Post-Soviet social Collier, Stephen J
2011., 20110808, 2011, 2011-08-08
eBook
The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across ...a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state.
This book offers a broad institutional analysis of Madagascar's Third Republic. It argues that a new agenda is in order to consider not just how institutions form, but the ways in which networks of ...power-and leaders of those networks-grow and change malleable institutions in young democracies with few avenues of accountability.
This book presents the fundamentals of wireless communications and services, explaining in detail what RF spectrum management is, why it is important, which are the authorities regulating the use of ...spectrum, and how is it managed and enforced at the international, regional and national levels. The book offers insights to the engineering, regulatory, economic, legal, management policy-making aspects involved. Real-world case studies are presented to depict the various approaches in different countries, and valuable lessons are drawn. The topics are addressed by engineers, advocates and economists employed by national and international spectrum regulators. The book is a tool that will allow the international regional and national regulators to better manage the RF spectrum, and will help operators and suppliers of wireless communications to better understand their regulators.
The International Ocean Institute – Canada has compiled more than 80 insightful essays on the future of ocean governance and capacity development, based largely on themes of its Training Program at ...Dalhousie University in Canada, to honor the work of Elisabeth Mann Borgese (1918-2002).
Cooperation and Engagement in the Asia-Pacific Region provides valuable insight into a region that encompasses many important maritime regions, and harbors promising opportunities for maritime ...cooperation and engagement.
A hardheaded book that confronts and outlines possible
solutions to a seemingly intractable problem: that helping the poor
often hurts the environment, and vice versa. Can we fight
poverty and ...inequality while protecting the environment? The
challenges are obvious. To rise out of poverty is to consume more
resources, almost by definition. And many measures to combat
pollution lead to job losses and higher prices that mainly hurt the
poor. In Unsustainable Inequalities, economist Lucas
Chancel confronts these difficulties head-on, arguing that the
goals of social justice and a greener world can be compatible, but
that progress requires substantial changes in public policy.
Chancel begins by reviewing the problems. Human actions have put
the natural world under unprecedented pressure. The poor are least
to blame but suffer the most-forced to live with pollutants that
the polluters themselves pay to avoid. But Chancel shows that
policy pioneers worldwide are charting a way forward. Building on
their success, governments and other large-scale organizations must
start by doing much more simply to measure and map environmental
inequalities. We need to break down the walls between traditional
social policy and environmental protection-making sure, for
example, that the poor benefit most from carbon taxes. And we need
much better coordination between the center, where policies are
set, and local authorities on the front lines of deprivation and
contamination. A rare work that combines the quantitative skills of
an economist with the argumentative rigor of a philosopher,
Unsustainable Inequalities shows that there is still hope
for solving even seemingly intractable social problems.
How to leverage existing resources to meet the current and future needs of cities
Crumbling streets and bridges. Poorly performing schools and inadequate social services. These are common complaints ...in cities, which too often struggle just to keep the lights on, much less make the long-term investments necessary for future generations.
It doesn't have to be this way. This book by two internationally recognized experts in public finance describes a new way of restoring economic vitality and financial stability to cities, using steps that already have been proven remarkably successful. The key is unlocking social, human, and economic wealth that cities already own but is out of sight-or "hidden." A focus on existing public wealth helps to shift attention and resources from short-term spending to longer-term investments that can vastly raise the quality of life for many generations of urban residents.
A crucial first step is to understand a city's balance sheet-too few cities comprehend how valuable a working tool this can be. With this in hand, taxpayers, politicians, and investors can better recognize the long-term consequences of political decisions and make choices that mobilize real returns rather than rely on more taxes, debt, or austerity.
Another hidden asset is real estate. Even poor cities own large swathes of poorly utilized land, or they control underperforming utilities and other commercial assets. Most cities could more than double their investments with smarter use of these commercial assets. Managing the city's assets smartly through the authors' proposed Urban Wealth Funds-at arm's-length from short-term political influence-will enable cities to ramp up much needed infrastructure investments.
After Austerity Taylor-Gooby, Peter; Leruth, Benjamin; Chung, Heejung
08/2017
eBook
European welfare states are undergoing profound change, driven by globalisation, technical changes, and population ageing. More immediately the aftermath of the Great Recession and unprecedented ...levels of immigration have imposed additional pressures. This book examines welfare state transformations across a representative range of European countries and at the EU level, and considers likely new directions in social policy. It reviews the dominant neo-liberal austerity response and discusses social investment, fightback, welfare chauvinism and protectionism. It argues that the class solidarities and cleavages that shaped the development of welfare states are no longer powerful. Tensions surrounding divisions between old and young, women and men, immigrants and denizens, and the winners in a new more competitive world and those who feel left behind are becoming steadily more important. European countries have entered a period of greater political instability and this is reflected in policy directions. Austerity predominates nearly everywhere, but patterns of social investment, protectionism, neo-Keynesian intervention and fightback vary between countries. We identify areas of convergence and difference in European welfare state futures.
China's extraordinarily rapid economic growth since 1978, driven by market- oriented reforms, has set world records and continued unabated, despite predictions of an inevitable slowdown. In The State ...Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China?, the renowned China scholar Nicholas R. Lardy argues that China's future growth prospects could be equally bright but are shadowed by the specter of resurgent state dominance, which has begun to diminish the vital role of the market and private firms in China's economy. Lardy's book is a timely sequel to his path-breaking Markets Over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China (Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2014). This book mobilizes new data to trace how President Xi Jinping has consistently championed state-owned or controlled enterprises, encouraging local political leaders and financial institutions to prop up ailing, underperforming companies that are a drag on China's potential. As with his previous book, Lardy's perspective departs from conventional wisdom, especially in its contention that China could achieve a high growth rate for the next two decades—if it reverses course and returns to the path of market- oriented reforms.
Conflict Resolution Actors, Dynamics and Cases deals with multiple concepts and themes of the broad subject area of conflict resolution, seeking to highlight empirical studies that examine several ...topics from conflict prevention to peacebuilding, including conflict management, institution building, the role of formal and informal actors, the features of conflicts in different political contexts and the methods and strategies used for resolution or transformation (mediation, non-violence, reconciliation, transitional justice, second track diplomacy, peace education, post-conflict reconstruction, among others) in intra- and inter-state conflicts. The book is open to several methodological approaches, focusing on empirical studies that address several cases, including studies on Cyprus, the South Caucasus region, DR Congo, the Middle East region, Tunisia and Iraq, as well as on the role of regional organizations such as the European Union in peace-making and peacebuilding. Conceived this way, this edited volume on conflict resolution complements existing books on the theme, seeking not only to apply conflict resolutions theoretical frameworks and concepts to contemporary case studies but also to contribute, based on these empirical studies, to advance the academic debate towards critical perspectives that guide the conflict resolution field to more pluralist, emancipatory and transformative approaches.
