Middle power states, such as Canada or Denmark, are often thought of as "followers" of great powers rather than significant actors in global security. Challenging this view, this book highlights how middle powers have in fact showed great leadership by developing a "human security" agenda that focuses on countering threats to human beings rather than to nation-states.
The work examines how coalitions of middle powers have performed through five case studies: the formation of the Multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for United Nations Operations (SHIRBRIG), the realization of the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the regulation of the legal trade in small arms and light weapons, and the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle. Furthermore, the book explores how the human security initiatives were shaped by the middle powers' choices of diplomatic strategy, and how they were affected by the reactions of the hegemonic United States.
The Human Security Agenda will appeal to those studying international relations and global security, as well as foreign policy and international organizations.
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Drawing on the interdisciplinary research projects of scholars from various social science and humanities disciplines, this book explores how African migration to Western countries after the neo-liberal economic reforms of the 1980s transformed West African states and their new transnational populations in Western countries.

A timely, original study of the emergence of a new type of thinking about children and their rights in contemporary urban China, which draws on diverse evidence from Chinese government, academic, media, and pedagogic publications, as well as on participant observation and interviews in two primary schools and among elite and middle class families in Shanghai, China. Drawing on rich, ethnographic data, this book debunks many popular and scholarly stereotypes about the predominance of Confucian ideas of parental authority in China or about the indifference to individual human rights in the political and public culture of the PRC. This book also recognizes the complexities and conflicts that exist in Chinese discourses about and practices toward children, as older ideas of filiality, neoliberal ideologies, and the new awareness of children's right to privacy, to expressing their views, and to protection against violence compete and collude in complicated, often contradictory ways.

Using a political economy of health, Gender, Globalization, and Health in a Latin American Context demonstrates how the development of health systems in Latin America was closely linked to men's participation in formal labor. This established an inherent male bias that continues to shape health services today. While economic liberalization has created new jobs that have been taken up mainly by women, these jobs fail to offer the same health entitlements. Author Jasmine Gideon explores the resultant tensions and gender inequalities, which have been further exacerbated in the context of health care commercialization.

This collection offers a comprehensive account of the relation between diaspora and media cultures drawing from traditional and innovative theoretical and empirical approaches illustrated by original case studies. It analyzes the dilemmas of the field, the tensions and promises of the politics of transnational communication and diasporas, the consumption of national and transnational media by diasporas communities, and the views of non-governmental organizations on issues of the politics of participation and representation of ethnic minorities in the media.

This book analyses the recent emergence of transnational forms of environmental regulation within the larger conceptual context of global governance research and institutional theory. Increasingly, private policies at the transnational level complement, and in some cases even replace, public interventions. The author takes a deep and broad look at the phenomenon to account for both the emergence and the influence of private institutions in global governance and sustainability. Focusing on the empirical arenas of sustainable forestry and corporate environmental reporting and management, Philipp Pattberg examines why and how private forms of policy-making emerge at the transnational level and how their impacts can be analysed. The study makes a threefold contribution to current debates; firstly, it provides a novel theoretical perspective on the phenomenon of private governance in global sustainability politics. Secondly, it offers a fresh conceptualisation of global governance as a meta-theory in the social sciences. And finally, it provides detailed insights into the empirical landscape of private governance in the areas of global forestry and corporate environmental reporting. This book bridges disciplinary boundaries by providing a detailed account of recent developments in global business regulation as an important aspect of the current sustainability debate. As such it will appeal to a wide audience of both academics and researchers in the fields of environmental policy, public sector economics, international relations and global environmental and sustainability politics in particular. It will also be of interest to practitioners involved in private rule-making and sustainable development.

With contributions from leading thinkers such as J. Bhagwati and Robert Solow, this edited collection examines some hotly debated issues in today's world. The significance of globalization and its effects on welfare states is discussed and analyzed. A special chapter is devoted to terrorism, and it is explained why some people are willing to sacrifice their lives to gain 'heavenly goods'. The role of multinationals in the globalization process is examined as is the importance of changing and evolving social norms regarding work and leisure for the survival of today's welfare states.

Dilip K. Das succinctly covers the principal normative and positive strands that one needs to be properly familiar with in the area of economic globalization. The selection and rejection of themes for coverage in the book has been carefully done. The picture of globalization has been painted with a broad brush. The unique feature that distinguishes it from the competition is its succinct coverage of numerous, carefully selected, thematic issues that falls under the rubric of globalization. The book is easy to access for the target readership because of its descriptive analysis style.

This title explores how British and Japanese firms have responded to globalization from a long-term perspective. Incorporates studies from the 18th century and sheds light on the impact of the institutional setting, the influence of government and entrepreneurs, and the weight of historical contingency in conditioning firm responses to globalization.

This collection re-examines and re-assesses the role of the semi-periphery in world politics and argues that the processes of globalization have led us to widen our understanding of the semi-periphery, through a range of case studies as well as theoretical chapters.

Building on the New Economic Foundation and Jubilee 2000's experience of making complex economic issues interesting and attractive to a mass audience, and publishing alternative reports, the Real World Economic Outlook provides an overview and reviews the global economy from a different and radical perspective. This first report looks at globalization and debt deflation.

