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This work presents the results of a comprehensive and integrated research project in comparative abortion policy and politics in post‐industrial democracies. It focuses on the questions of state feminism—the extent to which women's policy agencies further goals of women's movements for descriptive and substantive representation. In 11 countries in Western Europe and North America, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and the US, authors analyse the most significant debates on abortion policies from the 1970s through the 1990s. Following a common research design, individual researchers describe how each issue came to the public agenda, the goals of women's movement actors, the effectiveness of movement actors and women's policy agencies in inserting pro‐woman gendered perspectives into the issue frames, and the policy outcomes. They assess the success of the women's movement in gaining both access to the policy subsystem as well as favourable policy content. The comparative conclusion to the book examines several hypotheses in light of the descriptive information in the chapters. Have women's movement been successful in increasing their representation and thus making policy processes more democratic? To what extent have women's policy agencies been allies of movement activists? What explains patterns of movement success? In addition to state feminism theory, the conclusion assesses the explanatory power of theories of resource mobilization and political opportunity structure on women's movement effectiveness.

The central argument of this book is that voting unity in European legislatures is not primarily the result of the ‘disciplining’ power of the leadership of parliamentary parties, but rather the result of a combination of ideological homogeneity through self-selection into political parties and the calculations of individual legislators about their own long-term benefits. Despite the central role of policy preferences in the subsequent behaviour of legislators, preferences at the level of the individual legislator have been almost entirely neglected in the study of parliaments and legislative behaviour. The book measures these using an until now under-utilized resource: parliamentary surveys. Building on these, the book develops measures of policy incentives of legislators to dissent from their parliamentary parties, and show that preference similarity amongst legislators explains a very substantial proportion of party unity, yet alone cannot explain all of it. Analysing the attitudes of legislators to the demands of party unity, and what drives these attitudes, the book argues that what explains the observed unity (beyond what preference similarity would explain) is the conscious acceptance by MPs that the long-term benefits of belonging to a united party (such as increased influence on legislation, lower transaction costs, and better chances of gaining office) outweigh the short-terms benefits of always voting for their ideal policy outcome. The book buttresses this argument through the analysis of both open-ended survey questions as well as survey questions on the costs and benefits of belonging to a political party in a legislature.

Access Points develops a new theory about how democratic institutions influence policy outcomes. Access Point Theory argues that the more points of access that institutions provide to interest groups, the cheaper lobbying will be, and, thus, the more lobbying will occur. This will lead to more complex policy, as policymakers insert specific provisions to benefit special interests, and, if one side of the debate has a lobbying advantage, to more biased policy, as the advantaged side is able to better take advantage of the cheaper lobbying. This book then uses Access Point Theory to explain why some countries have more protectionist and more complex trade policies than others; why some countries have stronger environmental and banking regulations than others; and why some countries have more complicated tax codes than others. In policy area after policy area, this book finds that more access points lead to more biased and more complex policy. Access Points provides scholars a powerful tool to explain how political institutions matter and why countries implement the policies they do.

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.

United States officials argued during America’s post-9-/11 wars that the US took every precaution to prevent unintended civilian death and injury — known as collateral damage — due to US military operations. Yet, during the first years of the wars, officials accepted the inevitability of the harm, and tens of thousands of civilians were killed and injured by the US and its allies. The book explores moral responsibility for three kinds of collateral damage incidents. Accidents were unforeseen and sometimes unforeseeable, and arguably they were comparatively rare. More numerous were systemic collateral damage deaths, the foreseeable consequence of rules of engagement, weapons choices, standard operating procedures and military doctrine. Proportionality/double effect collateral damage is foreseeable, and foreseen, yet anticipated military advantages are said to excuse this unintentional killing. Both systemic collateral damage, and proportionality/double effect collateral damage are produced in part by expansive and permissive conceptions of military necessity. The other causes of systemic collateral damage are found in the organization of warmaking — the institutionalized rules, procedures, training, and stresses of war. Depending on choices that are made at the organizational and command level, the likelihood of causing civilian casualties may rise or fall. When those factors, including beliefs about military necessity, change the incidence of collateral damage also changes. This book offers a new way to think about moral agency and accountability. The dominant paradigm of legal and moral responsibility in war stresses both intention and individual accountability. Yet that framework is inadequate for cases of systemic and proportionality/double effect collateral damage because the causes of those deaths and injuries lie at the organizational level — where doctrine, tactics, and weapons are decided. The author supplements theories of individual agency and accountability with a theory of collective moral responsibility, treating organizations as imperfect moral agents. The US military exercised moral agency when it began, mid-way through the Post-9/11 wars, to change its organizational procedures in order reduce collateral damage deaths. The book offers ways to increase political and public moral responsibility for conduct in war.

