Power and Conflict in the Age of Transparency


Book Description

The twenty-first century will feature unprecedented global transparency. From the advent of the Internet to the rise of global media to the proliferation of commercial satellites, more information will be available to more people about more things than ever before in human history. This increase in transparency is certain to have a major effect on international politics, and particularly on the possibility of armed conflict in the next millennium. This volume represents the first comprehensive collection of articles written by leading scholars and policy analysts examining the effects of transparency on world politics.




Handbook of Research on Political Activism in the Information Age


Book Description

Technology, and particularly the Internet, has caused many changes in the realm of politics. Mainstream media no longer has a monopoly on political commentary as social media, blogs, and user-generated video streaming sites have emerged as an outlet for citizens and political activists to openly voice their opinions, organize political demonstrations, and network online. The Handbook of Research on Political Activism in the Information Age includes progressive research from more than 39 international experts at universities and research institutions across 15 different countries. Each of the 25 scholarly chapter contributions focus on topics pertaining to the application of information technology, engineering, and mathematics to political activism. Through its analysis of the methods for political activism in the information age, the effectiveness of these methods, as well as emerging analytical tools, this book is designed for use by researchers, activists, political scientists, engineers, computer scientists, journalists, professors, students and professionals working in the fields of politics, e-government, media and communications, and Internet marketing.




Transparency and American Primacy in World Politics


Book Description

At a time when greater transparency is needed, this book advances a novel explanation of America's efforts to advance greater transparency in international relations. Marquardt argues that American statesmen have long sought to secure an American-dominated international system to encourage states to be more open and forthcoming about their internal affairs. Yet the United States routinely uses its calls for military transparency in particular as a policy instrument to discipline its rivals and therefore paradoxically contributes to greater tension in international relations. In contrast to conventional thinking about transparency in relation to overcoming power politics and promoting international cooperation, this book explores the relationship between America's power and international security competition. Though analytically distinct, openness and transparency have served the same strategic goal; ensuring America's position of preponderance in the international system.




Cultures of Transparency


Book Description

This volume addresses the major questions surrounding a concept that has become ubiquitous in the media and in civil society as well as in political and economic discourses in recent years, and which is demanded with increasing frequency: transparency. How can society deal with increasing and often diverging demands and expectations of transparency? What role can different political and civil society actors play in processes of producing, or preventing, transparency? Where are the limits of transparency and how are these boundaries negotiated? What is the relationship of transparency to processes of social change, as well as systems of social surveillance and control? Engaging with transparency as an interrelated product of law, politics, economics and culture, this interdisciplinary volume explores the ambiguities and contradictions, as well as the social and political dilemmas, that the age of transparency has unleashed. As such it will appeal to researchers across the social sciences and humanities with interests in politics, history, sociology, civil society, citizenship, public policy, criminology and law.




Reclaiming Democracy


Book Description

Democracy is in shambles economically and politically. The recent economic meltdown in Europe and the U.S. has substituted democratic deliberation with technocratic decisions. In Athens, Madrid, Lisbon, New York, Pittsburgh or Istanbul, protesters have denounced the incapacity and unwillingness of elected officials to heed to their voices. While the diagnosis of our political-economic illness has been established, remedies are hard to come. What can we do to restore our broken democracy? Which modes of political participation are likely to have an impact? And what are the loci of political innovation in the wake of the crisis? It is with these questions that Reclaiming Democracy engages. We argue that the managerial approach to solving the crisis violates ‘a right to politics’, that is, a right that our collective life be guided by meaningful politics: by discussion of and decision among genuinely alternative principles and policies. The contributors to this volume are united in their commitment to explore how and where this right can be affirmed in a way that resuscitates democracy in the wake of the crisis. Mixing theoretical reflection and empirical analysis the book offers fresh insights into democracy’s current conundrum and makes concrete proposals about how ‘the right to politics’ can be protected.




