The Real World of EU Accountability reports the findings of a major empirical study into patterns and practices of accountability in European governance. The product of a 4-year, path-breaking project, this book assesses to what extent and how the people that populate the key arenas where European public policy is made or implemented are held accountable. Using a systematic analytical framework, it examines not just the formal accountability arrangements but also documents and compares how these operate in practice. In doing so, it provides a unique, empirically grounded contribution to the pivotal but often remarkably fact-free debate about democracy and accountability in European governance.
With four empirical chapters covering the Commission and its agencies, the European Council, and Comitology committees, it shows that a web of formal accountability arrangements has been woven around most of them, but that the extent to which the relevant accountability forums actually use the oversight possibilities offered to them varies markedly: some forums lack the institutional resources, others the willingness. But in those cases where both are on the increase, as in the European Parliament's efforts vis a vis the European Commission, fundamentally healthy accountability relationships are developing. Although ex-post accountability is only part of the larger equation determining the democratic quality of European governance, this study suggests that at least in this area, the EU is slowly but surely reducing its 'democratic deficit'.

Middle East Studies after September 11: Neo-Orientalism, American Hegemony and Academia will show the long-term implications of current approaches to Middle East scholarship on the internal transformation of Middle Eastern societies. It describes the complex relationship between American academia and state government: a relationship which has influenced and restructured the state, society and politics in the Middle East as well as in the United States. It engages the disciplines of Sociology, Political Science, Anthropology, History and International Studies, while maintaining the epistemological, methodological, and ontological insights of a sociological approach to the Middle East. Contributors are: Beyazit H. Akman, Mahmoud Arghavan, Dunya D. Cakir, Emanuela C. Del Re, Babak Elahi, Manuela E. B. Giolfo, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Merve Kavakci, Tugrul Keskin, Seyed Mohammd Marandi, Ameena Al-Rasheed Nayel, Staci Gem Scheiwiller, Francesco L. Sinatora, Zeinab Ghasemi Tari

Written by a team of experts, this text introduces all of the main competing theoretical approaches to the study of the state, including pluralism, Marxism, institutionalism, feminism, green theory and more. A brand new 'issues' section enables readers to apply these key concepts and theoretical approaches to important developments in the state today. This new edition offers: - Coverage of all key empirical and theoretical developments in the field, with analysis of the impact of globalisation, global financial upheavals, Brexit, Covid-19 and social movements such as Black Lives Matter - A wide range of voices, perspectives, contemporary and historical examples, giving readers a holistic overview of the field, as well as deeper dives into key issues - Brand new chapters on sovereignty, security, territory, capital, nationalism and populism - Guided further reading suggestions at the end of each chapter Providing both a firm grounding in the key concepts and critical engagement with contemporary controversies and debates, this text is ideal for those studying all aspects of the state.

The report was written by senior scholars of international studies and Indian Ocean studies and focuses on international relations in Indian Ocean region and covers many aspects of "Indo-Pacific". The report includes both strategic review and major events and related data in this region. This book also includes the origin, the aims, frameworks and regional and global impact of "Indo-Pacific". The book includes the authors from 5 different institutes in China which provide readers with a full and authentic picture of "Indo-Pacific" most recent development. This year's Annual Report is the Sixth of this kind and the only one which covers exclusive on the Indian Ocean region in China.

In the past century, South Asia underwent fundamental cultural, social, and political changes as many countries progressed from colonial dominations through nationalist movements to independence. These transformations have been intricately bound up with the spatiality of social life in the region, drawing further attention to the significance of social spaces within transformative politics and identity formations. Gender, Place, and Identity of South Asian Women studies contemporary literature of South Asian women with a focus on gender, place, and identity. It contributes to the debate on gender identity and equality, spatial and social justice, women empowerment, marginalization, and anti-discrimination measures. Covering topics such as partition memory narrative, spatial mobility, and diasporic women's lives, this book is an essential resource for students and educators of higher education, researchers, activists, government officials, business leaders, academicians, feminist organizations, sociologists, and researchers.

