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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.
From Empires to Imperialism: The State and the Rise of Bourgeois Civilisation (Rethinking Globalizations)
by Boris KagarlitskyTranslated from the original Russian, this book analyzes the economic development of leading European empires and the United States of America. The author exposes the myths of the spontaneous emergence of the market economy and the role of government as a disincentive towards private initiative, when for centuries the state power has been carrying out a "coercing to the market" with all its strength. This book presents a somewhat epic depiction of the development of Western hegemonic powers within the capitalist world system, from the struggles of the late Middle Ages to the rise and crisis of the American Empire. It both develops and questions some of the traditional assumptions of the world-system theory, arguing that it was very much the political form of the state that shaped capitalism as we know it and that, though the existence of a hegemonic power results from the logic of the system, hegemony is often missing in reality. A major work of historical Marxist theory, this book is essential reading for students of international political economy, globalisation and the crisis of capitalism. This book is also ideal for students of politics, history, economics and international relations.
From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel
by Gregory MannThis book looks beyond the familiar history of former empires and new nation-states to consider newly transnational communities of solidarity and aid, social science and activism. Shortly after independence from France in 1960, the people living along the Sahel - a long, thin stretch of land bordering the Sahara - became the subjects of human rights campaigns and humanitarian interventions. Just when its states were strongest and most ambitious, the postcolonial West African Sahel became fertile terrain for the production of novel forms of governmental rationality realized through NGOs. The roots of this "nongovernmentality" lay partly in Europe and North America, but it flowered, paradoxically, in the Sahel. This book is unique in that it questions not only how West African states exercised their new sovereignty but also how and why NGOs - ranging from CARE and Amnesty International to black internationalists - began to assume elements of sovereignty during a period in which it was so highly valued.
From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence
by Mindy Thompson Fullilove Hannah L. CooperA public health approach to understanding and eliminating excessive police violence.Excessive police violence and its disproportionate targeting of minority communities has existed in the United States since police forces first formed in the colonial period. A personal tragedy for its victims, for the people who love them, and for their broader communities, excessive police violence is also a profound violation of human and civil rights.Most public discourse about excessive police violence focuses, understandably, on the horrors of civilian deaths. In From Enforcers to Guardians, Hannah L. F. Cooper and Mindy Thompson Fullilove approach the issue from a radically different angle: as a public health problem. By using a public health framing, this book challenges readers to recognize that the suffering created by excessive police violence extends far outside of death to include sexual, psychological, neglectful, and nonfatal physical violence as well.Arguing that excessive police violence has been deliberately used to marginalize working-class and minority communities, Cooper and Fullilove describe what we know about the history, distribution, and health impacts of police violence, from slave patrols in colonial times to war on drugs policing in the present-day United States. Finally, the book surveys efforts, including Barack Obama's 2015 creation of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, to eliminate police violence, and proposes a multisystem, multilevel strategy to end marginality and police violence and to achieve guardian policing. Aimed at anyone seeking to understand the causes and distributions of excessive police violence—and to develop interventions to end it—From Enforcers to Guardians frames excessive police violence so that it can be understood, researched, and taught about through a public health lens.
From Entrenched Gender Bias to Economic Empowerment: Undermining the Patriarchy (Sustainable Development Goals Series)
by Bhabani Shankar Nayak Eunju Hwang Utkarsha MalkarThis book examines entrenched gender bias and the economic, political, and social systems that sustain patriarchy. Drawing examples from both developed and developing countries, it underscores the barriers women face within the capitalist system. It delves into how operational practices, economic frameworks, and political institutions perpetuate gender bias. Through the study of cases where traditional power structures have been challenged, it proposes a framework for achieving gender equality through cooperative and collaborative action, ensuring inclusion for all within the democratic system. This book places particular emphasis on the economic involvement of rural women, the potential for technology to empower women, gender equality within the creative industries, and the enduring nature of patriarchy. It demonstrates how economic progress can be inclusive and beneficial for women globally and will be of interest to students and researchers in development studies, labour economics, political economy, and gender studies.
