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Reforming the European Union: From Maastricht to Amsterdam
by Philip Lynch Nanette Neuwahl G. Wyn ReesAnalyses the likely future of the EU following next year's Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) which is likely to be even more significant for the future of Europe than the Maastricht Treaty. Since Maastricht it has become clear that future developments are less certain with regard to the EU and integration. The IGC will have to try and resolve tensions such as: "widening" Europe to include former communist countries whislt also trying to "deepen" Europe with increased political and economic integration; providing a framework which is acceptable to a core of countries (Benelux, Germany, France) who favour more integration and an early move to monetary union with countries such as the UK, which does not.
Reforming the International Financial System for Development (Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia: Challenges in Development and Globalization)
by Jomo Kwame SundaramThe 1944 Bretton Woods conference created new institutions for international economic governance. Though flawed, the system led to a golden age in postwar reconstruction, sustained economic growth, job creation, and postcolonial development. Yet financial liberalization since the 1970s has involved deregulation and globalization, which have exacerbated instability, rather than sustained growth. In addition, the failure of Bretton Woods to provide a reserve currency enabled the dollar to fill the void, which has contributed to periodic, massive U.S. trade deficits. Our latest global financial crisis, in which all these weaknesses played a part, underscores how urgently we must reform the international financial system. Prepared for the G24 research program, a consortium of developing countries focused on financial issues, this volume argues that such reforms must be developmental. Chapters review historical trends in global liquidity, financial flows to emerging markets, and the food crisis, identifying the systemic flaws that contributed to the recent downturn. They challenge the effectiveness of recent policy and suggest criteria for regulatory reform, keeping in mind the different circumstances, capacities, and capabilities of various economies. Essays follow ongoing revisions in international banking standards, the improved management of international capital flows, the critical role of the World Trade Organization in liberalizing and globalizing financial services, and the need for international tax cooperation. They also propose new global banking and reserve currency arrangements.
Reforming the Presidential Nominating Process: Front-Loading's Consequences and the National Primary Solution (Routledge Research in American Politics and Governance)
by Lisa K. ParshallThe 2020 presidential selection process is already underway. As the political parties finalize their nominating rules and the states jostle for an advantageous contest date, potential challengers are being identified and sized up by party insiders. Once again, media and popular attention will be disproportionately focused on the candidates’ performance in the first and earliest of the state nominating contests—and on how quickly the sequence of primaries and caucuses winnows the field and identifies the presumptive nominees. But what are the implications of a sequential and front-loaded nominating calendar that gives some voters outsized influence while leaving many others with a constrained choice—or no choice—in the selection of their party’s presidential nominee? Reforming the Presidential Nominating Process: Front-Loading's Consequences and the National Primary Solution critiques the contemporary nominating process from the perspective of voters and their right to effectively participate in their parties’ selection of a presidential nominee. Employing both a common-sense and legal, rights-based framework to invite a constitutionally grounded conversation on the legitimacy of the current presidential nominating process, Lisa K. Parshall argues that timing of participation in the nomination goes hand-in-hand with the right to choose a candidate and the fairest way to restore the promise of meaningful and timely participation for all voters is by adopting a same-day national primary. Viewed from the party membership perspective, this work illuminates the fundamental interests at stake that should be considered in any potential reform of the presidential nominating system.
Reforming the Public Sector
by Giovanni Tria Giovanni ValottiMany countries are still struggling to adapt to the broad and unexpected effects of modernization initiatives. As changes take shape, governments are challenged to explore new reforms. The public sector is now characterized by profound transformation across the globe, with ramifications that are yet to be interpreted. To convert this transformation into an ongoing state of improvement, policymakers and civil service leaders must learn to implement and evaluate change. This book is an important contribution to that end. Reforming the Public Sector presents comparative perspectives of government reform and innovation, discussing three decades of reform in public sector strategic management across nations. The contributors examine specific reform-related issues including the uses and abuses of public sector transparency, the "Audit Explosion," and the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in Europe.This volume will greatly aid practitioners and policymakers to better understand the principles underpinning ongoing reforms in the public sector. Giovanni Tria, Giovanni Valotti, and their cohorts offer a scientific understanding of the main issues at stake in this arduous process. They place the approach to public administration reform in a broad international context and identify a road map for public management.Contributors include: Michael Barzelay, Nicola Bellé, Andrea Bonomi Savignon, Geert Bouckaert, Luca Brusati, Paola Cantarelli, Denita Cepiku, Francesco Cerase, Luigi Corvo, Maria Cucciniello, Isabell Egger-Peitler, Paolo Fedele, Gerhard Hammerschmid, Mario Ianniello, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, Irvine Lapsley, Peter Leisink, Mariannunziata Liguori, Renate Meyer, Greta Nasi, James L. Perry, Christopher Pollitt, Adrian Ritz, Raffaella Saporito, MariaFrancesca Sicilia, Ileana Steccolini, Bram Steijn, Wouter Vandenabeele, and Montgomery Van Wart.
