Download or read book Tamed Village Democracy written by Guohui Wang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wang's book offers an empirically rich and conceptually nuanced analysis of how local state agents maintain control over village self-governance in China. His careful analysis of primary documents enables him to explicate the formal mechanisms used by members of the local state to influence village affairs. Meanwhile, his rigorous and fascinating ethnographic data enable him to elucidate the manifold ways in which informal clientelist ties between local state officials and village elites permit the former to exert control. Overall, this excellent book powerfully demonstrates the need for scholars to go beyond attention to election processes when evaluating what village democracy means in a Chinese context. It is a must-read for all serious scholars of Chinese politics and society. —Rachel Murphy, University of Oxford Guohui Wang's highly original, in-depth case research vividly reveals the dynamics of contemporary Chinese village politics. By combining abundant empirical data with close observation as an "insider," his book illustrates the processes and consequences of transplanting 'democracy' into rural Chinese society. Particularly for those in the West who are keen on understanding the ongoing transformation of rural China, this book is a rich and revealing source. —Shukai Zhao, Development Research Center of the State Council, P.R. China

Download or read book Taming Democracy written by Steven Hahn and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007-07-12 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book The Taming of Democracy Assistance written by Sarah Sunn Bush and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few government programs that aid democracy abroad today seek to foster regime change. Technical programs that do not confront dictators are more common than the aid to dissidents and political parties that once dominated the field. What explains this 'taming' of democracy assistance? This book offers the first analysis of that puzzle. In contrast to previous research on democracy aid, it focuses on the survival instincts of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that design and implement democracy assistance. To survive, Sarah Bush argues that NGOs seek out tamer types of aid, especially as they become more professional. Diverse evidence - including three decades of new project-level data, case studies of democracy assistance in Jordan and Tunisia, and primary documents gathered from NGO archives - supports the argument. This book provides new understanding of foreign influence and moral actors in world politics, with policy implications for democracy in the Middle East.

Download or read book Political Party Financing and Electoral Politics in Nigeria s Fourth Republic written by Babayo Sule and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Political Party Financing and Electoral Politics in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, Babayo Sule provides a detailed analysis of the process of political party financing in Nigeria from 1999 to the present. Sule links the party financing process with the electoral process and explores issues of democratic accountability, transparency, and corruption in Nigeria under democratic rule. Issues of excessive spending, violation of legal procedures for party financing and monitoring of parties’ activities, particularly, finances are explored. The book presents an analytical discourse on elections and processes that influence an election in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic in which party financing and money politics are instrumental. This book observes how political corruption gains root in the process of party financing and builds a theory linking party financing, electoral politics, and democratic accountability. This book provides practical policy implications for strengthening Nigeria’s electoral process and transparency in its democracy.

Download or read book Handbook of the Politics of China written by David S.G. Goodman and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-27 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of the Politics of China is a comprehensive resource introducing readers to the very latest in research on Chinese politics. David Goodman provides an introduction to the key structures and issues, providing the foundations on which later learning can be built. Including a comprehensive bibliography, it is an ideal reference work for undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics. The Handbook contains four sections of new and original research, dealing with leadership and institutions, public policy, political economy and social change, and international relations. Each of the 26 chapters has been written by a leading internationally-established authority in the field and each reviews the literature on the topic, and presents the latest findings of research. Presenting the state of the art of the field, this reader-oriented Handbook is an essential primer for the study of China’s politics.

Download or read book China s Singapore Model and Authoritarian Learning written by Stephan Ortmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores to what extent China has drawn lessons from Singapore, both in terms of its ruling ideology and through the policy-specific learning process. In so doing, it provides insights into the opportunities but also the challenges of this long-term learning process, focusing attention to how non-democratic regimes deal with modernization. The stellar line-up of international contributors, from China, Singapore, Europe, and the US, offer a variety of perspectives on Singapore as a model of "authoritarian modernism" for China. The book discusses how the small Southeast Asian city-state became a major reference point for China, how mainland observers often misunderstood the nature of Singapore’s governance and instrumentalized it to bolster the CCP’s legitimacy, and why the Singapore model appears to be in decline under Xi Jinping. The chapters also analyze policy-specific learning processes, including bilateral mechanisms of policy exchange, the Chinese "mayor’s class" in Singapore, and joint industrial projects and lessons in social welfare provision. The book will be of interest to academics working on Chinese politics; development in China; state society and economy in the Asia-Pacific; international relations in the Asia-Pacific; and Southeast Asian politics.

