Decisions about "who gets what, when, and how" are perhaps the most important that any government must make. So it should not be remarkable that around the world, public officials responsible for public budgeting are facing demands --from their own citizenry, other government officials, economic actors, and increasingly from international sources --to make their patterns of spending more transparent and their processes more participatory.

Surprisingly, rigorous analysis of the causes and consequences of fiscal transparency is thin at best. Open Budgets seeks to fill this gap in existing knowledge by answering a few broad questions: How and why do improvements in fiscal transparency and participation come about? How are they sustained over time? When and how do increased fiscal transparency and participation lead to improved government responsiveness and accountability?

Contributors: Steven Friedman (Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg); Jorge Antonio Alves (Queens College, CUNY) and Patrick Heller (Brown University); Jong-sung You (University of California --San Diego) and Wonhee Lee (Hankyung National University); John M. Ackerman (National Autonomous University of Mexico and Mexican Law Review); Aaron Schneider (University of Denver) and Annabella Espa?a-Naj?ra (California State University?Fresno); Barak D. Hoffman (Georgetown University); Jonathan Warren and Huong Nguyen (University of Washington); Linda Beck (University of Maine?Farmington and Columbia University), E. H. Seydou Nourou Toure (Institut Fondamental de l'Afrique Noire), and Aliou Faye (Senegal Ministry of the Economy and Finance).

In recent years, 'transnationalism' has become a key analytical concept across the social sciences. While theoretical approaches to the study of global social phenomena have traditionally focused on the nation-state as the central defining framework, transnational studies views social experience as a complex and dynamic product of multiple regional, ethnic, and institutional identities. Far from being static or bounded by national borders, social, political, and economic forces operate on supra-national, trans-regional, and trans-local scales and scopes. Transnational studies compares and contrasts these dynamics to rethink assumptions about identity, sovereignty, and citizenship. Assembling writings from some of the most important theorists in history, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, The Transnationalism Reader explores the ways that transnational practices and processes in different domains, and at different levels of social interaction, relate to, and inform each other. It also compares the spatial organization of social life during different historical periods. Coherent in its vision and expansive in its disciplinary, geographic, and historical coverage, The Transnationalism Reader is a field-defining collection.

In recent years, 'transnationalism' has become a key analytical concept across the social sciences. While theoretical approaches to the study of global social phenomena have traditionally focused on the nation-state as the central defining framework, transnational studies views social experience as a complex and dynamic product of multiple regional, ethnic, and institutional identities. Far from being static or bounded by national borders, social, political, and economic forces operate on supra-national, trans-regional, and trans-local scales and scopes. Transnational studies compares and contrasts these dynamics to rethink assumptions about identity, sovereignty, and citizenship.

Assembling writings from some of the most important theorists in history, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, The Transnationalism Reader explores the ways that transnational practices and processes in different domains, and at different levels of social interaction, relate to and inform each other. It also compares the spatial organization of social life during different historical periods. Coherent in its vision and expansive in its disciplinary, geographic, and historical coverage, The Transnationalism Reader is a field-defining collection.

Examines changing attitudes toward dams as examples of Western-style economic development and their impact on human rights, indigenous peoples, and the environment.

Big dams built for irrigation, power, water supply, and other purposes were among the most potent symbols of economic development for much of the twentieth century. Of late they have become a lightning rod for challenges to this vision of development as something planned by elites with scant regard for environmental and social consequences-especially for the populations that are displaced as their homelands are flooded. In this book, Sanjeev Khagram traces changes in our ideas of what constitutes appropriate development through the shifting transnational dynamics of big dam construction. Khagram tells the story of a growing, but contentious, world society that features novel and increasingly efficacious norms of appropriate behavior in such areas as human rights and environmental protection. The transnational coalitions and networks led by nongovernmental groups that espouse such norms may seem weak in comparison with states, corporations, and such international agencies as the World Bank. Yet they became progressively more effective at altering the policies and practices of these historically more powerful actors and organizations from the 1970s on. Khagram develops these claims in a detailed ethnographic account of the transnational struggles around the Narmada River Valley Dam Projects in central India, a huge complex of thirty large and more than three thousand small dams. He offers further substantiation through a comparative historical analysis of the political economy of big dam projects in India, Brazil, South Africa, and China as well as by examining the changing behavior of international agencies and global companies. The author concludes with a discussion of the World Commission on Dams, an innovative attempt in the late 1990s to generate new norms among conflicting stakeholders.