functions of corruption both conceptually and through the lens of a wide range of case studies. It also examines the impact of key anti-corruption policies on peacebuilding environments. The dynamics that shape the relationship between corruption and the political and economic developments in post-conflict countries are complex. This analysis highlights that fighting corruption is only one of several important peacebuilding objectives, and that due consideration must be given to the specific social and political context in considering how a sustainable peace can be achieved. This book will be of great interest to students of peacekeeping and peacebuilding, criminology, political economy, war and conflict studies, international security and IR.
In Losing The Plot, well-known scholar and writer Leon de Kock offers a lively and wide-ranging analysis of postapartheid South African writing which, he contends, has morphed into a far more flexible and multifaceted entity than its predecessor. If postapartheid literature's founding moment was the 'transition' to democracy, writing over the ensuing years has viewed the Mandelan project with increasing doubt. Instead, authors from all quarters are seen to be reporting, in different ways and from divergent points of view, on what is perceived to be a pathological public sphere in which the plot- the mapping and making of social betterment - appears to have been lost. The compulsion to forensically detect the actual causes of such loss of direction has resulted in the prominence of creative nonfiction. A significant adjunct in the rise of this is the new media, which sets up a 'wounded' space within which a 'cult of commiseration' compulsively and repeatedly plays out the facts of the day on people's screens; this, De Kock argues, is reproduced in much postapartheid writing. And, although fictional forms persist in genres such as crime fiction, with their tendency to overplot, more serious fiction underplots, yielding to the imprint of real conditions to determine the narrative construction.
Reconciliation in Divided Societies Finding Common Ground Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin "Erin Daly and Jeremy Sarkin . . . offer a breath-taking "tour de force" of the theory and practice of reconciliation. Their work is integrated and interdisciplinary. It moves effortlessly from law to literature, seamlessly from philosophy to psychology, and inclusively from art to history."--"International Journal of Transitional Justice" "An invaluable contribution to our understanding of conflict and reconciliation."--"Negotiation Journal" "As nations struggling to heal wounds of civil war and atrocity turn toward the model of reconciliation, "Reconciliation in Divided Societies" takes a systematic look at the political dimensions of this international phenomenon. . . . The book shows us how this transformation happens so that we can all gain a better understanding of how, and why, reconciliation really works. It is an almost indispensable tool for those who want to engage in reconciliation"--from the foreword by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu As societies emerge from oppression, war, or genocide, their most important task is to create a civil society strong and stable enough to support democratic governance. More and more conflict-torn countries throughout the world are promoting reconciliation as central to their new social order as they move toward peace and stability. Scores of truth and reconciliation commissions are helping bring people together and heal the wounds of deeply divided societies. Since the South African transition, countries as diverse as Timor Leste, Sierra Leone, Fiji, Morocco, and Peru, among others, have placed reconciliation at the center of their reconstruction and development programs. Other efforts to promote reconciliation--including trials and governmental programs--are also becoming more prominent in transitional times. But until now there has been no real effort to understand exactly what reconciliation could mean in these different situations. What does true reconciliation entail? How can it be achieved? How can its achievement be assessed? This book digs beneath the surface to answer these questions and explain what the concepts of truth, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation really involve in societies that are recovering from internecine strife. Erin Daly is Professor of Law at Widener University in Wilmington, Delaware, specializing in American and comparative constitutional law. She is a member of the American Society of International Law and the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law. Jeremy Sarkin is Senior Professor of Law at the University of Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. A former acting judge in the Cape High Court, his recent books include "Carrots and Sticks: The TRC and the South African Amnesty Process" and "The Administration of Justice: Comparative Perspectives." Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights 2006 344 pages 6 x 9 ISBN 978-0-8122-3976-8 Cloth $65.00s 42.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-2124-4 Paper $26.50s 17.50 World Rights Political Science, Anthropology Short copy: As nations struggling to heal wounds of civil war and atrocity turn toward the model of reconciliation, "Reconciliation in Divided Societies" takes a systematic look at the political dimensions of this international phenomenon.
In Defense of Japan provides the first complete, up-to-date, English-language account of the history, politics, and policy of Japan's strategic space development. The dual-use nature of space technologies, meaning that they cut across both market and military applications, has had two important consequences for Japan. First, Japan has developed space technologies for the market in its civilian space program that have yet to be commercially competitive. Second, faced with rising geopolitical uncertainties and in the interest of their own economics, the makers of such technologies have been critical players in the shift from the market to the military in Japan's space capabilities and policy. This book shows how the sum total of market-to-military moves across space launch vehicles, satellites and spacecraft, and emerging related technologies, already mark Japan as an advanced military space power.
When Daniel is tasked with writing the biography of his grandfather, Jules Browde - one of South Africa’s most celebrated advocates - he gets straight to work. But the task that at first seems so simple comes to overwhelm him. The troubled progress of Daniel’s book stands in sharp contrast to the clear-edged tales his grandfather tells him. Spanning almost a century, these gripping stories compellingly conjure other worlds: the streets of 1920s Yeoville, the battlefields of the Second World War, the courtrooms of apartheid South Africa. The Relatively Public Life Of Jules Browde is more than the portrait of an unusual South African life, it is the moving tale of a complex and tender relationship between grandfather and grandson, and an exploration of how we are made and unmade in the stories we tell about our lives.