Download or read book China s Challenges written by Jacques deLisle and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the "fifth generation" of Communist Party leaders in China assumed top political positions in 2012-2013, they took the helm of a country that has achieved remarkable economic growth, political stability, and international influence. Yet China today confronts challenges at least as daunting as any it has faced since the reform era began in the late 1970s. In November 2013, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee announced ambitious reforms to address vital issues, such as giving market forces a "decisive role" in the economy, strengthening the social safety net, assigning greater weight to factors other than economic growth and social order in evaluating local officials, promoting urbanization, and relaxing the "one child" policy. China's Challenges brings together fourteen experts on China's social, economic, political, legal, and foreign affairs to examine some of the nation's pivotal policy issues. Their wide-ranging analyses cover economic and social inequality, internal migration and population control, imperatives to "rebalance" China's economy toward domestic demand and consumption, problems of official corruption, tensions between legal reform and social order, and the strained relationships with neighboring countries and the United States that stem from China's rising power, military modernization, enduring territorial disputes, and rising nationalism in domestic politics. This timely volume offers a broad and comprehensive look at the issues facing China today and lays the groundwork for understanding the shifts to come. How—and how well—China handles these challenges not only will define China's trajectory for years to come, but will have repercussions far beyond China's borders. Contributors: Yong Cai, Jacques deLisle, Jane Duckett, Andrew Erickson, M. Taylor Fravel, Avery Goldstein, Yasheng Huang, Zai Liang, Benjamin Liebman, Melanie Manion, Barry Naughton, Daniela Stockmann, Robert Sutter, Guohui Wang.

Download or read book Taming Tibet written by Emily T. Yeh and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans’ apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life. The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han’s “little brothers.” Arguing that development is in this context a form of “indebtedness engineering,” Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to—and negotiations with—development, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China’s modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question.

Download or read book Taming the Vipers in the Slough written by Fred Howard and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2001-12-21 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Town In Between written by Judith Ridner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Town In-Between, Judith Ridner reveals the influential, turbulent past of a modest, quiet American community. Today Carlisle, Pennsylvania, nestled in the Susquehanna Valley, is far from the nation's political and financial centers. In the eighteenth century, however, Carlisle and its residents stood not only at a geographical crossroads but also at the fulcrum of early American controversies. Located between East Coast settlement and the western frontier, Carlisle quickly became a mid-Atlantic hub, serving as a migration gateway to the southern and western interiors, a commercial way station in the colonial fur trade, a military staging and supply ground during the Seven Years' War, American Revolution, and Whiskey Rebellion, and home to one of the first colleges in the United States, Dickinson. A Town In-Between reconsiders the role early American towns and townspeople played in the development of the country's interior. Focusing on the lives of the ambitious group of Scots-Irish colonists who built Carlisle, Judith Ridner reasserts that the early American west was won by traders, merchants, artisans, and laborers—many of them Irish immigrants—and not just farmers. Founded by proprietor Thomas Penn, the rapidly growing town was the site of repeated uprisings, jailbreaks, and one of the most publicized Anti-Federalist riots during constitutional ratification. These conflicts had dramatic consequences for many Scots-Irish Presbyterian residents who found themselves a people in-between, mediating among the competing ethnoreligious, cultural, class, and political interests that separated them from their fellow Quaker and Anglican colonists of the Delaware Valley and their myriad Native American trading partners of the Ohio country. In this thoroughly researched and highly readable study, Ridner argues that interior towns were not so much spearheads of a progressive and westward-moving Euro-American civilization, but volatile places situated in the middle of a culturally diverse, economically dynamic, and politically evolving early America.

