Author : Orville Schell
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 40,70 MB
Release : 2010-10-06
Category : History
ISBN : 0307767140
In this arresting chronicle of one tumultuous year in China's love-hate relationship with the West, Orville Schell brings us a revealing analysis of the Chinese reform movement.
Author : Orville Schell
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 12,70 MB
Release : 1989-05-22
Category : History
ISBN :
In this arresting chronicle of one tumultuous year in China's love-hate relationship with the West, Orville Schell brings us a revealing analysis of the Chinese reform movement.
Author : John King Fairbank
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 642 pages
File Size : 30,35 MB
Release : 2006-04-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674018280
John King Fairbank was the West's doyen on China, and this book is the full and final expression of his lifelong engagement with this vast ancient civilization. The distinguished historian Merle Goldman brings the book up to date and provides an epilogue discussing the changes in contemporary China that will shape the nation in the years to come.
Author : Norman Abjorensen
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 551 pages
File Size : 36,47 MB
Release : 2019-06-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1538120747
Democracy is easy to talk about but hard to define in other than broad generalizations; its history is a long, complex, and contested subject. What this volume seeks to do is to explore the general evolution of political and social thinking that would eventually coalesce into what we now know as democracy, for all its imperfections and shortcomings. The question of just why some societies evolved into a democratic trajectory and others did not continues to engage the interest of historians, political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists. Much conjecture surrounds the rise of certain elements we now recognize if not as democratic, then proto-democratic, such as collective decision-making, constraints on the exercise of power and a degree of accountability of the ruler to the ruled. If democracy in the sense of “rule by the people” has two essential qualities – rule by the majority and the equal treatment of free citizens - then its origins, however feeble, are to be found in these early examples of government. Historical Dictionary of Democracy contains a chronology, an introduction, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about democracy.
Author : Suisheng Zhao
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 297 pages
File Size : 25,61 MB
Release : 2014-06-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1317721640
China's dramatic economic growth in the last two decades of the last century and the prospect of its rise as a great power in this new one have greatly increased its weight and importance in world affairs. Consequently the progress, or lack of progress, of China's transition to democracy has become a central concern of the international community. This timely collection brings together many well-known scholars to systematically explore China's current government and assess that transition toward democracy. The contributors seek to bridge the gap between normative theories of democracy and empirical studies of China's political development by providing a comprehensive overview of China's domestic history, economy, and public political ideologies. Overall the volume contends that Chinese culture and Confucianism are not the obstacles to democratic transition that some scholars have said they are, and that the success of market reforms has eroded authoritarian rule. This weakening does not guarantee a successful transition, however, and the contributors show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about the short-term prospects for democracy in China, including historical failures, the underdevelopment of civil society, political apathy, and competing social values. Though China's political culture is essentially neither anti-democratic not pro-democratic, it must still overcome many obstacles in order to achieve democracy.
Author : Giuseppe Di Palma
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 32,18 MB
Release : 1990-11-05
Category : History
ISBN : 0520072146
"Giuseppe Di Palma's book could not be more timely, given the snowballing events that are gaining momentum in Eastern and Western Europe. . . . It represents a truly fresh look at the red-hot issue of transitions to democracy."—Joseph LaPalombara, Yale University
Author : Daniel A. Bell
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 18,53 MB
Release : 2000-05-08
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1400823552
Is liberal democracy a universal ideal? Proponents of "Asian values" argue that it is a distinctive product of the Western experience and that Western powers shouldn't try to push human rights and democracy onto Asian states. Liberal democrats in the West typically counter by questioning the motives of Asian critics, arguing that Asian leaders are merely trying to rationalize human-rights violations and authoritarian rule. In this book--written as a dialogue between an American democrat named Demo and three East Asian critics--Daniel A. Bell attempts to chart a middle ground between the extremes of the international debate on human rights and democracy. Bell criticizes the use of "Asian values" to justify oppression, but also draws on East Asian cultural traditions and contributions by contemporary intellectuals in East Asia to identify some powerful challenges to Western-style liberal democracy. In the first part of the book, Bell makes use of colorful stories and examples to show that there is a need to take into account East Asian perspectives on human rights and democracy. The second part--a fictitious dialogue between Demo and Asian senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew--examines the pros and cons of implementing Western-style democracy in Singapore. The third part of the book is an argument for an as-yet-unrealized Confucian political institution that justifiably differs from Western-style liberal democracy. This is a thought-provoking defense of distinctively East Asian challenges to Western-style liberal democracy that will stimulate interest and debate among students of political theory, Asian studies, and international human rights.
