Download or read book Backwardness and Modernization Poland and Eastern Europe in the 16th 20th Centuries written by Jacek Kochanowicz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of this book is the economic backwardness of Poland and Eastern Europe in the modern era. The studies in the first part analyse various aspects of the region's economic and social history in the period from the 16th to the 20th centuries, such as the nature of peasant economics, the character of economic evolution, and the ambiguity of social and economic relations between Poland and "the West". The second part deals with the change following the fall of state socialism. Papers in this part argue that, for understanding the present, it is necessary to take into consideration historical legacies. It is also important to look at the process of this recent change comparatively, both within Eastern Europe and comparing this region with other parts of the world. Professor Kochanowicz's contention in these essays is that the so-called transformation has had to cope not only with the effects of state socialism, but also with a much longer legacy of backwardness.
Download or read book Explaining Economic Backwardness written by Anna Sosnowska and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-12 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is about an exciting episode in the intellectual history of Europe: the vigorous debate among leading Polish historians on the sources of the economic development and non-development, including the origins of economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years of this debate between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. Anna Sosnowska provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the notions of post-1945 Polish historians about Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate influenced Western historical sociology, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and the image of Eastern Europe in Western, Marxist-inspired social science. Although created under the adverse conditions of state socialism and censorship, this body of scholarship had an important repercussion in international social science of the post-war period, contributing an emphasis on international comparisons, as well as a stress on social theory and explanations. Sosnowska's analysis also helps to understand current differences that lead to conflicts between Europe’s richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries. The historians she studies also investigated analogies between paths in Eastern Europe and regions of West Africa, Latin America and East Asia.
Download or read book Modernization from the Other Shore written by David C. Engerman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, America's experts on Russia watched as Russia and the Soviet Union embarked on a course of rapid industrialization. Captivated by the idea of modernization, diplomats, journalists, and scholars across the political spectrum rationalized the enormous human cost of this path to progress. In a fascinating examination of this crucial era, David Engerman underscores the key role economic development played in America's understanding of Russia and explores its profound effects on U.S. policy. American intellectuals from George Kennan to Samuel Harper to Calvin Hoover understood Russian events in terms of national character. Many of them used stereotypes of Russian passivity, backwardness, and fatalism to explain the need for--and the costs of--Soviet economic development. These costs included devastating famines that left millions starving while the government still exported grain. This book is a stellar example of the new international history that seamlessly blends cultural and intellectual currents with policymaking and foreign relations. It offers valuable insights into the role of cultural differences and the shaping of economic policy for developing nations even today.
Download or read book Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective written by Alexander Gerschenkron and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth Century Europe written by David Roberts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-27 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By developing a long-term supranational perspective, this ambitious, multi-faceted work provides a new understanding of ‘totalitarianism’, the troubling common element linking Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. The book’s original analysis of antecedent ideas on the subject sheds light on the common origins and practices of the regimes. Through this fresh appreciation of their initial frame of mind, Roberts demonstrates how the three political experiments yielded unprecedented collective mobilization but also a characteristic combination of radicalization, myth-making, and failure. Providing deep historical analysis, the book proves that 'totalitarianism' best characterizes the common features in the originating aspirations, the mode of action and even the outcomes of Soviet communism, Italian fascism and German Nazism. By enhancing our knowledge of what ‘totalitarianism’ was and where it came from, Roberts affords important lessons about the ongoing challenges, possibilities, and dangers of the modern political experiment.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to John F Kennedy written by Andrew Hoberek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to John F. Kennedy explores the creation, and afterlife, of an American icon.
