This book provides a critical engagement between contending historical materialist approaches that have played a crucial role in shaping post-positivist International Relations theory. It analyzes globalization as a process of state formation and argues that its fate depends on the neo-liberal recomposition of labour relations. .

This study explores a range of dynamics in state-society relations which are crucial to an understanding of the contemporary world: processes of state formation, collapse and restructuring, all strongly influenced by globalization in its various respects. Particular attention is given to externally orchestrated state restructuring.

Maswood examines the trade and regulatory structures that inhibit the capacity of developing countries to improve their economic conditions. In particular, the book looks at institutional structures of the WTO and examines the Doha Round negotiations to assess their success for developing countries. Developing countries have heightened expectations that these first WTO trade negotiations will deliver improved outcomes in their interest, and the book looks at difficulties in the negotiating process and prospects for global multilateralism.

Drawing on the Latin American political economy, this book brings to the fore empirical questions on different patterns of involvement of IFIs in pursuing politically-sensitive reforms, the capacity of local actors to influence outcomes, the context in which they interact, the type of policy ideas conveyed, and the policy process that are advanced.

Internationally renowned scholars investigate the discourses, practices and perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) across a wide range of multicultural, multi-ethnic and cross country experiences. Case studies are included from Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

International competition and skills shortages caused by technological advancement have raised entirely new issues for workers, not least how responsibility is increasingly being transferred to them. This book looks at how workers are expected to survive unstable job market conditions in three locations: the UK, Singapore, and South Korea.

The Forest and the Marine Stewardship Councils constitute new global governance institutions using voluntary certification and labelling as market incentives to encourage sustainable management. Utilizing a comparative political economic framework, the authors analyse shifting British, Canadian and Australian responses to the stewardship councils.

This book argues that the new actors in global health constitute a 'private turn' in global health governance, and provides theoretical and practical grounds for viewing global health partnerships and philanthropic foundations as closely aligned in their ideational and material approaches to a range of important issues and crises.

This book shows how domestic political institutions and the lack of time pressure have an impact on negotiations at the WTO. It provides detailed information on WTO ministerial meetings as well as on the political economy of trade policy in the EU, U.S., Brazil, and Australia.

The authors explore the complex dynamics of mining and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Latin America, including a reflection on the African continent, presenting arguments and case studies based on new research on a set of urgent and emerging questions surrounding mining, development and sustainability.