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From Crisis to Coalition
by Peter Dorey Mark Garnett Andrew DenhamIn 2010 the Conservative Party returned to office after over a decade of largely ineffective opposition to New Labour. This book explains why it took so long to recover, and why the party was unable to win an overall majority despite the charismatic leadership of David Cameron. It covers all aspects of Conservative Party politics since 1997.
From Crisis to Communisation (Revolutionary Pocketbooks)
by Gilles DauvéRising out of the radical Marxist French millieu and events of 1968 to criticize global capitalism and encourage revolution in theory and practice, From Crisis to Communisation places libertarian communist theory in historical and contemporary context. Communisation means something quite straightforward: a revolution that starts to change social relations immediately. The concept was born out of a specific period, and this book investigates how people personally and collectively experienced the crises of the 1960s and 1970s. The notion is now developing in the maelstrom of a new crisis, among other reasons because of its ecological dimension, that has the scope and magnitude of a crisis of civilization. This is not a book that glorifies existing struggles as if their present accumulation was enough to result in revolution. Radical theory is meaningful if it addresses this question: how can proletarian resistance to exploitation and dispossession achieve more than aggravate the crisis? How can it reshape the world?
From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century
by Megan DaigleFrom Cuba with Love deals with love, sexuality, and politics in contemporary Cuba. In this beautiful narrative, Megan Daigle explores the role of women in Cuban political culture by examining the rise of economies of sex, romance, and money since the early 1990s. Daigle draws attention to the violence experienced by young women suspected of involvement with foreigners at the hands of a moralistic state, an opportunistic police force, and even their own families and partners. Investigating the lived realities of the Cuban women (and some men) who date tourists and offering a unique perspective on the surrounding debates, From Cuba with Love raises issues about women's bodies-what they can or should do and, equally, what can be done to them. Daigle's provocative perspective will make readers question how race and politics in Cuba are tied to women and sex, and the ways in which political power acts directly on the bodies of individuals through law, policing, institutional programs, and social norms.
From Data to Action: A Community Approach to Improving Youth Outcomes
by Milbrey Mclaughlin Rebecca A. London Thomas W. PayzantThis book is a welcome guide for educators, civic leaders, and researchers looking for ways to leverage data to identify the most effective policies, interventions, and use of resources for their communities. In the current era of reform, much has been made of the fact that there are many influences that shape children beyond the walls of the schoolhouse. Powerful data "warehouses" have been built to track children and interventions within school bureaucracies and in other social service sectors. Yet these data systems are rarely linked to provide a holistic view of how individual children are faring both in and out of school and which interventions--or combinations thereof--are most promising. Privacy laws and institutional traditions have made such collaborations difficult, if not impossible. Until now. The Youth Data Archive, based at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, is an effort to blaze a new path to the productive use of cross-agency data now employed by researchers, school officials, and service providers in San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, and Santa Clara counties. Editors Milbrey McLaughlin and Rebecca A. London, leaders of the Youth Data Archive, bring together participants who describe the initiative and its challenges and successes. The participants also give detailed background on how the archive was built and how it has led to improvements in services, particularly for children at risk. This book is a welcome guide for educators, civic leaders, and researchers looking for ways to leverage data to identify the most effective policies, interventions, and use of resources for their communities.
From Data to Action: A Community Approach to Improving Youth Outcomes (HEL Impact Series)
by Rebecca A. London Milbrey McLaughlinThis book is a welcome guide for educators, civic leaders, and researchers looking for ways to leverage data to identify the most effective policies, interventions, and use of resources for their communities. In the current era of reform, much has been made of the fact that there are many influences that shape children beyond the walls of the schoolhouse. Powerful data &“warehouses&” have been built to track children and interventions within school bureaucracies and in other social service sectors. Yet these data systems are rarely linked to provide a holistic view of how individual children are faring both in and out of school and which interventions—or combinations thereof—are most promising. Privacy laws and institutional traditions have made such collaborations difficult, if not impossible. Until now. The Youth Data Archive, based at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, is an effort to blaze a new path to the productive use of cross-agency data now employed by researchers, school officials, and service providers in San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, and Santa Clara counties. Editors Milbrey McLaughlin and Rebecca A. London, leaders of the Youth Data Archive, bring together participants who describe the initiative and its challenges and successes. The participants also give detailed background on how the archive was built and how it has led to improvements in services, particularly for children at risk. This book is a welcome guide for educators, civic leaders, and researchers looking for ways to leverage data to identify the most effective policies, interventions, and use of resources for their communities.
