Download or read book Domestic Democracy written by Jennifer Fish and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-11-16 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the dialectic relationship between social inequality and change in the newly democratic South Africa through the lens of paid domestic labor. The complexities of this institution provide an in-depth analysis of the tension between the race and gender priorities of South Africa's new democracy and the lived realities of the majority of its population. Because paid domestic work remains the largest sector of employment for women in South Africa, it is critical to situating the scope of social change in this emergent democracy. This book presents the first comprehensive study of paid domestic labor since South Africa's 1994 post-apartheid transition. Drawing upon 85 interviews with domestic workers, employers, Parliamentarians, community activists and organizational leaders, this research offers diverse perspectives on the race, class and gender divides that remain integral to social relations in the context of national transition. In contrast, this study also details women's collective agency through the exploration of a critical social policy change shaped by the activism of a new union of domestic workers. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork, this book demonstrates that transformation of social relations remains one of the greatest obstacles to engendering democracy in South Africa.
Download or read book Diaspora Development and Democracy written by Devesh Kapur and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to a country when its skilled workers emigrate? The first book to examine the complex economic, social, and political effects of emigration on India, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy provides a conceptual framework for understanding the repercussions of international migration on migrants' home countries. Devesh Kapur finds that migration has influenced India far beyond a simplistic "brain drain"--migration's impact greatly depends on who leaves and why. The book offers new methods and empirical evidence for measuring these traits and shows how data about these characteristics link to specific outcomes. For instance, the positive selection of Indian migrants through education has strengthened India's democracy by creating a political space for previously excluded social groups. Because older Indian elites have an exit option, they are less likely to resist the loss of political power at home. Education and training abroad has played an important role in facilitating the flow of expertise to India, integrating the country into the world economy, positively shaping how India is perceived, and changing traditional conceptions of citizenship. The book highlights a paradox--while international migration is a cause and consequence of globalization, its effects on countries of origin depend largely on factors internal to those countries. A rich portrait of the Indian migrant community, Diaspora, Development, and Democracy explores the complex political and economic consequences of migration for the countries migrants leave behind.
Download or read book Domestic Interests Democracy and Foreign Policy Change written by Brett Ashley Leeds and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When new leaders come to office, there is often speculation about whether they will take their countries' foreign policies in different directions or stick to their predecessors' policies. We argue that when new leaders come to power who represent different societal interests and preferences than their predecessors, leaders may pursue new foreign policies. At the same time, in democracies, leadership selection processes and policymaking rules blunt leaders' incentives and opportunities for change. Democracies thus tend to pursue more consistent foreign policies than nondemocracies even when new leaders with different supporting coalitions assume office. Statistical analyses of three distinct foreign policy areas – military alliances, UNGA voting, and economic sanctions – provide support for our argument. In a fourth area – trade – we find that both democracies and nondemocracies are more likely to experience foreign policy change when a new leader with a different supporting coalition comes to power. We thus conclude that foreign policy responds to domestic political interests, and that, even as the interests supporting leaders change, democracies' foreign policies are no less stable than those of nondemocracies and often exhibit greater consistency.
Download or read book Domestic Perspectives on Contemporary Democracy written by Peter F Nardulli and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In looking at the remarkable proliferation of democracies since 1974, this volume offers important insight into the challenges and opportunities that democracy faces in the twenty-first century. Distinguished contributors detail difficulties that democracies face from within and how they deal with them. Among the contemporary threats to democracy emanating from internal sources are tensions arising over technology and its uses; ethnic, religious, and racial distinctions; and disparate access to resources, education, and employment. A democratically elected government can behave more or less democratically, even when controlling access to information, using legal authority to aid or intimidate, and applying resources to shape the conditions for the next election. With elections recently disputed in the United States, Mexico, Lebanon, and the Ukraine, debates about the future of democracy are inescapably debates about what kind of democracy is desired. Contributors are W. Lance Bennett, Bruce Bimber, Jon Fraenkel, Brian J. Gaines, Bernard Grofman, Wayne V. McIntosh, Peter F. Nardulli, Mark Q. Sawyer, Stephen Simon, Paul M. Sniderman, and Jack Snyder.