Reforming the Public Sector
by Giovanni Valotti Giovanni TriaMany countries are still struggling to adapt to the broad and unexpected effects of modernization initiatives. As changes take shape, governments are challenged to explore new reforms. The public sector is now characterized by profound transformation across the globe, with ramifications that are yet to be interpreted. To convert this transformation into an ongoing state of improvement, policymakers and civil service leaders must learn to implement and evaluate change. This book is an important contribution to that end. Reforming the Public Sector presents comparative perspectives of government reform and innovation, discussing three decades of reform in public sector strategic management across nations. The contributors examine specific reform-related issues including the uses and abuses of public sector transparency, the "Audit Explosion," and the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in Europe.This volume will greatly aid practitioners and policymakers to better understand the principles underpinning ongoing reforms in the public sector. Giovanni Tria, Giovanni Valotti, and their cohorts offer a scientific understanding of the main issues at stake in this arduous process. They place the approach to public administration reform in a broad international context and identify a road map for public management.Contributors include: Michael Barzelay, Nicola Bell?, Andrea Bonomi Savignon, Geert Bouckaert, Luca Brusati, Paola Cantarelli, Denita Cepiku, Francesco Cerase, Luigi Corvo, Maria Cucciniello, Isabell Egger-Peitler, Paolo Fedele, Gerhard Hammerschmid, Mario Ianniello, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, Irvine Lapsley, Peter Leisink, Mariannunziata Liguori, Renate Meyer, Greta Nasi, James L. Perry, Christopher Pollitt, Adrian Ritz, Raffaella Saporito, MariaFrancesca Sicilia, Ileana Steccolini, Bram Steijn, Wouter Vandenabeele, and Montgomery Van Wart.
Reforming the Reform: Problems of Public Schooling in the American Welfare State
by Susan L. Moffitt Michaela Krug O'Neill David K. CohenAn expansive study of the problems encountered by educational leaders in pursuit of reform, and how these issues cyclically translate into future topics of reform. School reform is almost always born out of big dreams and well-meaning desires to change the status quo. But between lofty reform legislation and the students whose education is at stake, there are numerous additional policies and policymakers who determine how reforms operate. Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate problems created by earlier reforms or existing injustices, all while introducing new complications. In Reforming the Reform, political scientist Susan L. Moffitt, education policy scholar Michaela Krug O’Neill, and the late policy and education scholar David K. Cohen take on a wide-ranging examination of the many intricacies of school reform. With a particular focus on policymakers in the spaces between legislation and implementation, such as the countless school superintendents and district leaders tasked with developing new policies in the unique context of their district or schools, the authors identify common problems that arise when trying to operationalize ambitious reform ideas. Their research draws on more than 250 interviews with administrators in Tennessee and California (chosen as contrasts for their different political makeup and centralization of the education system) and is presented here alongside survey data from across the United States as well as archival data to demonstrate how public schools shoulder enormous responsibilities for the American social safety net. They provide a general explanation for problems facing social policy reforms in federalist systems (including healthcare) and offer pathways forward for education policy in particular.
