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In the poorest countries, such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Mali, the United States has struggled to work with governments whose corruption and lack of capacity are increasingly seen to be the cause of instability and poverty. The development and security communities call for \"good governance\" to improve the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the delivery of public goods and services. The United States and other rich liberal democracies insist that this is the only legitimate model of governance. Yet poor governments cannot afford to govern according to these ideals and instead are compelled to rely more heavily on older, cheaper strategies of holding power, such as patronage and repression. The unwillingness to admit that poor governments do and must govern differently has cost the United States and others inestimable blood and coin. Informed by years of fieldwork and drawing on practitioner work and academic scholarship in politics, economics, law, and history, this book explains the origins of poor governments in the formation of the modern state system and describes the way they govern. It argues that, surprisingly, the effort to stigmatize and criminalize the governance of the poor is both fruitless and destabilizing. The United States must pursue a more effective foreign policy to engage poor governments and acknowledge how they govern.

Im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges und der Dekolonisierung wurden die Außenwirtschaftsbeziehungen beider deutscher Staaten vor allem durch politisch-strategische Ziele beeinflusst.Die Entstehung zweier Wirtschafts- und Militärblöcke seit Ende der 1940er Jahre wirkte sich auch auf die Außenwirtschaftsbeziehungen der Bundesrepublik und die DDR aus.

Most narratives depict Soviet Cold War cultural activities and youth groups as drab and dreary, militant and politicized. In this study Gleb Tsipursky challenges these stereotypes in a revealing portrayal of Soviet youth and state-sponsored popular culture.The primary local venues for Soviet culture were the tens of thousands ofklubswhere young people found entertainment, leisure, social life, and romance. Here sports, dance, film, theater, music, lectures, and political meetings became vehicles to disseminate a socialist version of modernity. The Soviet way of life was dutifully presented and perceived as the most progressive and advanced, in an attempt to stave off Western influences. In effect, socialist fun became very serious business. As Tsipursky shows, however, Western culture did infiltrate these activities, particularly at local levels, where participants and organizers deceptively cloaked their offerings to appeal to their own audiences. Thus, Soviet modernity evolved as a complex and multivalent ideological device.Tsipursky provides a fresh and original examination of the Kremlin's paramount effort to shape young lives, consumption, popular culture, and to build an emotional community-all against the backdrop of Cold War struggles to win hearts and minds both at home and abroad.

As the economic giants of Asia and elsewhere have awakened, Western leaders have increasingly struggled to maintain economic stability. The international financial crisis that began in 2007 is but one result of the emerging nations’ increased gravitational pull. In this vividly written and compellingly argued book, Stephen D. King, the global chief economist at HSBC, one of the largest banking groups in the world, suggests that the decades ahead will see a major redistribution of wealth and power across the globe that will force consumers in the United States and Europe to stop living beyond their means.The tide of money washing in from emerging nations has already fuelled the recent property bubble in the West, while new patterns of trade have left the West increasingly dependent on risky financial services. Unless things change drastically, King argues, the increasing power of emerging markets, when coupled with poor internal regulation and an increasingly anachronistic system of global governance, will result in greater instability and income inequality, accompanied by the risk of a major dollar decline. And as Western populations age and emerging economies develop further, the social and political consequences may be alarming to citizens who have grown accustomed to living in prosperity

This book examines the current guidance on model conventions regarding the provision of services and proposes a new approach in relations between developed and developing states.

The New Maids is a pioneering study, grounded in rich empirical evidence, which expertly addresses the thorny questions surrounding the growing number of migrant cleaners and caregivers who maintain modern Western households. Supported by an ethnographic study of immigrant domestic workers and their German employers, the author argues that domestic work plays the defining role in global ethnic and gender hierarchies. This exciting book not only will enhance the reader's understanding of the new care economy, it also sets a new standard for feminist methodology.

A pioneering study of the seminal period from the declaration of the Republic of Ireland, and the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), in 1949 until Ireland and Britain entered the EEC in 1973. Draws on unexploited original sources from Ireland and Germany. Dramatically re-envisions the foundations of contemporary Ireland.

Succeeding with Trade Reforms: The Role of Aid for Trade highlights the potential of aid for trade to boost economic growth and reduce poverty, while discussing the various reasons why it may not be realised. In so doing, this book draws lessons for the design of aid-for-trade projects and programmes and for increasing their effectiveness. Building on this analysis, the book also quantifies the binding constraints to trade in developing countries and the importance of complementary and compatible policies (such as education, governance, business environment and macroeconomic stability) to maximise the impact of trade reforms on trade and economic growth.

In 2014, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recorded 40 armed conflicts with a minimum of 25 battle-related deaths, up by six from 2013. This is the highest number of conflicts reported since 1999, and 11 of these conflicts were defined as wars, that is, conflicts generating 1,000 or more battle-related deaths in one calendar year. Further, an escalation of several conflicts, coupled with the extreme violence in Syria, resulted in the highest number of battle-related deaths in the post-1989 period. Yet, compared to the large-scale interstate wars of the 20th century, the number of fatalities caused by armed conflicts in 2014 was relatively low. Additionally, seven conflicts identified in 2013 were no longer active in 2014. However, four new conflicts erupted in 2014, all of them in Ukraine, and three previously registered conflicts were restarted by new actors. Furthermore, six conflicts reoccurred with previously registered actors. A positive development, however, is the increase to ten of the number of peace agreements concluded and signed in 2014, which represents a further four compared with 2013. And although this increase is part of a positive trend since 2011, it is worth noting that several peace processes remained fragile by the end of the year.

The world is currently experiencing a surge of international regulations aimed at limiting the development policy options of developing country governments. Of the three big agreements coming out of the Uruguay Round - on investment measures (TRIMS), trade in services (GATS), and intellectual property rights (TRIPS) - the first two limit the authority of developing country governments to constrain the choices of companies operating in their territory, while the third requires the governments to enforce rigorous property rights of foreign (generally Western) firms. Together the agreements make comprehensively illegal many of the industrial policy instruments used in the successful East Asian developers to nurture their own industrial and technological capacities and are likely to lock in the position of Western countries at the top of the world hierarchy of wealth. The paper describes how the three agreements constitute a modern version of Friedrich List's 'kicking away the ladder'. It then outlines some needed changes in the way we think about development and in the role of multilateral organizations. It concludes that the practical prospects for change along these lines are slender, but not negligible.