Product Description: Global economic crisis and the implications of global environmental change have led academics and policy-makers to consider how ‘development’ in all parts of the world should be achieved. However, ‘development’ has always been a contested idea...read more

Moving beyond abstract economic models and superficial descriptions of the market, Beyond the Developmental State analyses the economic, political and ideological interests which underpin current socio-economic processes.Through this approach, the contributors show the close interrelation between states and markets in both national and international contexts. Drawing on a wide range of case studies and themes, the book exposes the theoretical and empirical limitations of the developmental state paradigm, offering alternatives as well as discussing the policy implications and challenges they raise.For scholars, students and practitioners of development, Beyond the Developmental State presents a decisive break with the old dogmas of both neoliberal orthodoxy and theories of 'market-imperfection', and outlines theoretically and empirically grounded alternatives.

A new lens on development is changing the world of international aid. The overdue recognition that development in all sectors is an inherently political process is driving aid providers to try to learn how to think and act politically. Major donors are pursuing explicitly political goals alongside their traditional socioeconomic aims and introducing more politically informed methods throughout their work. Yet these changes face an array of external and internal obstacles, from heightened sensitivity on the part of many aid-receiving governments about foreign political interventionism to inflexible aid delivery mechanisms and entrenched technocratic preferences within many aid organizations. This pathbreaking book assesses the progress and pitfalls of the attempted politics revolution in development aid and charts a constructive way forward. Contents: Introduction 1. The New Politics Agenda The Original Framework: 1960s-1980s 2. Apolitical Roots Breaking the Political Taboo: 1990s-2000s 3. The Door Opens to Politics 4. Advancing Political Goals 5. Toward Politically Informed Methods The Way Forward 6. Politically Smart Development Aid 7. The Unresolved Debate on Political Goals 8. The Integration Frontier Conclusion 9. The Long Road to Politics

Product Description: Economists offer a rational-choice perspective on conflict, using approaches that range from the game theoretic to the experimental. Modern economics has largely ignored the issue of outright conflict as an alternative way of allocating goods, assuming instead the existence of well-defined property rights enforced by an undefined third party...read more

Growth against Democracy: Savage Developmentalism in the Modern World, by H.L.T. Quan is a compelling interrogation of the ways in which we have thought about modernity, capitalism, and democracy, and how those ideas inform neoliberal economics, diplomacy, and impact human life. To explicate contemporary theories of development, Quan introduces the concept of “savage developmentalism,” with its attendant distortions of the ideals of equality and freedom and assumptions that foment antidemocratic social and political forms. By outlining the pitfalls of security-obsessed developmental approaches, Growth against Democracy troubles the simple notion that modernity is inherently superior and development will benefit everyone. It shows how capitalists' needs for market, finance, and profitability often lead to development programs that engender expansionism, dispossession, and repression.Drawing on political theory, international political economy, critical ethnic studies, legal studies, and feminist analytics, this groundbreaking study exemplifies how multi-disciplinary scholarship best addresses the increasingly complex and multi-layered issues facing humanity today. It analyzes the linkages between development and national security, and provides sustained attention to the making of foreign policy, the development of capitalism and corporate globalization. The book highlights three critical examples of where savage developmentalism has eventuated worse living conditions, severe social repression, and displacement: Brazilian-Japanese economic relations in Brazil under military rule (1964-1985); China’s aggressive courting of African good will and resources; and, the United States’ reconstruction of Iraq. These three major historical cases represent some of the most momentous global development in the last sixty years, and never before have such powerful cases been analyzed in the same monograph. Growth against Democracy helps re-evaluate the promises of progress, security, and freedom, and broadens our ideas about and priorities for humane public policy at the national and global levels.

In the five years since the first edition of Conflict and Development was published the awareness of the relationship between conflicts and development has grown exponentially. Developmental factors can act as a trigger for violence, as well as for ending violence and for triggering post-conflict reconstruction. The book explores the complexity of the links between violent conflict (usually civil wars) and development, under-development and uneven development. The second edition incorporates significant changes in the field including the G7+ initiative, the New Deal on Fragile States, World Trade talks, major policy documents from the UNDP and World Bank and updates on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Product Description: The perception of politics as an obstacle to the advancement of the Caribbean must be removed. In Power Politics and Performance, Winston Dookeran argues that for meaningful change, politics must be visionary and pursued with principled purpose...read more

Product Description: Why does a huge income gap still exist between developed and developing countries? Plausible causes on the surface may be the difference in technology, the quality of human resources, and economic institutions, but on the deeper level the gap reflects the success and failure of state building which is vital for economic development...read more

There is considerable disagreement about whether the U.S. president has a direct and measurable influence over the economy. The analysis presented in Economic Actors, Economic Behaviors, and Presidential Leadership: The Constrained Effects of Rhetoric suggests that while presidents have increased their rhetoric regarding the economy, they have not had much success in shaping it. Considering this research, Arthur argues that the president’s decision to address the economy so often must stem from a symbolic placation or institutional necessity that is intended to comfort constituencies or somehow garner electoral advocacy from the party’s base. No other viable explanation exists given the lack of results presidents obtain from discussing the economy and their persistent determination to do so. This discrepancy suggests that presidential rhetoric on the economy is, at best, a tool used to appear concerned to everyone and toe the party-line to their base. Arthur presents an overview of economic rhetoric from the presidential office that will be of interest to scholars of the economy and political communication.

This book seeks to "re-think democracy." Over the past years, there has been a tendency in the global policy community and, even more widely, in the world’s media, to focus on democracy as the "gold standard" by which all things political are measured. This book re-examines democracy in Russia and in the world more generally, as idea, desired ideal, and practice. A major issue for Russia is whether the modernization of Russia might not prosper better by Russia focusing directly on modernization and not worrying too much about democracy. This book explores a wide range of aspects of this important question. It discusses how the debate is conducted in Russia; outlines how Russians contrast their own experiences, unfavourably, with the experience of China, where reform and modernization have been pursued with great success, with no concern for democracy; and concludes by assessing how the debate in Russia is likely to be resolved.