Leading scholars in the field examine the role played by the English language in contemporary Japanese society. Their various chapters cover the nature, status, and function of English in Japan, focusing on the ways in which globalization is influencing language practices in the country.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. In Retooling Global Development and Governance a team of UN experts debate new ideas about how to overcome deficiencies in the ongoing process of globalization and in the existing mechanisms for global economic governance. They do not claim to offer a blueprint, rather a set of ideas that could become the basis for a coherent "toolbox" designed to guide development policies and international cooperation. Promising directions for reform discussed in the book include: - Strengthening government capacities for formulating and implementing national development strategies - New strategies for ensuring that official development assistance is aligned with national priorities - Enhancing international trade and financial systems so that countries with limited capabilities can successfully integrate into the global economy - Creating new mechanisms for dealing with deficiencies, such as specialized multilateral frameworks through which to govern international migration and labour mobility, international financial regulation, multinational corporations and global value chains regulation and sovereign debt workouts. Above all, the book highlights the need for a strong mechanism for global economic coordination to establish coherence across all areas of global economic governance.

Science and politics are closely connected in today's global environmental issues. This book focuses on these links in relation to climate change, the threats to wildlife species, and natural hazards and disasters. Close study of these links of these reveals the need for more effective international cooperation and the limits of global governance.

This major book provides a new understanding of systems of corporate governance, notably in the USA, Japan and the EU. It discusses how governance influences corporate cultures and strategies, particularly in response to the effects of deepening integration in the world economy. These effects present challenges for governments, obliging them to focus increasingly on problems of the management of structural and foreign trade policies. Challenges in international financial markets also have to be confronted by policymakers as industries are funded more and more through cross-border investments, which reflect the responses of systems of corporate governance to globalization. The book links studies of corporate governance with surveys of efficiencies and failures in international financial markets, as well as examining aspects of corporate governance systems that have special significance for the management of economic policies as globalization continues. The contributors advocate increased international cooperation to promote more structural complementarities in the world economy.

This book contains a collection of papers by Japanese and German authors dealing with the ongoing globalization process and notable fluctuations in the regional economic development in East Asia. The contributions discuss the stabilizing and destabilizing elements of the globalization process. The authors investigate the different options for economic policy to stabilize an ever more tightly interwoven world economy. In the center of the discussion are developments in East Asia and the European Union.

From direct foreign investment to the flow of capital, there are endless factors that affect the economies of the world's poorest countries. Knowledge of the struggles of these countries--also known as the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)--is essential to understanding the impact of globalization. This work provides a platform for grasping why developed countries are reaping the benefits of globalization while the LDCs are being left behind. Topical chapters seek to uncover the processes that LDCs should take to reverse their marginalization and build their economies so that they can receive the benefits of globalization. Subjects include: *The relationship between the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund *Multilateral trade regimes *Tariff and non-tariff barriers in developed countries *Global Commodity Prices *Trends in Poverty and Human Development *Technology

This title offers a novel cross-disciplinary theoretical perspective on conflict and conflict transformation in world society. The Middle East will continue to be a focus for theories of Conflict Studies and IR for some time to come. This book offers a new perspective (modern systems theory) on the study of conflicts. It covers conflict in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan plus Egypt as well as Israel - the types of domestic, inter-state and global conflict dimensions which emanate from this region are at the heart of any analysis of conflict (and cooperation) dynamics in the entire Arab-Israeli region. It integrates the study of conflicts in the Middle East region into a modern systems theoretical framework.

Including a stellar line-up of international scholars, this book is an ambitious analysis of cosmopolitanism that will push the debate into new arenas, open up new lines of inquiry and have an impact on the study of globalization and global processes for years to come.

This interdisciplinary volume analyzes the strong links between the way we form our individual and collective identities and the type of society in which we live. The contributors--who include sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and philosophers--focus on the issue of modern identity both on a conceptual level and in the context of European unification and progressive globalization. Among the issues examined are the tension between our fluid, situation-specific identity and our constant attempt to create a coherent image of the self; the transformation of identities resulting from the collective experiences of East European societies in the aftermath of Communism; and the interplay between the evolution of the modes of constitution of identity and the social changes determined by European integration.

In this open access book, Mikael Hard tells a story of how people around the world challenged the production techniques and products brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom, creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives, globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens all obstacles in its path. Modern technology is also seen as inexorable: in the nineteenth century, steamships, telegraph lines, and Gatling guns are said to have paved the way for colonialism and other forms of dominating people and societies. Later, shipping containers and computer networks purportedly pulled the planet deeper into a maelstrom of capitalism. Hard discusses instances that push back against these narratives. For example, in Soviet times, inhabitants of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, preferred to remain in-and expand-their own mud-brick houses rather than move into prefabricated, concrete residential buildings. Similarly, nineteenth-century Sumatran carpenters ignored the saws brought to them by missionaries-and chose to chop down trees with their arch-bladed adzes. And people in colonial India successfully competed with capitalist-run Caribbean sugar plantations, continuing to produce their own muscovado and sell it to local consumers. This book invites readers to view the history of technology and material culture through the lens of diversity. Based on research funded by the European Research Council and conducted in the Global South, Microhistories of Technology: Making the World shows that the spread of modern technologies did not erase artisanal production methods and traditional tools.

This study is the first effort to document the extent of NAFTA's impact on higher education. Through case studies, the authors analyze higher education policy in Canada, Mexico, and the USA using a common theoretical framework that identifies economic globalization, international trade liberalization, and post-industrialization as common structural factors exerting a significant influence on higher education in the three countries.