This book analyzes the institutional underpinnings of East Asia's dynamic growth by exploring the interplay between governance and flexibility. As the challenges of promoting and sustaining economic growth become ever more complex, firms in both advanced and industrializing countries face constant pressures for change from markets and technology. Globalization, heightened competition, and shorter product cycles mean that markets are increasingly volatile and fragmented. To contend with demands for higher quality, quicker delivery, and cost efficiencies, firms must enhance their capability to innovate and diversify. Achieving this flexibility, in turn, often requires new forms of governance arrangements that facilitate the exchange of resources among diverse yet interdependent economic actors. Moving beyond the literature's emphasis on developed economies, this volume emphasizes the relevance of the links between governance and flexibility for understanding East Asia's explosive economic growth over the past quarter century. In case studies that encompass a variety of key industrial sectors and countries, the contributors emphasize the importance of network patterns of governance for facilitating flexibility in firms throughout the region. Their analyses illuminate both the strengths and limitations of recent growth strategies and offer insights into prospects for continued expansion in the wake of the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. Contributions by: Richard P. Appelbaum, Lu-lin Cheng, Stephen W. K. Chiu, Frederic C. Deyo, Richard F. Doner, Dieter Ernst, Eric Hershberg, Tai Lok Lui, Rajah Rasiah, David A. Smith, and Poh-Kam Wong.

This book explores the diverse consequences of Presidents Obama and Castro brokering a rapprochement between the United States and Cuba after more than half a century of estrangement. Economic, political, social, and cultural dynamics are analyzed in accessible fashion by leading experts from Cuba, the United States, Europe, and Latin America. What opportunities arise through the opening of diplomatic relations, and what issues may be obstacles to normalization? What are the implications for the Cuban economy, for its political system, and for ties with members of the Cuban diaspora? What are the implications for US relations elsewhere in Latin America? This up-to-date account addresses these and other questions about this new direction in US-Cuban relations.

This book explores the diverse consequences of Presidents Obama and Castro brokering a rapprochement between the United States and Cuba after more than half a century of estrangement. Economic, political, social, and cultural dynamics are analyzed in accessible fashion by leading experts from Cuba, the United States, Europe, and Latin America. What opportunities arise through the opening of diplomatic relations, and what issues may be obstacles to normalization? What are the implications for the Cuban economy, for its political system, and for ties with members of the Cuban diaspora? What are the implications for US relations elsewhere in Latin America? This up-to-date account addresses these and other questions about this new direction in US-Cuban relations.

North American Regionalism problematizes "North America" as an important region in its own right, breaking with the area-studies convention that divides the Global North and Global South portions of the Western Hemisphere at the US-Mexican border. By cutting across this division, the theoretically sophisticated essays in this volume yield new insights about politics, society, and the economy of North America, opening dialogues with the New Regionalism approach and the literature on comparative regional studies. Drawing on a six-year interdisciplinary collaboration among leading scholars from Canadian, Mexican, US, and European universities, the book brings North America back into International Relations' study of regions and regionalism. The book includes robust theoretical and empirical engagement with issues of trade, migration, security, energy and climate, and the rise of China.

North American Regionalism problematizes "North America" as an important region in its own right, breaking with the area-studies convention that divides the Global North and Global South portions of the Western Hemisphere at the US-Mexican border. By cutting across this division, the theoretically sophisticated essays in this volume yield new insights about politics, society, and the economy of North America, opening dialogues with the New Regionalism approach and the literature on comparative regional studies. Drawing on a six-year interdisciplinary collaboration among leading scholars from Canadian, Mexican, US, and European universities, the book brings North America back into International Relations' study of regions and regionalism. The book includes robust theoretical and empirical engagement with issues of trade, migration, security, energy and climate, and the rise of China.

"State and Society in Conflict" analyzes one of the most volatile regions in Latin America, the Andean states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. For the last twenty-five years, crises in these five Andean countries have endangered Latin America's democracies and strained their relations with the United States. As these nations struggle to cope with demands from Washington on security policies (emphasizing drugs and terrorism), neoliberal economics, and democratic politics, their resulting domestic travails can be seen in poor economic growth, unequal wealth distribution, mounting social unrest, and escalating political instability.

The contributors to this volume examine the histories, politics, and cultures of the Andean nations, and argue that, due to their shared history and modern circumstances, these countries are suffering a shared crisis of deteriorating relations between state and society that is best understood in regional, not purely national, terms. The results, in some cases, have been semi-authoritarian hybrid regimes that lurch from crisis to crisis, often controlled through force, though clinging to a notion of democracy. The solution to these problems--whether through democratic, authoritarian, peaceful, or violent means--will have profound implications for the region and its future relations with the world.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have forced many Americans to recognize that they ignore the world beyond their own shores at their peril.

The World Responds to September 11 begins where the news media leaves off, providing deep international perspective on the changing world order. An unprecedented array of scholars offer candid and unsparing views of America's role in the world from the vantage point of Africa, Eurasia, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, providing fresh insight into the varying perceptions of the September 11 attacks and the United States' response. The essays analyze such issues as security, terrorism and international order, globalization and economic liberalism, and the new social and cultural challenges stemming from the terrorist attacks.

Founded in 1923, the Social Science Research Council is an international, not-for-profit organization that seeks to advance the social sciences throughout the world, through international, interdisciplinary themes of public importance.