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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations
Owen E. Hughes investigates governance across sectors including corporate, international and political governance, arguing that governance, as a general concept and an operational system, is in crisis. Hughes reasons that the crisis is in governance in general, in how societies run themselves, in how companies are run and how international organizations are run. This critical book examines the ways in which governance enables the smooth running of these societies, companies and organizations, from sub-national to international levels, and how the setting up of structures or institutional arrangements can impact this. These structures, institutions and arrangements are explored from legal, ethical and behavioural perspectives to provide a well-informed introduction to the crisis of governance. The book further examines debates over the facts, lies, science and policies behind governance, scrutinising the conflicts between democracy and autocracy in governance. The Crisis of Governance will be a beneficial resource for both undergraduate and graduate courses in public administration and management. Academics, students and scholars interested in public affairs, international politics and corporate economics will also find value in this timely book.
European law has come to influence almost all fields of national law, including administrative, constitutional, contract, criminal and even tort law. But what is the European Union? How does it work? How does it produce European law? This book uses a clear framework to guide readers through all core constitutional and substantive topics of EU law. New content includes: a Brexit chapter covering the negotiation process and the possible future relationships between the United Kingdom and the European Union, new EU private international law and EU criminal law sections, and extended coverage of delegated legislation, human rights and free movement of persons. All chapters reflect judicial and legislative practice up to 31st December 2017. Key features include case extracts accompanied by extensive critical discussion of the theoretical and practical aspects of EU law, over 100 figures and tables clarifying complex topics and a companion website with full 'Lisbonised' versions of cited cases and many extra materials.
From the Great Game to the present, an international cultural and political biography of one of our most evocative, compelling, and poorly understood narratives of history. The Silk Road is rapidly becoming one of the key geocultural and geostrategic concepts of the twenty-first century. Yet, for much of the twentieth century the Silk Road received little attention, overshadowed by nationalism and its invented pasts, and a world dominated by conflict and Cold War standoffs. In The Silk Road, Tim Winter reveals the different paths this history of connected cultures took towards global fame, a century after the first evidence of contact between China and Europe was unearthed. He also reveals how this remarkably popular depiction of the past took hold as a platform for geopolitical ambition, a celebration of peace and cosmopolitan harmony, and created dreams of exploration and grand adventure. Winter further explores themes that reappear today as China seeks to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century. Known across the globe, the Silk Road is a concept fit for the modern world, and yet its significance and origins remain poorly understood and are the subject of much confusion. Pathbreaking in its analysis, this book presents an entirely new reading of this increasingly important concept, one that is likely to remain at the center of world affairs for decades to come.
Diplomacy is essential to the conduct of foreign policy and international business in the twenty-first century. Yet, few international actors are trained to understand or practice effective diplomacy. Poor diplomacy has contributed to repeated setbacks for the United States and other major powers in the last decade. Drawing on deep historical research, this book aims to 'reinvent' diplomacy for our current era. The original and comparative research provides a foundation for thinking about what successful outreach, negotiation, and relationship-building with foreign actors should look like. Instead of focusing only on failures, as most studies do, this one interrogates success. The book provides a framework for defining successful diplomacy and implementing it in diverse contexts. Chapters analyze the activities of diverse diplomats (including state and non-state actors) in enduring cases, including: post-WWII relief, the rise of the non-aligned movement, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. opening to China, the Camp David Accords, the reunification of Germany, the creation of the European Union, the completion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and relief aid to pre-2001 Afghanistan. The cases are diverse and historical, but they are written with an eye toward contemporary challenges and opportunities. The book closes with systematic reflections on how current diplomats can improve their activities abroad. Foreign Policy Breakthroughs offers rigorous historical insights for present policy.
Challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance. The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance. While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.
