This volume analyzes international agreements from a political economy perspective. In four essays, it raises the question of whether domestic institutions help explain if countries join international agreements, and in case they do, what type of international organization they join. The book examines how specific democratic design elements channel and mediate domestic demands directed at politicians, and how under certain circumstances entering international agreements helps politicians navigate these demands to their benefit. The volume also distinguishes between different types of international instruments with a varying expected constraining effect upon member states, and empirically tests if this matters for incentives to join. The volume addresses scholars, students, and practitioners interested in a better understanding of how the shape of domestic institutions affects politicians' incentives to enter into binding international agreements.

In this book, David Bello offers a new and radical interpretation of how China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911), relied on the interrelationship between ecology and ethnicity to incorporate the country's far-flung borderlands into the dynasty's expanding empire. The dynasty tried to manage the sustainable survival and compatibility of discrete borderland ethnic regimes in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan within a corporatist 'Han Chinese' imperial political order. This unprecedented imperial unification resulted in the great human and ecological diversity that exists today. Using natural science literature in conjunction with under-utilized and new sources in the Manchu language, Bello demonstrates how Qing expansion and consolidation of empire was dependent on a precise and intense manipulation of regional environmental relationships.

This major new text provides an original and comprehensive assessment of key contemporary trends in democratic politics and governance across major established democracies of the world.

State Building in Latin America diverges from existing scholarship in developing explanations both for why state-building efforts in the region emerged and for their success or failure. First, Latin American state leaders chose to attempt concerted state-building only where they saw it as the means to political order and economic development. Fragmented regionalism led to the adoption of more laissez-faire ideas and the rejection of state-building. With dominant urban centers, developmentalist ideas and state-building efforts took hold, but not all state-building projects succeeded. The second plank of the book's argument centers on strategies of bureaucratic appointment to explain this variation. Filling administrative ranks with local elites caused even concerted state-building efforts to flounder, while appointing outsiders to serve as administrators underpinned success. Relying on extensive archival evidence, the book traces how these factors shaped the differential development of education, taxation, and conscription in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

From campus protests to the Congress floor, the central feature of contemporary American politics is ideological polarization. In this concise, readable, but comprehensive text, Steven E. Schier and Todd E. Eberly introduce students to this contentious subject through an in-depth look at the ideological foundations of the contemporary American political machine of parties, politicians, the media, and the public. Beginning with a redefinition of contemporary liberalism and conservatism, the authors develop a comprehensive examination of ideology in all branches of American national and state governments. Investigations into ideologies reveal a seeming paradox of a representative political system defined by ever growing divisions and a public that continues to describe itself as politically moderate. The work's breadth makes it a good candidate for a course introducing American politics, while its institutional focus makes it suitable for adoption in more advanced courses on Congress, the Presidency, the courts or political parties.

Lara Douds examines the practical functioning and internal political culture of the early Soviet government cabinet, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), under Lenin. This study elucidates the process by which Sovnarkom's governmental decision-making authority was transferred to Communist Party bodies in the early years of Soviet power and traces the day-to-day operation of the supreme state organ. The book argues that Sovnarkom was the principal executive body of the early Soviet government until the Politburo gradually usurped this role during the Civil War. Using a range of archival source material, Lara Douds re-interprets early Soviet political history as a period where fledging 'Soviet' rather than simply 'Communist Party' power was attempted, but ultimately failed when pressures of Civil War and socio-economic dislocation encouraged the centralising and authoritarian rather than democratic strand of Bolshevism to predominate. Inside Lenin's Government explores the basic mechanics of governance by looking at the frequency of meetings, types of business discussed, processes of decision-making and the administrative backdrop, as well as the key personalities of Sovnarkom. It then considers the reasons behind the shift in executive power from state to party in this period, which resulted in an abnormal situation where, as Leon Trotsky commented in 1923, 'leadership by the party gives way to administration by its organs'.

