Political Power and Corporate Control

Political Power and Corporate Control
Author: Peter A. Gourevitch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2010-06-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400837014

Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

Information Technologies and Global Politics

Information Technologies and Global Politics
Author: James N. Rosenau
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0791489450

Returning to the fundamentals of political science, namely power and governance, this book studies the relationship between information technologies and global politics. Key issue-areas are carefully examined: security (including information warfare and terrorism); global consumption and production; international telecommunications; culture and identity formation; human rights; humanitarian assistance; the environment; and biotechnology. Each demonstrates the validity of the view now prevalent within international relations research—the shifting of power and the locus of authority away from the state. Three major conclusions are offered. First, the nation-state must now confront, support, or coexist with other international actors: non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations; multinational corporations; transnational social movements; and individuals. Second, our understanding of instrumental and structural powers must be reconfigured to account for digital information technologies. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, information technologies are now reconstituting actor identities and issues.

The Global Politics of Science and Technology - Vol. 1

The Global Politics of Science and Technology - Vol. 1
Author: Maximilian Mayer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2014-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 364255007X

An increasing number of scholars have begun to see science and technology as relevant issues in International Relations (IR), acknowledging the impact of material elements, technical instruments, and scientific practices on international security, statehood, and global governance. This two-volume collection brings the debate about science and technology to the center of International Relations. It shows how integrating science and technology translates into novel analytical frameworks, conceptual approaches and empirical puzzles, and thereby offers a state-of-the-art review of various methodological and theoretical ways in which sciences and technologies matter for the study of international affairs and world politics. The authors not only offer a set of practical examples of research frameworks for experts and students alike, but also propose a conceptual space for interdisciplinary learning in order to improve our understanding of the global politics of science and technology. This first volume summarizes various time-tested approaches for studying the global politics of science and technology from an IR perspective. It also provides empirical, theoretical, and conceptual interventions from geography, history, innovation studies, and science and technology studies that indicate ways to enhance and rearticulate IR approaches. In addition, several interviews advance possibilities of multi-disciplinary collaboration.

Power in a Warming World

Power in a Warming World
Author: David Ciplet
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2015-09-18
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262330040

An examination of shifting global power dynamics in climate change politics, and how this affects our ability to achieve equitable and sustainable climate outcomes. After nearly a quarter century of international negotiations on climate change, we stand at a crossroads. A new set of agreements is likely to fail to prevent the global climate's destabilization. Islands and coastlines face inundation, and widespread drought, flooding, and famine are expected to worsen in the poorest and most vulnerable countries. How did we arrive at an entirely inequitable and scientifically inadequate international response to climate change? In Power in a Warming World, David Ciplet, J. Timmons Roberts, and Mizan Khan, bring decades of combined experience as negotiators, researchers, and activists to bear on this urgent question. Combining rich empirical description with a political economic view of power relations, they document the struggles of states and social groups most vulnerable to a changing climate and describe the emergence of new political coalitions that take climate politics beyond a simple North-South divide. They offer six future scenarios in which power relations continue to shift as the world warms. A focus on incremental market-based reform, they argue, has proven insufficient for challenging the enduring power of fossil fuel interests, and will continue to be inadequate without a bolder, more inclusive and aggressive response.

Opening Standards

Opening Standards
Author: Laura Denardis
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-09-02
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0262297280

The economic and political stakes in the current heated debates over “openness” and open standards in the Internet's architecture. Openness is not a given on the Internet. Technical standards—the underlying architecture that enables interoperability among hardware and software from different manufacturers—increasingly control individual freedom and the pace of innovation in technology markets. Heated battles rage over the very definition of “openness” and what constitutes an open standard in information and communication technologies. In Opening Standards, experts from industry, academia, and public policy explore just what is at stake in these controversies, considering both economic and political implications of open standards. The book examines the effect of open standards on innovation, on the relationship between interoperability and public policy (and if government has a responsibility to promote open standards), and on intellectual property rights in standardization—an issue at the heart of current global controversies. Finally, Opening Standards recommends a framework for defining openness in twenty-first-century information infrastructures. Contributors discuss such topics as how to reflect the public interest in the private standards-setting process; why open standards have a beneficial effect on competition and Internet freedom; the effects of intellectual property rights on standards openness; and how to define standard, open standard, and software interoperability.