Michael Oppenheimer's Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures is both a synthesis of our knowledge on scenario planning and a practical guide for policymakers. One of America's leading scenario planners, Oppenheimer has advised the Department of State, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President's Science Advisor, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Brookings Institution. In this book, he develops a sophisticated and coherent method for foreign policy specialists who necessarily deal with rapidly changing situations involving high levels of uncertainty. As he explains, figuring out possible outcomes and designing and appropriate policy requires an ability to identify the drivers of change, the potential wild card events, and the central policy questions in any given situation. Once policymakers determine these, they must plan a scenario. To do that, planners need to know how to build the best team of experts possible, run a session, and create credible narratives for different scenario alternatives. To illustrate how it all works, Oppenheimer draws from a range of real-life planning scenarios, including China, Syria, and the Iran nuclear crisis. To be sure, new crises will arise that supplant these current ones, but his basic method will aid policymakers in almost every future situation. While nothing ever goes completely to plan-least of all international conflict-preparing with multiple scenarios in mind will always be the least worst approach to global and regional crises. Methodologically rigorous and comprehensive, Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures will be essential reading for policymakers and policy students trying to determine the best path forward in any given crisis.
Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. David P. Forsythe presents a compelling introduction to international human rights in a political context. He stresses the difficulties of interjecting human rights into foreign policy and international politics, while recognising the considerable progress that has been made over time. Focusing on international organizations, states, corporations, and private advocacy groups, Forsythe addresses key themes including war, migration, climate change, and slavery. Key features include: a multidisciplinary approach that draws on findings in political science, law, diplomacy, history, and economics discussion of a broad range of both traditional and contemporary topics from the United Nations to the internet and pandemics an assessment of the progress made in promoting human rights and humanitarian ideas, and how these ideas translate into tangible improvements for human dignity. Adopting a politically realistic and historically informed perspective, this Advanced Introduction will be a valuable resource for students of human rights, international relations, and political science.
The Achmea judgment revolutionised intra-EU investment protection by declaring intra-EU bilateral investment treaties (intra-EU BITs) incompatible with EU law. This incisive book investigates whether intra-EU foreign investments benefit from this alteration, which discontinued the parallel applicability of intra-EU BITs and EU law in the EU internal market. Analysing the level of protection offered to four identified types of investments, Dominik Moskvan argues that certain investors will find more favourable substantive protection under the framework of EU law as opposed to intra-EU BITs. However, he also highlights the loss of investment safeguards significant to more complex investments when relying exclusively on EU law. Furthermore, since the analysis reveals important differences in the approaches of EU Member States' judiciaries, the book proposes the creation of a permanent intra-EU foreign investment court to ensure a balanced economic development of the EU internal market. This book's discussion of the impact of the EU legal framework on investors' decisions will be beneficial for both EU and national policymakers when challenged with forming recommendations aimed at improving intra-EU investment policy. The comparative legal analysis from an investor perspective will also be of interest to scholars in EU and international investment law, as well as to lawyers advising foreign investors.
The rise of China is the most significant development in world affairs in this generation. No nation in history has risen as quickly or modernized as rapidly as has China over the four decades. This sixth edition of The China Reader chronicles the diverse aspects of this transition since the late-1990s. It is comprehensive in scope and draws upon both primary Chinese sources and secondary Western analyses written by the world's leading experts on contemporary China. Perfectly suited as both a textbook for students as well as for specialists and the public alike, the volume covers the full range of China's internal and external developments. During the past three decades China dramatically modernized its economy and taken a positon as one of the two major powers in the world. Its mega-economy has skyrocketed to being the second largest in the world, and will soon surpass the United States on aggregate. The physical transformation of the country has been extraordinary to witness, with infrastructure development unparalleled in human history. Modern cities featuring futuristic architecture have literally risen from farmland across the country. As China has developed domestically, it has also taken its place as a major power on the world stage. Whether in its relations with other powers-the United States, Russia, and European Union-with its neighbors in Asia or other countries across the world, China is now a major factor in international relations. Its businesses are "going global" and its people are establishing their footprint from Antarctica to outer space. For all its newfound prowess, China's rise has not been a smooth process. Domestically, the nation's juggernaut economy has produced numerous negative social and environmental side-effects. Its political system remains anachronistic and authoritarian, with substantial repression. Externally, Beijing's rapid military modernization and regional territorial claims have alarmed China's neighbors. Its relationship with the United States is complex and increasingly strained. And its "soft power" remains limited. Still, the rise of China is the story of the current era. The China Reader is a perfect window into the complexities of this historic process.
