This book explores the ways in which the EU features overlapping spheres of authority. Using territorial ideas prevalent in the Medieval Period, Andreas Faludi offers ways to rethink the current debates surrounding territorialism in the EU. Challenging contemporary European spatial planning, this book explores how modern planning puts the democratic control of state territories and their development in question. The notion of democracy in an increasingly interconnected world is a key issue, and as such Faludi advocates a Europe where national borders are questioned, and ultimately transgressed. Progressive and timely, this book is an invaluable read for academic and practicing planners concerned with European planning and co-operation. Critical social and political geographers will also benefit from the revolutionary insights Faludi offers.

This book examines the role of imagination in initiating, contesting, and changing the pathways of global cooperation. Building on carefully contextualized empirical cases from diverse policy fields, regions, and historical periods, it highlights the agency of a wide range of actors in reflecting on past and present experiences and imagining future ways of collective problem solving. Chapters analyse the mobilizing, identity, cognitive, emotional, and normative effects through which imaginations shape pathways for global cooperation. Expert contributors consider the ways in which actors combine multiple layers of meaning-making through practices of staging the past and present as well as in their circulation. Exploring the contingency and open-endedness of processes of global cooperation, the book challenges more systemic and output-oriented perspectives of global governance. Its synthesis of ways in which imaginations inform processes of creating, contesting, and changing pathways for global cooperation provides a novel conceptual approach to the study of global cooperation. Interdisciplinary in approach, this authoritative book offers new ways of thinking about global cooperation to scholars and students of international relations, development studies, law and politics, international theory, global sociology, and global history as well as practitioners and policy-makers across various policy fields.

Mass media sources everyday spread the information about events in the different regions of the world. And, most probably, there is no person, who by different level of interest, does not observe the news. On the information line, there are presented the meetings and negotiations, terrorist acts, conflicts and cooperation, wars, big financial and trade deals. How to understand and analyze all those factors? Which regularities act at the world political arena? In the modern world, internal and external events are interconnected with each other by close ties, which finds how the broadcasts are presented. All this, having been taken together, has the direct attitude to the World Politics. World politics is a new scientific discipline, which has been established only at the second half of the twentieth century, but which gained the rapid distribution in many countries. In the focus of its attention - political processes, which are going on in the modern world, but with the perspectives of their further development. In this regard, the world politics (in comparison for example from history) is oriented on the present and future periods and by this means has the closest ties with the political practice. One more significance of the world politics relates to the fact, that it cannot be understood without the knowledge of the relative fields - history, economics, law, social sciences, and psychology. Considering the above-mentioned realities, this book plays a very important role for the increasing public awareness on different processes within the world politics, which concerns the interests of each citizen of our planet. The target audience and potential users of this book will be representatives of the different target groups - Politicians, Diplomats, Scientists, University Professors, Journalists, NGO activists, employees of the various International Governmental and Intergovernmental Organizations, and Students interested in World Politics, Globalization, Democracy and Human Rights, Economics, Defense and Security, Conflict Resolution, Environment, Migration, and Cybersecurity issues.

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.

'For centuries, it was taken for granted that the West determined the rules of the global game. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, it was the Europeans. In the 20th century, it was the Americans. Now we find ourselves at the dawn of an epochal, worldwide transformation. For the first time, the global center of power is shifting towards Asia.'Frank Sieren Future? China! is the first book that comprehensively examines the influence of a new superpower on all continents and aspects of life. The book explains how China is changing the western-dominated world order to a multi-polar world order - from the perspective of a European who has been living in China for almost three decades. The book argues that the times in which the West sets the standards are over. For the first time in centuries, an Asian country is assuming the position of being a world power. The Chinese are already questioning values that we consider to be universal.China, the new superpower, already contributes to well over 30 percent of the global economic growth. The author believes China is only at the beginning of its ascent. He explains how the Middle Kingdom is expanding its influence throughout the world: whether in the automobile industry, which China is revolutionizing thanks to electric mobility and autonomous driving; or in the field of digitalization and artificial intelligence, where China is on a level-pegging with the USA; whether in Africa, where China has long since been investing in mineral deposits, infrastructure but also in light industry and creating trillions of jobs; or on the scale of the new Silk Road, a one trillion-dollar project, which reaches up to Duisburg and for which China has won the support of numerous Eastern European states.

Since the Great Financial Crisis swept across the world in 2008, there have been few certainties regarding the trajectory of global capitalism, let alone the politics taking hold in individual states. This has now given way to palpable confusion regarding what sense to make of this world in a political conjuncture marked by Donald Trump's `Make America Great Again' presidency of the United States, on the one hand, and, on the other, Xi Jinping's ambitious agenda in consolidating his position as `core leader' at the top of the Chinese state. * Is a major redrawing of the map of global capitalism underway? * Is an unwinding of globalization in train, or will it continue, but with closure to the mobility of labour? * Is there a legitimacy crisis for neoliberalism even while neoliberal practices continue to form state policy? * Are we witnessing an authoritarian mutation of liberal democracy in the 21st century? * Should the strategic issues today be posed in terms of `socialism versus barbarism redux'?