Download or read book The Taming of the Samurai written by Eiko Ikegami and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Japan offers us a view of a highly developed society with its own internal logic. Eiko Ikegami makes this logic accessible to us through a sweeping investigation into the roots of Japanese organizational structures. She accomplishes this by focusing on the diverse roles that the samurai have played in Japanese history. From their rise in ancient Japan, through their dominance as warrior lords in the medieval period, and their subsequent transformation to quasi-bureaucrats at the beginning of the Tokugawa era, the samurai held center stage in Japan until their abolishment after the opening up of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. This book demonstrates how Japan’s so-called harmonious collective culture is paradoxically connected with a history of conflict. Ikegami contends that contemporary Japanese culture is based upon two remarkably complementary ingredients, honorable competition and honorable collaboration. The historical roots of this situation can be found in the process of state formation, along very different lines from that seen in Europe at around the same time. The solution that emerged out of the turbulent beginnings of the Tokugawa state was a transformation of the samurai into a hereditary class of vassal-bureaucrats, a solution that would have many unexpected ramifications for subsequent centuries. Ikegami’s approach, while sociological, draws on anthropological and historical methods to provide an answer to the question of how the Japanese managed to achieve modernity without traveling the route taken by Western countries. The result is a work of enormous depth and sensitivity that will facilitate a better understanding of, and appreciation for, Japanese society.

Download or read book Taming the Regulatory State written by Noralv Veggeland and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . . . offering a concise and illuminative account of the regulatory state . Particularly impressive is its excellent contextualisation of the birth and spread of a regulatory paradigm as well as its potential impact equally on traditional welfare concerns and emerging problems involving the environment. . . it provides a good introduction into regulatory politics. Its historical and intellectual background to this transition is superb and offers insights for the uninitiated and knowledgeable alike. Moreover, it is excellent in its sustained description of the potential problems of regulation and the ways it may be tamed for achieving broader social and the ethical objectives. . . a welcome addition to the current interest on regulation. . . it provides readers with a comprehensive description of regulation and the ways in which it may be improved. Peter Bloom, In-Spire, Journal of Law, Politics and Societies Professor Veggeland s ambitious study of the regulatory state is an exceptionally timely and apposite analysis. It combines theoretical, historical, and empirical perspectives on the evolution of state regulation of the economy over the past century with an emphasis on the past thirty years. It covers issues such as the rise and fall of indicative and central planning (in the context of democratic capitalism), the loss of national sovereignty in the era of European and global integration, and new theories and practice in public administration. Rich with contemporary cases it will contribute to the agonizing reappraisal of policy trends in western democracies. Eric S. Einhorn, University of Massachusetts Amherst, US It is not often that the experience of a Northern European semi-periphery speaks directly to a core European, and indeed increasingly global, problematic. Taming the Regulatory State is just such an achievement, combining a comprehensive treatment of the European governance literature with a keen eye for the political as well as ethical dimensions of contemporary state re-structuring. A signally important book. Olivier Kramsch, Radboud Universiteit, the Netherlands Taming the Regulatory State incisively analyses the regulatory top-down regimes that are currently dominant and in crisis. Taking a critical perspective, the book offers an account of the inherent vulnerability of the regulatory state caused by one-sided economic thinking and the predominance of governing through hard regulation. Regulatory governance is inclined to eliminate transparency and downgrades the importance of social forces. One striking case that exposes these underlying tensions is the activity of the state-run international investment funds. This volume sets the Norwegian Pension Fund Global (formerly the Norwegian Petroleum Fund) into this context and shows how the attempt to regulate through ethical guidelines is an illuminating example of an effort, however imperfect, to revive politics and ethics in areas where the market focus usually obscures other considerations. This state-of-the-art book will be invaluable for students and scholars of political science and political economy and will also provide an engaging read for civil servants and policymakers.

Download or read book Taming the Gods written by Ian Buruma and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-26 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For eight years the president of the United States was a born-again Christian, backed by well-organized evangelicals who often seemed intent on erasing the church-state divide. In Europe, the increasing number of radicalized Muslims is creating widespread fear that Islam is undermining Western-style liberal democracy. And even in polytheistic Asia, the development of democracy has been hindered in some countries, particularly China, by a long history in which religion was tightly linked to the state. Ian Buruma is the first writer to provide a sharp-eyed look at the tensions between religion and politics on three continents. Drawing on many contemporary and historical examples, he argues that the violent passions inspired by religion must be tamed in order to make democracy work. Comparing the United States and Europe, Buruma asks why so many Americans--and so few Europeans--see religion as a help to democracy. Turning to China and Japan, he disputes the notion that only monotheistic religions pose problems for secular politics. Finally, he reconsiders the story of radical Islam in contemporary Europe, from the case of Salman Rushdie to the murder of Theo van Gogh. Sparing no one, Buruma exposes the follies of the current culture war between defenders of "Western values" and "multiculturalists," and explains that the creation of a democratic European Islam is not only possible, but necessary. Presenting a challenge to dogmatic believers and dogmatic secularists alike, Taming the Gods powerfully argues that religion and democracy can be compatible--but only if religious and secular authorities are kept firmly apart.