How can the seeds of accountability ever grow in authoritarian environments? Embedding accountability into the state is an inherently uneven, partial, and contested process. Campaigns for public accountability often win limited concessions at best, but they can leave cracks in the system that serve as handholds for subsequent efforts to open up the state to public scrutiny. This book explores how civil society ‘thickens’ by comparing two decades of rural citizens' struggles to hold the Mexican state accountable, exploring both change and continuity before, during, and after national electoral turning points. The book addresses how much power-sharing really happens in policy innovations that include participatory social and environmental councils, citizen oversight of elections and the secret ballot, decentralized social investment funds, participation reforms in World Bank projects, community-managed food programs, as well as new social oversight and public information access reforms. Meanwhile, efforts to exercise voice unfold at the same time as rural citizens consider their exit options, as millions migrate to the US, where many have since come together in a new migrant civil society. This book concludes that new analytical frameworks are needed to understand ‘transitions to accountability’. This involves unpacking the interaction between participation, transparency, and accountability.

This book advances our understanding of the global dimension of social policy by applying the notion of global social governance to actors, their relationships to each other, and their pathways, as well as their footprints of influence in the specific policy fields of social concern in which they are active. Focusing on a broad array of individual and corporate global social policy actors, ranging from international organizations to state formations and NGOs, the chapters in this book draw a fuller picture of agency in global social policy than what current accounts provide. It considers the multiple facets of individual actors’ scope and legitimacy for a particular actor in conjunction with the configuration of global social governance as characterized by multi-centred and multi-scaled obstacles, as well as diverse forms of collaboration. The book studies the contextualised actors’ range and power in designing, shaping, and facilitating various global social policies. Thus, the chapters discuss the role of particular (corporate) actors within global social policy structures and assess the impact of a number of key organizations, states, groups, and individuals in the governance of global social policy. At the same time, a variety of social policy fields in which these actors are involved are addressed, including the labour market issues, family policy, health policy, and education policy, migration issues, and global (re)distribution via various forms of development aid or remittances.

Many elections fail. The most overt malpractices used by rulers include imprisoning dissidents, harassing adversaries, coercing voters, vote-rigging counts, and finally, if losing, blatantly disregarding the people's choice. Administrative irregularities are also common, such as inaccurate electoral registers, ballot miscounts, and security defects. Flawed contests have triggered public protests and international criticism. It is time to take stock of these problems. This book addresses three related themes: what standards and evidence determine when elections fail? What strengthens effective, impartial, and independent electoral authorities? And, do failed contests undermine political legitimacy? International experts bring new concepts, theories, and evidence to illuminate these issues, drawing upon a range of cases in established democracies such as Britain and the United States, newer democracies in Central and Latin America, and diverse regimes in Africa and the Middle East. The book illuminates major themes in studies of democracy and democratization, comparative politics, elections and voting behavior, political sociology, international development, public opinion and political behavior, political institutions, and public policy.

The past few decades have witnessed the growth of movements that use digital means to connect with broader publics and express their point of view. Social media facilitate feelings of engagement, in ways that frequently make people feel reenergized about what it means to be political. In doing so, media do not make or break revolutions but they do lend emerging, storytelling publics their own means for feeling their way into the developing event, frequently by making them a part of the developing story. Digital technologies network us but it is our stories that connect us to each other, making us feel close to some and distancing us from others. Affective Publics explores how storytelling practices on Twitter facilitate affective engagement for publics tuning into a current issue or event by employing three case studies: Arab Spring movements, various iterations of Occupy, and everyday casual political expressions as traced through the archives of trending topics on Twitter.

European welfare states are undergoing profound change, driven by globalisation, technical changes, and population ageing. More immediately the aftermath of the Great Recession and unprecedented levels of immigration have imposed additional pressures. This book examines welfare state transformations across a representative range of European countries and at the EU level, and considers likely new directions in social policy. It reviews the dominant neo-liberal austerity response and discusses social investment, fightback, welfare chauvinism and protectionism. It argues that the class solidarities and cleavages that shaped the development of welfare states are no longer powerful. Tensions surrounding divisions between old and young, women and men, immigrants and denizens, and the winners in a new more competitive world and those who feel left behind are becoming steadily more important. European countries have entered a period of greater political instability and this is reflected in policy directions. Austerity predominates nearly everywhere, but patterns of social investment, protectionism, neo-Keynesian intervention and fightback vary between countries. We identify areas of convergence and difference in European welfare state futures.