Reforming the State Without Changing the Model of Power?: On Administrative Reform in Post-Socialist Countries
by Anton OleinikThis book places administrative reform in post-socialist countries in a broad context of power and domination. This new perspective clarifies the reasons why reforms went awry in Russia and some other post-Soviet countries, whereas they produced positive outcomes in the Baltic States and most East European countries. The contributors analyse the idea that administrative reform cannot produce sustainable changes in the organization of the state apparatus as long as it does not touch the underpinning model of power and domination. Using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, the essays combine elements of philosophy, sociology, political science and economics, including a wealth of primary and secondary data: surveys, in-depth interviews with state representatives and participant observation. The book focuses on Russia and analyses recent developments in this country by the way of comparison with the experience of carrying out administrative reform in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland, Germany and North America.This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.
Reforming the UN Security Council Membership: The illusion of representativeness (Routledge Research in International Law)
by Sabine HasslerThis book comprehensively examines the different proposals put forward for reforming the UN Security Council by analysing their objectives and exploring whether the implementation of these proposals would actually create a representative and more effective Security Council. The book places the discussion on reform of Security Council membership in the context of the council’s primary responsibility, which is at the helm of the UN collective security system. The author contends that only a Council that is adequately representative of the UN membership can claim to legitimately act on the members’ behalf. This book offers an inquiry into the Council’s constitutional framework and how far that framework still reflects the expectations and intentions of the founding nations, whilst remaining flexible enough to satisfy today’s, and possibly tomorrow’s, membership. Through the use of policy-oriented jurisprudence and elements of the International Law/International Relations theory this book explores how reform can best be realised. Reforming the UN Security Council Membership will be of particular interest to scholars and students of International Law and International Relations.
Reforming the Welfare State: Recovery and Beyond in Sweden
by Richard B. Freeman Birgitta Swedenborg Robert H. TopelOver the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed--a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. Bringing together leading economists,Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.
Reforming the Welfare State (Routledge Studies in the Political Economy of the Welfare State)
by Carsten Jensen Georg WenzelburgerThis book introduces a unique, new dataset on welfare state reforms in the UK, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany from 1974 to 2014. Using a variety of welfare state types in Europe, the authors have systematically investigated core questions that have preoccupied the welfare state literature at least since the 1990s. These include the extent of path dependency in mature welfare states, the usage of so-called "invisible" policy instruments for hiding cutbacks, and the role of partisanship – on whether the ideological color of the incumbent affects policy – which have been analysed in depth by examining the new dataset presented in this book. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners studying, and working in, welfare and the welfare state, and more broadly to political science, sociology and social policy.
Reforming to Survive: The Bolshevik Origins of Social Policies (Elements in Political Economy)
by Magnus B. Rasmussen Carl Henrik KnutsenThis Element details how elites provide policy concessions when they face credible threats of revolution. Specifically, the authors discuss how the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent formation of Comintern enhanced elites' perceptions of revolutionary threat by affecting the capacity and motivation of labor movements as well as the elites' interpretation of information signals. These developments incentivized elites to provide policy concessions to urban workers, notably reduced working hours and expanded social transfer programs. The authors assess their argument by using original qualitative and quantitative data. First, they document changes in perceptions of revolutionary threat and strategic policy concessions in early inter-war Norway by using archival and other sources. Second, they code, for example, representatives at the 1919 Comintern meeting to proxy for credibility of domestic revolutionary threat in cross-national analysis. States facing greater threats expanded various social policies to a larger extent than other countries, and some of these differences persisted for decades.
Reforming UK Public Policy Through Elected Regional Government
by Malcolm J. ProwleThis book takes an in-depth look at the enormous challenges facing UK public services and considers what might be done to resolve them. The authors are confident that more of the same over-centralised approaches to public policy and so-called "levelling-up" policies will just not work. Instead, they argue for an application of radical measures, involving the creation of elected regional governments in England similar to the devolved arrangements in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The book comprises four distinct parts: introduction and context; the need for major reform; policies for individual public services and cross-cutting themes. Following an introduction and discussion of the meaning of the terms public policy and public services, the first part goes on to discuss at length the substantial challenges to public policy and public services. The second part sets out the need for over-arching reforms, designed to address the issues discussed above, namely the development of elected regional governments. Each chapter in part three explores key themes concerning individual public policy areas and public services, while part four discusses a number of themes, which cut across all the public services already considered. Although the book is focused on and is of great relevance within the UK, it also has international appeal, as many of the themes discussed will have resonance in other countries and the analysis of public policy in regional administrations will also be of interest in other jurisdictions. It will appeal to students and academics in the fields of government and politics, economics, finance and accounting, public administration, public service management and social policy, as well as policymakers, practicing civil servants, public service managers and elected representatives.