Download or read book Bear Traps on Russia s Road to Modernization written by Clifford G. Gaddy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bear Traps examines Russia’s longer term economic growth prospects. It argues that Russia’s growth challenges are conventionally misdiagnosed and examines the reasons why: a spatial misallocation that imposes excess costs on production and investment; distortions to human capital; an excessively high relative price of investment that serves as a tax on physical capital accumulation; and an economic mechanism that inhibits adjustments that would correct the misallocation. Bear Traps explains why Soviet legacies still constrain economic growth and outlines a feasible policy path that could remove these obstacles. The most popular proposals for Russian economic reform today — diversification, innovation, modernization — are misguided. They are based on a faulty diagnosis of the country’s ills, because they ignore a simple reality: Russia’s capital, both physical and human, is systematically overvalued, owing to a failure to account for the handicap imposed by geography and location. Part of the handicap is an unavoidable consequence of Russia’s size and cold climate. But another part is self-inflicted. Soviet policies placed far too much economic activity in cold, remote locations. Specific institutions in today’s Russia, notably its federalist structure, help preserve the Soviet spatial legacy. As a result, capital remains handicapped. Investments made to compensate for the handicaps of cold and distance should properly be treated as costs. Instead, they are considered net additions to capital. When returns to what appear to be large quantities of physical and human capital fail to satisfy expectations, the blame naturally goes to poor institutions, corruption, backward technology, and so on. Policy proceeds along the wrong path, with costly programs that can end up doing more damage than good. The authors insist that the goal should be to seek to remove the handicaps rather than to spend to compensate for them. They discuss how Russia could develop a modernization program that would let the nation finally focus on its economic advantages, not its handicaps.
Download or read book How to achieve the welfare state in the twenty first century written by Kozulj, Roberto and published by Editorial UNRN. This book was released on 2019-09-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kozulj proposes a bold and vital idea: if the activities linked to urban development were reoriented towards the construction and reconstruction of sustainable cities, this would tend to solve a large part of the problem of structural unemployment,
Download or read book Modernization and Political Actions in the Brazilian Amazon written by João Santos Nahum and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an analysis of the territory of Barcarena, in the Brazilian Amazon. The author studies the land use and the implemented modernization policies that made it one of the richest cities of the state. The political system uses this territory as a resource to provide for the needs of a small circle of social agents. A system of conservative political actions enforces the process of modernization of the Baracena territory. Innovations in the Barcarena territory, such as the implementation of the aluminium factory Albras/Alunorte and the territorial configuration or public administration, lead to modernization simulations and artificial devices. The intended effect however is more about appearing to be modern, than actual modernization. The territorial use of Barcarena is aimed to protect the interests and privileges of the elite.
Download or read book Modernization as Spectacle in Africa written by Peter J. Bloom and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For postcolonial Africa, modernization was seen as a necessary outcome of the struggle for independence and as crucial to the success of its newly established states. Since then, the rhetoric of modernization has pervaded policy, culture, and development, lending a kind of political theatricality to nationalist framings of modernization and Africans' perceptions of their place in the global economy. These 15 essays address governance, production, and social life; the role of media; and the discourse surrounding large-scale development projects, revealing modernization's deep effects on the expressive culture of Africa.
Download or read book Democratic Dynasties written by Kanchan Chandra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dynastic politics, usually presumed to be the antithesis of democracy, is a routine aspect of politics in many modern democracies. This book introduces a new theoretical perspective on dynasticism in democracies, using original data on twenty-first-century Indian parliaments. It argues that the roots of dynastic politics lie at least in part in modern democratic institutions - states and parties - which give political families a leg-up in the electoral process. It also proposes a rethinking of the view that dynastic politics is a violation of democracy, showing that it can also reinforce some aspects of democracy while violating others. Finally, this book suggests that both reinforcement and violation are the products, not of some property intrinsic to political dynasties, but of the institutional environment from which those dynasties emerge.
Download or read book Global Modernization written by Alberto Martinelli and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has witnessed a revival of interest in the problems of modernity and modernization. In particular, three major processes have emerged as objects of debate: " The transformations of capitalism manifested in globalization and the unfolding of post-industrial society " The rapid and strong economic development of countries outside the West " The political and economic transformations in the post-Soviet countries of Eastern Europe
Download or read book The Production of Modernization written by Hemant Shah and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-11 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Daniel Lerner's seminal work contributed to the overall professionalization of communication theory and sociology.