Western academics, politicians, and military leaders alike have labelled Russia's actions in Crimea and its follow-on operations in Eastern Ukraine as a new form of "Hybrid Warfare." In this book, Kent DeBenedictis argues that, despite these claims, the 2014 Crimean operation is more accurately to be seen as the Russian Federation's modern application of historic Soviet political warfare practices-the overt and covert informational, political, and military tools used to influence the actions of foreign governments and foreign populations. DeBenedictis links the use of Soviet practices, such as the use of propaganda, disinformation, front organizations, and forged political processes, in the Crimea in 2014 to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (the "Prague Spring") and the earliest stages of the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Through an in-depth case study analysis of these conflicts, featuring original interviews, government documents and Russian and Ukrainian sources, this book demonstrates that the operation, which inspired discussions about Russian "Hybrid Warfare," is in fact the modern adaptation of Soviet political warfare tools and not the invention of a new type of warfare.

The world's foremost expert on Middle Eastern relations explains Iran's current nuclear potential and what America can do about it: "Engrossing...If Congress gets a vote on going to war with Iran, let's hope that this book is on everyone's reading lists" (The Economist). In 2005, Kenneth Pollack's first book about foreign policy in Iran, The Persian Puzzle, sparked a national conversation, laying out the possible options for nuclear deterrent in Iran. But, despite the attention his solutions received, the world didn't follow his advice. Now, Iran is even closer to possessing nuclear weapons, and America will have to find a new path forward. In Unthinkable, a New York Times and Economist Best Book of 2013 Pollack explores the intractable American problem with Iran, and Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. With the authority of his years as a CIA analyst and his time as the Director of Persian Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council, Pollack keenly examines the nature of the Iranian threat to American interests and the long-going clash that has led us to this point. Pollack explains and assesses the options for American policymakers: redoubling our efforts at a "carrot-and-stick" approach that combines negotiations and sanctions; aiding the Iranian opposition to bring about a popular form of regime change; an Israeli military strike; the American military option; and containing a nuclear Iran. Ultimately, Pollack argues for an assertive version of containment to maintain pressure on Tehran and minimize its ability to contribute to the problems of the Middle East by keeping it largely on the defensive. "Learned, lucid, and deeply sobering" (Kirkus Reviews), Pollack has written one of the most important books on foreign policy in this decade.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This exciting Research Agenda offers a multi-disciplinary and historically informed programme for the further investigation of the global political economy of the corporate sector. It tackles the question, can and should the corporation be reformed? Christopher May develops a range of intersecting areas for research while also offering an account of the possibilities for the reform of the global corporation. Based on an understanding of the history of corporations, the author provides key insights into their management and political agency as well as the operation of the global corporate supply chain. Drawing links between a range of disciplines and perspectives on business enterprises, May calls for a more nuanced understanding of the global corporate sector in order to better comprehend the contours of the contemporary global capitalist system. This Research Agenda will be a valuable resource for students and academics of politics, economics, sociology and law, who are curious to explore the corporation in relation to their area of study.

Travelling through various historical and geographical contexts, Social Imaginaries of Space explores diverse forms of spatiality, examining the interconnections which shape different social collectives. Proposing a theory on how space is intrinsically linked to the making of societies, this book examines the history of the spatiality of modern states and nations and the social collectives of Western modernity in a contemporary light. Debarbieux offers a practical exploration of his theory of the social imaginaries of space through the analysis of a number of case studies. Advanced geography scholars will find the analysis of space and its impact on societies a valuable tool in understanding the ways in which space, culture and behaviour interact. Historians of Western modernity will also benefit from Debarbieux's analysis of case studies that impact modern life.

Workers, Collectivism and the Law offers a captivating historical account of worker democracy, from its beginnings in European guild systems to present-day labor unions, across the national legal systems of Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Analysing these legal systems in light of a Habermasian concept of participatory democracy, Laura Carlson identifies ways to strengthen individual employee voice in claims against employers. Carlson highlights how employee voice and democracy, both collective and individual, assume different guises in each of these four labor law models. By tracing voice and democracy as components in the history of collective worker organizations, from guilds to journeymen associations to modern labor unions, Carlson demonstrates how history has shaped today's national labor law models. In the context of modern labor law's central focus on human rights, Carlson articulates the need for stronger legal defence of mechanisms of transparency and procedural due process, to enhance voice and democracy for union members in invoking rights and asserting protections for workers. This insightful book is indispensable reading for labor law academics and for those practicing in employment law, while those interested in the history of labor law will revel in its penetrating survey of the materials.

Travelling through various historical and geographical contexts, Social Imaginaries of Space explores diverse forms of spatiality, examining the interconnections which shape different social collectives. Proposing a theory on how space is intrinsically linked to the making of societies, this book examines the history of the spatiality of modern states and nations and the social collectives of Western modernity in a contemporary light. Debarbieux offers a practical exploration of his theory of the social imaginaries of space through the analysis of a number of case studies. Advanced geography scholars will find the analysis of space and its impact on societies a valuable tool in understanding the ways in which space, culture and behaviour interact. Historians of Western modernity will also benefit from Debarbieux's analysis of case studies that impact modern life.