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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 193 countries and a group of select territories are used by policy makers, the media, international corporations, and civic activists and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide....

This book addresses the question of political legitimacy in the European Union from the much neglected angle of political responsibility. It develops an original communitarian approach to legitimacy based on Alasdair MacIntyre's ethics of virtues and practices, that can be contrasted with prevalent liberal-egalitarian and neo-republican approaches. Tsakatika argues that a 'responsibility deficit', quite distinct from the often discussed 'democratic deficit', can be diagnosed in the European Unio...

"Discusses Liberia's settler and neo-colonial development, failure in state-building, collapse followed by its two civil wars, and reconstitution from 2005 under the administration of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf"--Provided by publisher.

China and the People's Liberation Army defines "great powers" and "developing states" and suggests that the purposes of their militaries are fundamentally different. Solomon Karmel works to debunk frequently unquestioned myths about China s status as a great power. He employs extensive research of Chinese and foreign sources, secret and public, to understand shortcomings in the strategic, military, and industrial overhaul of China s military-industrial complex. His thematic framework and case-st...

The "Evolution of the Trade Regime" offers a comprehensive political-economic history of the development of the world's multilateral trade institutions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). While other books confine themselves to describing contemporary GATT/WTO legal rules or analyzing their economic logic, this is the first to explain the logic and development behind these rules. The book begins by examining the institutions'...

This volume analyses the evolution of selected public policies and the changing roles and structure of the state in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain since the 1960s. It makes a major contribution to work on recent democratic regime transition in southern Europe, demonstrating how the state has responded and adapted to the challenges and pressures associated with the overarching processes of democratization, socio-economic development, and Europeanization.

Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran looks at the rise and role of female activism in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Since 1979 women have played a decisive role in elections and assumed political posts. This study assesses this role as well as the impact of domestic and international policies on women's activism, highlighting the contradictions between politics and religion within the Islamic Republic. It also seeks to evaluate political and economic developments and the transfo...

Re-Imagining America starts by revealing in painful detail the systematic betrayal of the core founding principles of a once-great nation, revealing in all its gory detail the ways in which the American government has been comprehensively 'captured' by wealth, ruthless corporate power and the military-industrial complex -an aging and declining empire whose days are numbered, like all empires, and whose Machiavellian manoeuvrings have brought shame to the nation, and led to opprobrium and derisio...

Living between Juniper and Palm discusses issues of sustainability, ecology, and environment in the Himalayas, particularly among the Tamang people of Nepal. Indigenous environmental knowledge is revealed-covering forests and plants, places and pathways, wild and domestic animals, and ideas of sameness and difference between humans and non-humans. Modern conservation of the environment is contrasted to shamanic and Hindu cosmologies, providing cultural analysis to power dimensions of participato...

For the most of the twentieth century, the country of Vietnam has served as a symbol of the bipolar system of rival ideological blocs that characterized the Cold War. As the conflict over communism waned in the 1980s, Vietnam faced the tough task of remaking itself as nation in the eyes of its people and of the world. In Changing Worlds, David W.P. Elliot, a participant in the Aspen Institute's U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue who has spent the past forty years working closely with the people and governmen...

Canadian Local Government: An Urban Perspective by Andrew Sancton is a new ground-up text that focuses on local governments as political institutions. Its objective is to attempt to answer all of the big questions political scientists ask about other political institutions: How are local governments defined? Why do we have them? What do they do? How do they relate to other political institutions? How is power attained and distributed within them? With a strong and powerful voice, Sancton answers...