EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Beyond Politics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Randy T. Simmons
  • Publisher : Independent Institute
  • Release : 2011-09-01
  • ISBN : 1598130595
  • Pages : 572 pages

Download or read book Beyond Politics written by Randy T. Simmons and published by Independent Institute. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing students of economics, politics, and policy with a concise explanation of public choice, markets, property, and political and economic processes, this record identifies what kinds of actions are beyond the ability of government. Combining public choice with studies of the value of property rights, markets, and institutions, this account produces a much different picture of modern political economy than the one accepted by mainstream political scientists and welfare economists. It demonstrates that when citizens request that their governments do more than it is possible, net benefits are reduced, costs are increased, and wealth and freedom are diminished. Solutions are also suggested with the goal to improve the lot of those who should be the ultimate sovereigns in a democracy: the citizens.

Book A World Beyond Politics

Download or read book A World Beyond Politics written by Pierre Manent and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-21 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in the grip of a great illusion about politics, Pierre Manent argues in A World beyond Politics? It's the illusion that we would be better off without politics--at least national politics, and perhaps all politics. It is a fantasy that if democratic values could somehow detach themselves from their traditional national context, we could enter a world of pure democracy, where human society would be ruled solely according to law and morality. Borders would dissolve in unconditional internationalism and nations would collapse into supranational organizations such as the European Union. Free of the limits and sins of politics, we could finally attain the true life. In contrast to these beliefs, which are especially widespread in Europe, Manent reasons that the political order is the key to the human order. Human life, in order to have force and meaning, must be concentrated in a particular political community, in which decisions are made through collective, creative debate. The best such community for democratic life, he argues, is still the nation-state. Following the example of nineteenth-century political philosophers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill, Manent first describes a few essential features of democracy and the nation-state, and then shows how these characteristics illuminate many aspects of our present political circumstances. He ends by arguing that both democracy and the nation-state are under threat--from apolitical tendencies such as the cult of international commerce and attempts to replace democratic decisions with judicial procedures.

Book Why States Matter

Download or read book Why States Matter written by Gary F. Moncrief and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it comes to voting, taxes, environmental regulations, social services, education, criminal justice, political parties, property rights, gun control, marriage and a whole host of other modern American issues, the state in which a citizen resides makes a difference. That idea—that the political decisions made by those in state-level offices are of tremendous importance to the lives of people whose states they govern—is the fundamental concept explored in this book. Gary F. Moncrief and Peverill Squire introduce students to the very tangible and constantly evolving implications, limitations, and foundations of America’s state political institutions, and accessibly explain the ways that the political powers of the states manifest themselves in the cultures, economies, and lives of everyday Americans, and always will.

Book Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics

Download or read book Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics written by Paul Kevin Wapner and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on case studies of three transnational groups, it argues that in addition to lobbying governments, activists operate within and across societies to effect widespread change. They work through transnational social, economic, and cultural networks to alter corporate practices, educate vast numbers of people, pressure multilateral development banks, and shift standards of good conduct. Wapner argues that because this activity takes place outside the formal arena of inter-state politics, environmental activists practice "world civic politics"; they politicize global civil society.

Book Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics

Download or read book Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics written by Jackie Smith and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Transnational Social Movements and Global Social Politics examines a cast of global actors left out of the traditional studies of international politics. It generates a theoretically informed view of the relationships between an emerging global civil society - partly manifested in transnational social movements - and international political institutions. This book consists of fifteen essays, all written by experts in the field. The first three parts analyze the rise of transnational social movements in the context of broad twentieth-century trends. A fourth part builds a theoretical framework from which organizations influencing global governance can be viewed."--

Book Beyond Politics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael P. Vandenbergh
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2017-12-21
  • ISBN : 131685664X
  • Pages : 495 pages

Download or read book Beyond Politics written by Michael P. Vandenbergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private sector action provides one of the most promising opportunities to reduce the risks of climate change, buying time while governments move slowly or even oppose climate mitigation. Starting with the insight that much of the resistance to climate mitigation is grounded in concern about the role of government, this books draws on law, policy, social science, and climate science to demonstrate how private initiatives are already bypassing government inaction in the US and around the globe. It makes a persuasive case that private governance can reduce global carbon emissions by a billion tons per year over the next decade. Combining an examination of the growth of private climate initiatives over the last decade, a theory of why private actors are motivated to reduce emissions, and a review of viable next steps, this book speaks to scholars, business and advocacy group managers, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone interested in climate change.

