This book addresses the global need to transition to a low-carbon society and economy by 2050. The authors interrogate the dominant frames used for understanding this challenge and the predominant policy approaches for achieving it. Highlighting the techno-optimism that informs our current understanding and policy options, Kirby and O'Mahony draw on the lessons of international development to situate the transition within a political economy framework. Assisted by thinking on future scenarios, they critically examine the range of pathways being implemented by both developed and developing countries, identifying the prevailing forms of climate capitalism led by technology. Based on evidence that this is inadequate to achieve a low-carbon and sustainable society, the authors identify an alternative approach. This advance emerges from community initiatives, discussions on postcapitalism and debates about wellbeing and degrowth. The re-positioning of society and environment at the core of development can be labelled "ecosocialism" - a concept which must be tempered against the conditions created by Trumpism and Brexit.

People's basic values are shaped by major changes in environmental conditions, such as scarcity of resources and hostility in the political and socioeconomic system. Based on the extensive research of the International Consortium for Management Studies, this work examines the values and perceptions of a variety of issues in eight countries with different socioeconomic and political systems. Cultural, family, and workplace values are among some of the critical issues discussed. A sequel to "Cross-Cultural Analysis of Values and Political Economy Issues" (Praeger, 1994), specialists in developmental, regional, and political economics will find this a timely contribution to understanding emerging developments in diverse cultures.

The media industry is in transition. While some changes are readily apparent, we have not even begun to understand the impact of others. The result is one of the most fascinating times in the history of media. As digital technologies accelerate the pace of change in all facets of our lives, researchers and practitioners are exploring its impact on traditional media and social interaction. Transitioned Media brings together leading academics and media industry executives to identify and analyze the most transformative trends and issues. Themes include the effect of digital technologies on consumer behavior, new approaches to advertising and branding, social networks, the blogosphere and impact of "citizen" journalism, music and intellectual property rights, digital cinema, and video games. Underlying the chapters is an economic perspective, with an emphasis on how new business models are being developed that take the social dimensions of digital technologies into account. The result is a unique perspective on the digital media landscape and the forces that will shape it in the future.

This thought-provoking monograph analyzes long- medium- and short-term global cycles of prosperity, recession, and depression, plotting them against centuries of important world events. Major research on economic and political cycles is integrated to clarify evolving relationships between the global center and its periphery as well as current worldwide economic upheavals and potential future developments. Central to this survey are successive waves of industrial and, later, technological and cybernetic progress, leading to the current era of globalization and the changes of the roles of both Western powers and former minors players, however that will lead to the formation of the world order without a hegemon. Additionally, the authors predict what they term the Great Convergence, the lessening of inequities between the global core and the rest of the world, including the wealth gap between First and Third World nations. Among the topics in this ambitious volume: * Why politics is often omitted from economic analysis. * Why economic cycles are crucial to understanding the modern geopolitical landscape. * How the aging of the developed world will affect world technological and economic future.< * The evolving technological forecast for Global North and South. * Where the U.S. is likely to stand on the future world stage. Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery will inspire discussion and debate among sociologists, global economists, demographers, global historians, and futurologists. This expert knowledge is necessary for further research, proactive response, and preparedness for a new age of sociopolitical change.

Using a mix of quantitative methods and case study research, this book critically assesses the impact of party governments in different institutional settings on welfare state generosity and labour market reforms. Its key findings contradict earlier established views on the impact of leftist governments on welfare state policies. Specifically, left-wing governments are pursuing clientelistic policies when facing high institutional constraints and austerity and turn out to cater towards the core workforce rather than designing policies for the full range of labour market participants.

This book contributes to our understanding of the reasons for the uneven geographic emergence and distribution of innovative start-ups and human capital, analyzing the role of the regional knowledge base and specifically academic knowledge. Using extensive datasets from West German regions and advanced econometric tools, it confirms a strong relationship between the presence of higher education institutions and the emergence of innovative start-ups. It also shows that the influence increases in direct relation with the innovativeness of the respective start-up, and that certain fields of knowledge are more influential than others in fostering innovative start-ups. In a second step, the multidimensional concept of quality of life is used to explain the geography of human capital across West German regions. Based on these empirical findings, the book shares valuable insights for higher education and regional development policy.

