This book answers the question why London has been a stronghold for the Labour Party for relatively long periods of the last century and continues to be so to this day to an extent that surprises contemporaries. The book draws on evidence from history and political sociology as well as the personal experience of the author in London local government during the 1980s. It argues that while changes in the London economy, plus the ability of the party to forge cross-class alliances, can go some way to explain the success of the Labour Party in London, a range of other demographic and social factors need to be taken into account, especially after the year 2000. These include the size of London's growing black and ethnic minority communities; higher concentrations of well-educated younger people with socially liberal values; the increasing support of the middle-classes; the impact of austerity after 2008; and the degree of poverty in London compared to non-metropolitan areas. This book will be of key interest to readers interested in the history of the Labour Party, the politics of London, Socialist politics/history, British politics/history, government, political sociology, and urban studies.

Local government innovation has become one of the most important topics on China's policy agenda in recent decades. This book explains why some local governments are more innovative than others. This book uses a novel theoretical framework and points out that in China's multi-level government structure, the administrative hierarchy and the span of control could shape local governments' innovation motivation, innovation capability, and innovation opportunity, thus influencing local government innovativeness. The author systematically analysed the 177 winners and finalists of the biennial Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local Governance (IECLG) Awards Programme from 2001 to 2015 to provide convincing empirical evidence to support this theory. This book adopts an institutional approach to explaining local government innovativeness in China and may be a useful reference to help us learn more about local government decisions and behaviours.

This is the second of five ambitious volumes theorizing the structure of governance above and below the central state. This book is written for those interested in the character, causes, and consequences of governance within the state. The book argues that jurisdictional design is shaped by the functional pressures that arise from the logic of scale in providing public goods and by the preferences that people have regarding self-government. The first has to do with the character of the public goods provided by government: their scale economies, externalities, and informational asymmetries. The second has to do with how people conceive and construct the groups to which they feel themselves belonging. In this book, the authors demonstrate that scale and community are principles that can help explain some basic features of governance, including the growth of multiple tiers over the past six decades, how jurisdictions are designed, why governance within the state has become differentiated, and the extent to which regions exert authority. The authors propose a postfunctionalist theory which rejects the notion that form follows function, and argue that whilst functional pressures are enduring, one must engage human passions regarding self-rule to explain variation in the structures of rule over time and around the world. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the VU Amsterdam, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

How do states respond to minority nations' demands? Are state nationalism and majority nationalism the same? This book brings together the leading lights in nationalism studies to turn their attention to the neglected role of the state in nationalist disputes. The aspirations of state and majority nationalists often conflict with the aspirations of substate nationalist movements, leading to disputes over resources, symbolic recognition, and the structure of the state. State elites are then forced to supply arguments defending the political union and to articulate strategies for its continuation. In the process, they make explicit what being 'national' means and the symbolic repertoires for doing so. With case studies from China, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Nepal, this edited volume examines state and majority nationalism in all its guises, asking how states respond to nationalist challenges from below. It is particularly timely at a moment when territorial and secessionist crises are reshaping politics. State and Majority Nationalism in Plurinational States will be relevant reading for students and researchers of comparative politics and international relations, including those with a deep interest in territorial politics, national identities, group rights, and representation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

At this juncture in American history, some of our most hard-fought state-level political struggles involve control of state supreme courts. New Hampshire witnessed one of the most dramatic of these, culminating in the impeachment of Chief Justice David Brock in 2000, but the issues raised by the case are hardly confined to New Hampshire. They involved the proper nature and operation of judicial independence within a "populist" civic culture that had long assumed the primacy of the legislative branch, extolled its "citizen legislators" over insulated and professionalized elites, and entrusted those legislators to properly supervise the judiciary. In the last few decades of the 20th Century, New Hampshire's judiciary had been substantially reconfigured: constitutional amendments and other measures endorsed by the national judicial-modernization movement had secured for it a much higher level of independence and internal unification than it had historically enjoyed. However, a bipartisan body of legislators remained committed to the principle of legislative supremacy inscribed in the state constitution of 1784. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a series of clashes over court administration, allegations of judicial corruption, and finally a bitter and protracted battle over Court decisions on educational funding. Chief Justice Brock publicly embodied the judicial branch's new status and assertiveness. When information came to light regarding some of his administrative actions on the high court, deepening antipathy toward him exploded into an impeachment crisis. The struggle over Brock's conduct raised significant questions about the meaning and proper practice of impeachment itself as a feature of democratic governance. When articles of impeachment were voted by the House of Representatives, the state Senate faced the difficult task of establishing trial protocols that would balance the political and juridical responsibilities devolved on them, simultaneously, by the state constitution. Having struck that balance, the trial they conducted would finally acquit Brock of all charges. Nevertheless, David Brock's impeachment was a highly consequential ordeal that provided a needed catalyst for reforms intended to produce a productive recalibration of legislative-judicial relations.

