Challenging the State

Challenging the State

Author: Merilee S. Grindle

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-02-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780521559195

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The 1980s and 1990s posed great challenges to governments in Latin America and Africa. Deep economic crises and significantly heightened pressure for political reform severely taxed their capacity to manage economic and political tasks. These crises pointed to an intense need to reform the state and redefine its relationship to the market and civic society. This book examines the paradox of states that have been weakened by crisis just as their capacity to encourage economic development and provide for effective governance most needs to be strengthened. Case studies of Mexico and Kenya allow the author to analyse the opportunities available for political leadership in moments of crisis, and the constraints on action provided by leadership goals and existing political and economic structures. She argues that while leaders and political structures are often part of the problem, they can also be part of the solution in building more efficient, effective, and responsive states.


Audacious Reforms

Audacious Reforms

Author: Merilee S. Grindle

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2003-05-27

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0801877881

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Audacious Reforms examines the creation of new political institutions in three Latin American countries: direct elections for governors and mayors in Venezuela, radical municipalization in Bolivia, and direct election of the mayor of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Diverging from the usual incremental processes of political change, these cases marked a significant departure from traditional centralized governments. Such "audacious reforms," explains Merilee S. Grindle, reinvent the ways in which public problems are manifested and resolved, the ways in which political actors calculate the costs and benefits of their activities, and the ways in which social groups relate to the political process. Grindle considers three central questions: Why would rational politicians choose to give up power? What accounts for the selection of some institutions rather than others? And how does the introduction of new institutions alter the nature of political actions? The case studies of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Argentina demonstrate that institutional invention must be understood from theoretical perspectives that stretch beyond immediate concerns about electoral gains and political support building. Broader theoretical perspectives on the definition of nation and state, the nature of political contests, the legitimacy of political systems, and the role of elites all must be considered. While past conflicts are not erased by reforms, in the new order there is often greater potential for more responsible, accountable, and democratic government.


Constructing the International Economy

Constructing the International Economy

Author: Rawi Abdelal

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2015-10-27

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0801458242

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Focusing empirically on how political and economic forces are always mediated and interpreted by agents, both in individual countries and in the international sphere, Constructing the International Economy sets out what such constructions and what various forms of constructivism mean, both as ways of understanding the world and as sets of varying methods for achieving that understanding. It rejects the assumption that material interests either linearly or simply determine economic outcomes and demands that analysts consider, as a plausible hypothesis, that economies might vary substantially for nonmaterial reasons that affect both institutions and agents' interests. Constructing the International Economy portrays the diversity of models and approaches that exist among constructivists writing on the international political economy. The authors outline and relate several different arguments for why scholars might attend to social construction, inviting the widest possible array of scholars to engage with such approaches. They examine points of terminological or theoretical confusion that create unnecessary barriers to engagement between constructivists and nonconstructivist work and among different types of constructivism. This book provides a tool kit that both constructivists and their critics can use to debate how much and when social construction matters in this deeply important realm. Contributors: Rawi Abdelal, Harvard Business School; Jacqueline Best, University of Ottawa; Mark Blyth, Brown University; Mlada Bukovansky, Smith College; Jeffrey M. Chwieroth, London School of Economics; Francesco Duina, Bates College; Charlotte Epstein, University of Sydney; Yoshiko M. Herrera, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Paul Langley, Northumbria University; Craig Parsons, University of Oregon; Catherine Weaver, University of Texas at Austin; Wesley W. Widmaier, Saint Joseph's University; Cornelia Woll, CERI-Sciences Po Paris


Between Presidential Power and Legislative Veto

Between Presidential Power and Legislative Veto

Author: Andreas Hahn

Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 3832525394

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reform success and reform delay are subject to a variety of explanations. In general, high decisiveness leads to reform propensity, while its absence, or high resoluteness, to policy-gridlock. The Brazilian reform experience is contradicting: both aspects are present - factors leading to decisiveness as well as those inducing gridlock and reform delay. Leaving the static point of view and accounting for a dynamic development, this apparent contradiction gets resolved: in fact, the executive gained growing leeway during the 1990s, providing it with the means to achieve a higher degree of decisiveness of the political system by simultaneously guaranteeing resoluteness.It is, however, greatly mistaken to consider this development as a blank cheque to universal, encompassing reforming in all areas. Despite growing executive dominance and growing policy consensus, some particular reforms were a success, while others did not surpass its initial stages. This is finally due to path-dependency and explicit policy-specificities, triggering different institutional constraints and veto-points, which even strong Presidents cannot override.