Reforming UN Decision-Making Procedures: Promoting a Deliberative System for Global Peace and Security (Routledge Research on the United Nations (UN))
by Martin Daniel NiemetzThe institutional procedures for the UN’s decision-making on issues of global peace and security, first and foremost the Security Council (SC), were conceived with the objective of enabling a swift but internationally coordinated response to irregular situations of crises. Today, however, the UN is constantly involved in situations of conflict and has expanded its range of activities. This book offers a concrete and practically applicable answer to the question of how to reform the UN and increase the legitimacy of the UN’s decision-making procedures on issues of global peace and security. In order to provide this answer, it connects the minutia of institutional design with the abstract principals of democratic theory in a systematic and reproducible method, thereby enabling a clear normative evaluation of even the smallest technical detail of reform. This evaluation demonstrates that there is a range of feasible proposals for reform that could improve the SC’s accountability both to the General Assembly and to the general public, that could increase the opportunities for effective input from the UN membership and NGOs. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the United Nations, International Organizations and regional governance.
Reforming Urban Governance in Bangladesh
by Pranab Kumar PandayThis book provides an analysis of the urban government system in Bangladesh, focusing on its upper tier, the City Corporation (CC), and the institutional and legal frameworks within which it operates. Along with a discussion of the scale and magnitude of urbanization, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of the reform agendas of CCs including their functional assignments, local political leadership, local control over administration and service delivery, local fiscal autonomy and local financial management, and local participation and accountability mechanisms. Very few efforts have been taken to analyze the comprehensive reform agenda required to make the CCs effectively discharge their duties and responsibilities in the context of Bangladesh. This book therefore not only fills this gap in the literature, but also provides recommendations on each reform agenda.
Reforming Vietnamese Higher Education: Global Forces and Local Demands (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects #50)
by Ly Thi Tran Nhai Thi NguyenThis book deepens readers’ conceptual understanding of and provides practical insights into Vietnam’s higher education reforms. Globalisation has had profound impacts on higher education worldwide, creating transnational linkages and junctures, as well as disjunctures. At the same time, it has generated fluidities, hybridities and mobilities. Within the postcolonial context of Vietnam, it is imperative to identify the unique global traits that characterise the Vietnamese higher education system. The book focuses specifically on key aspects of culture and values that are decisive to the reform of Vietnamese higher education under the forces of globalisation. It critically examines how global forces have shaped and reshaped Vietnam’s higher education landscape. At the same time, the book explores local demands on Vietnamese higher education, and deciphers how higher education institutions are responding to globalisation, internationalisation and local demands. Based on empirical research, theoretical approaches and the experiences of researchers from Vietnam and overseas, it addresses critical perspectives on the aspects fundamental to the reform of Vietnamese higher education and outlines viable paths for the future.
Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity
by Shireen Hunter Shireen T HunterIn recent years, Islamic fundamentalist, revolutionary, and jihadist movements have overshadowed more moderate and reformist voices and trends within Islam. This compelling volume introduces the current generation of reformist thinkers and activists, the intellectual traditions they carry on, and the reasons for the failure of reformist movements to sustain broad support in the Islamic world today. Richly detailed regionally focused chapters cover Iran, the Arab East, the Maghreb, South Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Europe, and North America. The editor's introductory chapter traces the roots of reformist thinking both in Islamic tradition and as a response to the challenge of modernity for Muslims struggling to reconcile the requirements of modernization with their cultural and religious values. The concluding chapter identifies commonalities, comparisons, and trends in the modernizing movements.
Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives #102)
by Eric M. PatashnikReforms at Risk is the first book to closely examine what happens to sweeping and seemingly successful policy reforms after they are passed. Most books focus on the politics of reform adoption, yet as Eric Patashnik shows here, the political struggle does not end when major reforms become enacted. Why do certain highly praised policy reforms endure while others are quietly reversed or eroded away? Patashnik peers into some of the most critical arenas of domestic-policy reform--including taxes, agricultural subsidies, airline deregulation, emissions trading, welfare state reform, and reform of government procurement--to identify the factors that enable reform measures to survive. He argues that the reforms that stick destroy an existing policy subsystem and reconfigure the political dynamic. Patashnik demonstrates that sustainable reforms create positive policy feedbacks, transform institutions, and often unleash the ''creative destructiveness'' of market forces.Reforms at Risk debunks the argument that reforms inevitably fail because Congress is prey to special interests, and the book provides a more realistic portrait of the possibilities and limits of positive change in American government. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wants to ensure that hard-fought reform victories survive.
Reforms in Long-Term Care Policies in Europe
by Emmanuele Pavolini Costanzo RanciOver the last two decades, many changes have happened to the social welfare policies of various industrial countries. Citizens have seen their pensions, unemployment benefits, and general healthcare policies shrink as "belt tightening" measures are enforced. But in contrast, long-term care has seen a general growth in public financing, an expansion of beneficiaries, and, more generally, an attempt to define larger social responsibilities and related social rights. The aim of this book is to describe and interpret the changes introduced in long-term care policies in Western Europe. The volume argues that recent reforms have brought about an increasing convergence in LTC policies. Most of the new programs have developed a new general approach to long-term care, based on a better integration of social care and health care. The book explores increasing public support given to family care work (in the past, the family would take care of the elderly or infirm) and increasing growth and recognition of a extended social care market (by which care has shifted from a moral obligation based on family reciprocity to a paid, professional activity). A new social care arrangement has therefore been developing in Western countries, based on a new mix of family obligations, market provision, and public support. In order to understand such changes, this analysis will take into account the social and economical impact of these reforms.
Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism: How Progressive Era Feminists Redefined Who We Are, and What It Means Today (Intersectionality)
by Wendy SarvasyIn Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism, Wendy Sarvasy recovers the unacknowledged Progressive Era social democratic feminist refounders who used collective political agency to reshape the body politic. Through intersectional activism, or the bridging of different movements, the refounders, who include Ida Wells-Barnett, Rose Schneiderman, and Jane Addams, created an intersectional, social democratic feminist understanding of democracy that allowed them to imagine their full inclusion. Sarvasy shows how these activists worked to incorporate women by combining political democracy with the creation of a welfare state. They embedded this nation-state project within a new humanitarian transnational level as they evolved their multileveled social citizenship. Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism demonstrates how a theory-activist dynamic played out in experimental socializing spaces and democratic conversations. It offers an inspirational method for intersectional activists today.
Refracted Economies: Diamond Mining and Social Reproduction in the North
by Rebecca Jane HallSince the beginning of the twenty-first century, diamonds have been lauded as a "glistening" driver of the northern Canadian economy. Canadian diamonds are cast with an imagined purity as though they had emerged by magic. However, these diamonds are mined on Dene land and extracted by people who fly in from afar, separated from their families for long periods of time. Adopting a decolonizing and feminist approach to political economy, Refracted Economies analyses the impact of diamond mining in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The book centres on Indigenous women’s social reproduction labour – both at the mine sites and at sites of community, home, and care – as a means of understanding the diffuse impacts of the diamond mines. Grounded in ethnographic work, the narratives of northern Indigenous women’s multiple labours offer unique insight into the gendered ways northern land and livelihoods have been restructured by the diamond industry. Rebecca Jane Hall draws on documentary analysis, interviews, and talking circles in order to understand and appreciate the – often unseen – labour performed by Indigenous women. Placing this day-to-day labour at the heart of her analysis, Hall shows that it both reproduces the mixed economy and resists the gendered violence of settler colonialism as exemplified by extractive capitalism.
Refractions of Civil Society in Turkey
by Daniella KuzmanovicDrawing on data from ethnographic fieldwork among civic activists and identifying a range of domestic and international socio-political contexts, Refractions of Civil Society in Turkey explores different perceptions of civil society in Turkey and pursues the general question of why civil society holds such power to move those who evoke it.