The use of secret police, security agencies and informers to spy on, disrupt and undermine opposition to the dominant political and economic order has a long history. This book reflects on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervades the lives of activists, organisations and movements that are labelled as 'threats to national security'. Activists and scholars from the UK, South Africa, Canada, the US, Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand expose disturbing stories of political policing to question what lies beneath state surveillance. Problematising the social amnesia that exists within progressive political networks and supposed liberal democracies, Activists and the Surveillance State shows that ultimately, movements can learn from their own repression, developing a critical and complex understanding of the nature of states, capital and democracy today that can inform the struggles of tomorrow.
Since September 11, 2001, Seymour M. Hersh has riveted readers -- and outraged the Bush Administration -- with his explosive stories in The New Yorker, including his headline-making pieces on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Now, Hersh brings together what he has learned, along with new reporting, to answer the critical question of the last four years: How did America get from the clear morning when two planes crashed into the World Trade Center to a divisive and dirty war in Iraq? In Chain of Command, Hersh takes an unflinching look behind the public story of the war on terror and into the lies and obsessions that led America into Iraq. Hersh draws on sources at the highest levels of the American government and intelligence community, in foreign capitals, and on the battlefield for an unparalleled view of a critical chapter in America's recent history. In a new afterword, he critiques the government's failure to adequately investigate prisoner abuse -- at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- and punish those responsible. With an introduction by The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick, Chain of Command is a devastating portrait of an administration blinded by ideology and of a president whose decisions have made the world a more dangerous place for America.
The Middle East, a region infamous for political violence and a democratic deficit, boasts a rich but little-known history of nonviolent civilian-led struggles for rights and freedoms. Ordinary Egyptians, Palestinians, Turks, Israelis, Iranians, Kuwaitis and other Middle Easterners have, over the past century, used "weapons" including boycotts, strikes, demonstrations, sit-ins, and other methods of civil disobedience and noncooperation to courageously challenge entrenched power and to advance democratic self-rule. This book challenges the oft-heard claim that nonviolent resistance "can't work" in the Middle East by chronicling some of the most significant nonviolent campaigns against colonialism, foreign occupation, authoritarianism, and structural injustice in the region. Other chapters examine the role of strategy, political humor, religion, Islamist movements, and external actors in advancing and impeding democratization and good governance. This volume, which includes scholarly and activist perspectives, will be of particular interest to academics, policymakers, journalists, and local civic leaders interested in the Middle East, nonviolent action, social movements, democratization, and war and peace studies - as well as educated general readers interested in understanding present convulsions in the Middle East.
This book argues that although labor market needs have been an
important element in the development of immigration policy, they
have been filtered through a political process: the politics of
immigration. It is this process that drives immigration policy in
each country. By exploring the relation between policy and politics
in France, the UK, and the US, three countries that have both
welcomed and severely restricted immigrant entry during different
periods, this book helps to show how this goes far beyond labor
market needs. Cross-nationally, these policies have been influenced
by considerations of race, domestic ideas of what constitutes
national identity, citizenship, naturalization, urban policy,
housing, and education.
Gallya Lahav's study examines the issue of immigration in the context of a Europe where the role of the nation state is in question, as the logic of the single market clashes with national policymaking. Immigration is a central issue in European politics since around a quarter of the world's migrants reside in Europe. Consequently, politicians throughout the continent are grappling with the problems this raises. Analyzing elite and public opinion, Lahav's book shows how support from both has led to the adoption of restrictive immigration policies despite the requirements of open borders.
In a striking departure from conventional treatments of the Greek Civil War and its effects on the people of Greece, Dangerous Citizens begins by placing it within a larger historical context beginning in 1929 when the Greek state set up numerous exile and rehabilitation camps on the Greek archipelago, and extending up until 2004 with the famous trial of the Revolutionary Organization 17 November. Using ethnographic interviews, archival material, unpublished personal narratives, and memoirs of political prisoners and dissidents, Dangerous Citizens examines the various tortured microhistories that have created the modern Greek citizen as a fraught political subject. Returning to ethnographic terrain that is intimately familiar to PanourgiA, she analyzes the difficulties of conducting ethnographic research on a subject matter that not only spans several decades but which has also now become historical. Dangerous Citizens also analyzes how a liberal state (Greece) engaged in a process of excision of an increasingly large segment of its population as dangerous to the nation leaving a fundamental scar that is still visible. Through detailed ethnographic work, PanourgiA shows that the past is not a space of comfort, and what people remember as the truth is deeply instructive of how people manage and negotiate the past without being mendacious.Between 1929 and 1974 tens of thousands of dissidents were imprisoned and tortured in concentration and rehabilitation camps. PanourgiA's anthropological focus in this book is on two particular camps that have been ignored in the scholarly literature: Al Dabaa (in Egypt) and YAros (in Greece). In Al Dabaa, Greek men from Athens were exiled betweenJanuary and June 1945. These men ranged in age from 16 to 60 and had either participated in the Resistance against the Germans during the Second World War as members of the leftist army ELAS, or were members of Athens-based ELAS Youth. They were arrested and exiled by the British Occupation Forces after the Germans retreated (in October 1944). YAros is the second camp PanourgiA focuses on, used as a place of imprisonment, first between 1947-1963, and again during the dictatorship of 1967-1974. By using a widened historical frame PanourgiA demonstrates that the effects of the Greek Civil War are palpable in the everyday lives of Greek citizens even today.
