Kategoria BISAC: Political Science >> NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)

Human rights advocacy in the West is changing. Before the turn of the century, access to goods such as food, housing, and health care while essential to human survival were deemed outside of the human rights sphere. Traditional human rights institutions focused on rights in the political arena that could be defended through legal systems.

In "Freedom from Poverty," Daniel P. L. Chong examines how today's nongovernmental organizations are modifying human rights practices and reshaping the political landscape by taking up the cause of subsistence rights. This book outlines how three types...

During the decade that preceded Syria's 2011 uprising and descent into violence, the country was in the midst of another crisis: the mass arrival of Iraqi migrants and a flood of humanitarian aid to handle the refugee emergency. International aid organizations, the media, and diplomats alike praised the Syrian government for keeping open borders and providing a safe haven for Iraqis fleeing the violence in Baghdad and Iraq's southern provinces. Only a few analysts looked beneath the surface to understand how the apparent generosity toward refugees squared with the ruthless oppression that...

What was the role of historians and historical societies in the public life of imperial Russia? Focusing on the Society of Zealots of Russian Historical Education (1895-1918), Vera Kaplan analyzes the network of voluntary associations that existed in imperial Russia, showing how they interacted with state, public, and private bodies. Unlike most Russian voluntary associations of the late imperial period, the Zealots were conservative in their view of the world. Yet, like other history associations, the group conceived their educational mission broadly, engaging academic and amateur...

Civil society's role in conflict and peace-building is increasingly being recognized: an integral element in conflict, it can act within the conflict dynamic to fuel discord further or to entrench the status quo. Alternatively, it can bring about peaceful resolution and reconciliation. The question at hand is not whether to engage civil society in contexts of conflict, but rather how governmental actors can partner with civil society to induce conflict resolution and conflict transformation. The collection of essays in this volume attempts to explore this nexus between...

The book provides a succinct and much needed introduction to the Council of Europe from its foundation through the early conventions on human rights and culture to its expansion into the fields of social affairs, environment and education.

Founded in 1949 within a month of NATO, the Council of Europe was the hub of political debate about integrating Europe after the Second World War. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it was thrust into the limelight again as the test bed where all newly liberated European states had to prove their democratic credentials. Now it is the political...

Politically active individuals and organizations make huge investments of time, energy, and money to influence everything from election outcomes to congressional subcommittee hearings to local school politics, while other groups and individual citizens seem woefully underrepresented in our political system. The Unheavenly Chorus is the most comprehensive and systematic examination of political voice in America ever undertaken--and its findings are sobering.

The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens...

This book addresses key questions on biofuels within agrarian political economy, political sociology and political ecology. Contributions are based on fresh empirical materials from different parts of the world. The book starts with four key questions in agrarian political economy: Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? And what do they do with the surplus wealth? It also addresses the emergent social and political relations in the biofuel complex and, given the impacts on natural resources and sustainability, engages with questions about people-environment interactions. At the same...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have contributed to reductions in poverty and improvements in the human condition in many parts of the world since their "invention" in 2000 and 2001. It nonetheless remains the case that today, as on all the previous days of the twenty-first century, almost one billion people will go hungry.

Debates about whether the MDGs have made a positive contribution to poverty eradication and/or whether they have achieved as much as they should have done are becoming more frequent as 2015 and the "end of the MDGs" approaches. This book...