This book provides unique insights into the practice of democratic constitutionalism in one of the world's most legally and politically significant regions. It combines contributions from leading Latin American and global scholars to provide 'bottom up' and 'top down' insights about the lessons to be drawn from the distinctive constitutional experiences of countries in Latin America. In doing so, it also draws on a rich array of legal and interdisciplinary perspectives. Ultimately, it shows both the promise of democratic constitutions as a vehicle for social, economic and political change, and the variation in the actual constitutional experiences of different countries on the ground - or the limits to constitutions as a locus for broader social change. This book presents new perspectives on recurrent topics and debates that enrich comparative constitutional law in other regions of the world, both in the Global South and the Global North. The fine-tuned, in-depth approach of the contributors brings rigorous scholarship to this institutionally diverse and significant region, illuminating the under-explored relationship between constitutionalism, politics, ideology and leadership. This unique and challenging study will prove to be an indispensable tool, not only for academics interested in Latin America but for comparative constitutional law scholars across the globe. Contributors include: C. Bernal, J.l. Colon-Rios, J. Couso, R. Dixon, Z. Elkins, H.A. Garcia, R. Gargarella, T. Ginsburg, A. Huneeus, D. Landau, J. Lemaitre, L. Lixinski, G.L. Negretto, R.A. Sanchez-Urribarri, M. Tushnet, O. Vilhena Vieira

The field of environmental history emerged just decades ago but has established itself as one of the most innovative and important new approaches to history, one that bridges the human and natural world, the humanities and the sciences. With the current trend towards internationalizing history, environmental history is perhaps the quintessential approach to studying subjects outside the nation-state model, with pollution, global warming, and other issues affecting the earth not stopping at national borders. With 25 essays, this Handbook is global in scope and innovative in organization, looking at the field thematically through such categories as climate, disease, oceans, the body, energy, consumerism, and international relations.

How did the British Government and Civil Service shape the Northern Ireland peace process? What kind of tensions and debates were being played out between the two governments and the various parties in Northern Ireland? Addressing texts, negotiations, dialogues, space, leverage, strategy, ambiguity, interpersonal relations and convergence, this is the first volume to examine how senior British officials and civil servants worked to bring about power-sharing in Northern Ireland. With a unique format featuring self-authored inside accounts and interview testimonies, it considers a spectrum of areas and issues that came into play during the dialogues and negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and political accommodation in Northern Ireland. This book provides a compelling insight into what actually happened inside the negotiating room and how the British tried to shape the course of negotiations.

With an in-depth exploration of rule by a single man and how this was seen as heroic activity, the title challenges orthodox views of ruling in the ancient world and breaks down traditional ideas about the relationship between so-called hereditary rule and tyranny. It looks at how a common heroic ideology among rulers was based upon excellence, or arete, and also surveys dynastic ruling, where rule was in some sense shared within the family or clan. Heroic Rulers examines reasons why both personal and clan-based rule was particularly unstable and its core tension with the competitive nature of Greek society, so that the question of who had the most arete was an issue of debate both from within the ruling family and from other heroic aspirants. Probing into ancient perspectives on the legitimacy and legality of rule, the title also explores the relationship between ruling and law. Law, personified as 'king' (nomos basileus), came to be seen as the ultimate source of sovereignty especially as expressed through the constitutional machinery of the city, and became an important balance and constraint for personal rule. Finally, Heroic Rulers demonstrates that monarchy, which is generally thought to have disappeared before the end of the archaic period, remained a valid political option from the Early Iron Age through to the Hellenistic period.

Indonesia has long been hailed as a rare case of democratic transition and persistence in an era of global democratic setbacks. But as the country enters its third decade of democracy, such laudatory assessments have become increasingly untenable. The stagnation that characterized Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's second presidential term has given way to a more far-reaching pattern of democratic regression under his successor, Joko Widodo. This volume is the first comprehensive study of Indonesia's contemporary democratic decline. Its contributors identify, explain and debate the signs of regression, including arbitrary state crackdowns on freedom of speech and organization, the rise of vigilantism, deepening political polarization, populist mobilization, the dysfunction of key democratic institutions, and the erosion of checks and balances on executive power. They ask why Indonesia, until recently considered a beacon of democratic exceptionalism, increasingly conforms to the global pattern of democracy in retreat.