From Day to Day: One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps
by Odd Nansen Timothy J. BoyceIn 1942 Norwegian Odd Nansen was arrested by the Nazis, and he spent the remainder of World War II in concentration camps—Grini in Oslo, Veidal above the Arctic Circle, and Sachsenhausen in Germany. For three and a half years, Nansen kept a secret diary on tissue-paper-thin pages later smuggled out by various means, including inside the prisoners' hollowed-out breadboards.Unlike writers of retrospective Holocaust memoirs, Nansen recorded the mundane and horrific details of camp life as they happened, "from day to day." With an unsparing eye, Nansen described the casual brutality and random terror that was the fate of a camp prisoner. His entries reveal his constantly frustrated hopes for an early end to the war, his longing for his wife and children, his horror at the especially barbaric treatment reserved for Jews, and his disgust at the anti-Semitism of some of his fellow Norwegians. Nansen often confronted his German jailors with unusual outspokenness and sometimes with a sense of humor and absurdity that was not appreciated by his captors.After the Putnam's edition received rave reviews in 1949, the book fell into obscurity. In 1956, in response to a poll about the "most undeservedly neglected" book of the preceding quarter-century, Carl Sandburg singled out From Day to Day, calling it "an epic narrative," which took "its place among the great affirmations of the power of the human spirit to rise above terror, torture, and death." Indeed, Nansen witnessed all the horrors of the camps, yet still saw hope for the future. He sought reconciliation with the German people, even donating the proceeds of the German edition of his book to German refugee relief work. Nansen was following in the footsteps of his father, Fridtjof, an Arctic explorer and humanitarian who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work on behalf of World War I refugees. (Fridtjof also created the "Nansen passport" for stateless persons.)This new edition, the first in over sixty-five years, contains extensive annotations and new diary selections never before translated into English. Forty sketches of camp life and death by Nansen, an architect and talented draftsman, provide a sense of immediacy and acute observation matched by the diary entries. The preface is written by Thomas Buergenthal, who was "Tommy," the ten-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz Death March, whom Nansen met at Sachsenhausen and saved using his extra food rations. Buergenthal, who later served as a judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague, is a recipient of the 2015 Elie Wiesel Award from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
From Day to Day: One Man's Diary of Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps
by Odd NansenThis new hardcover edition of Odd Nansen's diary, the first in over sixty-five years, contains extensive annotations and other material not found in any other hardcover or paperback versions. Nansen, a Norwegian, was arrested in 1942 by the Nazis, and spent the remainder of World War II in concentration camps--Grini in Oslo, Veidal above the Arctic Circle, and Sachsenhausen in Germany. For three and a half years, Nansen kept a secret diary on tissue-paper-thin pages later smuggled out by various means, including inside the prisoners' hollowed-out breadboards. Unlike writers of retrospective Holocaust memoirs, Nansen recorded the mundane and horrific details of camp life as they happened, "from day to day." With an unsparing eye, Nansen described the casual brutality and random terror that was the fate of a camp prisoner. His entries reveal his constantly frustrated hopes for an early end to the war, his longing for his wife and children, his horror at the especially barbaric treatment reserved for Jews, and his disgust at the anti-Semitism of some of his fellow Norwegians. Nansen often confronted his German jailors with unusual outspokenness and sometimes with a sense of humor and absurdity that was not appreciated by his captors. After the Putnam's edition received rave reviews in 1949, the book fell into obscurity. In 1956, in response to a poll about the "most undeservedly neglected" book of the preceding quarter-century, Carl Sandburg singled out From Day to Day, calling it "an epic narrative," which took "its place among the great affirmations of the power of the human spirit to rise above terror, torture, and death." Indeed, Nansen witnessed all the horrors of the camps, yet still saw hope for the future. He sought reconciliation with the German people, even donating the proceeds of the German edition of his book to German refugee relief work. Nansen was following in the footsteps of his father, Fridtjof, an Arctic explorer and humanitarian who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his work on behalf of World War I refugees. (Fridtjof also created the "Nansen passport" for stateless persons.) Forty sketches of camp life and death by Nansen, an architect and talented draftsman, provide a sense of immediacy and acute observation matched by the diary entries. The preface is written by Thomas Buergenthal, who was "Tommy," the ten-year-old survivor of the Auschwitz Death March, whom Nansen met at Sachsenhausen and saved using his extra food rations. Buergenthal, author of A Lucky Child, formerly served as a judge on the International Court of Justice at The Hague and is a recipient of the 2015 Elie Wiesel Award from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
