Browse Results

Showing 99,501 through 99,525 of 100,000 results

State and Local Policy Initiatives to Reduce Health Disparities: Workshop Summary

by Karen M. Anderson

Although efforts to reduce health disparities receive attention at the national level, information on the successes of state and local efforts are often not heard. On May 11, 2009, the Institute of Medicine held a public workshop to discuss the role of state and local policy initiatives to reduce health disparities. The workshop brought together stakeholders to learn more about what works in reducing health disparities and ways to focus on localized efforts when working to reduce health disparities.

State and Local Politics: Autonomy, Politics, And Policy

by David Berman

Politics at the state and local level has never been more interesting than in our "devolutionary" age. This popular text is the most concise, readable, and current introduction to the field. Now in its ninth edition, the book keeps its focus on the varied and changing political and economic environments in which state and local governments function, and their strengths and weaknesses in key areas of public policy. The text is enlivened by boxed sections that relate individual experiences or highlight particular issues and developments. Topics covered in this edition include the drive toward devolution in the federal system; fiscal constraints; political accountability; affirmative action; majority-minority districts; and changing approaches to welfare, education, land use, and law enforcement.

State And Market In Post-apartheid South Africa

by Merle Lipton Charles Simkins

This book argues that South Africa experienced extensive periods of trade liberalisation in the 1970s and 1980s. It discusses the libertarian analysis of state failure, particularly the libertarian argument that market failures are less serious and less extensive than was once thought.

State and Nation-Building in Pakistan: Beyond Islam and Security (Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series)

by Ian Talbot Roger D. Long Gurharpal Singh Yunas Samad

Religion, violence, and ethnicity are all intertwined in the history of Pakistan. The entrenchment of landed interests, operationalized through violence, ethnic identity, and power through successive regimes has created a system of ‘authoritarian clientalism.’ This book offers comparative, historicist, and multidisciplinary views on the role of identity politics in the development of Pakistan. Bringing together perspectives on the dynamics of state-building, the book provides insights into contemporary processes of national contestation which are crucially affected by their treatment in the world media, and by the reactions they elicit within an increasingly globalised polity. It investigates the resilience of landed elites to political and social change, and, in the years after partition, looks at the impact on land holdings of population transfer. It goes on to discuss religious identities and their role in both the construction of national identity and in the development of sectarianism. The book highlights how ethnicity and identity politics are an enduring marker in Pakistani politics, and why they are increasingly powerful and influential. An insightful collection on a range of perspectives on the dynamics of identity politics and the nation-state, this book on Pakistan will be a useful contribution to South Asian Politics, South Asian History, and Islamic Studies.

The State and New Cinema in Contemporary India: 1960–1997

by Sudha Tiwari

This book examines the relationship between the newly independent Indian state and its New Cinema movement. It looks at state formative practices articulating themselves as cultural policy. It presents an institutional history of the Film Finance Corporation (FFC), later the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), and their patronage of the New Cinema in India, from the 1960s to the 1990s, bringing into focus an extraordinary but neglected cultural moment in Indian film history and in the history of contemporary India. The chapters not only document the artistic pursuit of cinema, but also the emergence of a larger field where the market, political inclinations of the Indian state, and the more complex determinants of culture intersect — how the New Cinema movement faced external challenges from the industrial lobby and politicians, as well as experienced deep rifts from within. It also shows how the Emergency, the Janata Party regime, economic liberalization, and the opening of airwaves all left their impact on the New Cinema. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of film studies, politics and public policy, especially cultural policy, media and culture studies, and South Asian studies.

The State and Religious Violence in Indonesia: Minority Faiths and Vigilantism (Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia)

by A’an Suryana

This book analyses the response of the Indonesian state to violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a minority communities by foregrounding the close connections between state officials and vigilante groups, which influenced the way the post-Soeharto democratic Indonesian governments addressed the problem of violence against religious minorities. Arguing that the violence stemmed in part from the state officials’ close connection with vigilante groups, and a general tendency for the authorities to forge mutual and material interests with such groups, the author demonstrates that vigilante groups were able to perpetrate violence against the minority congregations with a significant degree of impunity. While the Indonesian state has become far more democratic, accountable, and decentralized since 1998, the violence against Ahmadiyah and Shi’a communities shows a state that is still unwilling in assisting or allowing minority groups to practice their religion. The research undertaken for this book draws upon a lengthy period of ethnographic fieldwork in the communities of West Java and East Java. Research material includes in-depth interviews with community and religious leaders, state officials and security forces, and other prominent politicians. A novel approach to the problem of Islam, violence, and the state in Indonesia, the book will be of interest to researchers studying Southeast Asian Politics, Islam and Politics, Conflict Resolution, State and Violence, and Terrorism and Political Violence.

