The 1980s and 1990s posed great challenges to governments in Latin America and Africa. Deep economic crises and significantly heightened pressure for political reform severely taxed their capacity to manage economic and political tasks. These crises pointed to an intense need to reform the state and redefine its relationship to the market and civic society. This book examines the paradox of states that have been weakened by crisis just as their capacity to encourage economic development and provide for effective governance most needs to be strengthened. Case studies of Mexico and Kenya allow the author to analyse the opportunities available for political leadership in moments of crisis, and the constraints on action provided by leadership goals and existing political and economic structures. She argues that while leaders and political structures are often part of the problem, they can also be part of the solution in building more efficient, effective, and responsive states.
This book explores the relationship between sport and democratization. Drawing on sociological and historical methodologies, it provides a framework for understanding how sport affects the level of egalitarianism in the society in which it is played. The author distinguishes between horizontal sport, which embodies and fosters egalitarian relations, and vertical sport, which embodies and fosters hierarchical relations. Christesen also differentiates between societies in which sport is played and watched on a mass scale and those in which it is an ancillary activity. Using ancient Greece and nineteenth-century Britain as case studies, Christesen analyzes how these variables interact and finds that horizontal mass sport has the capacity to both promote and inhibit democratization at a societal level. He concludes that horizontal mass sport tends to reinforce and extend democratization.
Responsibility for Human Rights provides an original theoretical analysis of which global actors are responsible for human rights, and why. It does this through an evaluation of the different reasons according to which such responsibilities might be assigned: legalism, universalism, capacity and publicness. The book marshals various arguments that speak in favour of and against assigning 'responsibility for human rights' to any state or non-state actor. At the same time, it remains grounded in an incisive interpretation of the world we actually live in today, including: the relationship between sovereignty and human rights, recent events in 'business and human rights' practice, and key empirical examples of human rights violations by companies. David Karp argues that relevantly public actors have specific human rights responsibility. However, states can be less public, and non-state actors can be more public, than might seem apparent at first glance.
This book uses literature and art to develop a cultural framework for understanding the relationship between modern cultures of sensation and our capacity for sympathy.
This book explores the complex relationship between international trade and poverty reduction through a combination of research papers and contemporary case studies. Written mainly by developing-country authors in consultation with local businesses and communities, the case studies contribute to our understanding of the ways in which low-income communities are dealing with trade as a practical challenge, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where approximately two-thirds of the world's poor live. While making it clear that there is no 'one size fits all' formula, the research and stories highlight a number of necessary preconditions, such as political commitment and cooperation at all levels, if trade is to successfully reduce poverty. Openness to trade, serious commitment to domestic reform, trade-related capacity building, a robust and responsible private sector and access to the markets of developed countries are all identified as powerful tools for building trade-related sustainab
This book explores the complex relationship between international trade and poverty reduction through a combination of research papers and contemporary case studies. Written mainly by developing-country authors in consultation with local businesses and communities, the case studies contribute to our understanding of the ways in which low-income communities are dealing with trade as a practical challenge, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where approximately two-thirds of the world's poor live. While making it clear that there is no 'one size fits all' formula, the research and stories highlight a number of necessary preconditions, such as political commitment and cooperation at all levels, if trade is to successfully reduce poverty. Openness to trade, serious commitment to domestic reform, trade-related capacity building, a robust and responsible private sector and access to the markets of developed countries are all identified as powerful tools for building trade-related sustainab
Discussions of economic policy argue that an adequate level of profitability is a precondition for avoiding future unemployment. This book studies the rationale for this statement. The analysis is built round a simple model of the Harrod–Doman type and extends the study of fixed-price equilibria by considering a dynamic process whose major components are capital accumulation and shifts in income distribution. The Keynesian depression, characterized by a sustained lack of demand, is found to be particularly stable. Lack of productive capacity may also occur when profitability has been too low. In this case, the resulting unemployment stimulates corrective shifts of prices and wages. However, such unemployment may last for some time and is more likely to be followed by Keynesian unemployment than by inflationary full employment. The first and last chapters consider the problem in less formal but more general terms. They discuss both the methodology for the study of the relationship betwe
Since ancient Athens, democrats have taken pride in their power and inclination to change their laws, yet they have also sought to counter this capacity by creating immutable laws. In Democracy and Legal Change, Melissa Schwartzberg argues that modifying law is a fundamental and attractive democratic activity. Against those who would defend the use of 'entrenchment clauses' to protect key constitutional provisions from revision, Schwartzberg seeks to demonstrate historically the strategic and even unjust purposes unamendable laws have typically served, and to highlight the regrettable consequences that entrenchment may have for democracies today. Drawing on historical evidence, classical political theory, and contemporary constitutional and democratic theory, Democracy and Legal Change reexamines the relationship between democracy and the rule of law from a new, and often surprising, set of vantage points.
