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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations
This new edition covers each of the current issues concerning the development of the EU - for example, enlargement, EMU, security and defence policy, the Treaty of Nice, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, Justice and Home Affairs and relations with countries outside Europe. Jargon-free and accessible, this substantial textbook opens with an introduction to the historical and theoretical perspectives on European integration. The book then examines the EUs institutional machinery and policy processes. The final section provides a wide-ranging review of the main EU policies, seeking to enhance understanding of the main issues and controversies surrounding development of the EU. Intended for students undertaking courses in European integration and as a supplementary book for other courses, this textbook is useful for anyone seeking a concise yet authoritative introduction to the institutions and policies of the EU. Robert Jones has drawn on his wide teaching experience to produce a text which students will find both accessible and stimulating.
During the last decade of the twentieth century, the Korean peninsula was the stage for non-stop, dramatic political and economic events. This volume brings together an unusually broad range of perspectives on US policy towards North Korea, the North Korean economy, and North-South economic co-operation and unification. The year 2000 opened a new chapter on the Korean peninsula; the North-South summit in June was no doubt a historical milestone that could lead to major changes on the peninsula. But the fundamental issues herein addressed are still relevant and important. No overnight solutions or magic bullets exist. Essential ingredients for North-South economic co-operation, ranging from regional security matters to policy nuts and bolts, remain little changed. Assembled in this volume are a diverse group of economists and analysts from academia, government and think tanks in the US and South Korea. Topics range from philosophical to practical policy matters. Students, researchers and policymakers interested in Korea and in the broader issues of economic and political integration will find this volume fresh and insightful.
This book brings forth the philosophical, conceptual and practical contours of the trade regionalism provisions under the GATT/WTO. It analyses SAARC as the regional integration organisation of South Asia along with identifying major challenges and bottlenecks faced by it in the process of achieving regional integration. It presents ways and methods through which SAARC can be made a more effective regional organisation. The book predominantly focuses on trade regionalism. However, other areas of integration which have impacts on the trade regionalism are also examined like social and political integrations etc. The book takes off from the premise that trade regionalism under SAARC has failed and has been marred by political and security concerns among its member nations. It has failed to achieve its objective on all the three counts, which are promoting peace, development and economic cooperation. However, with the developing countries as members, SAARC has great potential for trade integration. Certain structural, normative and organisation alteration along with favourable ideation can still make SAARC achieve its full potential. The book also deals with the comparative analysis of SAARC regional integration with the regional integration under European Union and ASEAN. Regarding comparative regionalism, the discussion has been confined only to the EU and ASEAN. The EU has been chosen because it is comparatively established as one of the most successful regional organisations in the contemporary world. Whereas, ASEAN has been chosen because of its similarity to the SAARC's economy, society and political structure. The analysis presented in the book is from the perspectives of international law and international relations' theories and practise. This book thus is of particular relevance to the students, researchers, academicians, policymakers and practitioners of international trade law, international relations and South Asian studies.
This book highlights the main factors determining the quality of public administration in conflict affected countries; and assesses to what extent the conflict determines and impacts on the performance of public administration in affected countries. The main value added by this book is confirming the general expectation that there is no direct and universal link between the conflict and public administration performance (and vice-versa). One may need to argue that each country situation differs and specific factors of internal and external environments determine the trends of public administration performance in conflict affected countries. To achieve the overarching goal of the book, sixteen country studies were developed from all relevant continents - America, Africa, Asia and Europe: Bangladesh, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Palestine, Paraguay, Philippines, Serbia, South Africa, Uganda, Ukraine, and Venezuela.
The impact of energy on global security and economy is clear and profound, and this is why in recent years energy security has become a source of concern to most countries. However, energy security means different things to different countries based on their geographic location, their endowment of resources their strategic and economic conditions. In this book, Gal Luft and Anne Korin with the help of twenty leading experts provide an overview of the world's energy system and its vulnerabilities that underlay growing concern over energy security. It hosts a debate about the feasibility of resource conflicts and covers issues such as the threat of terrorism to the global energy system, maritime security, the role of multinationals and non-state actors in energy security, the pathways to energy security through diversification of sources and the development of alternative energy sources. It delves into the various approaches selected producers, consumers and transit states have toward energy security and examines the domestic and foreign policy tradeoffs required to ensure safe and affordable energy supply. The explains the various pathways to energy security and the tradeoffs among them and demonstrates how all these factors can be integrated in a larger foreign and domestic policy framework. It also explores the future of nuclear power, the complex relations between energy security and environmental concerns and the role for decentralized energy as a way to enhance energy security.