In World Trade Systems of the East and West, Geoffrey C. Gunn profiles Nagasaki's historic role in mediating the Japanese bullion trade, especially silver exchanged against Chinese and Vietnamese silk. Founded in 1571 as the terminal port of the Portuguese Macau ships, Nagasaki served as Japan's window to the world over long time and with the East-West trade carried on by the Dutch and, with even more vigor, by the Chinese junk trade. While the final expulsion of the Portuguese in 1646 characteristically defines the "closed" period of early modern Japanese history, the real trade seclusion policy, this work argues, only came into place one century later when the Shogunate firmly grasped the true impact of the bullion trade upon the national economy.

This reader brings together the writings of Wallace Warfield (1938-2010), the internationally acclaimed and influential authority on conflict resolution. The selected essays highlight the importance of social context in conflicts and the future and potential of the field of Conflict Resolution.
After introducing Warfield's thinking and background, a first section highlights the role of race, ethnicity and culture in conflict, through case studies and step-by-step methods on how to deal with such issues. It also addresses theoretical issues and policymaking. The second section focuses on the role of conflict resolution in society and how it could become the key to building just societies.
Throughout the book, it is clear that the subjects that concerned Warfield are becoming even more relevant today. World conflicts are less between countries and more within communities confronted with socio-cultural clashes as well as issues related to economic deprivation. Individuals who have been victimized by oppressors or oppressive systems are becoming aware of their rights, while globalization and electronic communication are showing them what structural changes -pacific or otherwise- are happening around the world.
Ranging from the local to the international and integrating theory with ideas and practice, this work will be a unique learning resource and reference for both students and practitioners of conflict resolution, while highlighting the legacy and contemporary relevance of a leading thinker.

In this provocative new book, Shritha Vasudevan argues that feminist international relations (IR) theory has inadvertently resulted in a biased worldview, the very opposite of what feminist IR set out to try to rectify. This book contests theoretical presumptions of Western feminist IR and attempts to reformulate it in contexts of non-Western cultures. Vasudevan deftly utilizes the theoretical constructs of IR to explore the ramifications for India. This hypothesis argues that the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has predictive validity and is not a top-down norm but derived from the material and contingent experiences of nation states. This book enters the debate between feminist qualitative and quantitative IR through the lens of gender-based violence (GBV) under the CEDAW.

This concise introduction to the growth and evolution of geopolitics as a discipline includes biographical information on its leading historical and contemporary practitioners and detailed analysis of its literature. An important book on a topic that has been neglected for too long, Geopolitics: A Guide to the Issues will provide readers with an enhanced understanding of how geography influences personal, national, and international economics, politics, and security. The work begins with the history of geopolitics from the late 19th century to the present, then discusses the intellectual renaissance the discipline is experiencing today due to the prevalence of international security threats involving territorial, airborne, space-based, and waterborne possession and acquisition. The book emphasizes current and emerging international geopolitical trends, examining how the U.S. and other countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, India, and Russia, are integrating geopolitics into national security planning. It profiles international geopolitical scholars and their work, and it analyzes emerging academic, military, and governmental literature, including "gray" literature and social networking technologies, such as blogs and Twitter. Biographies of major current geopolitical scholars and descriptions and listings of their works Maps of geopolitical crisis areas, such as Afghanistan/Pakistan, the South China Sea, and the Straits of Malacca Quotations from various government and military primary source documents A glossary of geopolitical terms A bibliography of international scholarly resources, including government and military documents

This timely work offers a clear and thorough assessment of how Roma make sure their voice is heard and addresses the difficulty in determining who legitimately represents this heterogeneous transnational minority community. The book argues that Roma are a transnational minority that, as such, requires transnational representation structures to complement domestic political representation structures. After explaining the relationship between representation and political participation within the context of ethnic mobilization, the book then evaluates representation structures and Roma participation in Romania, Hungary, and in the transnational political context. Analytically, the book presents a multidisciplinary approach that draws from the literature on minority rights, citizenship, international relations, and social movements. Empirically, it describes two domestic political contexts and a transnational one. An engaging, informative, and accessible text, Who Speaks for Roma? sheds light on the key challenges facing Roma across Europe today and will be a timely reference for anyone interested in minority politics, political participation, political representation, and human rights.