At the start of his administration John F. Kennedy launched a personal policy initiative to court African nationalist leaders. This policy was designed to improve U.S.-African relations and constituted a dramatic change in the direction of U.S. foreign relations. The Kennedy administration believed that the Cold War could be won or lost depending upon whether Washington or Moscow won the hearts and minds of the Third World. Africa was particularly important because a wave of independence saw nineteen newly independent African states admitted into the United Nations during 1960-61. By 1962, 31 of the UN's 110 member states were from the African continent, and both Washington and Moscow sought to add these countries to their respective voting bloc. For Kennedy, the Cold War only amplified the need for a strong U.S. policy towards Africa-but did not create it. The Kennedy administration feared that American neglect of the newly decolonized countries of the world would result in the rise of anti-Americanism and for this reason needed to be addressed irrespective of the Cold War. For this reason, Kennedy devoted more time and effort toward relations with Africa than any other American president. By making an in-depth examination of Kennedy's attempt to court African nationalist leaders, Betting on the Africans adds an important chapter to the historiography of John F. Kennedy's Cold War strategy by showing how through the use of personal diplomacy JFK realigned United States policy towards Africa and to a large extent won the sympathies of its people while at the same time alienating more traditional allies.
Over the past hundred years, population policy has been a powerful tactic for achieving national goals. Whether the focus has been on increasing the birth rate to project strength and promote nation-building-as in Brazil in the 1960s, where the military government insisted that a "powerful nation meant a populous nation, " - or on limiting population through contraception and sterilization as a means of combatting overpopulation, poverty, and various other social ills, states have always used women's bodies as a political resource. In Reproductive States, a group of international scholars-specialists in population and reproductive politics of Japan, Germany, India, Egypt, Nigeria, China, Brazil, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the United States-explore the population politics, policies and practices adopted in these countries and offer reflections on the outcomes of those policies and their legacies. The essays in this volume focus on the context that stimulated nations to develop demographic imperatives regarding population size and "quality," and consider how those imperatives became unique sets of priorities and strategies. They also illuminate how these nations crafted their own policies and practices, often while responding to United Nations- and U.S.- driven population goals, tactics, and interventions. The global perspective of this volume shines light on national specificities, including change over time within a nation, while also capturing interconnections among various national politics and discourses, including evolving constructions of the key and complex concept of "overpopulation." The first volume to survey population policies from key countries on five continents and to interweave gender politics, reproductive rights, statecraft, and world systems, Reproductive States will be an essential work for scholars of anthropology, women and gender studies, feminist theory, and biopolitics.
In an age of intolerance where religious persecution is widespread, Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan explores how societies can promote freedom of religion or belief as a fundamental right of citizens Examining the extent of religious persecution throughout the world, this cutting-edge book explores mechanisms to address religious intolerance and develop religious freedom, outlining the necessary factors to measure progress on the protection of this fundamental human right. Chapters explore how freedom of religion or belief can be institutionalized in dispositions, laws, and policies through efforts which limit negative depictions of the religious (or non-religious) Other in public discourse. Rieffer-Flanagan demonstrates how reforms that enhance the ability of civil society actors to operate can also promote freedom of religion or belief, and how states and IGOs can support these efforts. Ultimately, this innovative book proves that reforms must be continually nurtured for freedom of religion or belief to exist in society. With interview-based research and a diverse range of regional case studies, this will be a vital resource for students and scholars of philosophy, religion, human rights law and political science. Considering the role of leaders in the promotion of religious tolerance, the book will also prove invaluable to policymakers concerned with human rights and freedom of religion or belief.