The New Politics of Protest

The New Politics of Protest

Author: Roberta Rice

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2012-11-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0816599599

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In June 1990, Ecuador saw the first major indigenous rebellion within its borders since the colonial era. For weeks, indigenous protesters participated in marches, staged demonstrations, seized government offices, and blockaded roads. Since this insurrection, indigenous movements have become increasingly important in the fight against Latin American Neoliberalism. Roberta Rice's New Politics of Protest seeks to analyze when, where, and why indigenous protests against free-market reforms have occurred in Latin America. Comparing cases in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, this book details the emergence of indigenous movements under and against Neoliberal governments. Rice uses original field research and interviews with indigenous leaders to examine long-term patterns of indigenous political activism and overturn accepted theories on the role of the Indian in democracy. A useful and engaging study, The New Politics of Protest seeks to determine when indigenous movements become viable political parties. It covers the most recent rounds of protest to demonstrate how a weak and unresponsive government is more likely to experience revolts against unpopular reforms. This influential work will be of interest to scholars of Latin American politics and indigenous studies as well as anyone studying oppressed peoples who have organized nationwide strikes and protests, blocked economic reforms, toppled corrupt leaders, and even captured presidencies.


Globalization and Neoliberalism

Globalization and Neoliberalism

Author: Thomas Klak

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 058508078X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do recent trends toward globalization affect the Caribbean, a region whose suppliers, production, markets, and politics have been globalized for centuries? What is the status of neoliberal development policy in the Caribbean, where the rewards for belt tightening and economic opening have been slow in coming? How have Caribbean policymakers and citizens responded to and resisted the pressures to conform to the new rules of the global economy? By examining these questions through the lens of political economy, this volume explores the interaction among development, trade, foreign policy, the environment, tourism, gender relations, and migration. With its global implications, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars from all disciplines who are concerned with the impact of development and globalization.


Rethinking the Development Experience

Rethinking the Development Experience

Author: Donald A. Schon

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2011-07-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780815720591

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book, written by a group of distinguished scholars and practitioners, critically reappraises ideas about learning and development advanced by Albert O. Hirschman in the 1950s and 1960s. The essays—prepared for an MIT faculty seminar—show how these innovative ideas bear on the theory, policy, and practice of development in the 1990s. Hirschman, one of the great pioneers in the field of economic development, is now professor emeritus at Princeton. Paul Krugman, Lance Taylor, and Donald Schon address the different approaches and assumptions of economic theorists in relation to modelling, learning, and development policy. Emma Rothschild, Lisa Peattie, and Bishwapryiya Sanyal examine some of the changing attitudes toward economic progress. Elliot Marseille, Judith Tendler, Sara Friedheim, Robert Picciotto, and Charles Sabel draw lessons from efforts to innovate or modify institutions, policies, programs, and projects. Lloyd Rodwin examines the underlying themes that emerge, particularly those that touch on the ideas of development as a process of social learning and on ways of strengthening theory, policy, and practice in economics when it is seen as both discipline and profession. In a postscript, Albert O. Hirschman reflects on the evolution of his ideas, his cognitive style, and his propensity for self-subversion. Two appendixes detail the candid seminar discussions and Hirschman's musings in response to particular chapters and questions raised by the participants.


The Turn to Process

The Turn to Process

Author: Kunal M. Parker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-11-16

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1009335243

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In The Turn to Process, Kunal M. Parker explores the massive reorientation of American legal, political, and economic thinking between 1870 and 1970. Over this period, American conceptions of law, democracy, and markets went from being oriented around truths, ends, and foundations to being oriented around methods, processes, and techniques. No longer viewed as founded in justice and morality, law became a way of doing things centered around legal procedure. Shedding its foundations in the 'people,' democracy became a technique of governance consisting of an endless process of interacting groups. Liberating themselves from the truths of labor, markets and market actors became intellectual and political techniques without necessary grounding in the reality of human behavior. Contrasting nineteenth and twentieth century legal, political, and economic thought, this book situates this transformation in the philosophical crisis of modernism and the rise of the administrative state.