From Dependency To Development: Strategies To Overcome Underdevelopment And Inequality
by Heraldo MuñozAlthough much has been written on the concept, nature, and implications of dependency in underdeveloped countries, there is a noticeable lack of comprehensive material on dependency reversal—the ways and circumstances under which dependency and underdevelopment can be overcome. Dr, Muñoz brings together in a coherent volume the alternative strategies for dependency reversal that have been posed by leading social scientists; the emphasis is on commonalities, differences, and theoretical and practical derivations. The book outlines the basic features of the dependency literature and clarifies the emergence and development of the dependency paradigm, its meaning, and its differences from other theoretical perspectives on underdevelopment. New aspects of dependency situations are also introduced. Significant alternatives to dependency are offered, taking into account varying geographical, ideological, and functional factors. Though no claim is made that all existing answers to development are included, this is clearly the most complete work available to date.
From Despotism to Democracy: How a World Government Can Save Humanity
by Torbjörn TännsjöThis book is about how best to respond to existential global threats posed by war and global heating. The stakes have become existential. A strong claim in the book is that we need a world state to save humanity. The book sheds new light on why this is so. The present author has long advocated global democracy. A strong argument against global democracy has been, however, that no state has ever been established without the resort to violence. In this book, the author bites the bullet and advocates a route to global democracy that passes through a phase where a global state is established in the form of global despotism. First despotism, then democracy! But, as the author insists and the reader will find, this is at most something we can hope for. We may fail. The moral importance of failure is thoroughly discussed.The book explored the following topics:· The tragedy of the commons is presented as the best explanation of why we do so little to obviate the causes behind climate change.· A world government presents a way out of the tragedy of the commons.· Standard arguments against a world state are examined.· The question of whether it matters if humanity goes extinct is taken seriously.· What if the attempt to establish a world state fails. The book is written by a philosopher, but the intended audience is broad. It has a place in courses in political philosophy, but it is possible for anyone who wants to do so to dig deeper into the questions should be able to read it. And regardless of whether you who read the book are a scholar or a layperson, there is no way for you to avoid its topic. Global existential issues concern all of us, regardless of profession or nationality.
From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia
by Dan Slater Joseph WongWhy some of Asia’s authoritarian regimes have democratized as they have grown richer—and why others haven’tOver the past century, Asia has been transformed by rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization—a spectacular record of development that has turned one of the world’s poorest regions into one of its richest. Yet Asia’s record of democratization has been much more uneven, despite the global correlation between development and democracy. Why have some Asian countries become more democratic as they have grown richer, while others—most notably China—haven’t? In From Development to Democracy, Dan Slater and Joseph Wong offer a sweeping and original answer to this crucial question.Slater and Wong demonstrate that Asia defies the conventional expectation that authoritarian regimes concede democratization only as a last resort, during times of weakness. Instead, Asian dictators have pursued democratic reforms as a proactive strategy to revitalize their power from a position of strength. Of central importance is whether authoritarians are confident of victory and stability. In Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan these factors fostered democracy through strength, while democratic experiments in Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar were less successful and more reversible. At the same time, resistance to democratic reforms has proven intractable in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Reconsidering China’s 1989 crackdown, Slater and Wong argue that it was the action of a regime too weak to concede, not too strong to fail, and they explain why China can allow democracy without inviting instability.The result is a comprehensive regional history that offers important new insights about when and how democratic transitions happen—and what the future of Asia might be.