Download or read book Democracy and the Market written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-07-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quest for freedom from hunger and repression has triggered in recent years a dramatic, worldwide reform of political and economic systems. Never have so many people enjoyed, or at least experimented with democratic institutions. However, many strategies for economic development in Eastern Europe and Latin America have failed with the result that entire economic systems on both continents are being transformed. This major book analyzes recent transitions to democracy and market-oriented economic reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Drawing in a quite distinctive way on models derived from political philosophy, economics, and game theory, Professor Przeworski also considers specific data on individual countries. Among the questions raised by the book are: What should we expect from these experiments in democracy and market economy? What new economic systems will emerge? Will these transitions result in new democracies or old dictatorships?
Download or read book The Arab Spring Democracy and Security written by Efraim Inbar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume analyzes the political, economic and strategic dimensions of the recent upheavals in the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. Mass demonstrations in many Arab states challenged the political status quo and the existing political and cultural system in the region. While it is too early to offer a definitive analysis of the impact of the widespread discontent in the Arab world, the trajectory of the events indicates regime change in several states, containment of political unrest in most states, increase in Islamic tendencies, centrifugal tendencies in a number of political units and deterioration of economic conditions. This volume presents an initial assessment by a selected group of Israeli scholars of the implications of the Arab Spring. The chapters focus on important issues such as democratization, the role of economic factors in political change and explanations for variations in regime stability in the Middle East. Taking an international relations perspective, the book not only examines the evolving regional balance, but also explores the link between external and internal politics and the implications of terrorism for regional security. The chapters also address the implications of the Arab Spring for Israel and its chances of existing peacefully in the region. This volume will be of much interest to students of Middle East politics, international security, foreign policy and international relations.
Download or read book State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace written by Christian Davenport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-04 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does democracy decrease state repression in line with the expectations of governments, international organizations, NGOs, social movements, academics and ordinary citizens around the world? Most believe that a 'domestic democratic peace' exists, rivalling that found in the realm of interstate conflict. Investigating 137 countries from 1976 to 1996, this book seeks to shed light on this question. Specifically, three results emerge. First, while different aspects of democracy decrease repressive behaviour, not all do so to the same degree. Human rights violations are especially responsive to electoral participation and competition. Second, while different types of repression are reduced, not all are limited at comparable levels. Personal integrity violations are decreased more than civil liberties restrictions. Third, the domestic democratic peace is not bulletproof; the negative influence of democracy on repression can be overwhelmed by political conflict. This research alters our conception of repression, its analysis and its resolution.
Download or read book Democracy and Political Ignorance written by Ilya Somin and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.
Download or read book Freedom in the World 2018 written by Freedom House and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 1265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.
Download or read book Patriotism Democracy and Common Sense written by Alan Curtis and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense is a new strategic analysis of common-sense alternatives to the public policies America has pursued since September 11, 2001. This important book features more than three dozen internationally known experts in economics, foreign and domestic policy, media, and political action.
Download or read book Aftershocks written by Seva Gunitskiy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. Aftershocks offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism and communism. Seva Gunitsky argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.
Download or read book The Green State written by Robyn Eckersley and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-03-05 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would constitute a definitively "green" state? In this important new book, Robyn Eckersley explores what it might take to create a green democratic state as an alternative to the classical liberal democratic state, the indiscriminate growth-dependent welfare state, and the neoliberal market-focused state—seeking, she writes, "to navigate between undisciplined political imagination and pessimistic resignation to the status quo." In recent years, most environmental scholars and environmentalists have characterized the sovereign state as ineffectual and have criticized nations for perpetuating ecological destruction. Going consciously against the grain of much current thinking, this book argues that the state is still the preeminent political institution for addressing environmental problems. States remain the gatekeepers of the global order, and greening the state is a necessary step, Eckersley argues, toward greening domestic and international policy and law. The Green State seeks to connect the moral and practical concerns of the environmental movement with contemporary theories about the state, democracy, and justice. Eckersley's proposed "critical political ecology" expands the boundaries of the moral community to include the natural environment in which the human community is embedded. This is the first book to make the vision of a "good" green state explicit, to explore the obstacles to its achievement, and to suggest practical constitutional and multilateral arrangements that could help transform the liberal democratic state into a postliberal green democratic state. Rethinking the state in light of the principles of ecological democracy ultimately casts it in a new role: that of an ecological steward and facilitator of transboundary democracy rather than a selfish actor jealously protecting its territory.