From Environmental to Comprehensive Security
by Arthur H. WestingThis work presents the evolution of the traditional concept of "national security" as military security to additionally embrace "environmental security" and then necessarily also "social (societal) security", thence to be termed "comprehensive human security". It accomplishes this primarily by presenting 11 of the author's own benchmark papers published between 1983 and 2010 (additionally providing bibliographic citations to a further 36 of the author's related publications during that period). The work stresses the importance of transfrontier (regional) cooperation, and also recognizes global overpopulation as a key impediment to achieving comprehensive human security.
From Environmental to Ecological Law (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)
by Kirsten Anker; Peter D. Burdon; Geoffrey Garver; Michelle Maloney; Carla SbertThis book increases the visibility, clarity and understanding of ecological law. Ecological law is emerging as a field of law founded on systems thinking and the need to integrate ecological limits, such as planetary boundaries, into law. Presenting new thinking in the field, this book focuses on problem areas of contemporary law including environmental law, property law, trusts, legal theory and First Nations law and explains how ecological law provides solutions. Written by ecological law experts, it does this by 1) providing an overview of shortcomings of environmental law and other areas of contemporary law, 2) presenting specific examples of these shortcomings, 3) explaining what ecological law is and how it provides solutions to the shortcomings of contemporary law, and 4) showing how society can overcome some key challenges in the transition to ecological law. Drawing on a diverse range of case study examples including Indigenous law, ecological restoration and mining, this volume will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers of environmental and ecological law and governance, political science, environmental ethics and ecological and degrowth economics.
From Epic Tales to Digital Trails: Understanding New Mediascapes in Activism
by Nalanda RoyThis book offers a critical perspective on the digital landscape, and examines how societies can ensure technology serves the public good and does not exacerbate existing inequalities. It advocates for a proactive approach to address challenges presented by digital media, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines and inclusive decision-making processes. Rather than merely outlining problems, the the volume offers potential solutions and frameworks for navigating the future, and advocates new forms of political engagement and innovative approaches to governance that leverage technology while safeguarding democratic values and human rights. Through a multidisciplinary lens, the chapters dissect critical issues, from the contours of digital landscapes to social media’s impact on communication patterns to the transformative power of digital mobilization.Journeying into diverse facets of human engagement with digital media, the book also explores how actors navigate the geographies of digital spaces and the resources at their disposal. The volume will be essential reading for scholars and researchers of media and communications studies, sociology and politics.
From Euphoria To Hysteria: Western European Security After The Cold War
by David G. HaglundThis book provides a detailed overview of the debate about the institutional context of Western European security after the Cold War. It discusses various aspects of contemporary European security 'architecture' and explores various aspects of the new transatlantic and European threat environment.
From Europeanisation to Diffusion (ISSN)
by Tanja A. Börzel; Thomas RisseThis book provides a comprehensive account of the extent to which policies and institutions of the European Union (EU) spread across different contexts. Are the EU’s attempts to transfer its policies and institutions to accession and neighbourhood countries sustainable and effective? To what degree do other regions of the world emulate the EU’s institutional features, what are the mechanisms of, and conditions for, their diffusion? Chapters deal with Europeanization in the new EU member states, particularly in Romania and Bulgaria, in current accession candidates, i.e. the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well the Eastern (Southern Caucasus) and Southern Neighbourhood (Israel and the Maghreb). In addition, authors investigate the diffusion of EU policies and institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The authors place Europeanization studies in the wider context of research on transnational diffusion, and examine the relevant mechanisms and processes, including incentives and capacity-building, socialization and learning as well as functional and normative emulation. Finally, the book discusses what conditions lead to the successful diffusion of European institutions and policies, such as domestic incentives, degrees of (limited) statehood, regime type, and power (a)symmetries. This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.