El libro proporciona un análisis bien informado y equilibrado con las razones que respaldan la transformación radical que ha experimentado la relación UE-Cuba en el siglo XXI, incluyendo los cambios realizados en Cuba desde el año 2008.

Lt. Governor Bill Ratliff is an engineer, a widely respected senator, and according to Caroline Kennedy he is "an inspiration to all who serve in government, and to all Americans." Senator Ratliff, nicknamed "Obi Wan Kenobi" by his colleagues, was a revered and much loved leader in Texas for more than a decade. He singularly wrote the Texas Robin-Hood school finance law, a major Ethics reform law, a Texas tort reform law, and held a great disdain for narrow partisanship and politics. This is the inspirational story of a great man doing good work in a time when many are cynical about political leadership and government. His courageous stand on principle brought him to a showdown with powerful forces in the Bush White House and earned him the public vitriol of right-wing billionaires.

From 1979 to 1997 Britain was a laboratory for experiments in local governance as the control and delivery of local services was switched from elected councils to appointed boards (guangos), private companies or self-management. This book is about four models of local governance: the traditional "localist" model, the New Right's "individualist" model, the New Left's "mobilization" model, and government's own "centralist" model. It tests them against public opinion as expressed in 2203 interviews with ordinary citizens, 788 with councilors, and 903 with members of appointed boards.

Current international discourse on the new state of South Sudan seems fixated on the "state construction." This book aims to broaden the debate by examining the character of regulatory authority in South Sudan's borderlands in both contemporary and historical perspective. The contributions gathered here show that emerging border governance practices challenge the bounded categorization of "state" and "non-state," especially in the complex interactions between state, military, and business actors and power structures. It thus provides a timely and sophisticated contribution to the literature on African borderlands, examining a new state in creation at its borders, and providing an anthropologically and historically informed view of a rapidly evolving situation.

Serves as a practical guide to city administrators on how to keep municipalities fiscally healthy and, if fiscal hardships occur, how to cope with them. Provides theoretical frameworks around fiscal emergency situation and bankruptcy in local government, as well as offers an assessment of the indicators and ratios of fiscal stress at local level. Explores recommendations that can be used to address situations of fiscal stress. Serves as a desk reference for practitioners, especially now that the topic of fiscal emergency situation and bankruptcy is again taking center stage during Covid-19 crisis.

Comparing Political Regimes provides a current and comprehensive empirical assessment of the world's 195 sovereign states. Alan Siaroff analyzes and classifies countries in terms of economic development, political evolution, and state strength, ultimately outlining and contrasting the aspects of four regime types: liberal democracies, electoral democracies, semi-open autocracies, and closed autocracies. The fourth edition explains institutional differences in regime types,, including how regimes evolve in key countries and how this change is incremental. An invaluable resource for students to refer to, this book provides a thorough foundational introduction to the comparative politics of countries and contains several unique figures and tables on the world's sovereign states. This new edition modifies the conceptual focus regarding some features of democracy and democratic party systems, expands on variations in autocracies, and adds a new chapter on the historical evolution of democracy, including key thresholds of representative democracy and levels of participation and competition at various historical junctures for all countries.

This book examines what role regions play in European (dis)integration and European identity building. Filling a glaring gap in our understanding of regions, the book considers what the scope and objectives of these regions' respective European policies and programmes are, how diverse they are and, in a time of mixed signals of European cynicism and identity, how European identity is perceived, fostered and even promoted in regions' European policies. In doing so, the book presents empirical findings on four EU regions as case studies, including Germany's Brandenburg; Belgium's Wallonia; France's Nord-Pas de Calais; and last but certainly in the current context of Brexit not least, the South West of England.

