Rethinking Neo-Institutional Statebuilding

Rethinking Neo-Institutional Statebuilding
Author: Peter Finkenbusch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2017-05-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315402726

This book examines how neo-institutional statebuilding undercuts international policy agency. Post-Cold War interventions are marked by a peculiar paradox. From peace and statebuilding projects in war-shattered societies to World Bank development programmes in Africa, the scope of external regulation has grown consistently while international policymakers are finding it increasingly difficult to formulate a political project regarding the Global South. This book seeks to make sense of a contradictory situation in which international policymakers are doing more statebuilding than ever while knowing less about it. The study argues that the crisis of international agency is driven by the demise of reductionist liberal-universal knowledge. It critically explores neo-institutionalism as a dominant policy framework, bringing out how the failure of intervention paves the way for more comprehensive, context-sensitive and bottom-up engagement. As a precondition and side-effect of this expansive process, reductionist liberal-universal knowledge is deconstructed. Paradoxically, the more policymakers learn within a neo-institutional frame of reference, the less they positively know. Without this epistemic foundation, it becomes difficult to act purposively in the world and formulate instrumental policy. The study illustrates these conceptual insights with reference to the Merida Initiative, a U.S.-Mexican security agreement signed in 2007. Rethinking Neo-Institutional Statebuilding will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, international intervention, peace and conflict studies, Latin American politics and IR in general.

Re-Thinking Science

Re-Thinking Science
Author: Helga Nowotny
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2013-04-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745657079

Re-Thinking Science presents an account of the dynamic relationship between society and science. Despite the mounting evidence of a much closer, interactive relationship between society and science, current debate still seems to turn on the need to maintain a 'line' to demarcate them. The view persists that there is a one-way communication flow from science to society - with scant attention given to the ways in which society communicates with science. The authors argue that changes in society now make such communications both more likely and more numerous, and that this is transforming science not only in its research practices and the institutions that support it but also deep in its epistemological core. To explain these changes, Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons have developed an open, dynamic framework for re-thinking science. The authors conclude that the line which formerly demarcated society from science is regularly transgressed and that the resulting closer interaction of science and society signals the emergence of a new kind of science: contextualized or context-sensitive science. The co-evolution between society and science requires a more or less complete re-thinking of the basis on which a new social contract between science and society might be constructed. In their discussion the authors present some of the elements that would comprise this new social contract.

Beyond Liberal Peacebuilding

Beyond Liberal Peacebuilding
Author: Elisa Randazzo
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2017-06-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317208692

This book examines the logic behind the shifts and paradigm changes within the scholarship on peacebuilding. In particular, the book is concerned with examining if, and how, these shifts have significantly altered how we think about peacebuilding beyond the ‘liberal peacebuilding’ paradigm. To do so, the book engages with the logic of critique that has led to the emergence of different theoretical approaches to peacebuilding, from hands-on institutionalisation, to the ‘local turn’. It uses the case of Kosovo to understand how a lessons-learnt approach facilitated the shift towards more invasive and intrusive forms of peacebuilding first. However, it is also crucial to understanding the recent local turn, as the rise of local ownership discourses in Kosovo is fundamentally tied to the critiques of extensive international missions, and the associated resistance and marginalisation of local agency. The book examines the implications of the framing of ‘everyday’ agency in order to assess the extent to which these bottom-up approaches have been able to by-pass the problems attributed to the liberal peace approach. It argues that despite its critical and radical intentions, the local turn retains certain foundational modernist and positivist qualities that have so far characterised the very mainstream approaches these critiques claim to transcend. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, statebuilding, peace and conflict studies, security studies and International Relations in general.

Gridlock

Gridlock
Author: Thomas Hale
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2013-07-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745670105

The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most. Ranging over the main areas of global concern, from security to the global economy and the environment, this book examines these mechanisms of gridlock and pathways beyond them. It is written in a highly accessible way, making it relevant not only to students of politics and international relations but also to a wider general readership.

Global Transformations

Global Transformations
Author: David Held
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 1999
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780804736275

In this book, the authors set forth a new model of globalization that lays claims to supersede existing models, and then use this model to assess the way the processes of globalization have operated in different historic periods in respect to political organization, military globalization, trade, finance, corporate productivity, migration, culture, and the environment. Each of these topics is covered in a chapter which contrasts the contemporary nature of globalization with that of earlier epochs. In mapping the shape and political consequences of globalization, the authors concentrate on six states in advanced capitalist societies (SIACS): the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and Japan. For comparative purposes, other states—particularly those with developing economics—are referred to and discussed where relevant. The book concludes by systematically describing and assessing contemporary globalization, and appraising the implications of globalization for the sovereignty and autonomy of SIACS. It also confronts directly the political fatalism that surrounds much discussion of globalization with a normative agenda that elaborates the possibilities for democratizing and civilizing the unfolding global transformation.