The State and Revolution in Iran (Routledge Library Editions: Iran)

by Hossein Bashiriyeh

This book analyses the distant and proximate causes of the 1978 revolution in Iran as well as the dynamics of power which it set in motion. The volume explains the complex and far-reaching processes which produced the revolution, beginning in the late nineteenth century. In explaining the more proximate causes of the revolution, the book analyses the nature of the old regime and its internal contradictions; the emergence of some fundamental conflicts of interest between the state and the upper class; the economic crisis of 1975-8 which made possible a revolutionary mass immobilisation; and the emergence of a new religious interpretation of political authority and the unusual spread of the ideology of political Islam among a segment of the modern intelligentsia. The volume relates the diverse aspects of class, ideology and economic structure in order to provide an understanding of the political processes.

The State and Rural Class Formation in Ghana: A Comparative Analysis

by Piet Konings

First published in 1986. Africanists are nowadays devoting increasing attention to the role of the state - both colonial and post-colonial - in the process of class formation in African societies. The present study of the role of the state in the process of rural class formation in Ghana can be viewed as both an expression of the current interest in, and an addition to the growing body of literature on, this subject.

The State and Security in Mexico: Transformation and Crisis in Regional Perspective (Routledge Studies in North American Politics)

by Brian Bow Arturo Santa-Cruz

At the turn of the millennium, Mexico seemed to have finally found its path to political and economic modernization; a state which had been deeply embedded in society was being pulled out, with new political leaders allowing market forces to play a greater role in guiding the nation’s economic development, and allowing old patron-client networks to crumble. At the same time, many hoped that political and legal reforms would increase the state’s capacity to provide prosperity, security, and equity for its citizens. In the midst of this historic transformation, however, Mexico was confronted with an urgent new policy challenge. Internationally recognized experts from the academic and think-tank communities in the United States, Mexico, and Canada consider the origins of the current crisis in Mexico, and the nature and effectiveness of the Calderón government’s response. Simply not another book on North American regional security, this volume uses Joel Migdal’s concept of "the state in society" to provide a refreshingly clear and accessible exploration of political change in the developing world. The engagement with the US and Canada gives the reader a chance to observe the dynamics of persuasion across the developmental divide. Four key questions structure the study: What does the ongoing security crisis in Mexico tell us about the changing role of the state in society there? What does the changing role of the state tell us about the nature (and intractability) of the crisis? How has the transition to democracy affected the links between the state and organized crime in Mexico, and the state’s capacity to contain non-state challengers? What kinds of political and legal reforms are called for, and what effects can we expect them to have on the extent and intensity of violence in Mexico? No other study comprehensively uncovers new conceptual and theoretical insights in each of these areas whilst offering some practical guidance for policy-makers and publics seeking to understand these urgent and complex challenges.

The State and Social Welfare, 1997: International Studies on Social Insurance and Retirement, Employment, Family Policy and Health Care (Routledge Revivals #Vol. 4)

by Peter Flora Philip R. De Jong Julian Le Grand Jun-Young Kim

First published in 1998, this volume contains an edited selection of papers presented at the Fifth International Research Seminar on ‘Issues in Social Security’, held on 14-17 June 1997 in Sweden by the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS) in memory of Brian Abel-Smith. The chapters cover a wide range of subjects related to old age pension reform, family policy, employment, privatization of social security and health care. The authors form a body of well-established researchers and scholars of world-wide reputation as well as younger scientists, stemming from various continents, and representing a range of relevant disciplines. This volume is the fourth in a series on international studies of issues in social security. The series is initiated by the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS). One of its aims is to confront different academic approaches with each other, and with public policy perspectives. Another is to give analytic reports of cross-nationally different approaches to the design and reform of welfare state programs.