Download or read book Flashpoints written by George Friedman and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new book by New York Times bestselling author and geopolitical forecaster George Friedman (The Next 100 Years), with a bold thesis about coming events in Europe. This provocative work examines “flashpoints,” unique geopolitical hot spots where tensions have erupted throughout history, and where conflict is due to emerge again. “There is a temptation, when you are around George Friedman, to treat him like a Magic 8 Ball.” —The New York Times Magazine With remarkable accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. In Flashpoints, Friedman focuses on Europe—the world’s cultural and power nexus for the past five hundred years . . . until now. Analyzing the most unstable, unexpected, and fascinating borderlands of Europe and Russia—and the fault lines that have existed for centuries and have been ground zero for multiple catastrophic wars—Friedman highlights, in an unprecedentedly personal way, the flashpoints that are smoldering once again. The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize built-in geopolitical tensions that historically have torn it apart. As Friedman demonstrates, with a mix of rich history and cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints narrates a living history of Europe and explains, with great clarity, its most volatile regions: the turbulent and ever-shifting land dividing the West from Russia (a vast area that currently includes Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania); the ancient borderland between France and Germany; and the Mediterranean, which gave rise to Judaism and Christianity and became a center of Islamic life. Through Friedman’s seamless narrative of townspeople and rivers and villages, a clear picture of regions and countries and history begins to emerge. Flashpoints is an engrossing analysis of modern-day Europe, its remarkable past, and the simmering fault lines that have awakened and will be pivotal in the near future. This is George Friedman’s most timely and, ultimately, riveting book.
Download or read book Bear Traps on Russia s Road to Modernization written by Clifford Gaddy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bear Traps examines Russia’s longer term economic growth prospects. It argues that Russia’s growth challenges are conventionally misdiagnosed and examines the reasons why: a spatial misallocation that imposes excess costs on production and investment; distortions to human capital; an excessively high relative price of investment that serves as a tax on physical capital accumulation; and an economic mechanism that inhibits adjustments that would correct the misallocation. Bear Traps explains why Soviet legacies still constrain economic growth and outlines a feasible policy path that could remove these obstacles. The most popular proposals for Russian economic reform today — diversification, innovation, modernization — are misguided. They are based on a faulty diagnosis of the country’s ills, because they ignore a simple reality: Russia’s capital, both physical and human, is systematically overvalued, owing to a failure to account for the handicap imposed by geography and location. Part of the handicap is an unavoidable consequence of Russia’s size and cold climate. But another part is self-inflicted. Soviet policies placed far too much economic activity in cold, remote locations. Specific institutions in today’s Russia, notably its federalist structure, help preserve the Soviet spatial legacy. As a result, capital remains handicapped. Investments made to compensate for the handicaps of cold and distance should properly be treated as costs. Instead, they are considered net additions to capital. When returns to what appear to be large quantities of physical and human capital fail to satisfy expectations, the blame naturally goes to poor institutions, corruption, backward technology, and so on. Policy proceeds along the wrong path, with costly programs that can end up doing more damage than good. The authors insist that the goal should be to seek to remove the handicaps rather than to spend to compensate for them. They discuss how Russia could develop a modernization program that would let the nation finally focus on its economic advantages, not its handicaps.
Download or read book Distant Tyranny written by Regina Grafe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-08 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region. Economic historians have long argued that high internal transportation costs limited domestic market integration, while at the same time the Castilian capital city of Madrid drew resources from surrounding Spanish regions as it pursued its quest for centralization. According to this view, powerful Madrid thwarted trade over large geographic distances by destroying an integrated network of manufacturing towns in the Spanish interior. Challenging this long-held view, Regina Grafe argues that decentralization, not a strong and powerful Madrid, is to blame for Spain's slow march to modernity. Through a groundbreaking analysis of the market for bacalao--dried and salted codfish that was a transatlantic commodity and staple food during this period--Grafe shows how peripheral historic territories and powerful interior towns obstructed Spain's economic development through jurisdictional obstacles to trade, which exacerbated already high transport costs. She reveals how the early phases of globalization made these regions much more externally focused, and how coastal elites that were engaged in trade outside Spain sought to sustain their positions of power in relation to Madrid. Distant Tyranny offers a needed reassessment of the haphazard and regionally diverse process of state formation and market integration in early modern Spain, showing how local and regional agency paradoxically led to legitimate governance but economic backwardness.
Download or read book Roadblocks to the Socialist Modernization Path and Transition written by Jutta Günther and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book examines how different economic systems impacted the development of East Germany and Poland. Through comparing these countries while they were centrally planned socialist economies with the periods when they transitioned to capitalism, the inability of socialist economies to modernize effectively and produce sustained economic growth is highlighted. Particular attention is given the role of technological progress in economic growth, peculiar institutions, the creation and transfer of knowledge, and post-socialist transformations. The book presents a detailed analysis of the barriers to modernization and growth implied by Soviet-type state socialism and the differences and similarities between the transition of East Germany and Poland to capitalist market economies. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in comparative systems and the political economy.