Jane D'Arista is one of those towering figures who thinks way ahead of the conventional understandings. A generation ago she recognized the distorted architecture of finance and banking and described in lucid detail the reform agenda for restoring a stable and equitable system. Written in the tradition of D'Arista, the essays in this important collection point the way toward overcoming the recurrent financial disorders of our gilded age. Like Jane D Arista s work, this timely volume demands the attention of both policy experts and the politicians who must do the reconstruction.' - William Greider, author of Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the CountryThe many forces that led to the economic crisis of 2008 were in fact identified, analyzed and warned against for many years before the crisis by economist Jane D'Arista, among others. Now, writing in the tradition of D'Arista's extensive work, the internationally renowned contributors to this thought-provoking book discuss research carried out on various indicators of the crisis and illustrate how these perspectives can contribute to productive thinking on monetary and financial policies. Topics addressed include monetary policy, financial markets, financial history, liquidity, institutions and global finance, with an emphasis on the ways in which theory and policy can be applied toward the goal of a more equitable and civilized society. The book s contributors hail from across the globe and offer a range of both academic and policy-making perspectives. This fascinating book will appeal to students and scholars of economics, particularly those with an interest in international finance and banking, financial regulation, and political economy. Contributors: R.A. Blecker, P. Bond, J. Crotty, G.A. Dymski, G.A. Epstein, K. Erturk, J.K. Galbraith, R.N. McCauley, P. Mehrling, D.H. Nielson, G. OEzgur, T. Palley, E. Perez Caldentey, C. Rada, E.D. Russell, T. Schlesinger, M. Seccareccia, L. Taylor, M. Vernengo, R.H. Wade, M.H. Wolfson

Oil revenue has been an economic curse for Iraq. In the second half of the 20th century the international oil sector shaped IraQ's economy, forcing it to rely too heavily on revenue brought in by oil production and exports. IraQ's failure to use copious oil rents to diversify the economy has proven disastrous for its people and economy. Its over-reliance on oil revenues coupled with the consequences of its war with Iran, the Gulf War, and the ensuing economic sanctions have led the country to economic destruction, sanctions, and enormous debt.

Iraq is a major oil producing country, a founding member of OPEC, and possesses the world's second highest amount of oil reserves. Yet few studies exist on IraQ's oil industry and its impact on the economic and political fortunes of the country. Alnasrawi remedies this by helping us understand this important Arab, Middle Eastern, oil-exporting country that has been a constant focus of U.S. foreign policy since 1990. Alnasrawi concludes that the availability of capital is an insufficient condition for economic development, and may in fact retard it, as it did in this now reviled and wrecked country.

This book compares the cross-border integration of infrastructures in Europe such as post, telecommunication and transportation in the 19th century and the period following the Second World War. In addition to providing a unique perspective on the development of cross-border infrastructures and the international regimes regulating them, it offers the first systematic comparison of a variety of infrastructure sectors, identifies general developmental trends and supplies theoretical explanations. In this regard, integration is defined as international standardization, network building and the establishment of international organizations to regulate cross-border infrastructures.

As national governments continue to disagree over how to respond to the aftermath of the global financial crisis, two of the few areas of consensus were the decisions to increase the IMF's capacity to respond and remove the policies designed to limit the use of its resources. Why was this massive increase in the size of the IMF, accompanied by the removal of policies designed to limit moral hazard, such an easy point of consensus? Michael Breen looks at the hidden politics behind IMF lending and proposes a new theory based on shareholder control. To test this theory, he combines statistical analysis with a sweeping account of IMF lending and conditionality during two global crises; the European sovereign debt crisis and the Asian financial crisis.

William Mott examines the relationships between economic growth and international conflict in history and theory, developing and analyzing a set of observed empirical modern growth-conflict relationships over long periods, and presenting an explanation of the observations. After introducing the growth-conflict relationship as the unit of analysis, he identifies historical perceptions of the growth-conflict relationship from ancient times through the modern era. Mott offers an alternative theoretical construct for further investigation, and speculates about the impact of these results on orthodox political-economic theory. The results of this work carry powerful implications for national management of foreign direct investment and trade in both home countries and host nations.

Taking as a starting point that hunger results from social exclusion and distributional inequities and that lasting, sustainable and just solutions are to be found in changing the structures that underlie our food systems, this book examines how law shapes global food systems and their ongoing transformations. Using detailed case studies, historical mapping and legal analysis, the contributors show how various actors (farmers, civil society groups, government officials, international bodies) use or could use different legal tools (legislative, jurisprudential, norm-setting) on various scales (local, national, regional, global) to achieve structural changes in food systems. Section 1, Institutionalizing New Approaches, explores the possibility of institutionalizing social change through two alternative visions for change - the right to food and food sovereignty. Individual chapters discuss Via Campesina's struggle to implement food sovereignty principles into international trade law, and present case studies on adopting food sovereignty legislation in Nicaragua and right to food legislation in Uganda. The chapters in Section 2, Regulating for Change, explore the extent to which the regulation of actors can or cannot change incentives and produce transformative results in food systems. They look at the role of the state in regulating its own actions as well as the actions of third parties and analyze various means of regulating land grabs. The final section, Governing for Better Food Systems, discusses the fragmentation of international law and the impacts of this fragmentation on the realization of human rights. These chapters trace the underpinnings of the current global food system, explore the challenges of competing regimes of intellectual property, farmers rights and human rights, and suggest new modes of governance for global and local food systems. The stakes for building better food systems are high. Our current path leaves many behind, destroying the environment and entrenching inequality and systemic poverty. While it is commonly understood that legal structures are at the heart of food systems, the legal academy has yet to make a significant contribution to recent discussions on improving food systems - this book aims to fill that gap."