From Exile to Washington: A Memoir of Leadership in the Twentieth Century
by W. Michael Blumenthal&“The former Treasury Secretary has shared his story in a memoir that is both an engrossing personal narrative and a thoughtful reflection on leadership&” (Henry Kissinger, author of On China). In a life that has spanned nearly nine decades and has taken him around the world and back, W. Michael Blumenthal has borne witness to the world&’s convulsions and transformations during the twentieth century. Born in Germany between the two world wars, Blumenthal narrowly escaped the Nazi horror, when, in 1939, he and his family fled to Shanghai&’s chaotic Jewish ghetto, where they spent the entirety of the WWII. From these fraught and humble beginnings, Blumenthal would emerge a major leader in American business and politics. In the second half of the century, Blumenthal headed two major American corporations—Bendix and Burroughs (later Unisys); served as a US trade ambassador in the State Department and the White House, advising John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; and served under Jimmy Carter as the secretary of the treasury. After his retirement from business and politics, he began an entirely new chapter in his career when he conceived and served as the director of Europe&’s largest Jewish museum—the Jewish Museum of Berlin. An essential autobiography by one of America&’s great political figures, From Exile to Washington is an engaging chronicle of the twentieth century&’s greatest upheavals, and a tribute to a lifetime of courage, leadership, and decisiveness. &“Blumenthal&’s astute understanding of history allows him to ably demonstrate the significance of good leadership.&” —Kirkus Reviews &“An astounding life, splendidly recorded.&” —Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known
From Extractivism to Sustainability: Scenarios and Lessons from Latin America (Routledge Critical Development Studies)
by Henry Veltmeyer Arturo Ezquerro-CañeteThis book investigates how extractive capitalism has developed over the past three decades, what dynamics of resistance have been deployed to combat it, and whether extractivism can ever be transformed into being a part of a progressive development path. It was not until the 20th century that the extraction of natural resources and raw materials took on a decidedly capitalist form, with the global north extracting primary commodities from the global south as a means of capital accumulation. This book investigates whether extractivism, despite its well-documented negative and destructive socioenvironmental impacts and the powerful forces of resistance that it has generated, could ever be transformed into a sustainable post-development strategy. Drawing on diverse sectoral forms of extractivism (mining, fossil fuels, agriculture), this book analyses the dynamics of both the forces of resistance generated by the advance of extractive capital and alternate scenarios for a more sustainable and liveable future. The book draws particularly on the Latin American experience, where both the propensity of capitalism towards crisis and the development of resistance dynamics to ‘extractive’ capital have had their greatest impact in the neoliberal era. This book will be of interest to researchers and students across development studies, economics, political economy, environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and Latin American affairs.
From Failed Communism to Underdeveloped Capitalism: Transformation of Eastern Europe, the Post-Soviet Union and China
by Adam ZwassThis text presents an analysis of the sources and general features of the current political and economic situation in the reforming countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and China.
From Family to Police Force: Security and Belonging on a South Asian Border (Police/Worlds: Studies in Security, Crime, and Governance)
by Farhana IbrahimFrom Family to Police Force illuminates the production and contestation of social, familial, and national order on a South Asian borderland. In the borderland that divides Kutch, a district in the western Indian state of Gujarat, from Sindh, a southern province in Pakistan, there are many forces at work: civil and border police, the air wing of the armed forces, paramilitary forces, and various intelligence agencies that depute officers to the region. These groups are the major actors in the field of security and policing. Farhana Ibrahim offers a bird's-eye view of these groups, drawing on long-standing anthropological engagement with the region. She observes policing on multiple levels, showing in detail that the nation-state is only one of the scales at which policing is enacted at a borderland. Ibrahim draws on multiple sources and forms of policing structure to illuminate everyday interaction on the personal scale, bringing families and individuals into the broader picture. From Family to Police Force looks beyond the obvious sites, sources, and modes of policing to show the distinctions between the act of policing and the institution of the police.
