Between Opposition and Collaboration
Between Opposition and Collaboration

Author: Richard Ninness

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-09-09

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9004211918

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This study of the Catholic Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg and its largely Protestant aristocracy demonstrates that shared family ties and traditional privilege could reduce religious based conflict. These findings raise fundamental questions about current interpretations of the Reformation era. Prince-bishops regularly appointed Lutheran nobles to administrative positions, and those Lutheran appointees served their Catholic overlords ably and loyally. Bamberg was a center for social interaction, business transactions, and career opportunities for aristocrats. As these nobles saw it, birthright and kinship ties made them suitable for service in the prince-bishopric. Catholic leaders concurred, confessional differences notwithstanding. This study tells the complicated story of how Lutheran nobles and their Catholic relatives struggled to maintain solidarity and cooperation during an era of religious strife and animosity

Empire
Empire

Author: Tim Richmond

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2003-06-02

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0595278418

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The story explains the events, which lead a bastard child to become the greatest King of his time. It takes him from childhood to a Knight worthy of becoming The Champion of Paris. It encompasses the legend of his witch grandmother and her pact with the devil to produce an Empire that was destined to last a millennium and beyond, while exploring the myths and legends of Alan Rufus de Richmond and the beautiful Lady Godiva of Coventry, a love destined to surpass the grave itself.

Institutional Reforms
Institutional Reforms

Author: Alberto Alesina

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780262511827

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Experts analyze Colombia's recent institutional reforms and socioeconomic problems from the perspective of political economics and offer policy recommendations.

Routes to Reform
Routes to Reform

Author: Ben Ross Schneider

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0197758851

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The key to sustained and equitable development in Latin America is high quality education for all. However, coalitions favoring quality reforms in education are usually weak because parents are dispersed, business is not interested, and much of the middle class has exited public education. In Routes to Reform, Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning--especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political--are possible. Several Andean countries and state governments in Brazil achieved notable reform since 2000, though on markedly different trajectories. Although rare, the first bottom-up route to reform was electoral. The second route was more top-down and technocratic, with little support from voters or civil society. Ultimately, by framing education policy in a much broader comparative perspective, Schneider demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, but rather--due to the emptiness of the education policy space--on more micro factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

Structural Reforms and Firms’ Productivity: Evidence from Developing Countries
Structural Reforms and Firms’ Productivity: Evidence from Developing Countries

Author: Wilfried A. Kouamé

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2018-03-19

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 1484347005

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This paper assesses the effects of structural reforms on firm-level productivity for 37 developing countries from 2006 to 2014 period. It takes advantage of the IMF Monitoring of Fund Arrangements dataset for reform indexes and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys for firm-level productivity. The paper highlights the following results. Structural reforms such as financial, fiscal, real sector, and trade reforms, significantly improve firm-level productivity. Interestingly, real sector reforms have the most sizeable effects on firm-level productivity. The relationship between structural reforms and firm-level productivity is nonlinear and shaped by some firms’ characteristics such as the financial access, the distortionary environment, and the size of firms. The pace of structural reforms matters since being a “strong reformer” is associated with a clear productivity dividend for firms. Finally, except for financial and trade reforms, all structural reforms under consideration are bilaterally complementary in improving firm-level productivity. These findings are robust to several sensitivity checks.

Reforms that Stick
Reforms that Stick

Author: Joannah Luetjens

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2023-08-14

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1035312077

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This incisive book examines how and why some major policy reforms endure while others fail to gain traction and embed themselves. Tracing the development of key policy reforms over time, it offers original insight into how to create and embed positive changes that continue to deliver over the long term.

The Theory and Practice of Local Government Reform
The Theory and Practice of Local Government Reform

Author: Brian Dollery

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9781781956687

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'Structural reform has been one of the most important, and yet one of the most neglected, aspects of modern local government. This book represents the first attempt, since the early seventies, at providing a comprehensive account of both the theory and practice of structural reform in local government in developed countries. Using recent policy experience from seven different countries, the authors present seminal theoretical perspectives on structural reforms in local governance and the policy implications deriving from them. Written by well-known scholars of local government from around the world, this volume is a "must-read" for all academics, practitioners, students and policymakers.' - Giorgio Brosio, University of Turin, Italy

The European Monetary Union After the Crisis
The European Monetary Union After the Crisis

Author: Nazaré da Costa Cabral

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-09

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1000096548

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This book provides a much-needed detailed analysis of the evolution of Europe over the last decade, as well as a discussion about the path of reform that has been trodden in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It offers a multidisciplinary view of the E(M)U and captures the main factors that induced the reform of the monetary union – a process that has not been linear and is far from being concluded. The author examines the policy responses designed throughout the development of the crisis and assesses the scale of the crisis in Europe, in comparison to other parts of the world, as well as its prolonged effects both in economic and financial terms. An update on the current ‘state of the art’ in the conception of risk-sharing mechanisms is provided. With its innovative approach, the book analyses the financing issues which need to be taken into consideration in the design of these instruments and highlights the main categories of governmental risk-sharing mechanisms – in particular, the ones to be used as ‘fiscal capacity’. This is a timely and topical book and will be of interest to a broad audience, including experts, scholars and students of European affairs, particularly those with economic, financial, legal and political science backgrounds.

The Celtiberian’s Tale
The Celtiberian’s Tale

Author: M. J. Kurzrok

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Published: 2019-11-08

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 1480881260

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On his life’s journey, from the waters of creation to the flames of the funeral pyre, every man will encounter the Fates, those three capricious sisters, who spin, weave and snip the thread of life into patterns of their own design. No two tapestries are ever the same, just as every life is unique in its own way. Even the slightest variation of color or texture can bring a man great joy, or unrelenting sorrow. Trials faced or decisions made may seem inconsequential at times, or touch him in ways both apparent and profound. Such an event befell Allu the Celtiberian, in the spring following his twelfth winter. Thus begins the epic story of the first eight years of the Second Punic war, from the events leading up to the fall of Saguntum, in 218 B.C.E., to the capture of Cartagena, in 210 B.C.E., as seen through the eyes of a reluctant youth swept up in the tide of one man’s ambition. This is a tale of Celtic devotion, Roman dignitas and Punic perfidy, set to the backdrop of a young man’s coming of age in the world inhabited by such historical figures as Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus, and the cultures that spawned them.