This book deals with two areas: Global Commons and Security: inextricably melted together and more relevant than ever in a world which is ever globalized and... with an incognita looming on the horizon: the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic upon the International Relations and globalization. Global Commons have always been relevant. It was Mahan who argued that the first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from the political and social point of view, is that of a great highway; or better, perhaps, of a wide common... Nowadays, this view has been further developed and, in addition to the unique legal implications that the Global Commons introduce, they are viewed, more and more intently, as a common pool of resources. Or perhaps, not that common... Resources, the key word! Which has to be always supplemented by two key words: access and security. And still, another one: data, the cyberspace contribution to the equation.

This book propounds the thesis that it was the dysfunction of globalization and liberalism that prompted the rise of nationalism and populism. Recent developments in global affairs are challenging assumptions and the basis upon which international relations, as a broad field of specialization, and foreign policy analysis, as a sub-field, rests. In a world that is changing in fundamental and irreversible ways, this book intervenes to enable an improved sense of understanding of these developments and what they mean for people-people, state-state, continent-continent, and global relations, moving forward. The author shows anti-globalization and the growth of nationalism and populism have been particularly necessitated by the failures of liberalism and America's abdication from the world. With reference to Brexit, the pandemic, the US 2020 elections and consequent shifts in power, with a focus on their respective impacts on Africa, and Africa-Sino relations particularly, and developing countries, more broadly, this book situates these discussions within a global context. It effectively illustrates the insufficiency of the West's soft power, especially as it is foisted or supposedly imposed on the rest of the world without regard to the demands of cultural relativity. Relevant to postgraduate students, researchers, and policymakers, this is must-read within the fields of international relations and political economy.

This book argues that Canada and its international policies are at a crossroads as US hegemony is increasingly challenged and a new international order is emerging. The contributors look at how Canada has been adjusting to this new environment and resetting priorities to meet its international policy objectives in a number of different fields: from the alignment of domestic politics along new foreign policies, to reshaping its international identity in a post-Anglo order, its relationship with international organizations such as the UN and NATO, place among middle powers, management of peace operations and defense, role in G7 and G20, climate change and Arctic policy, development, and relations with the Global South. Embracing multilateralism has been and will continue to be key to Canada's repositioning and its ability to maintain its position in this new world order. This book takes a comprehensive look at Canada's role in the world and the various political and policy variables that will impact Canada's foreign policy decisions into the future. Chapter 22 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book explores how the European Union designs its trade policy to face the most recent challenges and to influence global policy issues. It provides with an interdisciplinary perspective, by combining legal, political, and economic approaches. It studies a broad set of trade instruments that are used by the EU in its trade policy, such as: trade agreements, multilateral initiatives, unilateral trade policies, as well as, internal market tools. Therefore, the contributions to this volume present the EU's Trade Policy through different lenses providing a complex view of it.

This is the first book-length empirical study of free zones (FZs) in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The volume systematically illustrates the development processes behind FZs in Gulf Arab states and assesses the impact of these commercial entities on regional integration, global trade and investment trends, and the Gulf's foreign relations. In the process, the work maps how economic strategies involving FZs evolve alongside varying levels of resource availability and state capacity on a local level while also revealing how development paths in Gulf Arab states are linked to regional and global accumulation circuits. FZ development is an under-examined topic in the wider literature on the Gulf. The empirical findings and theoretical implications of the work therefore offer an original contribution to prevailing political economy discussions concerning the Gulf region.

In Outlaw Paradise, the author argues that countries become tax havens as a conscious economic development strategy. These countries do not have the natural resources or the population to pursue more traditional economic development strategies, but they do have the ability to write and implement laws that create a virtual resource: banking secrecy. These countries are able to carry out this strategy because they tend to be well-governed, stable, and relatively wealthy, making them attractive partners for the international banking, legal, and accounting firms that drive offshore finance. The qualities tax havens possess also enable them to calculate that the benefits they reap from pursuing this strategy outweigh any penalties assessed by anti-tax haven international collective action activities, such as the naming and shaming campaigns of 2000 and 2009. The author argues that, while the tax havens seem to be complying with the campaigns from a juridical standpoint, actual financial behavior is unaffected. The author further argues that this outcome is predetermined given the nature of international regimes and the history of the concept of sovereignty, as well as tax haven relationships to both. Finally, Outlaw Paradise offers policy prescriptions and surveys recent developments resulting from the Panama Papers.

