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Situated at the intersection of democratic theory and international studies, Accountability and Democracy provides an in-depth critical analysis of the concept “democratic accountability.” The book proceeds with separate chapters on accountability as found in the U.S. Ratification debates, agency theory, ancient Athenian democracy, theories of deliberative democracy, capitalist markets, and cosmopolitan democracy. Through an engagement with these different traditions and contexts, the book paints a picture of democratic accountability as a multidimensional concept harboring competing imperatives and diverse instantiations. It both engages conventional electoral models of accountability and moves beyond them by situating democratic accountability within more deliberative, participatory and agonistic contexts. Contrary to dominant views that emphasize discipline and control, the book describes democratic accountability as a source of mutuality, community, and political transformation. The book also challenges deep-seated understandings of democratic accountability as an expression of popular sovereignty. It instead argues that accountable governance is incompatible with all claims to ultimate authority, regardless of whether they refer to the demos, the state, or cosmopolitan public law. Rather than conceiving of democratic accountability as a way to legitimize a secure and sovereign political order, the book contends that destabilization and democratic insurgence are indispensable and often neglected facets of democratic accountability practices.

This book analyses the political and social problems that arise when American forces are stationed in other countries. The United States, although critical of the British Empire during World War II, found itself playing an imperial role in the postwar era in order to safeguard the security of the West. In building up a global security system, with American troops in Europe, the Far East, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean and the Pacific, the United States came to resemble the former colonial powers. But whereas the colonial empire had established garrisons on territory acquired by force, the United States was obliged to negotiate basing rights for its troops by negotiating with independent sovereign states. The result was a variety of arrangements with different host nations, in which the American position, and the use America could make of its troops overseas, was critically dependant on America's political and historical relationship with the country concerned. The United States has based more troops overseas than any of the colonial empires. However, the terms of the leasehold empire have imposed severe constraints on America's freedom of manoeuvre.

Democracy promotion has assumed greater importance since the end of the cold war, particularly in the US foreign policy. This book examines the American experience with the advancement of democracy worldwide. First, it explores to what extent classical political theory—particularly realism and liberalism—help us understand democracy promotion. Secondly, it looks at the strategic and political motivations behind this policy and how it relates to other key goals in US international relations. Finally, it considers the impact that American democracy promotion has had in different regions and countries. These issues are analysed from a wide range of theoretical perspectives sustained by 15 different contributors.

This new and original study focuses on the growing politicization and radicalization of the Arab minority within Israel — excluding the Israeli-administered territories — from 1967 to the present day. The author has studied both written and oral sources to produce a scholarly analysis of the diverse political views and attitudes of Muslims, Christians, and Druzes in Israel. As well as analysing the views of intellectuals and politicians, he examines trends among the general Arab population in Israel, looking in particular at political behaviour and struggles, organizations, problems of identity, electoral trends, education, language, and literature. His wide-ranging examination draws out the strategies developed by Israeli Arabs to deal with the conflicting demands of the State of Israel and Arab nationalism. The aim of this book is to encourage an objective and balanced approach to the issues, and concludes with some far-reaching proposals to improve Jewish—Arab relations.

This book spans an entire epoch in the history of the contemporary Palestinian national movement, from the establishment of Israel in 1948, to the PLO-Israel accord of 1993. Contrary to the conventional view that national liberation movements proceed with state-building only after attaining independence, the case of the PLO shows that state-building may shape political institutionalization, even in the absence of an autonomous territorial, economic, and social base. This study traces the political, ideological, and organizational evolution of the PLO and its constituent of guerrilla groups. Taking the much-vaunted ‘armed struggle’ as its connecting there, it shows how conflict was used to mobilize the mass constituency, assert particular discourses of revolution and nationalism, construct statist institutions, and establish legitimacy of a new political class and bureaucratic elite. The book draws extensively on PLO archives, official publications, and internal documents of the various guerrilla groups, and over 400 interviews conducted by the author with the PLO rank-and-file.

Does globalization erode the nation state's capacity to act? Are nation states forced to change their policies even if this goes against the democratic will of their electorates? How does government action change under conditions of globalization? Questions like these have not only featured highly in political debates in recent years, but also in academic discourse. This book contributes to that debate. The general question it addresses is whether globalization leads to policy convergence — a central, but contested topic in the debate, as theoretical arguments can be advanced both in favour of and against the likelihood of such a development. More specifically, the book contains detailed empirical case studies of four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland) in a policy area where state action has been particularly challenged by the emergence of world-wide, around-the-clock financial markets in the last few decades, namely that of the regulation and supervision of the banking industry. Based on careful analysis of historical developments, specific challenges, the character of policy networks and institutions, and their interaction in the political process, this book argues that nation states still possess considerable room for manoeuvre in pursuing their policies. Even if they choose supranational coordination and cooperation, their national institutional configurations still function as filters in the globalization process.

We live in an increasingly prosperous world, yet the estimated number of undernourished people has risen, and will continue to rise with the doubling of food prices. A large majority of those affected are living in India. Why have strategies to combat hunger, especially in India, failed so badly? How did a nation that prides itself on booming economic growth come to have half of its preschool population undernourished? Using the case study of a World Bank nutrition project in India, this book takes on these questions and probes the issues surrounding development assistance, strategies to eliminate undernutrition, and how hunger should be fundamentally understood and addressed. Throughout the book, the underlying tension between choice and circumstance is explored. How much are individuals able to determine their life choices? How much should policy-makers take underlying social forces into account when designing policy? This book examines the possibilities and obstacles to eliminating child hunger. This book is not just about nutrition, it is an attempt to uncover the workings of power through a close look at the structures, discourses, and agencies through which nutrition policy operates. In this process, the source of nutrition policy in the World Bank is traced to those affected by the policies in India.

This book challenges the habit of conventional historiography of taking the ‘essential’ state – a ‘bounded entity’ equipped with a ‘sovereign’ central power — for granted in any period and of not taking period political terminology seriously. It refutes the idea, current both in historiography and in International Relations theory (in particular Realism), that the fundamental nature of ‘international’ politics is historically immutable. Nothing akin to what we call the ‘state’ existed before the 19th century: it is a recent invention and the assumption that it is timeless, necessary for society, is simply part of its legitimating myth. The development over the past three millennia of the political structures of western civilization is shown here to have been a succession of unrepeatable but path-dependent stages. In examining structural change, the book adopts a constructivist approach based on the analysis of period political discourse. This approach both reflects and illuminates the evolution of western political thought: on the one hand, political thought is a vehicle of the political discourse of its period. On the other hand, the assumption that political theory must in any age somehow be centred on the ‘state’ has forced our understanding of it into a straight-jacket: abandoning this assumption permits fresh and unexpected insights into the political thinking of earlier eras. Close attention, however, is also paid to the material constraints and opportunities (e.g., ecological and economic factors, or military technology) impacting on the evolution of society.