This book discusses national development planning in the context of a globalized world economy. National economic development planning, the process of defining strategic economic objectives for a country and designing policies and institutional frameworks to attain them, was popular in many countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Over time it lost its appeal. More recently, with globalization accelerating and economic competition increasing, it is making a comeback in different countries under different forms. National planning in this new era is different than the earlier quantitative planning approaches. It employs different tools, such as strategic visions and action plans, revived forms of physical infrastructure planning, industrial policy, and cluster policy. Built on the research of international scholars with firsthand knowledge of the countries in question, this volume presents and evaluates current national planning strategies and policy worldwide. It will be of interest to both academicians who study and teach globalization and development as well as policy makers who may use it as a reference as they contemplate their own strategies.

This book explores the process of financialization whereby economies are increasingly dominated by finance capital. This process is characterized by rising income inequality, wage stagnation, increased indebtedness, a rising financial sector share of profits, and tendencies to generate asset price bubbles. The financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent recession and stagnation represent the latest phase. The book provides a comprehensive treatment of these developments, beginning with a presentation of
the empirical evidence. That is followed by economic theory chapters dealing with the macroeconomics of financialization, business cycle effects; microeconomic developments; tendencies toward Minsky-style economic instability; and economic growth effects. The final section of the book focuses on the political economy of financialization and policies to stabilize financial markets.

This volume examines the ways in which the socio-economic elites of the region have transformed and expanded the material bases of their power from the inception of neo-liberal policies in the 1970s through to the so-called progressive 'pink tide' governments of the past two decades. The six case study chapters-on Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala-variously explore how state policies and even United Nations peace-keeping missions have enhanced elite control of land and agricultural exports, banks and insurance companies, wholesale and import commerce, industrial activities, and alliances with foreign capital. Chapters also pay attention to the ways in which violence has been deployed to maintain elite power, and how international forces feed into sustaining historic and contemporary configurations of power.

Seekings and Nattrass explain why poverty persisted in South Africa after the transition to democracy in 1994. The book examines how public policies both mitigated and reproduced poverty, and explains how and why these policies were adopted. The analysis offers lessons for the study of poverty elsewhere in the world.

This book focuses on the economic and political relationships between Russia and Europe, which are currently characterized by the existence and escalation of contradictions. On the one hand, the common history and geographical proximity of Russia and Europe have naturally produced a close interdependence; on the other, current global political affairs and opposing positions continue to hinder the development of common economic relationships in Russia and Europe. This contributed volume describes integration processes in Russia and Europe to illustrate best practice examples and demonstrates how both parties have increasingly come to understand the importance of international cooperation, highlighting economic, legal, philosophical, political and sociological aspects.

The era of economic liberalization, spanning 1978 to 2008, is often regarded as a period in which government was simply dismantled. In fact, government was reconstructed to meet the needs of a globalized economy. Central banking, fiscal control, tax collection, regulation, port and airport management, infrastructure development-in all of these areas, radical reforms were made to the architecture of government.
A common philosophy shaped all of these reforms: the logic of discipline. It was premised on deep skepticism about the ability of democratic processes to make sensible policy choices. It sought to impose constraints on elected officials and citizens, often by shifting power to technocrat-guardians who were shielded from political influence. It placed great faith in the power of legal changes--new laws, treaties, and contracts--to produce significant alterations in the performance of governmental systems. Even before the global economic crisis of 2007-2009, the logic of discipline was under assault. Faced with many failed reform projects, advocates of discipline realized that they had underestimated the complexity of governmental change. Opponents of discipline emphasized the damage to democratic values that followed from the empowerment of new groups of technocrat-guardians.
The financial crisis did further damage to the logic of discipline, as governments modified their attitudes about central bank independence and fiscal control, and global financial and trade flows declined. It was the market that now appeared to behave myopically and erratically--and which now insisted that governments should abandon precepts about the role of government that it had once insisted were inviolable.
A sweeping account of neoliberal governmental restructuring across the world, The Logic of Discipline offers a powerful analysis of how this undemocratic model is unraveling in the face of a monumental--and ongoing--failure of the market.