From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era
by Thomas C. Field Jr.During the most idealistic years of John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress development program, Bolivia was the highest per capita recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America. Nonetheless, Washington’s modernization programs in early 1960s' Bolivia ended up on a collision course with important sectors of the country’s civil society, including radical workers, rebellious students, and a plethora of rightwing and leftwing political parties. In From Development to Dictatorship, Thomas C. Field Jr. reconstructs the untold story of USAID’s first years in Bolivia, including the country’s 1964 military coup d’état.Field draws heavily on local sources to demonstrate that Bolivia’s turn toward anticommunist, development-oriented dictatorship was the logical and practical culmination of the military-led modernization paradigm that provided the liberal underpinnings of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. In the process, he explores several underappreciated aspects of Cold War liberal internationalism: the tendency of “development” to encourage authoritarian solutions to political unrest, the connection between modernization theories and the rise of Third World armed forces, and the intimacy between USAID and CIA covert operations. Challenging the conventional dichotomy between ideology and strategy in international politics, From Development to Dictatorship engages with a growing literature on development as a key rubric for understanding the interconnected processes of decolonization and the Cold War.
From Dictatorship to Democracy
by Peter W. Galbraith Hamid Al-BayatiSelected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011Today, Hamid al-Bayati serves as Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations. But for many years he lived in exile in London, where he worked with other opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime to make a democratic and pluralistic Iraq a reality. As former Western spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and as a member of the executive council of the Iraqi National Congress, two of the main groups opposing Saddam's regime, he led campaigns to alert the world to human rights violations in Iraq and win support from the international community for the removal of Saddam.An important Iraqi diplomat and member of Iraq's majority Shia community, he offers firsthand accounts of the meetings and discussions he and other Iraqi opponents to Saddam held with American and British diplomats from 1991 to 2004. Drawn from al-Bayati's personal archives of meeting minutes and correspondence, From Dictatorship to Democracy takes readers through the history of the opposition.We learn the views and actions of principal figures, such as SCIRI head Sayyid Mohammed Baqir Al-Hakeem and the other leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi and his Kurdish counterparts, Masound Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Al-Bayati vividly captures their struggle to unify in the face of not only Saddam's harsh and bloody repression but also an unresponsive and unmotivated international community. Al-Bayati's efforts in the months before and after the U.S. invasion also put him in direct contact with key U.S. figures such as Zalmay Khalilzad and L. Paul Bremer and at the center of the debates over returning Iraq to self-government quickly and creating the foundation for a secure and stable state.Al-Bayati was both eyewitness to and actor in the dramatic struggle to remove Saddam from power. In this unique historical document, he provides detailed recollections of his work on behalf of a democratic Iraq that reflect the hopes and frustrations of the Iraqi people.
From Dictatorship to Democracy in Twentieth-Century Portugal
by Raphael CostaThis book examines Portugal's transition from dictatorship to democracy by focusing on Lourinh#65533;'s urbanization and economic development since 1966. Since 1966, Lourinh#65533;'s urban landscape has transformed as Portugal democratized. From a rural town with little infrastructure and few institutions in 1966, Lourinh#65533; emerged by 2001 as a modern European town. This work highlights key areas of economic and urban development and argues that Lourinh#65533;'s political culture became more institutional, creating a withering expectation of citizen participation in local development, as Portugal transitioned from dictatorship to democracy. Raphael Costa asks whether Portugal was on the path towards democracy before 1974, and if the rapid shift to democracy was the blessing it appeared to be by the 1990s. Did democratization ultimately disenfranchise the Portuguese in important ways? This work uses Lourinh#65533;'s development as an example of the Portuguese experience to argue that the Carnation Revolution, although a watershed in Portugal's politico-cultural evolution, should not be understood as the moment when democracy came to Portugal.