The New Global Politics

The New Global Politics
Author: Harry E. Vanden
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2017-03-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315522276

Over the past decade, there has been an unprecedented mobilization of street protests worldwide, from the demonstrations that helped bring progressive governments to power in Latin America, to the Arab Spring, to Occupy movements in the United States and Europe, to democracy protests in China. This edited volume investigates the current status, nature and dynamics of the new politics that characterizes social movements from around the world that are part of this revolutionary wave. Spanning case studies from Latin America, North and South Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America, this volume examines the varied manifestations of the current cycle of protest, which emerged from the Global South and spread to the North and highlights their interconnections – the globalized nature of these social movements. Analytically converging around Sidney Tarrow’s emphasis on protest cycles, political opportunity structures and identity, the individual chapters investigate processes such as global framing, internationalization, diffusion, scale shifts, externalizations and transnational coalition building to provide an analytic cartography of the current state of social movements as they are simultaneously globalizing while still being embedded in their respective localities. Looking at new ways of thinking and new forms of challenging power, this comprehensive volume will be of great interest to graduates and scholars in the fields of globalization, social movements and international politics.

Global Politics

Global Politics
Author: Roni Kay M. O'Dell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1793604770

Global Politics: A Toolkit for Learners is an innovative and exciting new learner-centered approach to the study of international relations. Leveraging decades of in-class teaching and learning experiences, authors Roni Kay M. O’Dell and Sasha Breger Bush have developed evidence-based teaching and learning practices which support a scaffolded, skills-oriented approach. Each chapter introduces historical documents from key political events, important concepts and the techniques learners need to independently and actively engage with primary sources. Readers are encouraged to develop a personal connection with global issues, to consider matters of justice, freedom and equality, and to think critically about possibilities for social transformation in the global arena.

The New Global Politics of Science

The New Global Politics of Science
Author: Mats Benner
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2018-08-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1784717177

Science has become a central political concern with massive increases in public investments and expectations, but resources are embedded in a complex web of societal expectations, which vary between countries and regions. This book outlines an insightful understanding of science policy as both concerning the governance of science itself (priority-setting, funding, organization and articulation with polity, society, and economy) and its extra-organizational connections, in terms of higher education, innovation and national policy concerns.

Beyond Religious Freedom

Beyond Religious Freedom
Author: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691176221

In recent years, North American and European nations have sought to legally remake religion in other countries through an unprecedented array of international initiatives. Policymakers have rallied around the notion that the fostering of religious freedom, interfaith dialogue, religious tolerance, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to combating persecution and discrimination. Beyond Religious Freedom persuasively argues that these initiatives create the very social tensions and divisions they are meant to overcome. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd looks at three critical channels of state-sponsored intervention: international religious freedom advocacy, development assistance and nation building, and international law. She shows how these initiatives make religious difference a matter of law, resulting in a divide that favors forms of religion authorized by those in power and excludes other ways of being and belonging. In exploring the dizzying power dynamics and blurred boundaries that characterize relations between "expert religion," "governed religion," and "lived religion," Hurd charts new territory in the study of religion in global politics. A forceful and timely critique of the politics of promoting religious freedom, Beyond Religious Freedom provides new insights into today's most pressing dilemmas of power, difference, and governance.

Global Politics in the 21st Century

Global Politics in the 21st Century
Author: Robert J. Jackson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2013-09-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0521767458

Objective, critical, optimistic, and with a global focus, this textbook combines international relations theory, history, up-to-date research, and current affairs to give the student a comprehensive, unbiased understanding of international politics. It integrates theory and traditional approaches with globalization and research on newer topics such as terrorism, the rise of new economic superpowers, and the impact of global communications and social networking to offer the ideal breadth and depth of coverage for a one-semester undergraduate course. Student learning is supported and enhanced by box features and "Close Up" sections with context and further information, "Critical Case Studies" that highlight controversial and complex current affairs topics and show how the world works in practice, and questions to stimulate discussion, review key concepts, and encourage further study. It brilliantly demonstrates the significance and interconnectiveness of globalization and new security challenges in the 21st century and illuminates the role of leadership in transnational crises.