State And Society In Algeria

by John P Entelis Phillip C Naylor

On 11 January 1992 senior military officers forced President Chadli Benjedid to resign; canceled the second round of legislative elections and annulled the results of the first round, which saw the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) achieve a major electoral victory; and imposed a year-long state of siege. Constitutional government was replaced by an army-dominated so-called Higher State Council responsive to no one but itself. In the weeks and months that followed further draconian measures were undertaken intended to subvert the incipient democratic process that Algeria had been experiencing in the several years following the deadly riots of October 1988. As part of the army's effort to regain control of state and society, it reined in the free-wheeling press, abolished the country's most popular political party (FIS), dissolved the National Assembly, and reimposed on civil society the apparatus of the omnipresent state security system (mukhabarat).

State and Society in China's Democratic Transition: Confucianism, Leninism, and Economic Development

by Xiaoqin Guo

This study aims to fill the gap in the existing literature on China's Democratic development, by presenting a comprehensive and detailed examination of the key factors that have created and sustained state domination over society in China.

State and Society in Modern Rangoon (Asia's Transformations)

by Donald M. Seekins

While most of Asia’s major cities are increasingly homogenized by rapid economic growth and cultural globalization, Rangoon, which is Burma’s former capital and largest city, still bears the imprint of a unique and often turbulent history. It is the site of the Shwedagon Pagoda, a focus of Buddhist pilgrimage and devotion since the early second millennium C.E. that continues to play a major role in national life. In 1852, the British occupied Rangoon and made it their colonial capital, building a modern port and administrative center based on western designs. It became the capital of independent Burma in 1948, but in 2005 the State Peace and Development Council military junta established a new, heavily fortified capital at Naypyidaw, 320 kilometers north of the old capital. A major motive for the capital relocation was the regime’s desire to put distance between itself and Rangoon’s historically restive population. Reacting to the huge anti-government demonstrations of "Democracy Summer" in 1988, the new military regime used massive violence to pacify the city and sought to transform it in line with its supreme goal of state security. However, the "Saffron Revolution" of September 2007 showed that Rangoon’s traditions of resistance reaching back to the colonial era are still very much alive.

State and Society in the Taiwan Miracle (Taiwan In The Modern World Ser.)

by Thomas B. Gold

Explores the application of constructivist theory to international relations. The text examines the relevance of constructivism for empirical research, focusing on some of the key issues of contemporary international politics: ethnic and national identity; gender; and political economy.

State and Society Responses to Social Welfare Needs in China: Serving the people (Routledge Contemporary China Series)

by Jonathan Schwartz Shawn Shieh

This volume examines the shifting role of the state and social organizations (e.g. NGOs) in providing social services in contemporary China. A series of case studies identifies a dynamic whereby the state increasingly withdraws from social service provision with social organizations taking up the slack. An interdisciplinary line up of contributors explore this dynamic, and how it affects the state-society relationship and the quality of social services provided. Based on current research, this book engages existing debates over state-society relations offering a new thematic framework to evaluate this relationship. Drawing on the framework, each chapter explores a particular aspect of social service provision including orphan care, migrant labor protection and infectious disease control. Differentiating between case studies of crisis and non-crisis social service provision situations, this volume argues that state and social organizations engage in ongoing negotiations to achieve shared social service provision goals – a dynamic largely controlled by the state. However during crises, the controlled relationship may alter as the priority becomes addressing the immediate demand for essential social services. The result is the potential for a rapid change in relations between the state and social organizations.

State and Statehood in the Global South: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Studies

by Miriam Fahimi Elmar Flatschart Wolfram Schaffar

This book focuses on critical approaches to the state and state theory in the Global South. In light of the reemergence of the post-colonial and peripheral state as a crucial institution and actor in the 21st century’s capitalist world-system, the book examines the nature, functions and development dynamics of the state in the periphery, as well as its constituting interests and struggles. Drawing on the works of Poulantzas and Gramsci, dependency and world-systems theory, as well as the regulation school and the German Ableitungsdebatte, stategraphy and critical realism, it analyzes the development of different theoretical perspectives on the state, elaborates on their theoretical, ontological and epistemological presuppositions, and illustrates their methodological, practical and ethical implications. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which provides an overview of recent global capitalist developments and challenges for state theory and lays the theoretical, ontological and hermeneutic foundation for studies of the state and statehood in the Global South. In turn, the second part introduces readers to different schools of state theory, including critical theory and materialism, as well as approaches derived from postcolonial, anthropological, and feminist thought. Lastly, the third part presents various empirical studies, highlighting concrete methodological and practical experiences of conducting critical state theory.