Reframing Blackness and Black Solidarities through Anti-colonial and Decolonial Prisms
by George J. Sefa DeiThis book grounds particular struggles at the curious interface of skin, body, psyche, hegemonies and politics. Specifically, it adds to current [re]theorizations of Blackness, anti-Blackness and Black solidarities, through anti-colonial and decolonial prisms. The discussion challenges the reductionism of contemporary polity of Blackness in regards to capitalism/globalization, particularly when relegated to the colonial power and privileged experiences of settler. The book does so by arguing that this practice perpetuates procedures of violence and social injustice upon Black and African peoples. The book brings critical readings to Black racial identity, representation and politics informed by pertinent questions: What are the tools/frameworks Black peoples in Euro-American/Canadian contexts can deploy to forge community and solidarity, and to resist anti-Black racism and other social oppressions? What critical analytical tools can be developed to account for Black lived experiences, agency and resistance? What are the limits of the tools or frameworks for anti-racist, anti-colonial work? How do such critical tools or frameworks of Blackness and anti-Blackness assist in anti-racist and anti-colonial practice? The book provides new coordinates for collective and global mobilization by troubling the politics of "decolonizing solidarity" as pointing to new ways for forging critical friends and political workers. The book concludes by offering some important lessons for teaching and learning about Blackness and anti-Blackness confronting some contemporary issues of schooling and education in Euro-American contexts, and suggesting ways to foster dialogic and generative forums for such critical discussions.
Reframing Climate Change: Constructing ecological geopolitics
by Shannon O'Lear Simon Dalby"Change the system, not the climate" is a common slogan of climate change activists. Yet when this idea comes into the academic and policy realm, it is easy to see how climate change discourse frequently asks the wrong questions. Reframing Climate Change encourages social scientists, policy-makers, and graduate students to critically consider how climate change is framed in scientific, social, and political spheres. It proposes ecological geopolitics as a framework for understanding the extent to which climate change is a meaningful analytical focus, as well as the ways in which it can be detrimental, detracting attention from more productive lines of thought, research, and action. The volume draws from multiple perspectives and disciplines to cover a broad scope of climate change. Chapter topics range from climate science and security to climate justice and literacy. Although these familiar concepts are widely used by scholars and policy-makers, they are discussed here as frequently problematic when used as lenses through which to study climate change. Beyond merely reviewing current trends within these different approaches to climate change, the collection offers a thoughtful assessment of these approaches with an eye towards an overarching reconsideration of the current understanding of our relationship to climate change. Reframing Climate Change is an essential resource for students, policy-makers, and anyone interested in understanding more about this important topic. Who decides what the priorities are? Who benefits from these priorities, and what kinds of systems or actions are justified or hindered? The key contribution of the book is the outlining of ecological geopolitics as a different way of understanding human–environment relationships including and beyond climate change issues.
Reframing Education as a Public and Common Good: Enhancing Democratic Governance
by Rita LocatelliThis book examines the normative principles that guide the governance of education, in particular the notion of education as a public good. Determining whether this concept is still valid is a topic of growing importance, especially considering the phenomena of increasing privatisation and marketisation in the sector. The author posits that the prioritisation of economic aspects of education may lead to the weakening of the role of the State in ensuring equality of opportunity and social justice, and thus to a significant risk of considering education as merely a private, marketable good. The volume argues that considering education as a common good can lead to the strengthening of democratic and participatory approaches to educational governance, based on the recognition of education as a shared endeavour and responsibility. It will be of interest and value to students and scholars of education as a public good, social justice, and the wider neoliberalisation of the education sector.
Reframing Energy Access: Insights from The Gambia (Routledge Focus on Environment and Sustainability)
by Anne SchifferThis book investigates energy access through the lens of everyday energy practices in the Gambian community of Kartong. Reframing Energy Access: Insights from The Gambia explores past, current and potential future modes of energy production and consumption to examine concepts such as energy leapfrogging and energy sufficiency. It argues that developments must be rooted in situated understanding of energy consumption to ensure sustainable and equitable access to modern energy services. Schiffer provides a uniquely long-term and holistic perspective into changing energy practices on the ground and the economic, political, environmental, technical and cultural factors that shape it. Translating insights of energy in The Gambian context into broader themes and recommendations, this book will be of great interest to policy makers, researchers and practitioners who work in the fields of energy access, energy policy, renewable energy transitions, as well as African and sustainable development in general.