Book Beyond the State

Download or read book Beyond the State written by John Hoffman and published by Polity. This book was released on 1995-06-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an accessible yet challenging introduction to the state and state theory, the author makes the distinction between "state" and "government" and discusses a world beyond the state.

Book Beyond the Nation State

    Book Details:
  • Author : Dmitry Shumsky
  • Publisher : Yale University Press
  • Release : 2018-10-23
  • ISBN : 0300241097
  • Pages : 314 pages

Download or read book Beyond the Nation State written by Dmitry Shumsky and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revisionist account of Zionist history, challenging the inevitability of a one-state solution, from a bold, path-breaking young scholar The Jewish nation-state has often been thought of as Zionism’s end goal. In this bracing history of the idea of the Jewish state in modern Zionism, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel, Dmitry Shumsky challenges this deeply rooted assumption. In doing so, he complicates the narrative of the Zionist quest for full sovereignty, provocatively showing how and why the leaders of the pre-state Zionist movement imagined, articulated and promoted theories of self-determination in Palestine either as part of a multinational Ottoman state (1882-1917), or in the framework of multinational democracy. In particular, Shumsky focuses on the writings and policies of five key Zionist leaders from the Habsburg and Russian empires in central and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha’am, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion to offer a very pointed critique of Zionist historiography.

Book Security as Politics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Neal Andrew W. Neal
  • Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
  • Release : 2019-03-21
  • ISBN : 1474450946
  • Pages : 288 pages

Download or read book Security as Politics written by Neal Andrew W. Neal and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew W. Neal argues that while 'security' was once an anti-political 'exception' in liberal democracies - a black box of secret intelligence and military decision-making at the dark heart of the state - it has now become normalised in professional political life. This represents a direct challenge to critical security studies debates and their core assumption that security is a kind of illiberal and undemocratic 'anti-politics'. Using archival research and interviews with politicians, Neal investigates security politics from the 1980s to the present day to show how its meaning and practice have changed over time. In doing so, he develops an original reassessment of the security/politics relationship.

Book Empowered

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lisa Magaña
  • Publisher : University of Arizona Press
  • Release : 2021-03-23
  • ISBN : 0816542244
  • Pages : 168 pages

Download or read book Empowered written by Lisa Magaña and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empowered!examines Arizona’s recent political history and how it has been shaped and propelled by Latinos. It also provides a distilled reflection of U.S. politics more broadly, where the politics of exclusion and the desire for inclusion are forces of change. Lisa Magaña and César S. Silva argue that the state of Arizona is more inclusive and progressive then it has ever been. Following in the footsteps of grassroots organizers in California and the southeastern states, Latinos in Arizona have struggled and succeeded to alter the anti-immigrant and racist policies that have been affecting Latinos in the state for many years. Draconian immigration policies have plagued Arizona’s political history. Empowered! shows innovative ways that Latinos have fought these policies. Empowered! focuses on the legacy of Latino activism within politics. It raises important arguments about those who stand to profit financially and politically by stoking fear of immigrants and how resilient politicians and grassroots organizers have worked to counteract that fear mongering. Recognizing the long history of disenfranchisement and injustice surrounding minority communities in the United States, this book outlines the struggle to make Arizona a more just and equal place for Latinos to live.