State and Sufism in Iraq: Building a “Moderate Islam” Under Saddam Husayn (Routledge Sufi Series)

by David Jordan

State and Sufism in Iraq is the first comprehensive study of the Iraqi Baʿth regime’s (r. 1968–2003) entanglement with Sufis and of Sunnī Sufi Islam in Iraq from the late Ottoman period until 2003 and beyond. For far too long, the secular and authoritarian Baʿth regime has been reduced to the dictator Saddam Husayn and portrayed as antireligious. It’s growing political employment of Islam during the 1990s, in turn, has been interpreted either as an abstract Baʿthist-nationalist Islam or as an ideological U-turn from secularism to a form of Islamism that ultimately contributed to the spread of Islamist terrorism after 2003. Broadening the narrow focus on Saddam Husayn, this book analyses other leading regime figures, their close entanglement with Sufis, and Baʿth religious politics of a state-sponsored revival of Sufi Islam and Iraq’s broad and distinct Sufi culture. It is the story of a secular regime’s search for "moderate" Islam in order to overcome the challenges of radical Islamism and sectarianism in Iraq. The book’s two-pronged interdisciplinary approach that deals equally with politics and Sufi Islam in Iraq makes it a valuable contribution to scholars and students in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Religious Anthropology and Sociology, Political Science, and International Relations.

The State and the Advocate: Case studies on development policy in Asia

by Teresita Cruz-del Rosario

This book seeks to demonstrate the role of public policy in support of equitable and inclusive development. The achievement of this overarching goal rests on an assumption that development does not happen by chance or by accident, but rather, through the deliberate application of analytical tools which public policy is able to provide. Set within an Asian context, the book emphasizes the role of public policy in reducing poverty, eliminating deprivation, promoting equity, and ensuring social justice. The book likewise aims to provide an argument for the developmental role of the state — one which has been the subject of a long-standing debate among development scholars. In addition, the book accounts for the role of civil society organizations, particularly their involvement in multi-stakeholder participation. Through different case studies, this book explains the outcome of public policy decisions as combinations of efforts among government and civil society actors, to ensure the creation of the most optimal public good. Finally, the book takes a comparative perspective, i.e., there are cases that directly or indirectly implicate the regional character of public policies that result in the creation and distribution of regional public goods.

The State And The Arts

by Judith Kapferer

Judith Kapferer and her collaborators present an insightful volume that interrogates relations between the state and the arts in diverse national and cultural settings. The authors critique the taken-for-granted assumption about the place of the arts in liberal or social democratic states and the role of the arts in supporting or opposing the ideological work of government and non-government institutions. This innovative volume explores the challenges posed by the state to the arts and by the arts to the state, focusing on several transformations of the interrelations between state and commercial arts policies in the current era. These ongoing challenges include the control of repressive tolerance, complicity with and resistance to state power, and the commoditization of the arts, including their accommodation to market and state apparatuses. While endeavouring to avoid the currently dominant pragmatic and didactic priorities of officialdom, the contributors tackle social and cultural policy and practice in the arts as well as connections between national states and dissenting art from a range of genres.

The State and the Grassroots: Immigrant Transnational Organizations in Four Continents

by Alejandro Portes Patricia Fernández-Kelly

Whereas most of the literature on migration focuses on individuals and their families, this book studies the organizations created by immigrants to protect themselves in their receiving states. Comparing eighteen of these grassroots organizations formed across the world, from India to Colombia to Vietnam to the Congo, researchers from the United States, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Spain focus their studies on the internal structure and activities of these organizations as they relate to developmental initiatives. The book outlines the principal positions in the migration and development debate and discusses the concept of transnationalism as a means of resolving these controversies.