The current problems of sub-Saharan peoples who are subject to recurrent famine and shortages of food are only one facet of a wider problem which confronts the peoples of the world. This problem, which is a vast in scale, concerns the relationship between the physical and biological resources which the world can muster and the provision of food for the adequate nutrition of its peoples. Overshadowing much of the thought about the future is the theorem propounded by Malthus almost 200 years ago, namely that population, unless checked in some way, has the capacity to outstrip the productivity of the earth in supplying food. Malthus' views are examined in this 1986 book and estimates are made of the need to increase and the possibilities of increasing both the nutritional status of the world's population and the production of food and other essentials. The enormous dilemmas that face mankind, the economic arguments that, while apparently logical, pose large moral questions, and the possib
Since ancient Athens, democrats have taken pride in their power and inclination to change their laws, yet they have also sought to counter this capacity by creating immutable laws. In Democracy and Legal Change, Melissa Schwartzberg argues that modifying law is a fundamental and attractive democratic activity. Against those who would defend the use of 'entrenchment clauses' to protect key constitutional provisions from revision, Schwartzberg seeks to demonstrate historically the strategic and even unjust purposes unamendable laws have typically served, and to highlight the regrettable consequences that entrenchment may have for democracies today. Drawing on historical evidence, classical political theory, and contemporary constitutional and democratic theory, Democracy and Legal Change reexamines the relationship between democracy and the rule of law from a new, and often surprising, set of vantage points.
A. L. Kennedy, the son of a British diplomat, began a long career in journalism with The Times before the First World War. When he returned to the newspaper in 1919 - as Captain Kennedy - he began to keep a journal of his activities and ideas, his conversations with politicians, officials and journalists. This book is an edited and annotated selection from his journals between 1932 and 1939, during which period he served as The Times' assistant foreign editor and in which capacity he was responsible for most of the leading articles on foreign affairs. His journals provide a fascinating insight into the complicated relationship between The Times and the government: intriguing to read, they are an extremely valuable source for historians of diplomacy politics and journalism in Britain between the wars and help to illuminate our understanding of 'appeasement'.
A. L. Kennedy, the son of a British diplomat, began a long career in journalism with The Times before the First World War. When he returned to the newspaper in 1919 - as Captain Kennedy - he began to keep a journal of his activities and ideas, his conversations with politicians, officials and journalists. This book is an edited and annotated selection from his journals between 1932 and 1939, during which period he served as The Times' assistant foreign editor and in which capacity he was responsible for most of the leading articles on foreign affairs. His journals provide a fascinating insight into the complicated relationship between The Times and the government: intriguing to read, they are an extremely valuable source for historians of diplomacy politics and journalism in Britain between the wars and help to illuminate our understanding of 'appeasement'.
