Maritime East Asia is a region with a long history of contest. In the 17th century, the Zheng family enterprise found success in regional trade and maintained a high degree of agency despite clashing pressures in the region from Manchu China, Tokugawa Japan, and European colonial powers. The Zheng organization was caught between regional interests and an obligation to continental politics, and ultimately collapsed. In this new pamphlet in the Regions and Regionalisms in the Modern World series, Xing Hang aruges that the Zheng family nonetheless "profoundly shaped the maritime Asian world region and the global order."
Introduction to Politics and Society comprehensively demonstrates how key theoretical and concepts in political science have foretold, rationalized and shaped politics in the contemporary world. Students will discover the meaning of `power′, `authority′, `coercion′, `surveillance′ and `legitimacy′. The ideas of Weber, Marx, Foucault, Bauman, Sennett, Habermas, Baudrillard and Giddens are explained with clarity and precision. Well-chosen examples, many from popular political culture illustrate the relevance of fundamental theoretical debates. This book also examines: - The central tendencies in the movement from modern to post-modern society - The significance, strengths and weaknesses of `Third Way′ politics - The decline of organized party politics - The development of new social movements Developed with an understanding of the requirements of students and lecturers, this book is an extraordinary resource for undergraduate teaching and study needs. It will be required reading for undergraduate students in sociology, politics and social policy.
In America today, a public official's lawful income consists of a salary. But until a century ago, the law frequently authorized officials to make money on a profit-seeking basis. Prosecutors won a fee for each defendant convicted. Tax collectors received a cut of each evasion uncovered. Naval officers took a reward for each ship sunk. The list goes on. This book is the first to document American government's "for-profit" past, to discover how profit-seeking defined officials' relationship to the citizenry, and to explain how lawmakers-by banishing the profit motive in favor of the salary-transformed that relationship forever.
In today's complex work world, things no longer get done simply because someone issues an order and someone else follows it.Most of us work in socially intricate organizations where we need the help not only of subordinates but of colleagues, superiors, and outsiders to accomplish our goals. This often leaves us in a "power gap" because we must depend on people over whom we have little or no explicit control.This is a book about how to bridge that gap: how to exercise the power and influence you need to get things done through others when your responsibilities exceed your formal authority.Full of original ideas and expert insights about how organizations—and the people in them—function,Power and Influencegoes further, demonstrating that lower-level personnel also need strong leadership skills and interpersonal know-how to perform well.Kotter shows how you can develop sufficient resources of "unofficial" power and influence to achieve goals, steer clear of conflicts, foster creative team behavior, and gain the cooperation and support you need from subordinates, coworkers, superiors—even people outside your department or organization.He also shows how you can avoid the twin traps of naivete and cynicism when dealing with power relationships, and how to use your power without abusing it.Power and Influenceis essential for top managers who need to overcome the infighting, foot-dragging, and politicking that can destroy both morale and profits; for middle managers who don't want their careers sidetracked by unproductive power struggles; for professionals hindered by bureaucratic obstacles and deadline delays; and for staff workers who have to "manage the boss."This is not a book for those who want to "grab" power for their own ends. But if you'd like to create smooth, responsive working relationships and increase your personal effectiveness on the job, Kotter can show you how—and make the dynamics of power work for you instead of against you.
A new economy is emerging from the global financial crisis. In this groundbreaking book, seasoned executive and Harvard-trained economist Mia de Kuijper guides readers through the fundamentals of this economy and explains how companies and individuals can create sustainable wealth now. The key is wielding one of twelve contemporary sources of profit power. Control just one and you are on the road to high returns. Turning profit power into sustainable wealth requires new strategies, enumerated here, for choosing and valuing investments, structuring and managing global enterprises, confronting competitive threats, and navigating markets which may increasingly display power law dynamics and where distributions may have "fat tails." To derive this book's unique framework for achieving high returns, de Kuijper rethought parts of economic theory itself in light of the most transformative force in the new economy (dubbed the Transparent Economy by de Kuijper), namely the vanishing cost of information and connectivity. Based on original research and illustrated with lively lessons from the experiences of the author and other successful investors and leaders, Profit Power Economics draws a detailed picture of the new competitive arena and gives readers a step-by-step approach to build (or find) exceptionally high-return enterprises and to utilize today's shifting market dynamics to influence choice and build wealth.
Defining power as the ability to get what we want, this volume identifies three major types of power: threat power; economic power; and, integrative power. It argues that threat power should not be seen as fundamental since it is not effective unless reinforced by economic and integrative power.
The politics of legitimacy is central to international relations. When states perceive an international organization as legitimate, they defer to it, associate themselves with it, and invoke its symbols. Examining the United Nations Security Council, Ian Hurd demonstrates how legitimacy is created, used, and contested in international relations. The Council's authority depends on its legitimacy, and therefore its legitimation and delegitimation are of the highest importance to states. Through an examination of the politics of the Security Council, including the Iraq invasion and the negotiating history of the United Nations Charter, Hurd shows that when states use the Council's legitimacy for their own purposes, they reaffirm its stature and find themselves contributing to its authority. Case studies of the Libyan sanctions, peacekeeping efforts, and the symbolic politics of the Council demonstrate how the legitimacy of the Council shapes world politics and how legitimated authority can be transferred from states to international organizations. With authority shared between states and other institutions, the interstate system is not a realm of anarchy. Sovereignty is distributed among institutions that have power because they are perceived as legitimate. This book's innovative approach to international organizations and international relations theory lends new insight into interactions between sovereign states and the United Nations, and between legitimacy and the exercise of power in international relations.
The rise of the corporate supercitizen and the consequences for society Only about thirty countries possess the powers usually associated with sovereign nations. The rest can’t actually defend their borders, govern their finances independently, or meet the basic needs of their people. In this provocative and persuasive new book, David Rothkopf calls these others semistates and argues that they’re much less powerful than hundreds of corporate supercitizens. A multitude of facts demonstrates the reach of the modern corporation. Walmart has revenues greater than the GDP of all but twenty-five nations. The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, controls $3.3 trillion, almost as much as the currency reserves held by China and Japan combined. Corporations in Third World countries routinely hire mercenary armies to enforce their will, and in some cases (such as Shell in Nigeria), they control the politicians as well. Striking a balance between public and private power has become the defining challenge for all societies. In Power, Inc., Rothkopf argues that the decline of the state is irreversible. The way forward is to harness corporate resources in the service of individual nations to forge a radically new relationship between the individual and the institutions that govern our lives.
Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.