From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation
by Gene SharpTwenty-one years ago, at a friend's request, a Massachusetts professor sketched out a blueprint for nonviolent resistance to repressive regimes. It would go on to be translated, photocopied, and handed from one activist to another, traveling from country to country across the globe: from Iran to Venezuela-where both countries consider Gene Sharp to be an enemy of the state-to Serbia; Afghanistan; Vietnam; the former Soviet Union; China; Nepal; and, more recently and notably, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, where it has served as a guiding light of the Arab Spring.This short, pithy, inspiring, and extraordinarily clear guide to overthrowing a dictatorship by nonviolent means lists 198 specific methods to consider, depending on the circumstances: sit-ins, popular nonobedience, selective strikes, withdrawal of bank deposits, revenue refusal, walkouts, silence, and hunger strikes. From Dictatorship to Democracy is the remarkable work that has made the little-known Sharp into the world's most effective and sought-after analyst of resistance to authoritarian regimes.
From Discrimination to Death: Genocide Process Through a Human Rights Lens (Routledge Studies in Genocide and Crimes against Humanity)
by Melanie O'BrienFrom Discrimination to Death studies the process of genocide through the human rights violations that occur during genocide. Using individual testimonies and in-depth field research from the Armenian Genocide, Holocaust and Cambodian Genocide, this book demonstrates that a pattern of specific escalating human rights abuses takes place in genocide. Offering an analysis of all these particular human rights as they are violated in genocide, the author intricately brings together genocide studies and human rights, demonstrating how the ‘crime of crimes’ and the human rights law regime correlate. The book applies the pattern of rights violations to the Rohingya Genocide, revealing that this pattern could have been used to prevent the violence against the Rohingya, before advocating for a greater role for human rights oversight bodies in genocide prevention. The pattern ascertained through the research in this book offers a resource for governments and human rights practitioners as a mid-stream indicator for genocide prevention. It can also be used by lawyers and judges in genocide trials to help determine whether genocide took place. Undergraduate and postgraduate students, particularly of genocide studies, will also greatly benefit from this book.
From Dissent to Diplomacy: The Pugwash Project During the 1960s Cold War (SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology)
by Alison KraftThis book provides new and critical perspectives on the internal development of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (the PCSWA; Pugwash) and its role in international nuclear diplomacy during the 1960s Cold War. Conceived by western scientists dissenting from their own government’s position on nuclear weapons, the conferences brought together elite scientists from across the East-West divide to work towards nuclear disarmament and for peace. The analysis follows two lines. First, the book charts the emergence during the conferences of a distinctive form of technopolitical communication that was crucial to the role of Pugwash in Informal cross-bloc dialogue about disarmament. This enabled Pugwash to realize its paradoxical vision of working both with and against governments to promote disarmament and was key to its role as both a forum for and actor within the realm of informal diplomacy. It is argued that Pugwash scientists formed the vanguard of what came in the 1960s to be called Track II diplomacy. The relevance of the contemporary concept of Science Diplomacy for Pugwash is discussed. The second analytical focus of the book centers on the internal dynamics of the international Pugwash organization. It is argued that informal modes of working and a code of confidentiality accorded the leadership enormous power and autonomy: this small network of senior figures was able to control the Pugwash agenda and priorities, and to launch diplomatic initiatives beyond the conferences. However, by 1967, competing interests were fueling tensions and instability within Pugwash as it struggled for coherence and direction amid with the political challenges posed by the Vietnam War and European security. This crisis manifest the limits of the Pugwash project and placed its future in doubt.
From Dissonance to Sense: Welfare State Expectations, Privatisation and Private Law (Routledge Revivals)
by Thomas Wilhelmsson Samuli HurriFirst published in 1999, this book focuses on the new role of private law in late modernity. It analyses the pressures for changes in this area of law due to the present processes of privatisation and marketisation. The perspective is welfarist: in what ways and to what extent can the welfare state expectations of the citizens be defended through private law mechanisms when state-offered security is diminishing? Which alternatives are available when developing private law? The questions are discussed against the background of theories concerning important features of late modern society, for example consumerism, risk, information, globalisation and fragmentation. Several fields of private law are analysed, such as private law theory, tort and liability law, contract law and credit law as well as access to justice issues. The approach is comparative, including analyses of both common law and continental law.