From Sharach Bond, who served as the first governor of Illinois beginning in 1818, to William Ogden, Chicago's first mayor, many powerful men and women have played vital roles in the political life and climate of both Chicago and Illinois. The Governors of Illinois and the Mayors of Chicago provides biographies for the state's most important power brokers.

In this study, author Bradley W. Rasch explores the history of the state, its politics, and its power brokers and details little-known facts about some of the important people:

Edward Coles, who served as governor from 1822 to 1826, was an abolitionist long before it was fashionable.

Gov. Joseph Duncan's (1834-1838) major accomplishment was moving the state capital to Springfield.

William Ogden is called Chicago's founder and served as the first mayor after its incorporation, which he helped facilitate.

Mayor Augustus Garrett served as mayor twice but is best known for having his second election invalidated due to fraud.

Filled with an interesting array of facts and trivia, The Governors of Illinois and the Mayors of Chicago shows how many of the people who served in these positions have gone on to receive national and international acclaim and influence.

Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time. Escalating climate disasters like storms, floods, and dry spells lead to disruptions, social conflicts, and unrest. This book elucidates the reality of climate adaptation related challenges and needs in vulnerable territories. It considers cities, land use, anticipatory governance, and the role of civil society, as well as early warning systems and nature-based solutions. The research also highlights major obstacles such as funding, knowledge gaps, trade-offs, social justice, and multi-stakeholder cooperation. The book is unique in that it unites a variety of perspectives and examples from different regions to develop a thorough and nuanced perspective on potential climate change solutions and the barriers to behavioral change at all levels of climate-related decision making.

This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating to give citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves. Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It revitalizes and reinfuses the 'democratic spirit' going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavor by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in. This book is of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens' perspectives, aspirations and preferences.

Serves as a practical guide to city administrators on how to keep municipalities fiscally healthy and, if fiscal hardships occur, how to cope with them. Provides theoretical frameworks around fiscal emergency situation and bankruptcy in local government, as well as offers an assessment of the indicators and ratios of fiscal stress at local level. Explores recommendations that can be used to address situations of fiscal stress. Serves as a desk reference for practitioners, especially now that the topic of fiscal emergency situation and bankruptcy is again taking center stage during Covid-19 crisis.

This book can be seen as two different books. The first is a history of political parties in ten nations (with the sections on France and Germany limited to specific periods). The second is an inquiry into the reasons for the different party systems that are found when applying similar proportional rules. In the specific countries that are analyzed, the authors put to the forefront community ties (specifically labor unions, some religious organizations and at times language) that intervene in the apparent political affiliation of a considerable number of voters. In addition, the authors add an explanation of the rise of new parties that hinges largely on whether or not alternatives exist that have not been tainted by having been part of the government or having been closely part of failed political institutions.

An internationally renowned scholar of law and economics, Michael J. Trebilcock has spent over fifty years teaching and researching at the intersection between ideas, interests, and institutions. In Public Inquiries, Trebilcock reflects on his extensive experiences and sheds light on the role of scholars in engaging with the Canadian public policy-making process. Drawing on a number of case studies, Public Inquiries gives an informed overview of the role of ideas and interests in shaping the policy-making process. Trebilcock takes readers through his personal experiences and what he has learned throughout his career. He puts forward general lessons about the public policy-making process and reform in areas including consumer protection, competition policy, trade policy, electricity reform, and legal aid. By showing that not all experiences have been triumphant, and that disappointments can be as revealing as successes, Trebilcock draws out personal lessons and insights with a view to improving the structure and effectiveness of public inquiries.

Set against the backdrop of tensions in East Asia, this book analyzes how East Asia's "new middle powers" and emerging powers employ public diplomacy as a key element of their foreign policy strategy and in so doing influence regional power dynamics. The volume brings together contributions from an international and influential group of scholars, who are leading debates on public diplomacy within East Asia. Where the study of public diplomacy has so far focused primarily on the West, the essays in this book highlight the distinct strategies of East Asian powers and demonstrate that understanding public diplomacy requires studying its strategies and practices outside as much as within the Western world. A focus on public diplomacy likewise gives us a more varied picture of state-to-state relations in East Asia.