In volume, an emerging generation of African scholars examines specific states in Africa where instability is the order of the day. Considerations of African instability are highly relevant in today's world, where one examines the types of regimes that were put in place after the Cold War and their effects on Africa. Multiparty systems introduced in Africa, rather than bringing about inclusive governance, allowed for the emergence of religious strife, ethnic conflict, and cronyism inscribed in the continent's "politicalscapes." The economics of exclusivity fueled by globalization have decisively contributed to the emergence of non-state actors claiming sovereignty in sovereign states. From Libya's implosion to the low-key war in Mozambique to the crisis of climate change, there are many variables that make stability a mirage on the continent. Widespread terrorism implies that for the foreseeable future, the continent may be a theater of crises. Regime change, as seen in Libya, Ivory Coast, and Liberia, not only increases instability in the states concerned, but has and will have spill over effects in adjacent states. Boko Haram's activities in Nigeria, which ought to be an internal matter of the Abuja government, for instance, are having negative effects in Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. The effect on food production, disputed access to farmland, and daily challenges faced by food producers are instances of underdevelopment perpetuated by climate change and other challenges considered in this timely book.

This book focuses on the recent rise of new regional economic institutions such as the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which were established, in part, as a result of dissatisfaction of dynamic emerging markets with global economic institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the GATT/WTO. The latter were formed by advanced economies in the West, after the historic Bretton Wood Conference of 1944. In doing so, the book addresses how this recent round of decentralisation, defined as the co-existence of "senior" global institutions and a plethora of newly-established regional institutions, has affected global economic governance, and the delivery of global public goods. It also poses the question if this has led to the fragmentation of global economic governance. The book adds value to existing literature by using a benefit-risk analytical framework to study the decentralisation process. Unlike the "contested multilateralism" argument used by some authors which focuses on the costs of decentralisation, the authors argue that benefits must also be considered. It also describes and analyses the establishment of global and regional international economic institutions and the evolving relationships between the two. Third, the authors argue that this decentralisation process will continue in the postpandemic period and recommend policies to reset the relationship between global and regional institutions. And lastly, the book discusses proposals to reform the international monetary system including the global reserve system with a view to reducing the hegemony of the US dollar. Throughout the book, the role for Asia is also identified, and elaborated on.

This book captures Malaysia's foreign policy over the first fifty years and beyond since the date of the country's formal independence in 1957. The author provides "macro-historical" narratives of foreign policy practices and outcomes over distinct time periods under the tenures of the five prime ministers. One chapter delves into relations with immediate neighbouring states and another chapter analyses the political economy of foreign policy. A postscript deals with the transition of foreign policy beyond the fifth decade. The concluding chapter suggests that Malaysian middlepowermanship has been in the making in foreign policy practice being particularly evident since the Mahathir years. Employing a critical-constructivist approach throughout the study, the author posits that foreign policy should be appreciated as outcomes of socio-political-economic processes embedded within a Malaysian political culture. In terms of broad policy orientations, Malaysian foreign policy over five decades has navigated over the terrains of neutralism, regionalism, globalization and Islamism. However, the critical engagement of civil society in foreign policy construction remains a formidable challenge.