This book explores the development of mental health systems in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) of Samoa and Tonga through an examination of several policy transfer events from the colonial to the contemporary. Beginning in the 1990s, mental health became an area of global policy concern as reflected in concerted international organisation and bilateral aid and development agendas, most notably those of the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand. This book highlights how Tonga and Samoa both reformed their respective mental health systems during these years, after relatively long periods of stagnation. Using recent scholarship concerning public policy transfer, this book explains these policy outcomes and expands it to include consideration of the historical institutional dimensions evidenced by contemporary mental health systems. This book considers three distinct levels of policy implicated in mental health system transfer processes from developed to developing nations: colonial authority and influence; decolonisation processes; and the global development agenda surrounding health systems. In the process, the author argues that there are in fact three levels of policy change that must be accounted for in examining contemporary policy change. These policy levels include formal policy transfers, which tend to be prescriptive, involving professional problem construction and the designation of appropriate state apparatus for curative or custodial care provision; quasi-formal transfers, which tend to be aspirational and involve policy instruments developed through collaborative, participatory processes; and informal transfers that tend to be normative and include practices by professional actors in delivering service merged with traditional cultural beliefs as to disease aetiology as well as reflecting a deep understanding of the cultural context within which the services will be delivered. This book argues that a renewed focus on the importance of public policy and government institutional capacity is necessary to ensure human rights and justice are secured.

'John Feffer is our 21st-century Jack London' - Mike Davis In a post-Trump world, the right is still very much in power. Significantly more than half the world's population currently lives under some form of right-wing populist or authoritarian rule. Today's autocrats are, at first glance, a diverse band of brothers. But religious, economic, social and environmental differences aside, there is one thing that unites them - their hatred of the liberal, globalised world. This unity is their strength, and through control of government, civil society and the digital world they are working together across borders to stamp out the left. In comparison, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands - Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain and Uruguay. So far they have been on the defensive, campaigning on local issues in their own countries. This narrow focus underestimates the resilience and global connectivity of the right. In this book, John Feffer speaks to the world's leading activists to show how international leftist campaigns must come together if they are to combat the rising tide of the right. A global Green New Deal, progressive trans-European movements, grassroots campaigning on international issues with new and improved language and storytelling are all needed if we are to pull the planet back from the edge of catastrophe. This book is both a warning and an inspiration to activists terrified by the strengthening wall of far-right power.

This volume is an important instalment in the rapidly expanding literature on multilingualism in education and language teaching. Within multilingual studies the volume is highly innovative in its application of the concept, theory and perspectives of the Dominant Language Constellations (DLC). The volume reports original research on language education policy and practice which address contemporary DLC-informed multilingualism within family settings and institutional domains such as teacher education, primary and secondary schooling, and higher education. Deploying the DLC concept as an analytical and conceptual category the chapters explore both personal and institutional life of multilingualism, enriched through visualizations. Specific chapters examine issues connected to career opportunities of adults of refugee background in Norway, multilingual transnational couples, and language teacher preparation in settings as diverse as Austria, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Israel, and the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain. This volume is of direct relevance to coursework students and researchers pursuing programs in education, linguistics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and multilingualism, but will also attract interest in disciplines such as social work and psychology. Additionally the volume will appeal to members of the general public wishing to acquaint themselves with current research and thinking on critical issues in multilingual studies, such as learning experiences within and beyond classrooms, and aspects of public policy and institutional decision-making processes.

This book investigates the macroacquisition of Chinese - its large-scale acquisition and adoption for various purposes by individuals, governments and organisations - and the implications of this process for the future of English as a global language. The author contextualises the macroacquisition of Chinese within the global ecology of languages, then analyses the factors responsible for the macroacquisition of Chinese, showing, in contrast to most academic and popular commentary, that a character-based writing system will not stop Chinese from becoming a global language. He then articulates three possible future scenarios: English remaining a dominant global language, English and Chinese both being global languages, and Chinese becoming a global language instead of English. The book concludes by outlining directions for further research on the acquisition and use of Chinese around the world. It will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in English as a global language, Chinese as a second/foreign language, language education policy, and applied linguistics more generally.