The State And The Industrialization Crisis In Turkey

by Henri J Barkey

This book re-evaluates the politics of the maligned industrialization strategy and examines Turkey's attempts to implement it in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that Import Substituting Industrialization itself is not responsible for the failure of Turkey's industrialization efforts.

The State and the Poor: Public Policy and Political Development in India and the United States

by John Echeverri-Gent

This comparison of rural development in India and the United States develops important departures from economic and historical institutionalism. It elaborates a new conceptual framework for analyzing state-society relations beginning from the premise that policy implementation, as the site of tangible exchanges between state and society, provides strategic interaction among self-interested individuals, social groups, and bureaucracies. It demonstrates how this interaction can be harnessed to enhance the effectiveness of public policy. <p><p>Echeverri-Gent's application of this framework to poverty alleviation programs generates provocative insights about the ways in which institutions and social structure constrain policy-makers. In the process, he illuminates new implications for the concepts of state autonomy and state capacity. The book's original conceptual framework and intriguing findings will interest scholars of South Asia and American politics, social theorists, and policy-makers.

The State and the Social: State Formation in Botswana and its Precolonial and Colonial Genealogies

by Ørnulf Gulbrandsen

Botswana has been portrayed as a major case of exception in Africa—as an oasis of peace and harmony with an enduring parliamentary democracy, blessed with remarkable diamond-driven economic growth. Whereas the “failure” of other states on the continent is often attributed to the prevalence of indigenous political ideas and structures, the author argues that Botswana’s apparent success is not the result of Western ideas and practices of government having replaced indigenous ideas and structures. Rather, the postcolonial state of Botswana is best understood as a unique, complex formation, one that arose dialectically through the meeting of European ideas and practices with the symbolism and hierarchies of authority, rooted in the cosmologies of indigenous polities, and both have become integral to the formation of a strong state with a stable government. Yet there are destabilizing potentialities in progress due to emerging class conflict between all the poor sections of the population and the privileged modern elites born of the expansion of a beef and diamond-driven political economy, in addition to conflicts between dominant Tswana and vast other ethnic groups. These transformations of the modern state are viewed from the long-term perspectives of precolonial and colonial genealogies and the rise of structures of domination, propelled by changing global forces.

The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History

by Derek S. Hoff

&“A powerful model of how to understand the complex array of issues that will shape the political economy of population in the future.&”—American Historical Review From the founders&’ fears that crowded cities would produce corruption, luxury, and vice to the zero population growth movement of the late 1960s to today&’s widespread fears of an aging crisis as the Baby Boomers retire, the American population debate has always concerned much more than racial composition or resource exhaustion, the aspects of the debate usually emphasized by historians. In The State and the Stork, Derek Hoff draws on his extraordinary knowledge of the intersections between population and economic debates throughout American history to explain the many surprising ways that population anxieties have provoked unexpected policies and political developments—including the recent conservative revival. At once a fascinating history and a revelatory look at the deep origins of a crucial national conversation, The State and the Stork could not be timelier. &“Hoff has done a real service by bringing to the foreground the economic dimension of U.S. debates over population size and growth, a topic that has been relegated to the shadows for too long.&”—Population and Development Review &“After decades of failed efforts by the scientific community to alert the public to the environmental dangers of population growth and overpopulation, a first-rate historian has finally detailed both the arguments and their policy implications . . . Everyone interested in population should read The State and the Stork. This is an incredibly timely book.&”—Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb

State and Tribe in Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826-1863)

by Christine Noelle

With the exception of two short periods of direct British intervention during the Anglo-Afghan Wars of 1839-42 and 1878-80, the history of nineteenth-century Afghanistan has received little attention from western scholars. This study seeks to shift the focus of debate from the geostrategic concern with Afghanistan as the bone of contention between imperial Russian and British interests to a thorough investigation of the sociopolitical circumstances prevailing within the country. On the basis of unpublished British documents and works by Afghan historians, it lays the groundwork for a better understanding of the political mechanisms at work during the early Muhammadzai era by analysing them both from the viewpoint of the center and the pierphery.

Refine Search

Showing 99,501 through 99,525 of 100,000 results