Book Law Beyond the State

Download or read book Law Beyond the State written by Carmen E. Pavel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite growing skepticism about the value of international law and its compatibility with state sovereignty, states should improve and strengthen international law because it makes a critical contribution to an international order characterized by peace and justice. In recent years, international agreements and institutions have become particularly contentious. China is refusing to abide by the decision of an international arbitration decision implementing UNCLOS rules in the South China Sea, and Donald Trump has withdrawn the US from international agreements including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of 2015. Such retreats expose widespread ambivalence towards cooperation through international law, and reverse the gains made by long-standing processes of legalization. In Law Beyond the State, Carmen Pavel responds to the ambivalent attitude states have with respect to international law by offering moral and legal reasons for them to improve, strengthen, and further institutionalize its capacity. She argues that the same reasons which support the development of law at the domestic level, namely the cultivation of peace, the protection of individual rights, the facilitation of complex forms of cooperation, and the resolution of collective action problems, also support the development of law at the international level. The argument thus engages in institutional moral reasoning. Pavel shows why it should matter to individuals that their states are part of a rule-governed international order. When states are bound by common rules of behavior, their citizens reap the benefits. International law encourages states to protect individual rights and provides a forum where they can communicate, negotiate, and compromise on their differences in order to protect themselves from outside interference and pursue their domestic policies more effectively, including those directed at enhancing their citizen's welfare. Thus, Pavel shows that international law makes a critical, irreplaceable, and defining contribution to an international order characterized by peace and justice. At a time when challenges of cooperation beyond state boundaries include climate change, health epidemics, and large-scale human rights violations, Law Beyond the State issues a powerful reminder of the tools we have to address them.

Book The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty

Download or read book The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty written by Rebecca Bryant and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world, border walls and nationalisms are on the rise as people express the desire to "take back" sovereignty. The contributors to this collection use ethnographic research in disputed and exceptional places to study sovereignty claims from the ground up. While it might immediately seem that citizens desire a stronger state, the cases of compromised, contested, or failed sovereignty in this volume point instead to political imaginations beyond the state form. Examples from Spain to Afghanistan and from Western Sahara to Taiwan show how calls to take back control or to bring back order are best understood as longings for sovereign agency. By paying close ethnographic attention to these desires and their consequences, The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty offers a new way to understand why these yearnings have such profound political resonance in a globally interconnected world. Contributors: Panos Achniotis, Jens Bartelson, Joyce Dalsheim, Dace Dzenovska, Sara L. Friedman, Azra Hromadžić, Louisa Lombard, Alice Wilson, and Torunn Wimpelmann.

Book Beyond Camelot

    Book Details:
  • Author : Edward L. Rubin
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2007-08-27
  • ISBN : 1400826624
  • Pages : 479 pages

Download or read book Beyond Camelot written by Edward L. Rubin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-27 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that many of the basic concepts that we use to describe and analyze our governmental system are out of date. Developed in large part during the Middle Ages, they fail to confront the administrative character of modern government. These concepts, which include power, discretion, democracy, legitimacy, law, rights, and property, bear the indelible imprint of this bygone era's attitudes, and Arthurian fantasies, about governance. As a result, they fail to provide us with the tools we need to understand, critique, and improve the government we actually possess. Beyond Camelot explains the causes and character of this failure, and then proposes a new conceptual framework, drawn from management science and engineering, which describes our administrative government more accurately, and identifies its weaknesses instead of merely bemoaning its modernity. This book's proposed framework envisions government as a network of connected units that are authorized by superior units and that supervise subordinate ones. Instead of using inherited, emotion-laden concepts like democracy and legitimacy to describe the relationship between these units and private citizens, it directs attention to the particular interactions between these units and the citizenry, and to the mechanisms by which government obtains its citizens' compliance. Instead of speaking about law and legal rights, it proposes that we address the way that the modern state formulates policy and secures its implementation. Instead of perpetuating outdated ideas that we no longer really believe about the sanctity of private property, it suggests that we focus on the way that resources are allocated in order to establish markets as our means of regulation. Highly readable, Beyond Camelot offers an insightful and provocative discussion of how we must transform our understanding of government to keep pace with the transformation that government itself has undergone.