Between 1998 and 2010, an unprecedented wave of left-of-center candidates reached power in Latin America. In spite of a shared concern for social inequality and opposition to the Washington Consensus, their governments pursued dramatically different economic policies. Why did some governments reverse neoliberal economic policies amid the supremacy of market orthodoxy? Why did others embrace market orthodoxy after denouncing it for decades from the opposition? Why were nationalizations, price controls, and trade barriers implemented in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, but not in Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua, and Uruguay? More generally, what are the conditions that make the initiation and maintenance of economic reforms likely? In answering these questions, this book conducts a theoretical and empirical study of economic reforms in Latin America. It takes stock of the left’s economic transformations in the region and challenges widely held views that resource dependence, economic crises, or strong executives are responsible for them. Instead, it argues that party systems are crucial in explaining reform: when institutionalized, party systems are likely to preserve the prevailing market orthodoxy; when in disarray, they are conducive to drastic economic changes. Marshalling evidence drawn from ten countries and case studies of the governments of Ricardo Lagos in Chile, Lula in Brazil, and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, this study not only sheds light on one of the most puzzling aspects of contemporary Latin America, but also advances our general understanding of the left as a political ideology, economic reforms, and party systems beyond the region.

What should progressive social movements after Occupy be aiming for? What is the underlying economic vision and what are the ultimate economic goals? This book provides an answer to these questions. The book investigates the fundamental aspects of the contemporary economy by providing a perspective that integrates both normative and empirical concerns. Part One asks whether workplaces should be democratized and examines the empirical record of worker cooperatives. Part Two investigates the democratic potential of markets and examines the extent to which actual market systems, particularly the Nordic variety, have been democratized in practice. Part Three asks whether finance and investment institutions should be democratized and analyzes the empirical record of various experiments in this regard, including capital controls, public banks, and participatory budgeting. The book thus weaves together the different strands of economic democracy into a comprehensive whole. It culminates in an illustration of a truly democratic society in the form of market socialism. Yet while the book is hopeful it is not utopian. It invites us to pay close attention to the inherent costs and benefits of economic reforms. The ultimate argument is that although economic democracy is far from perfect, it represents a significant and substantial advance over contemporary American neoliberalism as well as European social democracy.

The introduction of the single European currency, the euro, draws attention to the institutional deficit of the European Union: the organizational structures and forms of governance within which central banks and other monetary authorities are embedded within individual states, are lacking at the European level. This gives unusual prominence to financial structures. While the contributors to this collection do not agree in their evaluation of this phenomenon, they agree on its importance, and analyse different aspects of it in depth.

While Buddhists all over the world were celebrating 2,500 years of Gautama Buddha’s passing in 1956, Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was called then) was sowing the seeds of an ethnic conflict. To begin with, language became the source of conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the minority Tamils, until violence itself became the language of discourse between the two ethnic groups. After the Fall shows how Sri Lanka’s post-independence exercise in nation formation was beset with using language domination as an instrument of partisan power and racial memories as the way to define nationhood. That resulted in an escalating conflict through half a century of ethnic violence—giving rise to one of the world’s most fearsome militant movements and the cult of the suicide bomber. It analyzes how Eelam war four (2006–9), which came like a tornado crashing through all the red-lines of a war (even a guerrilla war), succeeded—and at what cost and consequences. The book argues how the ‘success’ of this war, in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, was the product of a unique combination of domestic and international factors. And why it cannot be replicated elsewhere as an example of fighting the ‘war against terror’.

Given the almost universal assumption that democracy is a ‘good thing’, the goal of mankind, it is easy to forget that ‘rule by the people’ has been vehemently opposed by some of the most distinguished thinkers in the Western tradition. The book attempts to combat collective amnesia by systematically exploring the evaluating anti‐democratic thought since the French Revolution. Using categories first introduced by A. O. Hirschman in The Rhetoric of Reaction, it examines the various arguments under the headings of ‘perversity’, ‘futility’, and ‘jeopardy’. This classification scheme makes it possible to highlight the fatalism and pessimism of anti‐democratic thinkers, their conviction that democratic reform would be either pointless or destructive. They failed to understand the adaptability of democracy, its ability to coexist with traditional and elitist values. Nevertheless, it must be granted that some of their predictions and observations have been confirmed by history.

