Women are significantly underrepresented in politics in the Pacific Islands, given that only one in twenty Pacific parliamentarians are female, compared to one in five globally. A common, but controversial, method of increasing the number of women in politics is the use of gender quotas, or measures designed to ensure a minimum level of women's representation. In those cases where quotas have been effective, they have managed to change the face of power in previously male-dominated political spheres. How do political actors in the Pacific islands region make sense of the success (or failure) of parliamentary gender quota campaigns? To answer the question, Kerryn Baker explores the workings of four campaigns in the region. In Samoa, the campaign culminated in a "safety net" quota to guarantee a minimum level of representation, set at five female members of Parliament. In Papua New Guinea, between 2007 and 2012 there were successive campaigns for nominated and reserved seats in parliament, without success, although the constitution was amended in 2011 to allow for the possibility of reserved seats for women. In post-conflict Bougainville, women campaigned for reserved seats during the constitution-making process and eventually won three reserved seats in the House of Representatives, as well as one reserved ministerial position. Finally, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna, Baker finds that there were campaigns both for and against the implementation of the so-called "parity laws." Baker argues that the meanings of success in quota campaigns, and related notions of gender and representation, are interpreted by actors through drawing on different traditions, and renegotiating and redefining them according to their goals, pressures, and dilemmas. Broadening the definition of success thus is a key to an understanding of realities of quota campaigns. Pacific Women in Politics is a pathbreaking work that offers an original contribution to gender relations within the Pacific and to contemporary Pacific politics.

The New Port Moresby: Gender, Space, and Belonging in Urban Papua New Guinea explores the ways in which educated, professional women experience living in Port Moresby, the burgeoning capital of Papua New Guinea. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist scholarship, the book adds to an emerging literature on cities in the "Global South" as sites of oppression, but also resistance, aspiration, and activism. Taking an intersectional feminist approach, the book draws on a decade of research conducted among the educated professional women of Port Moresby, offering unique insight into class transitions and the perspectives of this small but significant cohort. The New Port Moresby expands the scope of research and writing about gendered experiences in Port Moresby, moving beyond the idea that the city is an exclusively hostile place for women. Without discounting the problems of uneven development, the author argues that the city's new places offer women a degree of freedom and autonomy in a city predominantly characterized by fear and restriction. In doing so, it offers an ethnographically rich perspective on the interaction between the "global" and the "local" and what this might mean for feminism and the advancement of equity in the Pacific and beyond. The New Port Moresby will find an audience among anthropologists, particularly those interested in the urban Pacific, feminist geographers committed to expanding research to include cities in the Global South and development theorists interested in understanding the roles played by educated elites in less economically developed contexts. There have been few ethnographic monographs about Port Moresby and those that do exist have tended to marginalize or ignore gender. Yet as feminist geographers make clear, women and men are positioned differently in the world and their relationship to the places in which they live is also different. The book has no predecessors and stands alone in the Pacific as an account of this kind. As such, The New Port Moresby should be read by scholars and students of diverse disciplines interested in urbanization, gender, and the Pacific.

International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed. This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, including more than 80 interviews conducted for this book, the authors find that the strategies which both IOs and small states adopt to balance their respective dilemmas can explain both continuity and change in their interactions with institutions ranging from UN agencies to the World Trade Organization.

The Australian aid program faces a fundamental dilemma: how, in the absence of deep popular support, should it generate the political legitimacy required to safeguard its budget and administering institution? Australia's Foreign Aid Dilemma tells the story of the actors who have grappled with this question over 40 years. It draws on extensive interviews and archival material to uncover how 'court politics' shapes both aid policy and administration. The lesson for scholars and practitioners is that any holistic understanding of the development enterprise must account for the complex relationship between the aid program of individual governments and the domestic political and bureaucratic contexts in which it is embedded. If the way funding is administered shapes development outcomes, then understanding the 'court politics' of aid matters. This comprehensive text will be of considerable interest to scholars and students of politics and foreign policy as well as development professionals in Australia and across the world.

Is it possible to compare French presidential politics with village leadership in rural India? Most social scientists are united in thinking such unlikely juxtapositions are not feasible. Boswell, Corbett and Rhodes argue that they are possible. This book explains why and how. It is a call to arms for interpretivists to embrace creatively comparative work. As well as explaining, defending and illustrating the comparative interpretive approach, this book is also an engaging, hands-on guide to doing comparative interpretive research, with chapters covering design, fieldwork, analysis and writing. The advice in each revolves around 'rules of thumb', grounded in experience, and illustrated through stories and examples from the authors' research in different contexts around the world. Naturalist and humanist traditions have thus far dominated the field but this book presents a real alternative to these two orthodoxies which expands the horizons of comparative analysis in social science research.

How do bureaucracies remember? The conventional view is that institutional memory is static and singular, the sum of recorded files and learned procedures. There is a growing body of scholarship that suggests contemporary bureaucracies are failing at this core task. This Element argues that this diagnosis misses that memories are essentially dynamic stories. They reside with people and are thus dispersed across the array of actors that make up the differentiated polity. Drawing on four policy examples from four sectors (housing, energy, family violence and justice) in three countries (the UK, Australia and New Zealand), this Element argues that treating the way institutions remember as storytelling is both empirically salient and normatively desirable. It is concluded that the current conceptualisation of institutional memory needs to be recalibrated to fit the types of policy learning practices required by modern collaborative governance.

