The essays in the book compare the Czech Republic and Slovakia since the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993. The papers deal with the causes of the divorce and discuss the political, economic and ...social developments in the new countries. This is the only English-language volume that presents the synoptic findings of leading Czech, Slovak, and North American scholars in the field.The authors include two former Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, eight leading scholars (four Czechs and four Slovaks), and eight knowledgeable commentators from North America. The most significant new insight is that in spite of predictions by various pundits in the Western World that Czechia would flourish after the breakup and Slovakia would languish, the opposite has happened. While the Czech Republic did well in its early years, it is now languishing while Slovakia, which had a rough start, is now doing very well. Anyone interested in the history of the Czech and Slovak Republics over the last twenty years will find gratification in reading this book.
Side Effects Aspinwall, Mark
2013, 2013-01-09
eBook
This is a story about governance in Mexico after the labor and environmental accords—called "side agreements"—that accompanied the NAFTA treaty went into effect. These side agreements required member ...states to uphold and enforce their labor and environmental laws; though never codified, it was widely accepted that Mexico, in particular, had a problem with law enforcement. Side Effects explores how differences in institutional design (of the side agreements) and domestic capacity (between the labor and environment sectors) influenced norm socialization in Mexico. It argues that the acceptance of rule-of-law norms in environmental governance can be attributed to participating institutions' independence from national control, their willingness to give citizens access, and the professionalization and technical capacity of domestic bureaucrats and civil society actors. Changes in labor governance have been hampered by union confederations, longstanding corruption, and a closed opportunity structure. Going beyond a simple accounting exercise of resources devoted to enforcing the law, this book comes to grips with how best to strengthen local capacity and promote pro-norm behavior—advances essential to the task of development and democratization.
This book describes the process of the Czech economic transformation from the beginning of the 1990s to the country’s entry into the European Union in 2004. This transformation is divided into four ...periods: an initial recession caused by the transformation; economic growth in the mid-1990s; a recession connected to the currency crisis of 1997; and recovery and growth from 1999 until 2004, when the analysis ends. The examination covers the main aspects of the transformation – an overall view of the process, political transition, economic policy, economic results (GDP development, inflation, unemployment), changes in outside indicators (balance of payments), privatization, transformation of the financial sector, and changes in the business sector and institutional development. The book also compares Czech development in this transformative era to those of Poland and Hungary. As in Hungary and Poland, the Czech Republic underwent an exceptional qualitative shift from a system centrally planned to one that was market-based. The book concludes that despite mistakes and hardships, the overall transformation process in Central Europe has been successful.
Many observers have portrayed the Oslo Process as a milestone in the peacemaking process between Palestinians and Israelis. In this controversial and groundbreaking new work, McMahon challenges the ...interpretation of the Oslo Process as a breakthrough or new beginning in Palestinian-Israeli relations. He argues that the Oslo Process affected no discursive or non-discursive change and that the Oslo Process in fact institutionalized the analytics practices involved in Israeli and Palestinian relations. It should, McMahon concludes, be no surprise that the process ended with direct Palestinian-Israeli violence. This book will be crucial reading for scholars of Israeli and Palestinian relations as well as anyone who is interested in understanding what discursive change must occur for peace between Israel and Palestinians to be established and sustained.
Introduction 1. Excavating the Oslo Process 2. Reading the Oslo Process 3. Pre-1993 Systematic Silences 4. Pre-1993 Rules of Formation 5. Post-1993 Systematic Silences 6. Post-1993 Rules of Formation 7. Persistent Israeli Practices 8. Conclusion
Sean F. McMahon is a Post-Doctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo. His research focuses on Palestinian-Israeli politics generally, and the Oslo Process and its effects more specifically. He has published his research in Canadian Foreign Policy and the British Journal of Middle East Studies .
During the past forty years, thousands of studies have been carried out on the subject of happiness. Some have explored the levels of happiness or dissatisfaction associated with typical daily ...activities, such as working, seeing friends, or doing household chores. Others have tried to determine the extent to which income, family, religion, and other factors are associated with the satisfaction people feel about their lives. The Gallup organization has begun conducting global surveys of happiness, and several countries are considering publishing periodic reports on the growth or decline of happiness among their people. One nation, tiny Bhutan, has actually made "Gross National Happiness" the central aim of its domestic policy. How might happiness research affect government policy in the United States--and beyond? In The Politics of Happiness, former Harvard president Derek Bok examines how governments could use the rapidly growing research data on what makes people happy--in a variety of policy areas to increase well-being and improve the quality of life for all their citizens.
Ipperwash Hedican, Edward J
Ipperwash,
c2013, 2013, 2013-06-17, 20130101
eBook
"On September 6, 1995, Dudley George was shot by Ontario Provincial Police officer Kenneth Deane. He died shortly after midnight the next day. George had been participating in a protest over land ...claims in Ipperwash Provincial Park, which had been expropriated from the native Ojibwe after the Second World War. A confrontation erupted between members of the Stoney Point and Kettle Point Bands and officers of the OPP's Emergency Response Team, which had been instructed to use necessary force to disband the protest by Premier Mike Harris's government. George's death and the grievous mishandling of the protest led to the 2007 Ipperwash Inquiry. Edward J. Hedican's Ipperwash provides an incisive examination of protest and dissent within the context of land claims disputes and Aboriginal rights. Hedican investigates how racism and government practices have affected Aboriginal resistance to policies, especially those that have resulted in the loss of Aboriginal lands and led to persistent socio-economic problems in Native communities. He offers a number of specific solutions and policy recommendations on how Aboriginal protests can be resolved using mediation and dispute management - instead of the coercive force used in Ipperwash Park that ultimately gave this tragic story such infamy."--Publisher's website.
This first complete history of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip allows us to see beyond the smoke screen of politics in order to make sense of the dramatic changes that have ...developed on the ground over the past forty years. Looking at a wide range of topics, from control of water and electricity to health care and education as well as surveillance and torture, Neve Gordon's panoramic account reveals a fundamental shift from a politics of life—when, for instance, Israel helped Palestinians plant more than six-hundred thousand trees in Gaza and provided farmers with improved varieties of seeds—to a macabre politics characterized by an increasing number of deaths. Drawing attention to the interactions, excesses, and contradictions created by the forms of control used in the Occupied Territories, Gordon argues that the occupation's very structure, rather than the policy choices of the Israeli government or the actions of various Palestinian political factions, has led to this radical shift.