As the power and scope of the European Union moves further, beyond traditional forms of international cooperation between sovereign states, it is important to analyse how these developments are impacting upon national institutions and processes of democratic representation and legitimacy in the member countries. The authors in this book identify four core processes of democratic governance present in any democratic political system that link societal and state processes of decision-making: opinion formation, interest intermediation, national executive decision-making and national parliamentary scrutiny. From a normative perspective they discuss what impacts this process of Europeanization has on democracy in the evolving system. They conclude that more changes are seen within the state-centric than in the societal-centred processes of democracy, thus the public seems to have been 'left behind' in the process of constructing Europe. The empirical research and normative discussion presented in this book are designed to further our knowledge concerning the Europeanization of social and state processes of democracy and to contribute to the continuing dialogue on democracy in the European Union. This book will be of great interest to academics and researchers of political science, public policy and international relations, as well as those interested in European studies and comparative politics.

Aldous Huxley: The Political Thought of a Man of Letters argues that Huxley is not a man of letters engaged in politics, but a political thinker who chooses literature to spread his ideas. His preference for the dystopian genre is due to his belief in the tremendous impact of dystopia on twentieth-century political thought. His political thinking is not systematic, but this does not stop his analysis from supplying elements that are original and up-to-date, and that represent fascinating contributions of political theory in all the spheres that he examines from anti-Marxism to anti-positivism, from political realism to elitism, from criticism of mass society to criticism of totalitarianism, from criticism of ideologies to the future of liberal democracy, from pacifism to ecological communitarianism. Huxley clearly grasped the unsolved issues of contemporary liberalism, and the importance of his influence on many twentieth-century and present-day political thinkers ensures that his ideas remain indispensable in the current liberal-democratic debate. Brave New World is without doubt Huxley's most successful political manifesto. While examining the impassioned struggle for the development of all human potentialities, it yet manages not to close the doors definitively on the rebirth of utopia in the age of dystopia.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia's largest economy and freest democracy yet vested interests and local politics serve as formidable obstacles to infrastructure reform. In this critical analysis of the politics inhibiting infrastructure investment, Jamie S. Davidson utilizes evidence from his research, press reports and rarely used consultancy studies to challenge mainstream explanations for low investment rates and the sluggish adoption of liberalizing reforms. He argues that obstacles have less to do with weak formal institutions and low fiscal capacities of the state than with entrenched, rent-seeking interests, misaligned central-local government relations, and state-society struggles over land. Using a political-sociological approach, Davidson demonstrates that 'getting the politics right' matters as much as getting the prices right or putting the proper institutional safeguards in place for infrastructure development. This innovative account and its conclusions will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asia and policymakers of infrastructure investment and economic growth.

A groundbreaking work that identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time-- the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich.
We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven't. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have continued to fall behind. Why do the "haveit- alls" have so much more? And how have they managed to restructure the economy to reap the lion's share of the gains and shift the costs of their new economic playground downward, tearing new holes in the safety net and saddling all of us with increased debt and risk? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it--until now.
In their lively and provocative "Winner-Take-All Politics, "renowned political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate convincingly that the usual suspects--foreign trade and financial globalization, technological changes in the workplace, increased education at the top--are largely innocent of the charges against them. Instead, they indict an unlikely suspect and take us on an entertaining tour of the mountain of evidence against the culprit. The guilty party is American politics. Runaway inequality and the present economic crisis reflect what government has done to aid the rich and what it has not done to safeguard the interests of the middle class. The winner-take-all economy is primarily a result of winner-take-all politics.
In an innovative historical departure, Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got under way, taxes were cut for the wealthiest, and business decisively defeated labor in Washington. And this transformation continued under Reagan and the Bushes as well as under Clinton, with both parties catering to the interests of those at the very top. Hacker and Pierson's gripping narration of the epic battles waged during President Obama's first two years in office reveals an unpleasant but catalyzing truth: winner-take-all politics, while under challenge, is still very much with us.
"Winner-Take-All Politics"--part revelatory history, part political analysis, part intellectual journey-- shows how a political system that traditionally has been responsive to the interests of the middle class has been hijacked by the superrich. In doing so, it not only changes how we think about American politics, but also points the way to rebuilding a democracy that serves the interests of the many rather than just those of the wealthy few.

Addresses a gap in the market between policy and academia. Broad readership given the focus on climate change action, a hugely topical area. Interdisciplinary approach - politics, IPE, international economics, and environmental economics. Written in an accessible voice/style.