The Australian aid program faces a fundamental dilemma: how, in the absence of deep popular support, should it generate the political legitimacy required to safeguard its budget and administering institution? Australia's Foreign Aid Dilemma tells the story of the actors who have grappled with this question over 40 years. It draws on extensive interviews and archival material to uncover how 'court politics' shapes both aid policy and administration. The lesson for scholars and practitioners is that any holistic understanding of the development enterprise must account for the complex relationship between the aid program of individual governments and the domestic political and bureaucratic contexts in which it is embedded. If the way funding is administered shapes development outcomes, then understanding the 'court politics' of aid matters. This comprehensive text will be of considerable interest to scholars and students of politics and foreign policy as well as development professionals in Australia and across the world.

Is it possible to compare French presidential politics with village leadership in rural India? Most social scientists are united in thinking such unlikely juxtapositions are not feasible. Boswell, Corbett and Rhodes argue that they are possible. This book explains why and how. It is a call to arms for interpretivists to embrace creatively comparative work. As well as explaining, defending and illustrating the comparative interpretive approach, this book is also an engaging, hands-on guide to doing comparative interpretive research, with chapters covering design, fieldwork, analysis and writing. The advice in each revolves around 'rules of thumb', grounded in experience, and illustrated through stories and examples from the authors' research in different contexts around the world. Naturalist and humanist traditions have thus far dominated the field but this book presents a real alternative to these two orthodoxies which expands the horizons of comparative analysis in social science research.

Populism and the personalization of politics appears to be threatening the existence of democracy as we know it all over the world. It is now more important than ever to understand the history of this form of regime: why it has thrives and fails. But, existing studies are limited by their focus on a few large and predominately rich states. This book takes the opposite approach: it investigates how politics is practiced in the smallest states where hyper-personalization has always been a ubiquitous feature of political life. It optimistically finds that hyper-personalized democracy can actually persist against all odds, but also cautions that political practices in small states are often markedly different to larger states. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed. This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, including more than 80 interviews conducted for this book, the authors find that the strategies which both IOs and small states adopt to balance their respective dilemmas can explain both continuity and change in their interactions with institutions ranging from UN agencies to the World Trade Organization.

This book explains how leaders in the Caribbean and Pacific regions balance the autonomy-viability dilemma of postcolonial statehood - that political self-determination is a hollow achievement unless it is accompanied by economic development - by practising statehood à la carte. Previous research has focused on the pursuit of decolonial self-determination through and above the nation state, via regionalism and internationalism, or by creating non-sovereign alternatives to it. This book looks at how communities have sought the same goals below the state, including via secession and devolution. Downsizing is typically portrayed as the antithesis of progressive, cosmopolitan internationalism and employed as evidence for the claim that the age of anticolonial self-determination has ended. In this book, Jack Corbett shows how these movements are animated by similar ideas and motivations that are rendered viable by the simultaneous pursuit of regional integration and forms of non-sovereignty. He argues that the à la carte pursuit of political and economic independence through, above, and below the state, and via non-sovereign alternatives to it, is a pragmatic response to the contradictions inherent to coloniality.

Herman the German gives huge discounts to prospective buyers of his condos, but there's a catch. To buy from him they must meet his bizarre standards and having the purchase price in hand is not enough to satisfy the eccentric German. The offers are almost impossible to refuse as Herman looks for the perfect candidates for his upscale Bahthaus condominiums. But Herman's condo project is in Pattaya, Thailand, the most hedonistic city on earth The residents carouse their way from one bar to the next as the Bahthaus becomes the Fun House where hardly anyone acts responsibly. "The Fun House" has a hopelessly inept Thai manager who can't get anything done unless he can get a commission from overcharging the Fun House condo owners. It's Only when one of the residents falls off his balcony and the police conveniently rule it an accident that the immature residents must decide between giving up their childish ways and taking the law into their own hands.

When Dick Fitswell's on the prowl no woman's safe. From the ski slopes of Sun Valley to the Canadian Wilderness where he has an unfortunate experience with a Sasquatch, to biker bars, swinger's clubs and the night clubs of Hong Kong and Bangkok Fitswell pursues his dream quest. When his pursuit of his holy grail leads him to becoming the minister of a church his message is seen by some as the dreams of a megalomaniac while others see it as Fitswellian Nirvana. Fitswell is not a book for children. Above all it's bawdy satire. It's a no holds in your face portrayal of the foibles of both men and women as it follows the war of the sexes through the sexual exploits of the overly endowed Dick Fitswell. In the end, Dick Fitswell usually succeeds only in outsmarting himself which causes him time after time to wind up with the short end of the stick, often literally, when his manhood comes into harms way.

