Jayasuriya explores the dynamics of a new social agenda conceived within the boundaries of neo liberalism. The enhanced focus on issues such as poverty through strategies of inclusion frames new terms of engagement for social policy, different from that which existed in the terrain of the post war welfare state.

This is the only book of its kind devoted to exploring contentious politics from a North American perspective including protests, social movements, transnational contention, and emergent regional governance processes between Canadian, U.S. and Mexican state and civil society actors.

This book demonstrates how housing systems are built from political struggles over the distribution of welfare and wealth. The contributors analyze varieties of residential capitalism through a range of international case studies, as well as investigating the links between housing finance and the current international financial crisis.

Despite abundant scepticism about their economic benefits, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) have proliferated at a rapid pace. Policy diffusion models explain how different sets of preferential trade agreements are interconnected and establish under what conditions FTAs can work for or against the emergence of coherent regional blocs.

While major theories of economic regionalism in the existing literature are primarily constructed to explore institutionalized regional integration, European integration in particular, the analytical framework developed in this work explains the unique process and pattern of regional integration in East Asia.

This study examines the sources, characteristics and implications of post-Khomeini Iran's foreign policy. It concentrates on two geographic 'zones of interest': one composed of the countries which surround Iran; the other comprised of Islamic governments and movements beyond Iran's borders. It argues that fears, not just ambitions, have yielded a policy increasingly co-operative (especially in the economic sphere) yet in some respects still confrontational.

This book is based on a conference addressing the relationship between the environment and security in the post-Cold War world. It brings together scholars and practitioners from a variety of different disciplines and perspectives in an effort to both explore the complexities of the relationship between environmental variables and security conditions, and re-focus the debate within the environmental community. The book combines analytical frameworks and case study material with proposals for addressing environmental challenges and enhancing the security and welfare of peoples, states and...

This book investigates the perceptions of political actors towards the creation of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in Europe. The research is largely based on personal interviews conducted with key informants in central banks, finance ministries, employers' organizations and trade unions in Britain, France and Germany. It examines why actors perceived EMU to serve or frustrate their interests. It concludes that actors favoured EMU for a variety of reasons. The book contributes to the literature of European integration and incorporates economic, political and historical facts.

The accords and protocols that underlie the Arab and Israeli peace agreements set into place economic policies and political processes so flawed that they are bound to fail. The chapters in this volume look at the diplomatic and historical precedents that have led to this situation and they debate - some cynically and some sympathetically - the reasons why the institutional structures and trade regimes the process has created are so weak. But for whatever reason, the structural flaws built into the Middle East peace process are not only biased toward the dominant players but against the...

Comparing Regionalisms summarizes the UNU/WIDER international research project on the formation of world regions, and what implications this process will have for the future world order, particularly as far as the important issues of peace and development are concerned. This last volume in a series of five focuses on comparative research, covering all important regions of the world. Comparative studies are seen as the next step in regional analysis. Acknowledging the enormous variety of regional formations, the contributors nevertheless argue that a comparative approach to the dynamics of...