From East Germans to Germans?: The New Postcommunist Elites
by Jennifer A. YoderIn 1990 Germany launched an experiment to transplant democracy into a formerly communist country, effectively dismantling the system of the German Democratic Republic and rebuilding it in the likeness of the democratic Federal Republic of Germany. From East Germans to Germans? examines the role of the first generation of democratically elected political elites in the former GDR's transition to democracy. Although the quick transplant of a ready-made democratic system supported by West German financial backing and expertise provided benefits, problems arose for the development of postcommunist political leadership and for the growth of mass support for the democratic system. Jennifer A. Yoder analyzes the implications of the transition process for democratic legitimation and integration. Based on field research in East Germany that included interviews with parliamentarians, her study addresses issues such as culture, identity, and the lack of continuity between the old and new political elites. Although the availability of West German role models, together with pressure to conform, allowed the process of decommunization to occur much faster than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the cultural differences between east and west are more extensive and complex than previously assumed. Unification has also been followed by a reinvigoration of regional interests. Yoder shows how some political elites have adopted western German patterns, while others openly criticize many of the practices and policies originating in Bonn and present themselves as democratic alternatives and advocates for East German interests in the new Germany. Indeed, for many East Germans, these new regional elites are regarded as the only representatives of their interests in the western-dominated political system. Providing insight into elite-building at a time of transition and a valuable alternative to the "institutions versus culture" debate found in traditional analyses of political change, this book will interest political scientists and students and scholars of European politics and German studies.
From Eastern Bloc to European Union: Comparative Processes of Transformation since 1990
by Günther Heydemann Karel VodiÄkaMore than 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, European integration remains a work in progress, especially in those Eastern European nations most dramatically reshaped by democratization and economic liberalization. This volume assembles detailed, empirically grounded studies of eleven states-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and the former East Germany-that went on to join the European Union. Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformations that have taken place in these nations, using a comparative approach to identify structural similarities and assess outcomes relative to one another as well as the rest of the EU.
From Economic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe
by Grigore Pop-ElechesThe wave of neoliberal economic reforms in the developing world since the 1980s has been regarded as the result of both severe economic crises and policy pressures from global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Using comparative evidence from the initiation and implementation of IMF programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe, From Economic Crisis to Reform shows that economic crises do not necessarily persuade governments to adopt IMF-style economic policies. Instead, ideology, interests, and institutions, at both the international and domestic levels, mediate responses to such crises. Grigore Pop-Eleches explains that the IMF's response to economic crises reflects the changing priorities of large IMF member countries. He argues that the IMF gives greater attention and favorable treatment to economic crises when they occur in economically or politically important countries. The book also shows how during the neoliberal consensus of the 1990s, economic crises triggered IMF-style reforms from governments across the ideological spectrum and how these reforms were broadly compatible with democratic politics. By contrast, during the Latin American debt crisis, the contentious politics of IMF programs reflected the ideological rivalries of the Cold War. Economic crises triggered ideologically divergent domestic policy responses and democracy was often at odds with economic adjustment. The author demonstrates that an economic crisis triggers neoliberal economic reforms only when the government and the IMF agree about the roots and severity of the crisis.
From Economic to Energy Transition: Three Decades of Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe (Energy, Climate and the Environment)
by Matúš Mišík Veronika OravcováThis book examines energy transition issues within the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. The European Union is aiming for an almost complete decarbonization of its energy sector by 2050. However, the path towards a carbon-free economy is full of challenges that must be solved by individual EU members. Across 18 chapters, leading researchers explore challenges related to energy transition and analyse individual EU members from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the region as a whole. To further explore this complex issue, the volume also includes several countries from South East Europe in its analysis. As perspective members, these countries will be important contributors to the EU’s mid- and long-term climate and energy goals. The focus on a variety of issues connected to energy transition and systematic analyses of the different CEE countries make it an ideal reference for anyone with a general interest in the region or European energy transition. It will also be a useful resource for students looking for an accessible overview of the field.