Download or read book Parties Movements and Democracy in the Developing World written by Nancy Bermeo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-12 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative study of the role of political parties and movements in the founding and survival of developing world democracies.
Download or read book The Democracy Deficit written by Alfred C. Aman (Jr.) and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2004-12 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ContentsPreface Introduction: The Domestic Face of Globalization 1 Three Eras of Administrative Law and Agency Regulation 2 Federalisms Old and New: The Vertical Dimensions of Globalization 3 Privatization and Deregulation: The Horizontal Dimensions of Globalization 4 The Implications of the Globalizing State for Law Reform Notes Index About the Author
Download or read book Advancing Democracy Through Education written by Doyle Stevick and published by IAP. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the diversity of American roles in such cross-cultural engagement in education for democracy, both within the United States and around the world. Cross-cultural engagement in education for democracy inevitably bears the impressions of each culture involved and the dynamics among them. Even high-priority, well-funded U.S. government programs are neither monolithic nor deterministic in their own right, but are rather reshaped, adapted to their contexts, and appropriated by their partners. These partners are sometimes called recipients, although that label is problematic. “Recipient” both gives a misleading impression that partners are relatively passive in the overall process, and its use is a reflection of some outside donors’ or experts’ stance that they are delivering goods or expertise. The authors of these chapters pay close attention to the cultures, contexts, structures, people, and processes involved in education for democracy. Woven throughout this volume’s qualitative studies are the notions that contacts between powers and cultures are complex and situated, that agency matters, that local meanings play a critical role in the dynamic exchange of peoples and ideas. The authors span an array of fields that concern themselves with understanding languages, cultures, institutions, the close view of daily life, and the broad horizon of the past that shapes the present: history,anthropology, literacy studies, policy analysis, political science, and journalism. Together, these 10 chapters provide a rich sampling of the diverse contexts and ways in which American ideas, practices, and policies of education for democracy are spread, encountered, appropriated, rejected, or embraced around the world. While not meant to provide a complete or systematic overview of the American influence on education for democracy around the world, the volume nevertheless introduces concepts, identifies processes, notes obstacles and challenges, and reveals common themes that can help us to understand American influence on education for democracy more clearly, wherever it occurs.
Download or read book Democracy and Diplomacy written by Melvin Small and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . The book gives particular attention to the events of the twentieth century, when the United States became a major power - and then a superpower.
Download or read book The Rise of Domestic Terrorism and Decline of American Democracy written by Prebble Q. Ramswell and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2016, both the United Kingdom and the United States found themselves embroiled in bitter battles, battles in which the citizens themselves became their own worst enemies. The Brexit campaign and campaign for the 45th presidency precipitated a rebirth of populism and nationalism, invigorating entire populations and inducing even the most casual observer into political action and discourse. Yet, in both cases, what began as an endeavor to serve the needs of the citizenry morphed into a battlefield of derision and division.Racism and xenophobia are no longer isolated issues affecting only small segments of society. Hate crimes, hate speech, and overt racial discrimination are on the rise worldwide stemming from populist empowerment. Domestic terrorism has surged across the West, particularly in the US. An atmosphere of hostility has emerged, pitting neighbor against neighbor, as it insidiously sweeps through society, permanently altering our understanding of right and wrong and law and order. These issues are now at the forefront of debate and have assumed a position on the frontline of political warfare worldwide. The parallels between the societal changes in the UK and US are not merely provocative, they are disarming, particularly in light of the ensuing rise in far-right and far-left terrorism across the West. In the US, this societal transformation and rise in domestic threat demonstrates a charged and changed political atmosphere, as well as heralding the decline of American democracy.