This book explores the institutional factors in social policymaking and implementation in China. From the performance evaluation system for local cadres to the intergovernmental fiscal system, local policy experimentation, logrolling among government departments, and the "top-level" design, there are a number of factors that make policy in China less than straightforward. The book argues that it is bureaucratic incentive structure lead to a fragmented and stratified welfare system in China. Using a variety of Chinese- and English-language sources, including central and local government documents, budgetary data, household surveys, media databases, etc., this book covers the development of China's pensions, health insurance, unemployment insurance, and social assistance programs since the 1990s, with a focus on initiatives since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing a deeper understanding of policymaking and implementation in China, this book interests scholars of public administration, political economy, Asian politics, and social development.

"New Issues in Polar Tourism" traces and analyzes a decade of growing interest in the polar regions, and the consequent challenges and opportunities of increasing tourist traffic in formerly remote and seldom-visited places. The book arises from the recently-formed International Polar Tourism Research Network(IPTRN), and documents the outcomes of its 2010 conference, held at Sweden s Abisko Scientific Research Station."

Delivering a sustainable transport system is not just a matter of adopting a number of technological innovations to improve performance in terms of people, planet, and profits. A broader structural and societal transition is needed in technology, as well as in institutions, behavioural patterns, and the economy as a whole. In this broader view, neither the free market nor the public sector will be the unique key player in making this transition happen. Elements of such an approach are presented in this book in a number of domains: integrating transport infrastructure and land use planning, thus connecting fields that are rather unconnected in day-to-day policies; experiments with dynamic transport optimization, including reports on pilot projects to test the viability of transitions; towards reliable transport systems, describing a reversal from supply-driven towards demand-driven approaches; and sustainable logistics and traffic management, from 'local' city distribution to global closed supply chain loops.

Using the framework of critical international political economy, the contributors challenge the long held views about the ways natural resources shape political and economic outcomes. They examine how the specific features of the resource sector creates particular dynamics of policy change, and therefore, the range of development options for the Global South move beyond adopting unregulated, open extractive markets. In so doing, they explore the extent to which neoliberalism as a global political project has both constrained and opened opportunities for economic development in the global South. The volume engages with development theory and political economy literature by exploring the ideational construction, implementation, and subsequent recalibration of mining reforms in the last three decades across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The end of the Cold War in 1989 gave rise to hopes for a new, more peaceful international system and for the redirection of military expenditures--over one-half of annual U.S. federal discretionary spending--toward education and health care, renewing the nation's infrastructure, environmental mitigation, and alternative energy sources. At the beginning of the 21st Century, U.S. military spending remains stuck at 85% of the Cold War average. Why? As Accordino explains, at the federal level, the Iron Triangle comprised of the Pentagon, defense contractors, and a conservative Congress maintained defense spending at Cold War levels, encouraging contractors to stay focused on defense. When some procurement cutbacks and base closures occurred, growth interests recruited lower-wage branch plants, sports, and entertainment facilities, rather than supporting the hard work of defense conversion that creates higher-paying jobs. Nevertheless, some defense contractors and community interests did embrace conversion, showing remarkable potential. Of particular interest to scholars and researchers involved with urban and regional planning, public administration and local politics, and regional economic development.

This book offers an important chronological perspective on the evolution of multilateralism within Europe and beyond. It provides a critical reconstruction of the history of the idea and praxis of peaceful global governance, comparative analysis of regional multilateral organizations and a discussion about concrete trends and perspectives of a new multilateralism against the challenging context of the current multipolar power politics. Focusing on the changing European interplay with multilateralism - from Eurocentric cradle of civilian cooperation among sovereign imperial states, to political dwarf after the two WW and decolonization, and to potential co-leader of a multi-layered and multi-actor cooperation within the current multipolar order, it addresses a theoretical ‘gap’ by fuelling the long-recognised idealism v. realism debate over international cooperation and institutionalisation with both historical and new empirical insights. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European studies, global governance, multilateralism, international organisations and more broadly to international relations.

This book, through an analysis of case studies in Latin America and Southeast Asia, sets out to understand the form and function of contemporary states seeking to guide and cajole markets, hoping to stimulate economic growth and generate robust development outcomes. In the context of contemporary globalization, and the hegemony of a neoliberal mode of capital accumulation, independent state-directed development has moved away from the reach of many emerging markets. Wylde's analysis reveals that, contrary to much of the literature espousing the 'end of the state', the role of the state in the 21st century development process continues to be of pivotal importance.