The book deals with the most challenging issues which the Slovak Mass Media are currently facing, including matters of public criticism. The first chapter describes the media influence on power control in Slovakia. It does not avoid the controversial question of corruption in the Slovak media field. The following chapter examines the stereotypes about the social minorities that are still widely spread by the media (especially the Internet and the social media). In this context, the chapter related to the public media explains why the existence of the media of public service is so important and why it is necessary to finance such media by public sources and not by the state. In the final chapter, the author aims to identify the reasons why alternative sources of information usually fail to inform truthfully, impartially and objectively.
Israel-Palestine in the Print News Media: Contending Discourses is concerned with conceptions of language, knowledge, and thought about political conflict in the Middle East in two national news media communities: the United States and the United Kingdom. Arguing for the existence of national perspectives which are constructed, distributed, and reinforced in the print news media, this study provides a detailed linguistic analysis of print news media coverage of four recent events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in order to examine ideological patterns present in print news media coverage. The two news communities are compared for lexical choices in news stories about the conflict, attribution of agency in the discussion of conflict events, the inclusion or exclusion of historical context in explanations of the conflict, and reliance upon essentialist elements during and within print representations of Palestine-Israel. The book also devotes space to first-hand testimony from journalists with extensive experience covering the conflict from within both news media institutions. Unifying various avenues of academic enquiry reflecting upon the acquisition of information and the development of knowledge, this book will be of interest to those seeking a new approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Of the sixty-nine professors fired nationwide for political reasons
during the McCarthy Era, nearly half were from the University of
California. A small band of men and women at California's Berkeley
and Los Angeles campuses defied the stranglehold of McCarthyism in
a refusal to sign the non-communist loyalty oath required by the
institution. While college professors across the nation meekly
acquiesced to non-communist oaths in order to keep their jobs, this
group of "nonsigners" resisted in defense of free speech.
Readers will re-discover the forgotten treasures of the history and principles of the Declaration of Independence, recognizing the dedication of the Founding Fathers to the principles found there. The Founders' Revolution is designed to help readers understand the principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence and to make those principles their own. The book unpacks the intent of the Founding Fathers in drafting the document and the historical circumstances surrounding its development. Every charge and every paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is discussed with supporting evidence coming from the original words of the Founding Fathers and other original source documents. The Founders' Revolution also makes applicable comparisons with America's current federal government and how it is acting similarly to the king of England at the time of the Declaration, showing how the Declaration and its principles are still applicable today.
Daniel Pinello's exhaustive study analyzes how federal and state appellate courts treated the civil rights claims of lesbians and gay men between 1981 and 2000. Pinello examines 1,439 votes by 849 appellate judges in 398 decisions and opinions from 87 courts in all federal jurisdictions and 47 states. His investigation reveals that legal variables; judges' personal attributes; environmental factors (juridical ideology, consensual sodomy statutes, and gay civil rights laws); institutional determinants (judicial selection method and term length); and time and interest group participation were significant forces in judicial policymaking.
In virtually all corners of the Western world, 1968 witnessed a
highly unusual sequence of popular rebellions. In Italy, France,
Spain, Vietnam, the United States, West Germany, Czechoslovakia,
Mexico, and elsewhere, millions of individuals took matters into
their own hands to counter imperialism, capitalism, autocracy,
bureaucracy, and all forms of hierarchical thinking. Recent
reinterpretations have sought to play down any real challenge to
the socio-political status quo in these events, but Gerd-Rainer
Horn's book offers a spirited counterblast. 1968, he argues, opened
up the possibility that economic and political elites on both sides
of the Iron Curtain could be toppled from their position of
unnatural superiority to make way for a new society where everyday
people could, for the first time, become masters of their own
destiny. Furthermore, Horn contends, the moment of crisis and
opportunity culminating in 1968 must be seen as part of a larger
period of experimentation and revolt. The ten years between 1956
and 1966, characterised above all by the flourishing of
iconoclastic cultural rebellions, can be regarded as a preparatory
period which set the stage for the non-conformist cum political
revolts of the subsequent "red" decade (1966-1976).
This book revolves around three closely related questions. First, how did George W. Bush--a wisecracking cutup, mediocre student, failed oil patch entrepreneur and fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard's "Champagne Unit"--become a War President? Did George W. Bush go too far--invading Iraq, abandoning the Geneva Conventions' safeguards for captured prisoners and conducting surveillance over American citizens without court approval--in wielding his powers as War President? And finally, will George W. Bush receive history's accolade as a great American president for his leadership in the war on terror? |
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