Increased global interest in the Arctic poses challenges to contemporary international relations and many questions surround exactly why and how Arctic countries are asserting their influence and claims over their northern reaches and why and how non-Arctic states are turning their attention to the region. Despite the inescapable reality in the growth of interest in the Arctic, relatively little analysis on the international relations aspects of such interest has been done. Traditionally, international relations studies are focused on particular aspects of Arctic relations, but to date there has been no comprehensive effort to explain the region as a whole. Literature on Arctic politics is mostly dedicated to issues such as development, the environment and climate change, or indigenous populations. International relations, traditionally interested in national and international security, has been mostly silent in its engagement with Arctic politics. Essential concepts such as security, sovereignty, institutions, and norms are all key aspects of what is transpiring in the Arctic, and deserve to be explained in order to better comprehend exactly why the Arctic is of such interest. The sheer number of states and organizations currently involved in Arctic international relations make the region a prime case study for scholars, policymakers and interested observers. In this first systematic study of Arctic international relations, Robert W. Murray and Anita Dey Nuttall have brought together a group of the world's leading experts in Arctic affairs to demonstrate the multifaceted and essential nature of circumpolar politics. This book is core reading for political scientists, historians, anthropologists, geographers and any other observer interested in the politics of the Arctic region.
Why do states and international relations organizations participate in the "global war on terrorism"? This book asks this question within a broad framework, exploring the mechanisms and causes for participation in global governance and taking counterterrorism as a pertinent case. Challenging the assumption of egalitarian structures of global governance, the author argues that power relations and the use of power (influence, coercion and force) play a more important role than previously suggested. Providing a critical assessment of the counterterrorism policies of EU, US and ASEAN, the book identifies a number of causes of participation in hegemonic governance, including asymmetric interdependence with the US, open and informal pressure in the case of the EU, and the authority and legitimacy of the leading actors.
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.
The book aims to trace and explain the historical evolution of Moscow, the capital of the Tsardom of Russia, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, as a political entity and political community, and to understand what place Moscow occupied within the Russian political space and what role it played in Russian political life for centuries until 2018. The authors consistently examine the dramatic political history of the contemporary Russian capital in the Moscow (13th - 17th centuries) and St. Petersburg (18th - 19th centuries) epochs, in the Soviet period, in the post-Soviet era, and identify its key points and the most pivotal events.
American critics who deeply fear a "China threat" have unduly influenced government policy. "China hawks" believe China intends to push the United States out of Asia and dominate the world. Protectionists argue that China threatens American jobs and prosperity. This authoritative work examines why and how the U.S. should stabilize and improve its relations with China. It first assesses the threat posed by China, addressing such issues as military capability, Taiwan, the trade deficit, human rights and democracy. It then discusses the rationale for rapprochement between the two countries in order to achieve a stable peace. It makes the case for a fundamental shift in U.S. policy and efforts by both countries to increase their cooperation. It analyzes the benefits to the United States of this policy shift along with the potential impact on Japan, Taiwan, and both Koreas. This significant work on U.S.-China relations will be an essential resource for the academic and policy community as well as of interest to the general reader on a topic of great public concern.
Airpower for Strategic Effect is intended to contribute to the understanding of airpower-what it is, what it does, why it does it, and what the consequences are. This is the plot: airpower generates strategic effect. Airpower's product is strategic effect on the course of strategic history. Everything about military airpower is instrumental to the purpose of securing strategic effect.
Why do world powers sometimes try to determine who wins an election in another country? What effects does such meddling have on the targeted elections results? Great powers have attempted for centuries to intervene in elections occurring in other states through various covert and overt methods, with the American intervention in the 2013 Kenyan elections and the Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections being just two recent examples. Indeed, the Americans and the Soviets/Russians intervened in one out of every nine national-level executive elections between 1946 and 2000. Meddling in the Ballot Box is the first book to provide a comprehensive analysis of foreign meddling in elections from the dawn of the modern era to the 2016 Russian intervention in the US election. Dov Levin shows that partisan electoral interventions are usually an "inside job" occurring only if a significant domestic actor within the target wants it. Likewise, a great power will not intervene unless it fears that its interests are endangered by an opposing party or candidate with very different preferences. He also finds that partisan electoral interventions frequently have significant effects on the results-sufficient in many situations to determine the winner. Such interference also tends to be more effective when it is conducted overtly. However, it is usually ineffective, if not counterproductive, when done in a founding election. A revelatory account that explains why major powers have meddled so frequently across the entire postwar era, Meddling in the Ballot Box also provides us with a framework for assessing the cyber-future of interference.
