Author: Kidane Mengisteab
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847012477
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Analyses the structural and institutional obstacles to democratization in transitional societies - fractured societies, fragmented economies and institutions of governance, weak or deformed state structures - and how to overcome these.
Author: Kidane Mengisteab
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 184701058X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Examines how regional integration can resolve the crises of the Greater Horn of Africa, exploring how it can be used as a mechanism for conflict resolution, promoting the economy and tackling issues of identity and citizenship. The Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) is engulfed by three interrelated crises: various inter-state wars, civil wars, and inter-communal conflicts; an economic crisis manifested in widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity and famines; and environmental degradation that is ravaging the region. While it is apparent that the countries of the region are unlikely to be able to deal with the crises individually, there is consensus that their chances of doing so improve markedly with collective regional action. The contributors to this volume address the need for regional integration in the GHA. They identify those factors that can foster integration, such as the proper management of equitable citizenship rights, as well as examining those that impede it, including the region's largely ineffective integration scheme, IGAD, and explore how the former can be strengthened and the latter transformed; explain how regional integration can mitigate the conflicts; and examine how integration can help to energise the region's economy. Kidane Mengisteab is Professor of African Studies and Political Science at Penn State University; Redie Bereketeab is a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden.
Author: Timothy D. Sisk
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 9781878379795
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Elections have emerged as one of the most important, and most contentious, features of political life on the African continent. In the first half of this decade, there were more than 20 national elections, serving largely as capstones of peace processes or transitions to democracies. The outcomes of these and more recent elections have been remarkably varied, and the relationship between elections and conflict management is widely debated throughout Africa and among international observers. Elections can either help reduce tensions by reconstituting legitimate government, or they can exacerbate them by further polarizing highly conflictual societies. This timely volume examines the relationship between elections, especially electoral systems, and conflict management in Africa, while also serving as an important reference for other regions. The book brings together for the first time the latest thinking on the many different roles elections can play in democratization and conflict management.
Author: Kidane Mengisteab
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135185464X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Most African economies range from moderately advanced capitalist systems with modern banks and stock markets to peasant and pastoral subsistent systems. Most African countries are also characterized by parallel institutions of governance – one is the state sanctioned (formal) system and the other is the traditional system, which is adhered to, primarily but not exclusively, by the segments of the population in the subsistence peasant and pastoral economic systems. Traditional Institutions in Contemporary African Governance examines critical issues that are largely neglected in the literature, including why traditional institutions have remained entrenched, what the socioeconomic implications of fragmented institutional systems are, and whether they facilitate or impede democratization. The contributors investigate the organizational structure of traditional leadership, the level of adherence of the traditional systems, how dispute resolution, decision-making, and resource allocation are conducted in the traditional system, gender relations in the traditional system, and how the traditional institutions interact with the formal institutions. Filling a conspicuous gap in the literature on African governance, this book will be of great interest to policy makers as well as students and scholars of African politics, political economy and democratization.
Author: Sylvia Walby
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150950320X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 174
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Book Description
We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations – a focus on ‘austerity’ and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on ‘financial crisis’ and democratic regulation of finance – are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.
Author: Joseph Zajda
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031554787
Category : Cultural pluralism
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
This book analyses major discourses of cultural diversity and human rights. The chapters contained in this book examine critically major issues confronting cultural diversity and human rights, both locally and globally. They analyze the challenges that different societies are confronted with, as they attempt to implement, protect and defend cultural diversity and human rights in an ever-changing world, and culturally diverse environment. Topics covered include celebrating cultural diversity in sport, human rights legacies of the African slave trade and the long-term implications of colonialism, assessment of human rights and sports, effectiveness in intercultural dialogue in dominant discourses of cultural diversity and human rights, and the rising importance of cultural diversity and human rights in sport for children and youth. This book will be helpful to readers to explore their own views and consider more broadly what may be in the best interests of a fair and just society, as envisioned in human rights treaties, human rights education in schools, and cultural diversity.
Author: Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191645877
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 785
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Book Description
Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being a concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy researchers in the 1980s to a global field of interest with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research which may or may not ultimately inform policy and practice, as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees' needs and rights. This authoritative Handbook critically evaluates the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and analyses the key contemporary and future challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world. The 52 state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs and international organizations, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today. The chapters vividly illustrate the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice.
Author: Simon Tormey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745690513
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low. Fewer people are voting or joining political parties, and our interest in parliamentary politics is declining fast. Even oppositional and radical parties that should be benefitting from public disenchantment with politics are suffering. But different forms of political activity are emerging to replace representative politics: instant politics, direct action, insurgent politics. We are leaving behind traditional representation, and moving towards a politics without representatives. In this provocative new book, Simon Tormey explores the changes that are underway, drawing on a rich range of examples from the Arab Spring to the Indignados uprising in Spain, street protests in Brazil and Turkey to the emergence of new initiatives such as Anonymous and Occupy. Tormey argues that the easy assumptions that informed our thinking about the nature and role of parties, and ‘party based democracy’ have to be rethought. We are entering a period of fast politics, evanescent politics, a politics of the street, of the squares, of micro-parties, pop-up parties, and demonstrations. This may well be the end of representative politics as we know it, but an exciting new era of political engagement is just beginning.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047978
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 94
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Book Description
The global movement toward democracy, spurred in part by the ending of the cold war, has created opportunities for democratization not only in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but also in Africa. This book is based on workshops held in Benin, Ethiopia, and Namibia to better understand the dynamics of contemporary democratic movements in Africa. Key issues in the democratization process range from its institutional and political requirements to specific problems such as ethnic conflict, corruption, and role of donors in promoting democracy. By focusing on the opinion and views of African intellectuals, academics, writers, and political activists and observers, the book provides a unique perspective regarding the dynamics and problems of democratization in Africa.
Author: Tanja A. Börzel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199682305
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 705
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism - the first of its kind - offers a systematic and wide-ranging survey of the scholarship on regionalism, regionalization, and regional governance. Unpacking the major debates, leading authors of the field synthesize the state of the art, provide a guide to the comparative study of regionalism, and identify future avenues of research. Twenty-seven chapters review the theoretical and empirical scholarship with regard to the emergence of regionalism, the institutional design of regional organizations and issue-specific governance, as well as the effects of regionalism and its relationship with processes of regionalization. The authors explore theories of cooperation, integration, and diffusion explaining the rise and the different forms of regionalism. The handbook also discusses the state of the art on the world regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Various chapters survey the literature on regional governance in major issue areas such as security and peace, trade and finance, environment, migration, social and gender policies, as well as democracy and human rights. Finally, the handbook engages in cross-regional comparisons with regard to institutional design, dispute settlement, identities and communities, legitimacy and democracy, as well as inter- and transregionalism.