Author : Raymond Wacks
Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
Page : 710 pages
File Size : 16,71 MB
Release : 1999-11-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9622095070
As Hong Kong enters its third year under Chinese rule, the prognosis for the common law remains uncertain. Can the improbable doctrine of 'one country, two systems' be made to work? Will the political controversies that continue to bedevil the territory undermine the rule of law and the integrity of the legal order? The 21 essays in this important new collection consider these, and many other, questions. The first part examines several problems that lie at the heart of the Basic Law's promise of legal continuity. Hong Kong's economic order and its legal buttresses are analysed in Part 2, while the essays in Part 3 trace the shifts in social values as reflected both in Chinese and Hong Kong law. Though they embrace a wide area, the contributions to this volume suggest that, while many problems lie ahead, Hong Kong's law and legal system seem adequately entrenched to endure well into the future. Raymond Wacks is Professor of Law and Legal Theory at the University of Hong Kong. He is an international authority on the legal protection of privacy, and has also published widely in the field of legal theory. Professor Wacks has edited several books on Hong Kong law and human rights. His recent books include Privacy and Press Freedom (1995). The fifth edition of his text, Jurisprudence will appear in early 2000. “(B)y far the most comprehensive study of the post-1997 legal order I have come across, covering nearly all the subjects which the Basic Law touches upon... (I)t contains much insightful analysis of the historical development and future issues surrounding each topic... A very valuable contribution to scholarship... Far more importantly, there is no collection that comes close to such an array of good analysis on so many topics.” — Anthony Neoh, SC, Visiting Professor, Peking University
Author : Ronald M. McCarthy
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 762 pages
File Size : 41,56 MB
Release : 2013-07-04
Category : History
ISBN : 1135067538
This comprehensive guide to research, sources, and theories about nonviolent action as a technique of struggle in social and political conficts discusses the methods and techniques used by groups in various encounters. Although violence and its causes have received a great deal of attention, nonviolent action has not received its due as an international phenomenon with a long history. An introduction that explains the theories and research used in the study provides a practical guide to this essential bibliography of English-language sources. The first part of the book covers case-study materials divided by region and subdivided by country. Within each country, materials are arranged chronologically and topically. The second major part examines the methods and theory of nonviolent action, principled nonviolence, and several closely related areas in social science, such as conflict analysis and social movements. The book is indexed by author and subject.
Author : Flora Pitrolo
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 32,45 MB
Release : 2022-03-28
Category : History
ISBN : 3030919951
This book explores some of disco’s other lives which thrived between the 1970s and the 1980s, from oil-boom Nigeria to socialist Czechoslovakia, from post-colonial India to war-torn Lebanon. It charts the translation of disco as a cultural form into musical, geo-political, ideological and sociological landscapes that fall outside of its original conditions of production and reception, capturing the variety of scenes, contexts and reasons for which disco took on diverse dimensions in its global journey. With its deep repercussions in visual culture, gender politics, and successive forms of popular music, art, fashion and style, disco as a musical genre and dance culture is exemplary of how a subversive, marginal scene – that of queer and Black New York undergrounds in the early 1970s – turned into a mainstream cultural industry. As it exploded, atomised and travelled, disco served a number of different agendas; its aesthetic rootedness in ideas of pleasure, transgression and escapism and its formal malleability, constructed around a four-on-the-floor beat, allowed it to permeate a variety of local scenes for whom the meaning of disco shifted, sometimes in unexpected and radical ways.