The Dynamics of States

The Dynamics of States
Author: Klaus Schlichte
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

This volume deals with recent changes in state domination in the non-Western world. It develops a new approach to the study of state formation and state erosion to explain dynamics that neither follow the pathways of development nor the rule of stagnation that dependency theory once suggested.

The Many Hands of the State

The Many Hands of the State
Author: Kimberly J. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2017-02-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131684188X

The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects.

Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics

Pierre Bourdieu and Democratic Politics
Author: Loïc Wacquant
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2005-06-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745634877

Pierre Bourdieu was a brilliant sociologist and social thinker; he was also an intensely political man whose work is of profound significance for rethinking democracy. This original volume presents and develops Bourdieu's distinctive contribution to the theory and practice of democratic politics. It explicates and illustrates his core concepts of political field and field of power, his historical model of the bureaucratic state, and his influential analyses of the practices and institutions involved in the paradoxical phenomenon of political representation - starting with the enigma of delegation, or what he called the "mystery of ministry." The fruitfulness of Bourdieu's approach is demonstrated in a series of integrated studies of voting, public opinion polls, party dynamics, class rule, and state-building, as well as by careful analyses of Bourdieu's own civic engagements and his theoretical treatment of the politics of reason and recognition in contemporary society. Charting the connections between Bourdieu's political views, the main nodes of his sociology of democratic representation, and the implications of this sociology for progressive civic thought and action, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across the gamut of disciplines as well as to citizens concerned with renewing struggles for social justice.

Statebuilding

Statebuilding
Author: Timothy Sisk
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745663559

After civil wars end, what can sustain peace in the long-term? In particular, how can outsiders facilitate durable conflict-managing institutions through statebuilding - a process that historically has been the outcome of bloody struggles to establish the state's authority over warlords, traditional authorities, and lawless territories? In this book, Timothy Sisk explores international efforts to help the world’s most fragile post-civil war countries today build viable states that can provide for security and deliver the basic services essential for development. Tracing the historical roots of statebuilding to the present day, he demonstrates how the United Nations, leading powers, and well-meaning donors have engaged in statebuilding as a strategic approach to peacebuilding after war. Their efforts are informed by three key objectives: to enhance security by preventing war recurrence and fostering community and human security; to promote development through state provision of essential services such as water, sanitation, and education; to enhance human rights and democracy, reflecting the liberal international order that reaffirms the principles of democracy and human rights, . Improving governance, alongside the state's ability to integrate social differences and manage conflicts over resources, identity, and national priorities, is essential for long-term peace. Whether the global statebuilding enterprise can succeed in creating a world of peaceful, well-governed, development-focused states is unclear. But the book concludes with a road map toward a better global regime to enable peacebuilding and development-oriented statebuilding into the 21st century.

Rethinking Neoliberalism

Rethinking Neoliberalism
Author: Sanford F. Schram
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2017-08-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351736485

Neoliberalism remains a flashpoint for political contestation around the world. For decades now, neoliberalism has been in the process of becoming a globally ascendant default logic that prioritizes using economic rationality for all major decisions, in all sectors of society, at the collective level of state policymaking as well as the personal level of individual choice-making. Donald Trump's recent presidential victory has been interpreted both as a repudiation and as a validation of neoliberalism’s hegemony. Rethinking Neoliberalism brings together theorists, social scientists, and public policy scholars to address neoliberalism as a governing ethic for our times. The chapters interrogate various dimensions of debates about neoliberalism while offering engaging empirical examples of neoliberalism’s effects on social and urban policy in the USA, Europe, Russia, and elsewhere. Themes discussed include: Relationship between neoliberalism, the state, and civil society Neoliberalism and social policy to discipline citizens Urban policy and how neoliberalism reshapes urban governance What it will take politically to get beyond neoliberalism. Written in a clear and accessible style, Rethinking Neoliberalism is a sophisticated synthesis of theory and practice, making it a compelling read for students of Political Science, Public Policy, Sociology, Geography, Urban Planning, Social Work and related fields, at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.