Conditionality and Coercion

Conditionality and Coercion
Author: Isabela Mares
Publisher:
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2019
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019883277X

This volume provides a comparative study of the illicit electoral strategies used by candidates in contemporary elections in Romania and Hungary.

The Politics of Social Risk

The Politics of Social Risk
Author: Isabela Mares
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2003-07-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521534772

The book provides a systematic evaluation of the role played by business in the development of the modern welfare state. When and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers for various employment-related risks? What factors explain the variation in the social policy preferences of employers? What is the relative importance of business and labor-based organization in the negotiation of a new social policy? This book studies these critical questions, by examining the role played by German and French producers in eight social policy reforms spanning nearly a century of social policy development. The analysis demonstrates that major social policies were adopted by cross-class alliances comprising labor-based organizations and key sectors of the business community.

From Open Secrets to Secret Voting

From Open Secrets to Secret Voting
Author: Isabela Mares
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2015-06-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131630079X

The expansion of suffrage and the introduction of elections are momentous political changes that represent only the first steps in the process of democratization. In the absence of institutions that protect the electoral autonomy of voters against a range of actors who seek to influence voting decisions, political rights can be just hollow promises. This book examines the adoption of electoral reforms that protected the autonomy of voters during elections and sought to minimize undue electoral influences over decisions made at the ballot box. Empirically, it focuses on the adoption of reforms protecting electoral secrecy in Imperial Germany during the period between 1870 and 1912. Empirically, the book provides a micro-historical analysis of the democratization of electoral practices, by showing how changes in district level economic and political conditions contributed to the formation of an encompassing political coalition supporting the adoption of electoral reforms.

Taxation, Wage Bargaining, and Unemployment

Taxation, Wage Bargaining, and Unemployment
Author: Isabela Mares
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2006-02-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107320909

Why were European economies able to pursue the simultaneous commitment to full employment and welfare state expansion during the first decades of the postwar period and why did this virtuous relationship break down during recent decades? This book provides an answer to this question, by highlighting the critical importance of a political exchange between unions and governments, premised on wage moderation in exchange for the expansion of social services and transfers. The strategies pursued by these actors in these political exchanges are influenced by existing wage bargaining institutions, the character of monetary policy and by the level and composition of social policy transfers. The book demonstrates that the gradual growth in the fiscal burden has undermined the effectiveness of this political exchange, lowering the ability of unions' wage policies to affect employment outcomes.

Economic Statecraft

Economic Statecraft
Author: Cécile Fabre
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018
Genre: POLITICAL SCIENCE
ISBN: 9780674988866

Leaders have used economic power as a tool of foreign policy since at least Pericles, whose trade sanctions against Megara helped to spark the Peloponnesian War. But as Cécile Fabre notes, philosophers have spent relatively little time thinking about the relevant ethics, especially compared with the time they have spent thinking about the ethics of war. Yet the moral questions raised by the use of economic statecraft are significant and complex. Fabre deploys a cosmopolitan theory of justice and the theory of justified harm to answer these questions, and concludes that political actors are morally entitled to resort to economic sanctions and conditional aid, but only as a means to protect human rights, and so long as the harms which they thereby inflict are not out of proportion to the goods they bring about. Moreover, they are morally entitled to resort to conditional lending and conditional debt forgiveness, not just with a view to protect human rights, but also, under certain conditions, to pursue other non-wrongful political goals.--

Globalization and Global Justice

Globalization and Global Justice
Author: Nicole Hassoun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2012-03-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107378559

The face of the world is changing. The past century has seen the incredible growth of international institutions. How does the fact that the world is becoming more interconnected change institutions' duties to people beyond borders? Does globalization alone engender any ethical obligations? In Globalization and Global Justice, Nicole Hassoun addresses these questions and advances a new argument for the conclusion that there are significant obligations to the global poor. First, she argues that there are many coercive international institutions and that these institutions must provide the means for their subjects to avoid severe poverty. Hassoun then considers the case for aid and trade, and concludes with a new proposal for fair trade in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. Globalization and Global Justice will appeal to readers in philosophy, politics, economics and public policy.

Coercive Distribution

Coercive Distribution
Author: Michael Albertus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2018-05-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108586104

Canonical theories of political economy struggle to explain patterns of distribution in authoritarian regimes. In this Element, Albertus, Fenner, and Slater challenge existing models and introduce an alternative, supply-side, and state-centered theory of 'coercive distribution'. Authoritarian regimes proactively deploy distributive policies as advantageous strategies to consolidate their monopoly on power. These policies contribute to authoritarian durability by undercutting rival elites and enmeshing the masses in lasting relations of coercive dependence. The authors illustrate the patterns, timing, and breadth of coercive distribution with global and Latin American quantitative evidence and with a series of historical case studies from regimes in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. By recognizing distribution's coercive dimensions, they account for empirical patterns of distribution that do not fit with quasi-democratic understandings of distribution as quid pro quo exchange. Under authoritarian conditions, distribution is less an alternative to coercion than one of its most effective expressions.

Liberalism with Excellence

Liberalism with Excellence
Author: Matthew H. Kramer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2017
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0198777965

During the past several decades, political philosophers have frequently clashed with one another over the question whether governments are morally required to remain neutral among reasonable conceptions of excellence and human flourishing. Whereas the numerous followers of John Rawls (and kindred philosophers such as Ronald Dworkin) have maintained that a requirement of neutrality is indeed incumbent on every system of governance, other philosophers -- often designated as 'perfectionists' -- have argued against the existence of such a requirement. Liberalism with Excellence enters these debates not by plighting itself unequivocally to one side or the other, but instead by reconceiving each of the sides and thus by redirecting the debates that have occurred between them. On the one hand, the book rejects the requirement of neutrality by contending that certain subsidies for the promotion of excellence in sundry areas of human endeavour can be proper and vital uses of resources by governments. Advocating such departures from the constraint of neutrality, the book presents a version of liberalism that can rightly be classified as 'perfectionist'. On the other hand, the species of perfectionism espoused in Liberalism with Excellence diverges markedly from the theories that have usually been so classified. Indeed, much of the book assails various aspects of those theories. What is more, the aspirational perfectionism elaborated in the closing chapters of the volume is reconcilable in most key respects with a suitably amplified version of Rawlsianism. Hence, by reconceiving both the perfectionist side and the neutralist side of the prevailing disputation, Liberalism with Excellence combines and transforms their respective insights.

IMF Conditionality

IMF Conditionality
Author: John Williamson
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
Total Pages: 708
Release: 1983
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The twenty-one contributions in this book assess the controversy surrounding the Fund and provide judgments about the criteria for Fund lending which should help readers understand and analyze both its ongoing role in smoothing adjustment to international payments imbalances and its currently critical position in responding to the debt crisis.

Political Conditionality

Political Conditionality
Author: Georg Sorensen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135200904

Political conditionality involves the linking of development aid to certain standards of observance of human rights and (liberal) democracy in recipient countries. Although this may seem to be an innocent policy, it has the potential to bring about a dramatic change in the basic principles of the international system: putting human rights first means putting respect for individuals and rights before respect for the sovereignty of states.