This major new study examines the nature of Chinese power and its impact on the international order. Drawing on an extensive range of Chinese-language debates and discussions, the book explains the roles of different actors and interests in Chinese international interactions, and how they influence the nature of Chinese strategies for global change. It also gives a unique perspective on how assessments of the consequences of China's rise are formed, and how and why these understandings change. Providing an important challenge to scholars and policy makers who seek to engage with China, the book demonstrates just how far starting assumptions can influence the questions asked, evidence sought and conclusions reached.

This book examines the political costs of monetary union in Europe. It does so by gauging the degree to which four small European states - Iceland, Latvia, Hungary and Ireland - employed their monetary policies in response to the financial crisis. Contrary to popular and academic perception, Moses finds that small states in Europe still enjoy monetary policy autonomy, and this autonomy was used to prioritise the needs of domestic constituents over those of international markets. Eurozone member states, by contrast, pursued policies that prioritised the (long-term) needs of international lenders and European institutions, at the (short-term) expense of their own constituents. By illustrating the degree to which monetary policy autonomy still plays an effective role in responding to economic shocks, this book documents the substantial sacrifices that states have made in joining a suboptimum currency area. These are the political costs of monetary union in Europe.

In The Warsaw Pact, 1969-1985, young Czech scholar Mat?j Bily analyzes the internal tensions of the Soviet-led Cold War alliance as its careened toward its end. Starting with the peak of the alliance's power under Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the book follows its ossification to its increasing haplessness under Brezhnev's successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Rooted in detailed research in Czech, Polish, and German archives, this book presents much previously unknown information about the alliance's mechanisms as it served as one of the Kremlin's increasingly ineffective tools for managing the Eastern Bloc. Bily's findings prove that the Warsaw Pact never became an initiator of political processes within the Soviet sphere of interest and only reactively addressed military issues. The alliance's framework did not allow it to become an incubator or agent of any independent development in the Soviet sphere of influence. To the contrary, events within the Warsaw Pact reflected the overall dismal situation in the Eastern Bloc and the changing policy of the Kremlin toward its East European satellites. Because of the alliance's lack of flexibility and cumbersome internal mechanisms, it was unable to react to the dynamic challenges of the 1980s and helplessly followed a path to its own end.

China's rise to global economic and strategic eminence, with the potential for achieving pre-eminence in the greater-Asian region, is one of the defining characteristics of the post-Cold War period. This work offers a basic understanding of the military-strategic basis and trajectory of a rising China, provides background, and outlines current and future issues concerning China's rise in strategic-military influence.

The next decade may witness China's assertion of military or strategic pressure on Japan, the Korean Peninsula, India, the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, Central Asia, or even on behalf of future allies in Africa and Latin America. While conflict is not a foregone conclusion, as indicated by China's increasing participation in many benign international organizations, it is a fact that China's leadership will pursue its interests as it sees them, which may not always coincide with those of the United States, its friends, and allies.

Until now, no single volume has existed that provides an authoritative, comprehensive, and concise description of China's evolving geo-strategy or of how China is transforming its military to carry out this strategy. Fisher examines how China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) remains critical to the existence of the Chinese Communist government and looks at China's political and military actions designed to protect its expanded strategic interests in both the Asia-Pacific and Central to Near-Asian regions. Using open sources, including over a decade of unique interview sources, Fisher documents China's efforts to build a larger nuclear force that may soon be protected by missile defenses, modern high technology systems for space, air, and naval forces, and how China is now beginning to assemble naval, air, and ground forces for future power projection missions. His work also examines how the United States and other governments simultaneously seek greater engagement with China on strategic concerns, while hedging against its rising power. Although China faces both internal and external constraints on its rise to global eminence, it cannot be denied that China's government is pursuing a far-reaching strategic agenda.