From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries between Economics and other Social Sciences (Economics as Social Theory)
by Ben Fine Dimitris MilonakisIs or has economics ever been the imperial social science? Could or should it ever be so? These are the central concerns of this book. It involves a critical reflection on the process of how economics became the way it is, in terms of a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, that has, nonetheless, increasingly directed its attention to appropriating the subject matter of other social sciences through the process termed "economics imperialism". In other words, the book addresses the shifting boundaries between economics and the other social sciences as seen from the confines of the dismal science, with some reflection on the responses to the economic imperialists by other disciplines. Significantly, an old economics imperialism is identified of the "as if market" style most closely associated with Gary Becker, the public choice theory of Buchanan and Tullock and cliometrics. But this has given way to a more "revolutionary" form of economics imperialism associated with the information-theoretic economics of Akerlof and Stiglitz, and the new institutional economics of Coase, Wiliamson and North. Embracing one "new" field after another, economics imperialism reaches its most extreme version in the form of "freakonomics", the economic theory of everything on the basis of the most shallow principles. By way of contrast and as a guiding critical thread, a thorough review is offered of the appropriate principles underpinning political economy and its relationship to social science, and how these have been and continue to be deployed. The case is made for political economy with an interdisciplinary character, able to bridge the gap between economics and other social sciences, and draw upon and interrogate the nature of contemporary capitalism.
From Education Policy to Education Practice: Unpacking the Nexus (Policy Implications of Research in Education #15)
by Tine S. Prøitz Wieland Wermke Petter AasenThis open access book addresses the complex interrelations between education policy and education practice developed under new ways of governance. It illuminates the nexuses of the interrelated fields of education policy and education practice including the characteristics of these relationships. The book offers a selection of cases with varied approaches to the question of how different actors and stakeholders are situated in contemporary policy and practice nexuses. The cases presented includes theoretical and conceptual studies; historical studies; ethnographic studies; and studies combining empirical interview data and quantitative data. The book shows what constitutes the contemporary nexuses in education and discusses the need to re-consider how we in education research approach policy and practice in the interface between structure and agency for the future developments in the education policy-practice nexus.
From Electronic to Mobile Government
by Vincent Homburg Thomas J. Lampoltshammer Mihkel SolvakThe open access book combines insights from policy sciences (backgrounds of cross-border coordination challenges), design science (development of architectures for mobile services), information ethics (privacy and security of e-government services in international arenas) and business studies (changes in existing business models). The notably interdisciplinary character provides scholars and policy professionals working in specific (legal, political, engineering) disciplines a unique outlook on how policy making, implementation, and pilots are related in multi-level and cross-border governance. The book presents the results of the EU-funded “Mobile Cross-Border Government Services for Europe” (mGov4EU) project in which various pilots implemented and validated enhanced infrastructure services for electronic voting, smart mobility, and mobile signing. Together, the single pilots demonstrated how enhanced electronic identities and trust services (eIDAS) and Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) layers can accommodate once-only, digital-by-default and mobile-first principles. By taking advantage of security features of modern smartphones like hardware-backed secure elements together with integrated convenience elements like biometric sensors, this research showed how both the security needs and data-protection expectations one has into public services and the usability challenges that arise when accessing complex services using constrained mobile devices meet. This book is the first one in his kind to address this gap in the academic knowledge, as well as this gap in available compendiums for policy professionals at European levels of decision-making, as well as for policymakers and experts working on electronic identification, cross-border and cross-sector information exchange in the various member states of the European Union. This way, it serves various audiences: first, researchers in informatics-related areas like information systems, electronic government, and mobile applications, as it describes empirical examples of secure, easy-to-use and cross-border electronic services that have been developed and successfully tested in practice. Second, it also caters to researchers in international relations or political science as well as policymakers and politicians, both at national or European levels, who are involved in drafting policies and implementing European initiatives in relation to the building blocks of next-generation e-government services.
From Empire to Nation State: Ethnic Politics in China
by Yan SunMany scholars perceive ethnic politics in China as an untouchable topic due to lack of data and contentious, even prohibitive, politics. This book fills a gap in the literature, offering a historical-political perspective on China's contemporary ethnic conflict. Yan Sun accumulates research via field trips, local reports, and policy debates to reveal rare knowledge and findings. Her long-time causal chain of explanation reveals the roots of China's contemporary ethnic strife in the centralizing and ethnicizing strategies of its incomplete transition to a nation state—strategies that depart sharply from its historical patterns of diverse and indirect rule. This departure created the institutional dynamics for politicized identities and ethnic mobilization, particularly in the outer regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. In the 21st century, such factors as the demise of socialist tenets and institutions that upheld interethnic solidarity, and the rise of identity politics and developmentalism, have intensified these built-in tensions.