This book explores the change and continuity in the idea of the nation state. Since the Westphalian treaties and the political thought of Thomas Hobbes, the nation state has been the denominator of all geopolitics. In an era of populism, economic globalization, digitalization, and the Chinese party-state, scholars of sovereignty have been struggling to understand whether the nation-state remains relevant as a necessary heuristic. This book will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, investors, and citizens navigating a fast-changing world.

The book examines the emergence of hegemonic development ideas and practices in the context of shifts in world orders post-1945 and debates concerning the transforming of the prevailing world order characterized by neoliberalism and securitization of development and security. It also examines the rise of China and the start of Obama's presidency.

How can we understand power in a world of ever-growing complexity? This book proposes that we can do so by rethinking the theory and practice of political hegemony through the resources of complexity theory. Taking Gramsci's understanding of hegemony as its starting point, the book argues that the intricacies of contemporary power can be mapped by applying concepts drawn from complexity theory, such as emergence, self-organisation, metastability, and generative entrenchment. It develops an original account of social complexity, drawing upon critical realist sociology, analytic philosophy of science, Marxist and continental philosophies, and neoliberal and anarchist thought. It then draws out the elements of Gramscian hegemony that already align with complexity concepts, such as the balance of forces, common sense, and the historic bloc. On this basis, the book sets out the different dimensions of complex hegemonic power before using this theory to interpret the nature of the power of neoliberalism since 2008.

Civilizations and World Order: Geopolitics and Cultural Difference examines the role of civilizations in the context of the existing and possible world order(s) from a cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary perspective. Contributions seek to clarify the meaning of such complex and contested notions as "civilization," "order," and "world order"; they do so by taking into account political, economic, cultural, and philosophical dimensions of social life. The book deals with its main theme from three angles or vectors: first, the geopolitical or power-political context of civilizations; secondly, the different roles of civilizations or cultures against the backdrop of "post-coloniality" and "Orientalism"; and thirdly, the importance of ideological and regional differences as factors supporting or obstructing world order(s). All in all, the different contributions demonstrate the impact of competing civilizational trajectories on the functioning or malfunctioning of contemporary world order.

This book focuses on the current tension between China and the US on trade imbalance and discusses China's opening-up strategy in the context of this trade conflict. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, the author presents a detailed analysis of the current state of the China-US trade relationship and describes the potential impacts of China-US trade conflicts. The topics covered in this section include the re-estimate of US trade deficit with China, China's non-market economy status, the impact of China-US bilateral investment treaties on China's manufacturing sectors, and the estimated welfare losses and gains resulting from the China-US trade war. Part II explores China's possible response and development strategy in the context of de-globalization. Based on an overview of China's three stages of economic reform and opening-up policy in the past four decades, the author discusses the future tasks that would move the country into a new stage of all-round opening up. Lastly, the book comprehensively reviews the role of processing trade, trade liberalization, and firm performance in promoting China's miraculous economic growth so as to foster a better understanding of China's experience of opening up over the past 4 decades.

This book addresses the politics of borders in the era of global art by exploring the identification of Chinese artists by location and exhibition. Focusing on performative, body-oriented video works by the post-1989 generation, it tests the premise of genealogical inscription and the ways in which cultural objects are attributed to the artist's residency, homeland or citizenship rather than cultural tradition, style or practice. Acknowledging historical definitions of Chineseness, including the orientalist assumptions of the past and the cultural-mixing of the present, the book's case studies address the paradoxes and contradictions of representation. An analysis of the historical matrix of global expositions reveals the structural connections among art, culture, capital and nation. -- .

This book presents an unusual view on one of the most influential periods in world economic history: the Early Globalization. By this term, the notion that a process of genuine globalization took place in the Early Modern Era is defended. The authors propose that the canonical globalization-that of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-was preceded by a century-long increasing economic integration between continents that were non-existent before 1492. The economic aspects of the Early Globalization, like market integration, price co-movements and international silver circulation, were very important. Notwithstanding, other dimensions of human life, which were affected by unprecedented intercontinental contacts, including free and forced migrations, changes in tastes and consumption, etc. The Fruits of Globalisation deals with some of the most important issues among the former and the latter. The book combines approaches from different disciplines, including quantitative and non-quantitative economic history, econometrics, international trade and demography. Overall, the vision of the Early Globalisation offered in this book is less pessimistic than in mainstream literature on the period.