This timely book sets out a shrewd and comprehensive policy programme, for both 'microeconomic' supply-side settings of tax and regulatory systems, and 'macroeconomic' policies for fiscal and monetary policies to regulate demand and support the supply-side growth agenda. Explaining the numerous benefits of free trade after Britain's exit from the EU, and challenging the anti-Brexit argument, Patrick Minford builds on his extensive research into economic modelling to quantify the effects of Brexit and propose policies for the aftermath. Laying out an agenda for replacing social interventionist EU regulation with a robust free market framework, Minford proposes a radical tax reform programme to broaden the tax base and flatten marginal rates. This incisive book looks to the future of the UK beyond Brexit, addressing the effects of coronavirus and proposing an avenue of policies for recovery. Featuring key empirical analysis and insightful arguments, this book will be crucial reading for economists and policymakers investigating and overseeing the future of UK economic policy. It will also benefit scholars of economics and political economy, particularly those interested in tax reform programmes.
Political theory deals with profound questions about human nature, political principles, and the limits of knowledge. In Teaching Political Theory, Nicholas Tampio shows how political theorists may take a pluralistic approach to help students investigate the deepest levels of political life. The book shares advice about how to design a political theory course, including selecting reading materials, writing lectures, making assignments, and creating experiences for students. More than a how-to manual, the book also shows how political theorists may profitably stage conversations between American, Chinese, European, and Indian political thinkers. After reading this book, political theorists will gain ideas about how to read and teach ancient sceptics like Sextus Empiricus, Chinese Daoists like Zhuangzi, African American abolitionists like Sojourner Truth, and Indian philosophers like B.R. Ambedkar. Written by an editor of the journal Comparative Political Theory, this book offers insights to political theorists at all stages of their career on how to energize their research and teaching methods.
This account of the life of Jacques Vaillant de Guelis follows him from his birth in Cardiff, through school and University and French Military Service. Newly married he was recalled to France in 1939 and was assigned to a company of British engineers as liaison officer until reportedly captured. He escaped via Dunkirk, only to return to France a few days later. He retreated south, escaped over the Pyrenees only to be caught again and flung into the Miranda del Ebro Concentration camp. On his release he returned to England where he was recruited by the fledgling SOE, after an interview with Churchill. He became a familiar figure in Baker Street as a recruiting and conducting officer until he was sent to France on a fact- finding mission in 1941. A stay in Algiers in 1942-3 followed when he took part in the liberation of Corsica before returning to London and leading his 2nd mission to France in 1944. In 1945 he joined SAARF and led his last mission to Germany which culminated in collision with another vehicle when he was badly injured. He died later as a result
The gripping real story of the ordinary American man who found himself at the centre of a deadly terrorist organisation - and working for both MI5 and the FBI. A bored trucker from New York took a holiday to Ireland with his new girlfriend and brought down the IRA. Just a quick Google search reveals the level of interest across Britain, Ireland and the US into exactly how this ordinary blue-collar worker found himself at the centre of an espionage ring. David Rupert, a complete outsider with no connection to Ireland, rose to the very top of the Real IRA, all while working for the FBI and British intelligence. But the story is really about just how a bored, frustrated New York trucking manager becomes one of Britain's most valued spies, brings down the entire IRA structure and makes $10 million dollars in the process. Along the way he finds himself in the most extraordinary and terrifying situations - he is involved in major terrorist operations, sets up an Iraqi sting operation and organises US arms shipments with a man being trained to kill the then British prime minister, Tony Blair.
Exploring the considerable qualitative research conducted by the Judicial Cooperation in Economic Recovery (JCOERE) Project, this book provides a rich analysis of the questions surrounding the contrasting legal traditions and cultures within the European framework. Building on existing research, this book analyses the EU Directive (2019) harmonising 'preventive restructuring' law in a number of member states of the EU. Embodying a modern approach to business failure involving radical concepts, it examines the imposition of a stay or moratorium, the process of agreeing a compromise of existing debt through cram-down and final approval, and ultimately financing the rescued business into the future. These concepts are considered in addition to the obligations imposed on courts through EU Regulation (2015) to cooperate in cross-border litigation in insolvency generally. Chapters also provide a critical analysis of legal texts and commentary, studying the development of the Preventive Restructuring Directive (PRD) and domestic preventive restructuring processes. Critically considering the legal initiatives affecting business rescue within a broader EU legal context, this book will be an insightful read for EU policy-makers and insolvency lawyers and practitioners. Academics and researchers with an interest in European law and EU integration will also benefit from this comprehensive book. |
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