The book revolves round the role played by Tripura in Indian foreign policy on East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. The ‘Agartala Doctrine’, that emerges from the policy of successive Tripura governments, stresses on ‘appropiate response’ – friendly approach towards regimes which are friendly and tough response to those which are not. Tripura is also marked out for playing an active role within the parameters of national foreign policy and furthering national interests – unlike some states which oppose national foreign policy initiatives for short-term domestic considerations. Having developed the ‘Agartala doctrine, the book then seeks to lay bare the emerging realities – both challenges and opportunities -- for Indian states in the eastern neighbourhood, even as the Union government pushes its Look East initiative. Twelve contributors, representing a varied mix from India and neighbouring countries with proven expertise on the region, examine both problems within India’s Northeast and focus on Bangladesh, Myanmar and China to explore the dynamics involved in pushing ahead with the Look East initiative. An effort is also made by three contributors to examine the growing role of states and provinces in the national foreign policy of US, China and Russia . The implications of regional groups like BCIM and BIMSTEC are also examined by some contributors. The underlying argument is to advocate the policy of ‘appropriate response’ to the present foreign policy challenges and hold up the Tripura role as a model for other Indian states when they seek to influence national foreign policy.

The al-Qaeda Franchise asks why al-Qaeda adopted a branching-out strategy, introducing seven franchises spread over the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. After all, transnational terrorist organizations can expand through other organizational strategies. Forming franchises was not an inevitable outgrowth of al-Qaeda’s ideology or its US-focused strategy. The book argues that al-Qaeda’s branching-out strategy was not a sign of strength, but instead a response to its decline in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Franchising reflected an escalation of al-Qaeda’s commitments in response to earlier strategic mistakes, leaders’ hubris, and its diminished capabilities. Although the introduction of new branches helped al-Qaeda create a frightening image far beyond its actual capabilities, ultimately this strategy neither increased the al-Qaeda threat, nor enhanced the organization’s political objectives. In fact, the rise of ISIS from an al-Qaeda branch to the dominant actor in the jihadi camp demonstrates how expansion actually incurred heavy costs for al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda Franchise goes beyond explaining the adoption of a branching-out strategy by exploring particular expansion choices. Through nine case studies, it analyzes why al-Qaeda formed branches in some arenas but not others, and why its expansion in some locations, such as Yemen, took the form of in-house franchising (with branches run by al-Qaeda’s own fighters), while other locations, such as Iraq and Somalia, involved merging with groups already operating in the target arena. It ends with an assessment of al-Qaeda’s future in light of the turmoil in the Middle East, the ascendance of ISIS, and US foreign policy.

This book explores the history of the Somalia based Al Harakat Al Shabaab from 2005 to 2012, offering the first in-detail history of one of the most important Al-Qaeda affiliates today and the first to conquer large territories. It anchors the organization in its local context, describing it as set in the nexus of global and local streams of influence, employing terror strategically, often in order to offset diplomatic and military defeats. Al-Shabaab gained popularity because of its emphasis on justice, and its alignment with Somali nationalism, but still was influenced by global trends within Islamism and jihadism. This book follows Al-Shabaab in all its phases: as an early network, through its membership in the Sharia courts, through its guerrilla wars against the Ethiopians, through its expansion and attempts to govern central Somalia, into the post-2010 phase where it struggles against a superior enemy but still remains an actor to be reckoned with. The book concludes in 2013 and thus gives excellent background the Westgate attack in 2013. A separate chapter tackles the increasing regional influence of Al-Shabaab, tracing the trend back to 2009 when it employed a large number of Kenyans, through the gradual increase of Swahili propaganda, and the wave of terror attacks inside Kenya since Kenya intervened in Somalia In 2011. It also studies Al-Shabaab activities in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.

Throughout the turbulent history of the Levant the Alawis — a secretive, resilient and ancient Muslim sect — have aroused suspicion and animosity, including accusations of religious heresy. More recently they have been tarred with the brush of political separatism and complicity in the excesses of the Assad regime, claims that have gained greater traction since the onset of the Syrian uprising and subsequent devastating civil war. The contributors to this book provide a complex and nuanced reading of Syria's Alawi communities — from loyalist gangs (Shabiha) to outspoken critics of the regime. Drawing upon wide-ranging research that examines the historic, political and social dynamics of the Alawi and the Syrian state, the current tensions are scrutinized and fresh insights offered. Among the themes addressed are religious practice, social identities, and relations to the Ba’ath party, the Syrian state and the military apparatus. The analysis also extends to Lebanon with a focus on the embattled Alawi community of Jabal Mohsen in Tripoli and state relations with Hizballah amid the current crisis.