Combining case studies with normative theory, this book analyzes the democratic credentials of transnational actors participating in global governance, ranging from corporations and philanthropic foundations to NGOs and social movements. This leads to innovative interpretations of democratic legitimacy in a transnational context.

This book explains the importance of globalization and the Belt and Road Initiative, which is one of the essential projects of President Xi Jinping, and where China fits on the global arena. Additionally, the contributors cover such important topics as China's maritime traffic, infrastructure along the modern Silk Road, the South China Sea, and China's relationship with Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, Hong Kong, and Macao. This edited volume will interest scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of Asian studies, globalization, political science, and Chinese politics.

This book enters into a detailed discussion with many theorists of totalitarianism, and demands a re-evaluation of approaches that speak of mass manipulation of people and ideological control mechanisms. Zarko Paic shows that totalitarianism cannot be only a political-ideological problem, but rather a problem of the relationship between the technosphere, political power, and the narcissistic culture of the spectacle, which offers postmodern revisionism and forgetfulness of history as opposed to brave civic participation in the public sphere of acting together. He investigates the transformations the political and cultural processes linked to the notion of 'totalitarianism' undergo in the contemporary world, and the transformations (and differences) that this notion expresses today in comparison to what was realized by fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism in the 20th century.

This book brings together voices and perspectives from across the world and draws in a new generation of curriculum scholars to provide fresh insight into the contemporary field. By opening up Curriculum Studies with contributions from twelve countries-including every continent-the book outlines and exemplifies the challenges and opportunities for transnational curriculum inquiry. While curriculum remains largely shaped and enabled nationally, global policy borrowing and scholarly exchange continue to influence local practice. Contributors explore major shared debates and future implications through four key sections: Decolonising the Curriculum; Knowledge Questions and Curriculum Dilemmas; Nation, History, Curriculum; and Curriculum Challenges for the Future.

This book offers a unique analysis of the participatory spaces available for civil society organisations (CSOs) in Caribbean governance. It reveals the myriad ways in which the region's CSOs have contributed to enriching Caribbean societies and to scaffolding Caribbean regionalism, and also uncovers that despite their contributions, Caribbean CSOs (and civil society more broadly) have found limited space for involvement in governance. The author peers into Caribbean state-civil society participatory dynamics using in-depth country case studies (Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago), mini-case studies and evaluations of the approaches to inclusion within the regional institutions of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). This novel contribution to the Caribbean civil society literature uses these assessments to make a case for regularising state-civil society collaborative practices to enhance the quality of democracy in the region.

This book presents the first published account in English of Sverre Lysgaard's theory of the 'worker collectivity' - a theory of an informal protective organisation among subordinate employees, which so far has been unknown outside Scandinavia. Lysgaard's theory espouses that workers collectively form a buffer against management to protect themselves from the technical/economic power, which controls their working lives. The authors have returned to the same Norwegian factory Lysgaard studied in the 1950s to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in the 1980s and 2010s, and investigate the changing nature of the production, labour processes and management strategies. Through analysis that extends over 50 years of factory life, this research documents shifting power relations between workers and employers during times of changing institutional structures, globalisation, and worker solidarity. A revised version of the theory is also presented as an answer to some of the uncovered deficiencies in the original framework. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of work, labour studies, business management and organisation studies.

This volume brings together 25 defining texts in global history. These pieces cover approaches to the subject from antiquity to the present century and, taken together, show the development of the discipline, providing a solid historiographical, theoretical and methodological overview that will be invaluable for students. The collection gives a unique sense of how, at different times, in different cultural circumstances, students of the past have approached the problems of encompassing the world in a single narrative or theory. This is a reader with an implicit story to unfold. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto tracks how a global understanding of history originated in prophetic writings, how the "Renaissance discovery of the world" multiplied the opportunities for historians to think about history globally, how scientific investigations of change came to exert influence and inspire new thinking among global historians, how "culture wars" ensued between advocates of scientific and cultural models and how changing contexts in the 20th century produced new thematic approaches to the world as a whole. Each part is introduced, setting it in context and explaining the impact of its subject matter on the discipline, as well as the relations between the texts and their place in the overall development of global history.