This book demonstrates that the disciplinary boundaries present within international relations approaches to security studies are redundant when examining social media, and inter- and multi-disciplinary analysis is key. A key result of the analysis undertaken is that when examining the social media sphere security scholars need to "expect the unexpected". This is because social media enables users to subvert, contest and create security narratives with symbols and idioms of their choice which can take into account "traditional" security themes, but also unexpected and under explored themes such as narratives from the local context of the users' towns and cities, and the symbolism of football clubs. The book also explores the complex topography of social media when considering constructions of security. The highly dynamic topography of social media is neither elite dominated and hierarchical as the Copenhagen School conceptualises security speak. However, neither is it completely flat and egalitarian as suggested by the vernacular security studies' non-elite approach. Rather, social media's topography is shifting and dynamic, with individuals gaining influence in security debates in unpredictable ways. In examining social media this book engages with the emancipatory burden of critical security studies. This book argues that it remains unfulfilled on social media and rather presents a "thin" notion of discursive emancipation where social media does provide the ability for previously excluded voices to participate in security debates, even if this does not result in their direct emancipation from power hierarchies and structures offline.
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.
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.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European bloc, the reunification of Germany was a major episode in the history of modern Europe - and one widely held to have been opposed by that country's centuries-old enemy, France. But while it has been previously believed that French President Francois Mitterrand played a negative role in events leading up to reunification, this book shows that Mitterrand's main concern was not the potential threat of an old nemesis but rather that a reunified Germany be firmly anchored in a unified Europe. Updated with a new introduction and other materials, the book blends primary research and interviews with key actors in France and Germany to take readers behind the scenes of world governments as a new Europe was formed. Tilo Schabert had unprecedented, exclusive access to French presidential archives and here focuses on French diplomacy not only to dispel the notion that Mitterrand was reluctant to accept reunification but also to show how successful he was in bringing it about.
This book examines how the United States's extensive nation-building and stability operations will continue to evolve in the 21st century in the face of ever-growing budgetary concerns and constraints. Stability, Security, Reconstruction, and Transition Operations: A Guide to the Issues puts the people, places, and events crucial to nation-building and security operations through U.S. experiences under the microscope. This book focuses on the period after the Cold War, when U.S. operations proliferated, but also outlines the development of U.S. strategic decisions on nation-building and stability operations in a chronological fashion, providing documentation of these actions throughout American history. Original documents are provided and referenced to clarify concepts. With the increased attention on recent events in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Libya, the United States's actions and policies of nation-building are now a key public policy discussion topic, and an understanding of these topics is critical for students, scholars, and general readers alike. Maps outlining the areas where U.S. operations have occurred over past Documents that form the basis of U.S. policy Bibliography containing books, articles, websites, and prominent blogs Glossary of key terms
Kashmir is one of the longest-standing conflicts yet to be resolved by the international community. In 2000, Bill Clinton declared it the most dangerous place in the world and since then the situation continues to escalate. Positioned between India, Pakistan and China - three nuclear powers - Kashmir is the most militarized zone on the planet. Against this backdrop, the urgency to understand what Jammu and Kashmir means to those who actually belong to its territory has increased. This book not only helps readers navigate subtleties in a complex part of the world but is the first of its kind - written for a global audience from local perspectives, which to date have been sorely lacking.
This important book presents a comprehensive and systematic investigation of the effectiveness of environmental policy within the European Union at the dawn of the twenty-first century.The development of environmental policy, including the policymaking process, is analysed from an historical perspective. The authors then examine implementation and enforcement and present a critical appraisal of the impact of environmental policy throughout Europe. Key issues discussed include: trade and the environment environmental protection and the maintenance of industrial competitiveness agriculture and the environment energy and environmental policy transport and the environment tourism and the environment The authors provide insight into the problems of reconciling differing national interests, and present a number of proposals for environmental policy in the future. They conclude that what is required for effective environmental policy is not more radical measures but the opportunity for the measures already in place to be effectively implemented. This book will be of interest to a wide audience including students interested in environmental issues and the European Union, as well as postgraduates and academics working in the fields of environmental management and environmental studies. It will also be of use to environmental policymakers, consultants, advisers and non-government organizations. |
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