Borrowing a white tiger just to take the best pictures of a topless dancer posing with a German World War II Mauser might seem to be a little extreme for getting the reader's attention until you consider that author photographer Jack Corbett and his friends turned the White Tiger loose in a topless club afterwards. But "Extreme Guns and Babes for an Adult World" is not your average run of the mill book about guns. It is a collection of 26 articles the writer-photographer produced while writing for "Xtreme Magazine." This third edition of the book is printed in black and white whereas the 2nd edition is in full color and the first edition was published in Kindle. Each edition contains over 100 photos. There's over 26 models posing with the 26 weapons (or the Tiger), and all of them are feature entertainers and strippers. Jack Corbett's mission was one nearly every red blooded American male would envy which was he got to select his own models for his articles while getting to write about any gun he chose. And since Xtreme Magazine is a small East Coast adult magazine there was no bureaucracy to put up with. There's a lot of good stuff about guns here for all of you gun lovers out there. For instance, did you know why the Colt Python was the best .357 magnum revolver on the market or why Vietnam era M-16's are better man stoppers than the "improved models" being used today? Or why the underpowered, inaccurate (according to its detractors) M-1 carbine was the favorite weapon of Audie Murphy, America's most decorated World War II hero or how the German M42 machine gun outclassed the 30 caliber Browning used by American World War II soldiers? The book is labeled "adult" but this might be a misnomer. If you are looking for porn you will not find it here. If you are looking for complete nudity, there's been a coverup, as even though a large number of the pictures appearing in this book were shot in the nude, bare nipples and the most private portions of the models have disappeared into the dark recesses of Photoshop.

Borrowing a white tiger just to take the best pictures of a topless dancer posing with a German World War II Mauser might seem to be a little extreme for getting the reader's attention until you consider that author photographer Jack Corbett and his friends turned the White Tiger loose in a topless club afterwards. But "Extreme Guns and Babes for an Adult World" is not your average run of the mill book about guns. It is a collection of 26 articles the writer-photographer produced while writing for "Xtreme Magazine." This second edition of the book is printed in full color whereas the 3rd edition is in black and white and the first edition was published in Kindle. Each edition contains over 100 photos. There's over 26 models posing with the 26 weapons (or the Tiger), and all of them are feature entertainers and strippers. Jack Corbett's mission was one nearly every red blooded American male would envy which was he got to select his own models for his articles while getting to write about any gun he chose. And since Xtreme Magazine is a small East Coast adult magazine there was no bureaucracy to put up with. There's a lot of good stuff about guns here for all of you gun lovers out there. For instance, did you know why the Colt Python was the best .357 magnum revolver on the market or why Vietnam era M-16's are better man stoppers than the "improved models" being used today? Or why the underpowered, inaccurate (according to its detractors) M-1 carbine was the favorite weapon of Audie Murphy, America's most decorated World War II hero or how the German M42 machine gun outclassed the 30 caliber Browning used by American World War II soldiers? The book is labeled "adult" but this might be a misnomer. If you are looking for porn you will not find it here. If you are looking for complete nudity, there's been a coverup, as even though a large number of the pictures appearing in this book were shot in the nude, bare nipples and the most private portions of the models have disappeared into the dark recesses of Photoshop.

Frank Harring hates lawyers so much that he dreams about planting as many as possible in his fields, then decapitating them with his farm machinery. Frank also hates the institution of marriage, telling his friend Stan, "nothing is more stupid than entering a marriage contract which is a contract enforceable by law which will result in divorce more than 50 % of the time resulting in financial disaster to the man. Frank hatches his "great plan," which will get him the largest number of beautiful women at the lowest possible cost and implements his great plan in the Saint Louis Metro East strip clubs. His plan works sensationally as he has sex with one beautiful stripper after another until he meets top stripper Lori Mellon. The plan unravels just as he predicted it would when the customer dancer relationship turns out to be more than either bargained for.

Women are significantly underrepresented in politics in the Pacific Islands, given that only one in twenty Pacific parliamentarians are female, compared to one in five globally. A common, but controversial, method of increasing the number of women in politics is the use of gender quotas, or measures designed to ensure a minimum level of women's representation. In those cases where quotas have been effective, they have managed to change the face of power in previously male-dominated political spheres. How do political actors in the Pacific islands region make sense of the success (or failure) of parliamentary gender quota campaigns? To answer the question, Kerryn Baker explores the workings of four campaigns in the region. In Samoa, the campaign culminated in a ""safety net"" quota to guarantee a minimum level of representation, set at five female members of Parliament. In Papua New Guinea, between 2007 and 2012 there were successive campaigns for nominated and reserved seats in parliament, without success, although the constitution was amended in 2011 to allow for the possibility of reserved seats for women. In post-conflict Bougainville, women campaigned for reserved seats during the constitution-making process and eventually won three reserved seats in the House of Representatives, as well as one reserved ministerial position. Finally, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna, Baker finds that there were campaigns both for and against the implementation of the so-called ""parity laws."" Baker argues that the meanings of success in quota campaigns, and related notions of gender and representation, are interpreted by actors through drawing on different traditions, and renegotiating and redefining them according to their goals, pressures, and dilemmas. Broadening the definition of success thus is a key to an understanding of realities of quota campaigns. Pacific Women in Politics is a pathbreaking work that offers an original contribution to gender relations within the Pacific and to contemporary Pacific politics.