Are foreign investors the privileged citizens of a new constitutional order that guarantees rates of return on investment interests? Schneiderman explores the linkages between a new investment rules regime and state constitutions – between a constitution-like regime for the protection of foreign investment and the constitutional projects of national states. The investment rules regime, as in classical accounts of constitutionalism, considers democratically authorized state action as inherently suspect. Despite the myriad purposes served by constitutionalism, the investment rules regime aims solely to enforce limits, both inside and outside of national constitutional systems, beyond which citizen-driven politics will be disabled. Drawing on contemporary and historical case studies, the author argues that any transnational regime should encourage innovation, experimentation, and the capacity to imagine alternative futures for managing the relationship between politics and markets. These
Modern statesmen and political theorists have long struggled to design institutions that will simultaneously respect individual freedom of religion, nurture religion's capacity to be a force for civic good and human rights, and tame religion's illiberal tendencies. Moving past the usual focus on personal free expression of religion, this illuminating book - written by renowned scholars of law and religion from the United States, England, and Israel - considers how the institutional design of both religions and political regimes influences the relationship between religious practice and activity and human rights. The authors examine how the organization of religious communities affects human rights, and investigate the scope of a just state's authority with respect to organized religion in the name of human rights. They explore the institutional challenges posed by, and possible responses to, the fraught relationship between religion and rights in the world today.
Quotas for women in government have swept the globe. Yet we know little about their capacity to upend entrenched social, political, and economic hierarchies. Women, Power, and Property explores this question within the context of India, the world's largest democracy. Brulé employs a research design that maximizes causal inference alongside extensive field research to explain the relationship between political representation, backlash, and economic empowerment. Her findings show that women in government – gatekeepers – catalyze access to fundamental economic rights to property. Women in politics have the power to support constituent rights at critical junctures, such as marriage negotiations, when they can strike integrative solutions to intrahousehold bargaining. Yet there is a paradox: quotas are essential for enforcement of rights, but they generate backlash against women who gain rights without bargaining leverage. In this groundbreaking study, Brulé shows how well-designed quotas c
Ryan Hass charts a path forward in America's relationship and rivalry with China rooted in the relative advantages America already possesses. Hass argues that while competition will remain the defining trait of the relationship, both countries will continue to be impacted--for good or ill--by their capacity to coordinate on common challenges that neither can solve on its own, such as pandemic disease, global economic recession, climate change, and nuclear nonproliferation. Hass makes the case that the United States will have greater success in outpacing China economically and outshining it in questions of governance if it focuses more on improving its own condition at home than on trying to impede Chinese initiatives. He argues that the task at hand is not to stand in China's way and turn a rising power into an enemy in the process but to renew America's advantages in its competition with China.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev reflects on the relationship between destruction and art, and on art''s converse capacity for healing. Guiding us through a web of etymological, historical, philosophical, p
This book argues that community can exist at the international level, and that security politics is profoundly shaped by it, with states dwelling within an international community having the capacity to develop a pacific disposition. By investigating the relationship between international community and the possibility for peaceful change, this book revisits the concept first pioneered by Karl Deutsch: 'security communities'. Leading scholars examine security communities in various historical and regional contexts: in places where they exist, where they are emerging, and where they are hardly detectable. Building on constructivist theory, the volume is an important contribution to international relations theory and security studies, attempting to understand the conjunction of transnational forces, state power and international organizations that can produce a security community.
This book argues that community can exist at the international level, and that security politics is profoundly shaped by it, with states dwelling within an international community having the capacity to develop a pacific disposition. By investigating the relationship between international community and the possibility for peaceful change, this book revisits the concept first pioneered by Karl Deutsch: 'security communities'. Leading scholars examine security communities in various historical and regional contexts: in places where they exist, where they are emerging, and where they are hardly detectable. Building on constructivist theory, the volume is an important contribution to international relations theory and security studies, attempting to understand the conjunction of transnational forces, state power and international organizations that can produce a security community.
The modern concept of disability did not exist in the Romantic period. This study addresses the anachronistic use of 'disability' in scholarship of the Romantic era, providing a disability studies theorized account that explores the relationship between ideas of function and aesthetics. Unpacking the politics of ability, the book reveals the centrality of capacity and weakness concepts to the egalitarian politics of the 1790s, and the importance of desert theory to debates about sentiment and the charitable relief of impaired soldiers. Clarifying the aesthetics of deformity as distinct from discussions of ability, Joshua uncovers a controversy over the use of deformity in picturesque aesthetics, offers accounts of deformity that anticipate recent disability studies theory, and discusses deformity and monstrosity as a blended category in Frankenstein. Setting aside the modern concept of disability, Joshua cogently argues for the historical and critical value of period-specific terms.