The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land ("land-lost farmers") and local government. Particularly, it applies the extended case method to answer the following two questions: first, in what ways do the forces of integration and conflict manifest themselves in the relationship between land-lost farmers and local government? Second, how do land-lost farmers and local government apply respective modalities in the context of their interplay? The main finding is that the two groups, land-lost farmers and officials, are engaged in a complex and dynamic relationship. That relationship is played out locally within a network of power-interest structures, which not only manifests itself as forces of integration and conflict, but also as an ongoing process, a game played by knowledgeable agents, whose strategies are enacted, and in so doing, both reproduce that game and alter it. Readers will gain an ethnographic understanding of the relationship based on an in-depth examination of perspectives on both sides of the equation.

This book discusses the elite capture taking place in the development programmes implemented through Grama Panchayats (GPs), the lowest tier in the rural local self-government structure in India. Inclusive growth being the cherished goal of all the developing countries, including India, the book assesses whether checks and balances incorporated in development programmes prevent elite capture and promote inclusive development. It also highlights the role of community-based organisations, such as SHGs, in ensuring development benefits reach marginalized groups. The policy makers in India introduced decentralised governance to facilitate the participation of marginalized groups in the planning and implementation of development programmes at the local level, and to ensure that development benefits reach them. International agreements such as the Hyogo Framework for Action, Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals also call for decentralised governance for inclusive growth. The issue of elite capture has traditionally been studied mainly from the sociological perspective, i.e., how the local upper/dominant castes and classes garner the positions and benefits. But with the new and structured governance system that is in place at the local level in contemporary India, this book explores how decentralised governance is addressing the issue of elite capture. The study closely analyses micro processes of decentralisation to understand how elite capture is taking place. Additionally, it examines this concern from both governance and economic perspectives. The scope of the book is wide, and encompasses several aspects such as the functioning of the local government, decentralised governance, checks and balances in development programmes, community-based organisations, the upward political linkages and elite capture. It is equally relevant to researchers from several social science disciplines, civil society, policy makers, and implementers from the grassroots to national level government.

Towards Sustainable Well-Being examines existing efforts and emerging possibilities to improve upon gross domestic product as the dominant indicator of economic and social performance. Contributions from leading international and Canadian researchers in the field of beyond-GDP measurement offer a rich range of perspectives on alternative ways to measure well-being and sustainability, along with lessons from around the world on how to bring those metrics into the policy process. Key topics include the policy and political impacts of major beyond-GDP measurement initiatives; the most promising possibilities and policy applications for beyond-GDP measurement; key barriers to introducing beyond-GDP metrics; and complementary measures to ensure new measurements are not merely calculated but taken into account in policymaking. The book highlights a distinction between a reformist beyond-GDP vision, which seeks to improve policymaking and quality of life within existing political and economic institutions, and a transformative vision aiming for more fundamental change including a move beyond economic growth. Illustrating the many advances that have occurred in Canada and internationally, Towards Sustainable Well-Being proposes next steps for both the reformist and transformative visions, as well as possible common ground between them in the pursuit of sustainable well-being.

This edited volume analyzes how migration, the conformation of urban areas, and globalization impact Latin American geopolitics. Globalization has decisively influenced Latin American nationhood and it has also helped create a global region with global cities that are the result of the urbanization process. Also, globalization and migration are changing Latin America's own vision as a collective community. This book tackles how migration triggers concerns about security, which lead to policies based on the protection of borders as a matter of national security. The contributors argue that economic regionalization-globalization promotes changes in the social and economic geography which refer to social phenomena, the dynamic of social classes and their spatial implications, all of which may impact economic growth on the region. The project will appeal to a wider audience including political scientists, scholars, researchers, students and non-academics interested in Latin American geopolitics.

Over the last century, the scale of Canada's domestic disaster response system has grown significantly due to the country's increased capacity for emergency management and the rise in natural hazards. However, there has been no systematic assessment of how effectively this multilevel system, which includes all levels of government and the military, has been integrated, and how efficient this system actually is at responding to high-level disasters. Using in-depth archival analysis and interviews with senior military and civilian officials on the inside, Boots on the Ground provides a detailed examination of Canada's disaster response system. Including policy recommendations focused on the expansion of emergency management networks, the maintenance of Canada's decentralized emergency management system, and disaster response resources for First Nations communities, Boots on the Ground aims to highlight opportunities to improve Canada's urgent disaster response. Boots on the Ground offers helpful lessons for students, policy makers, emergency management practitioners, and military officers, ensuring that readers gain concrete insights into the strategic and efficient implementation of disaster response initiatives.

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The multiple purposes of nature - livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists - have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.