Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> Political Economy

This book undertakes the first systematic, multi-country investigation into how regimes of place equality, consisting of multilevel policies, institutions and governance at multiple scales, influence spatial inequality in metropolitan regions. Extended, diversified metropolitan regions have become the dominant form of human settlement, and disparities among metropolitan places figure increasingly in wider trends toward growing inequality. Regimes of place equality are increasingly critical components of welfare states and territorial administration. They can aggravate disparities in...

This book takes a fresh approach to the puzzle of sub-Saharan Africa's resource curse. Moving beyond current scholarship's state-centric approach, it presents cutting-edge evidence gathered through interviews with mining company executives and industry representatives to demonstrate that firms are actively controlling the regulation of the gold mining sector. It shows how large mining firms with significant private authority in South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania are able to engender rules and regulations that are acknowledged by other actors, and in some cases even adopted by the state. In...

This book takes a comprehensive look at the governance and civil society of Macao, the shadowy mecca of gambling in Asia, and the reforms, changes, and social movements which are challenging that reputation today. Thanks to the rapid expansion of the local casino industry, Macao has experienced spectacular economic growth since it returned to Chinese rule in 1999. Following double-digit rates of economic growth between 2002 and 2013, Macao has become one of the wealthiest regions in Asia, with GDP per capita rising from USD$14,258 in 2001 to USD$89,333 in 2014. However, as the casino...

This book deals with the consequences of the inclusion of African states and communities in the global aluminium chain. The so-called -New Scramble for Africa- of the 2000s illustrated how seriously African living conditions are affected by continuous cycles of boom and bust, and how strongly the quality of life currently depends on the investment decisions and corporate social responsibility policies of transnational corporations. Taking the example of the global production network of bauxite and aluminium, the author focuses on the socio-political aspects of this dependency, which he...

This book analyses the World Bank's provision of technical assistance from 1946 to the present day. It argues that the relational dynamics between technical assistance provider and recipient affects the legitimacy of policy norms travelling from the 'international' to the 'domestic'. Beginning from the constructivist position that 'development' is a social construct, the author contends that successful policy movement via technical assistance depends on the recipient's perception of the validity of policy reforms, with perception being influenced by the way those ideas and practices are...

This book takes issue with the likening of contemporary globalization to nineteenth century trade interdependence, in which the defining feature of contemporary globalization is the spread of global production networks, which were notably absent in the past. Maswood demonstrates that the emergence of global production networks (GPNs) was not a result of economic and trade liberalization, but instead due to neo-protectionist developments in the 1980s that acted as a catalyst to transform Japan's nationally based production networks into the now ubiquitous GPNs. Through this case study of...