In 2009 and 2010, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights underwent significant reforms to their respective judicial appointments processes. Though very different judicial institutions, they adopted very similar - and rather remarkable - reforms: each would now make use of an expert panel of judicial notables to vet the candidates proposed to sit in Luxembourg or Strasbourg. Once established, these two vetting panels then followed with actions no less extraordinary: they each immediately took to rejecting a sizable percentage of the judicial candidates proposed by the Member State governments. What had happened? Why would the Member States of the European Union and of the Council of Europe, which had established judicial appointments processes that all but ensured themselves the unfettered power to designate their preferred judges to the European courts, and who had zealously maintained and exercised that power over the course of some fifty years, suddenly decide to undermine their own capacity to continue to do so? This book sets out to solve this mystery. Its point of departure is that it would be a mistake to view the 2009-2010 establishment of the two vetting panels in isolation from other European judicial developments. Though these acts of institutional creation are certainly the most notable recent developments, they actually represent but the crowning achievement of a process of European judicial appointments reform that has been running unremittingly since the 1990's. This longstanding and tenacious movement has actually triggered a broad set of interrelated debates and reforms, encompassing not only judicial appointments per se, but also a much wider set of issues, including judicial independence, judicial quality, judicial councils, the separation of powers, judicial gender equity, and more.

This book offers broad-gauged analyses of the causes, nature, and changing patterns of armed conflict in Africa as well as the reasons for these patterns. It also situates conflicts that have been haunting the African continent since the time of decolonization within the various theoretical schools such as "new war," "economic war," "neo-patrimonial," and "globalization." It begins with the premise that conflict constitutes one of the major impediments to Africa's socio-economic development and has made the continent's future looks relatively bleak. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the international community has, once again, treated Africa as a hopeless continent. This is due, in part, to a number of political, military, and socio-economic problems, which have made the continent miss the path towards sustainable development. From the period of political independence in the 1960s to the immediate post-Cold War period, the African political landscape was dotted with many conflicts of different natures and intensity (low-intensity conflicts, civil wars, mass killings, and large-scale political violence). During the first four decades of political independence, there were about 80 forceful changes of government in Sub-Saharan Africa, while a large number of countries in that region witnessed various forms of conflicts. This collection assembles the work of distinguished African scholars who offer valuable new insights into the problem of political instability.

This title presents a vivid account of how some citizens actively assist state surveillance by 'informing' on others, such as during the Cold War and the current campaign against terrorism. With "Snitch!", Steve Hewitt provides a thorough study of human informers, i.e., people who secretly supply information to a domestic security agency (a spy provides information to a foreign intelligence service). The work begins with an examination of the rise of the modern security state through the Cold War to today's ongoing 'long war' on terror. Using a unique comparative approach, Hewitt analyzes the practical and political aspects of informing, drawing on past and present examples from the United States, United Kingdom, former Soviet Union, and other countries. He argues that although the scale of the use of informers by domestic security agencies differs from nation to nation, the nature of their use and the impact on those targeted by this form of surveillance do not. An engaging read that combines scholarly research and specific case studies, "Snitch!" will appeal to anyone interested in security and intelligence as well as in issues surrounding the use of informers, especially in democratic societies.

The celebrations which marked the accession of the Republic of Cyprus to the European Union on May 1, 2004 signaled the end of a fourteen year process since the island had first applied to join -- and the end of six full years of complicated and intense negotiations. Upon joining the EU, Cyprus was widely regarded as the most advanced of the ten acceding states. Yet this did not prevent the conditions of accession and its aftermath from bringing widespread and comprehensive changes to the internal social, economic, and political situation of Cyprus, as well as to its external relations.
"""An Island in Europe" traces these developments, examining the process of accession and its wide-reaching repercussions. It offers an authoritative and comprehensive account of a critical phase in Cypriot history, from a range of experts in the fields of politics, academia and conflict resolution. The authors explain the economic, political, and legal ramifications of EU membership and explore how Cyprus has endeavored -- sometimes successfully, at other times less so -- to adapt to these demands. This book is an important contribution to an understanding of contemporary Cyprus. It will be a vital resource for anyone involved with the politics or history of the island or seeking to understand Cyprus as a case study for conflict resolution.