Book Jordan and the Arab Uprisings

Download or read book Jordan and the Arab Uprisings written by Curtis R. Ryan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, as the Arab uprisings spread across the Middle East, Jordan remained more stable than any of its neighbors. Despite strife at its borders and an influx of refugees connected to the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS, as well as its own version of the Arab Spring with protests and popular mobilization demanding change, Jordan managed to avoid political upheaval. How did the regime survive in the face of the pressures unleashed by the Arab uprisings? What does its resilience tell us about the prospects for reform or revolutionary change? In Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, Curtis R. Ryan explains how Jordan weathered the turmoil of the Arab Spring. Crossing divides between state and society, government and opposition, Ryan analyzes key features of Jordanian politics, including Islamist and leftist opposition parties, youth movements, and other forms of activism, as well as struggles over elections, reform, and identity. He details regime survival strategies, laying out how the monarchy has held out the possibility of reform while also seeking to coopt and contain its opponents. Ryan demonstrates how domestic politics were affected by both regional unrest and international support for the regime, and how regime survival and security concerns trumped hopes for greater change. While the Arab Spring may be over, Ryan shows that political activism in Jordan is not, and that struggles for reform and change will continue. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews with a vast range of people, from grassroots activists to King Abdullah II, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings is a definitive analysis of Jordanian politics before, during, and beyond the Arab uprisings.

Book Governance Without a State

Download or read book Governance Without a State written by Thomas Risse and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governance discourse centers on an "ideal type" of modern statehood that exhibits full internal and external sovereignty and a legitimate monopoly on the use of force. Yet modern statehood is an anomaly, both historically and within the contemporary international system, while the condition of "limited statehood," wherein countries lack the capacity to implement central decisions and monopolize force, is the norm. Limited statehood, argue the authors in this provocative collection, is in fact a fundamental form of governance, immune to the forces of economic and political modernization. Challenging common assumptions about sovereign states and the evolution of modern statehood, particularly the dominant paradigms supported by international relations theorists, development agencies, and international organizations, this volume explores strategies for effective and legitimate governance within a framework of weak and ineffective state institutions. Approaching the problem from the perspectives of political science, history, and law, contributors explore the factors that contribute to successful governance under conditions of limited statehood. These include the involvement of nonstate actors and nonhierarchical modes of political influence. Empirical chapters analyze security governance by nonstate actors, the contribution of public-private partnerships to promote the United Nations Millennium Goals, the role of business in environmental governance, and the problems of Western state-building efforts, among other issues. Recognizing these forms of governance as legitimate, the contributors clarify the complexities of a system the developed world must negotiate in the coming century.

Book Security Beyond the State

Download or read book Security Beyond the State written by Rita Abrahamsen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-18 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the globe, from mega-cities to isolated resource enclaves, the provision and governance of security takes place within assemblages that are de-territorialized in terms of actors, technologies, norms and discourses. They are embedded in a complex transnational architecture, defying conventional distinctions between public and private, global and local. Drawing on theories of globalization and late modernity, along with insights from criminology, political science and sociology, Security Beyond the State maps the emergence of the global private security sector and develops a novel analytical framework for understanding these global security assemblages. Through in-depth examinations of four African countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa – it demonstrates how global security assemblages affect the distribution of social power, the dynamics of state stability, and the operations of the international political economy, with significant implications for who gets secured and how in a global era.

Book Beyond the Welfare State

Download or read book Beyond the Welfare State written by Christopher Pierson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1991, Beyond the Welfare State? has been thoroughly revised and updated for this new edition, which draws on the latest theoretical developments and empirical evidence. It remains the most comprehensive and sophisticated guide to the condition of the welfare state in a time of rapid and sometimes bewildering change. The opening chapters offer a scholarly but accessible review of competing interpretations of the historical and contemporary roles of the welfare state. This evaluation, based on the most recent empirical research, gives full weight to feminist, ecological, and "anti-racist" critiques and also develops a clear account of globalization and its contested impact upon existing welfare regimes. The book constructs a distinctive history of the international growth of welfare states and offers a comprehensive account of recent developments from "crisis" to "structural adjustment." The final chapters bring the story right up to date with an assessment of the important changes effected in the 1990s and the prospects for welfare states in the new millennium.