From Farm to Canal Street: Chinatown's Alternative Food Network in the Global Marketplace
by Valerie ImbruceOn the sidewalks of Manhattan's Chinatown, you can find street vendors and greengrocers selling bright red litchis in the summer and mustard greens and bok choy no matter the season. The neighborhood supplies more than two hundred distinct varieties of fruits and vegetables that find their way onto the tables of immigrants and other New Yorkers from many walks of life. Chinatown may seem to be a unique ethnic enclave, but it is by no means isolated. It has been shaped by free trade and by American immigration policies that characterize global economic integration. In From Farm to Canal Street, Valerie Imbruce tells the story of how Chinatown's food network operates amid--and against the grain of--the global trend to consolidate food production and distribution. Manhattan's Chinatown demonstrates how a local market can influence agricultural practices, food distribution, and consumer decisions on a very broad scale. Imbruce recounts the development of Chinatown's food network to include farmers from multimillion-dollar farms near the Everglades Agricultural Area and tropical "homegardens" south of Miami in Florida and small farms in Honduras. Although hunger and nutrition are key drivers of food politics, so are jobs, culture, neighborhood quality, and the environment. Imbruce focuses on these four dimensions and proposes policy prescriptions for the decentralization of food distribution, the support of ethnic food clusters, the encouragement of crop diversity in agriculture, and the cultivation of equity and diversity among agents in food supply chains. Imbruce features farmers and brokers whose life histories illuminate the desires and practices of people working in a niche of the global marketplace.
From Farmyard to City Square? The Electoral Adaptation of the Nordic Agrarian Parties
by David ArterHow successful have the Nordic Agrarian-Centre Parties been in transforming themselves from class parties to catchall parties drawing significant support from voters engaged in the non-primary sectors of the economy? Using case studies from five comparable countries, David Arter provides an insightful account of an historic group of parties who still wield distinctive strength in the Nordic region. This detailed profile, the first ever in English, makes a unique contribution to the topical issues of party adaptation and institutional modernization.
From Fascination to Folly: A Troubled History of Collecting since the 1600s
by Charles MerewetherThis book explores the interplay of Western European exploration and trade, with collecting, cabinets of curiosities and museums, and with the role of booty and plunder in the building of empires from ca.1600 until the end of the 19th century. The book focuses principally on the Dutch, English, Spanish, French and Italian at different times of their colonial power over the course of these 300 years. The achievements of exploration and trade provide the basis for these countries and both the state and individuals to build collections and museums. This involved governments to legitimize the pursuit of booty and subsequently looting whether by themselves, members of the ruling class or privateers. Throughout much of this period, there those who stood up and challenged such practices, passing laws to criminalize, curtail or contain these activities. By the late 18th century, these parallel but disparate activities converged. It was era of Napoleon and his imperial ambitions that drew these disparate activities together, with his support of intellectual inquiry alongside military plunder and collecting. This served as a symbol of imperial power of the French empire that, alongside England and Italy, exploited the wealth and riches of Egypt, India, and China.
From Fascism to Populism in History
by Federico FinchelsteinWhat is fascism and what is populism? What are their connections in history and theory, and how should we address their significant differences? What does it mean when pundits call Donald Trump a fascist, or label as populist politicians who span left and right such as Hugo Chávez, Juan Perón, Rodrigo Duterte, and Marine Le Pen? Federico Finchelstein, one of the leading scholars of fascist and populist ideologies, synthesizes their history in order to answer these questions and offer a thoughtful perspective on how we might apply the concepts today. While they belong to the same history and are often conflated, fascism and populism actually represent distinct political trajectories. Drawing on an expansive record of transnational fascism and postwar populist movements, Finchelstein gives us insightful new ways to think about the state of democracy and political culture on a global scale. This new edition includes an updated preface that brings the book up to date, midway through the Trump presidency and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
From Financial Crisis to Stagnation
by Thomas I. PalleyThe US economy today is confronted with the prospect of extended stagnation. This book explores why. Thomas I. Palley argues that the Great Recession and destruction of shared prosperity is due to flawed economic policy over the past thirty years. One flaw was the growth model adopted after 1980 that relied on debt and asset price inflation to fuel growth instead of wages. A second flaw was the model of globalization that created an economic gash. Financial deregulation and the house price bubble kept the economy going by making ever more credit available. As the economy cannibalized itself by undercutting income distribution and accumulating debt, it needed larger speculative bubbles to grow. That process ended when the housing bubble burst. The book explains why the economy is now confronted with stagnation rather than the quick recovery predicted by other accounts.