The Study of World Politics


Book Description

Focusing on two pre-eminent themes in contemporary world politics - globalization and governance - this volume offers a review of current thinking in this subject.




Toward an Anthropology of Government


Book Description

The National Assembly for Wales was established in 1999, granting the people of Wales a parliament for the first time in nearly six centuries. The Assembly was intended to create a parliamentary culture of open, inclusive, and modern democracy that stood apart from the Houses of Parliament in London. Based on anthropological fieldwork, this informative book analyzes how power in Wales is legitimated and justified. William Schumann s intriguing argument makes the case that contradictory political practices exist which affirm elected officials as public representatives while also reproducing the subordinate status of Wales within the institutional hierarchies of the United Kingdom and European Union.




Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance


Book Description

This global encyclopedic work serves as a comprehensive collection of global scholarship regarding the vast fields of public administration, public policy, governance, and management. Written and edited by leading international scholars and practitioners, this exhaustive resource covers all areas of the above fields and their numerous subfields of study. In keeping with the multidisciplinary spirit of these fields and subfields, the entries make use of various theoretical, empirical, analytical, practical, and methodological bases of knowledge. Expanded and updated, the second edition includes over a thousand of new entries representing the most current research in public administration, public policy, governance, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, and management covering such important sub-areas as: 1. organization theory, behavior, change and development; 2. administrative theory and practice; 3. Bureaucracy; 4. public budgeting and financial management; 5. public economy and public management 6. public personnel administration and labor-management relations; 7. crisis and emergency management; 8. institutional theory and public administration; 9. law and regulations; 10. ethics and accountability; 11. public governance and private governance; 12. Nonprofit management and nongovernmental organizations; 13. Social, health, and environmental policy areas; 14. pandemic and crisis management; 15. administrative and governance reforms; 16. comparative public administration and governance; 17. globalization and international issues; 18. performance management; 19. geographical areas of the world with country-focused entries like Japan, China, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and Eastern Europe, North America; and 20. a lot more. Relevant to professionals, experts, scholars, general readers, researchers, policy makers and manger, and students worldwide, this work will serve as the most viable global reference source for those looking for an introduction and advance knowledge to the field.




Contested Transparencies, Social Movements and the Public Sphere


Book Description

This edited collection examines the multi-faceted phenomenon of transparency, especially in its relation to social movements, from a range of multi-disciplinary viewpoints. Over the past few decades, transparency has become an omnipresent catch phrase in public and scientific debates. The volume tracks developments of ideas and practices of transparency from the eighteenth century to the current day, as well as their semantic, cultural and social preconditions. It connects analyses of the ideological implications of transparency concepts and transparency claims with their impact on the public sphere in general and on social movements in particular. In doing so, the book contributes to a better understanding of social conflicts and power relations in modern societies. The chapters are organized into four parts, covering the concept and ideology of transparency, historical and recent developments of the public sphere and media, the role of the state as an agent of surveillance, and conflicts over transparency and participation connected to social movements.




Strategic Intelligence


Book Description

While several fine texts on intelligence have been published over the past decade, there is no complementary set of volumes that addresses the subject in a comprehensive manner for the general reader. This major set explains how the sixteen major U.S. intelligence agencies operate, how they collect information from around the world, the problems they face in providing further insight into this raw information through the techniques of analysis, and the difficulties that accompany the dissemination of intelligence to policymakers in a timely manner. Further, in a democracy it is important to have accountability over secret agencies and to consider some ethical benchmarks in carrying out clandestine operations. In addition to intelligence collection and analysis and the subject of intelligence accountability, this set addresses the challenges of counterintelligence and counterterrorism, as well covert action. Further, it provides comparisons regarding the various approaches to intelligence adopted by other nations around the world. Its five volumes underscore the history, the politics, and the policies needed for a solid comprehension of how the U.S. intelligence community functions in the modern age of globalization, characterized by a rapid flow of information across national boundaries.