Download or read book Taming Babel written by Rachel Leow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taming Babel sheds new light on the role of language in the making of modern postcolonial Asian nations. Focusing on one of the most linguistically diverse territories in the British Empire, Rachel Leow explores the profound anxieties generated by a century of struggles to govern the polyglot subjects of British Malaya and postcolonial Malaysia. The book ranges across a series of key moments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which British and Asian actors wrought quiet battles in the realm of language: in textbooks and language classrooms; in dictionaries, grammars and orthographies; in propaganda and psychological warfare; and in the very planning of language itself. Every attempt to tame Chinese and Malay languages resulted in failures of translation, competence, and governance, exposing both the deep fragility of a monoglot state in polyglot milieux, and the essential untameable nature of languages in motion.

Download or read book Social Mobilisation in Post Industrial China written by Jia Gao and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years China has experienced intense economic development. Previously a rapidly urbanising industrial economy, the country has become a post-industrial economy with a service sector that accounts for almost half the nation’s GDP. This transformation has created many socio-political changes, but key among them is social mobilisation. This book provides a full and systematic analysis of social mobilisation in China, and how its use as part of state capacity has evolved.

Download or read book Taming Manhattan written by Catherine McNeur and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Perkins Marsh Prize, American Society for Environmental History VSNY Book Award, New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America Hornblower Award for a First Book, New York Society Library James Broussard Best First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic With pigs roaming the streets and cows foraging in the Battery, antebellum Manhattan would have been unrecognizable to inhabitants of today’s sprawling metropolis. Fruits and vegetables came from small market gardens in the city, and manure piled high on streets and docks was gold to nearby farmers. But as Catherine McNeur reveals in this environmental history of Gotham, a battle to control the boundaries between city and country was already being waged, and the winners would take dramatic steps to outlaw New York’s wild side. “[A] fine book which make[s] a real contribution to urban biography.” —Joseph Rykwert, Times Literary Supplement “Tells an odd story in lively prose...The city McNeur depicts in Taming Manhattan is the pestiferous obverse of the belle epoque city of Henry James and Edith Wharton that sits comfortably in many imaginations...[Taming Manhattan] is a smart book that engages in the old fashioned business of trying to harvest lessons for the present from the past.” —Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times

Download or read book Taming the Street written by Diana B. Henriques and published by Random House. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic story of FDR’s fight for the soul of American capitalism—from award-winning journalist Diana B. Henriques, author of The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust “I thought I was well versed in the New Deal, but it turns out I knew next to nothing. Diana Henriques’s chronicle is meticulous, illuminating, and riveting.”—Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland Taming the Street describes how President Franklin D. Roosevelt battled to regulate Wall Street in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression. With deep reporting and vivid storytelling, Diana B. Henriques takes readers back to a time when America’s financial landscape was a jungle ruled by the titans of vast wealth, largely unrestrained by government. Roosevelt ran for office in 1932 vowing to curb that ruthless capitalism and make the world of finance safer for ordinary savers and investors. His deeply personal campaign to tame the Street is one of the great untold dramas in American history. Success in this political struggle was far from certain for FDR and his New Deal allies, who included the political dynasty builder Joseph P. Kennedy and the future Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas. Wall Street’s old guard, led by New York Stock Exchange president Richard Whitney, fought every new rule to the “last legal ditch.” That clash—between two sharply different visions of financial power and federal responsibility—has shaped how “other people’s money” is managed in the United States to this day. As inequality once again reaches Jazz Age levels, Henriques brings to life a time when the system worked—an idealistic moment when ordinary Americans knew what had to be done and supported leaders who could do it. A vital history and a riveting true-life thriller, Taming the Street raises an urgent and troubling question: What does capitalism owe to the common good?