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The Geopolitics of Spectacle
Why do autocrats build spectacular new capital cities? InThe Geopolitics of Spectacle, Natalie Koch considers how autocratic rulers use \"spectacular\" projects to shape state-society relations, but rather than focus on the standard approach-on the project itself-she considers the unspectacular \"others.\" The contrasting views of those from the poorest regions toward these new national capitals help her develop a geographic approach to spectacle.
Koch uses Astana in Kazakhstan to exemplify her argument, comparing that spectacular city with others from resource-rich, nondemocratic nations in central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Southeast Asia.The Geopolitics of Spectacledraws new political-geographic lessons and shows that these spectacles can be understood only from multiple viewpoints, sites, and temporalities. Koch explicitly theorizes spectacle geographically and in so doing extends the analysis of governmentality into new empirical and theoretical terrain.
With cases ranging from Azerbaijan to Qatar and Myanmar, and an intriguing account of reactions to the new capital of Astana from the poverty-stricken Aral Sea region of Kazakhstan, Koch's book provides food for thought for readers in human geography, anthropology, sociology, urban studies, political science, international affairs, and post-Soviet and central Asian studies.
eBook
Barrio rising
Beginning in the late 1950s political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as Latin America's most stable democracy. But outside the staid halls of power, in the gritty barrios of a rapidly urbanizing country, another politics was rising—unruly, contentious, and clamoring for inclusion. Based on years of archival and ethnographic research in Venezuela's largest public housing community, Barrio Rising delivers the first in-depth history of urban popular politics before the Bolivarian Revolution, providing crucial context for understanding the democracy that emerged during the presidency of Hugo Chávez. In the mid-1950s, a military government bent on modernizing Venezuela razed dozens of slums in the heart of the capital Caracas, replacing them with massive buildings to house the city's working poor. The project remained unfinished when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and in a matter of days city residents illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatted on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: the 23 de Enero (January 23). During the next thirty years, through eviction efforts, guerrilla conflict, state violence, internal strife, and official neglect, inhabitants of el veintitrés learned to use their strategic location and symbolic tie to the promise of democracy in order to demand a better life. Granting legitimacy to the state through the vote but protesting its failings with violent street actions when necessary, they laid the foundation for an expansive understanding of democracy—both radical and electoral—whose features still resonate today. Blending rich narrative accounts with incisive analyses of urban space, politics, and everyday life, Barrio Rising offers a sweeping reinterpretation of modern Venezuelan history as seen not by its leaders but by residents of one of the country's most distinctive popular neighborhoods.
eBook
Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise
While the number of think tanks active in American politics has more than quadrupled since the 1970s, their influence has not expanded proportionally. Instead, the known ideological proclivities of many, especially newer think tanks with their aggressive efforts to obtain high profiles, have come to undermine the credibility with which experts and expertise are generally viewed by public officials. This book explains this paradox. The analysis is based on 135 in-depth interviews with officials at think tanks and those in the policy making and funding organizations that draw upon and support their work. The book reports on results from a survey of congressional staff and journalists and detailed case studies of the role of experts in health care and telecommunications reform debates in the 1990s and tax reduction in 2001.
eBook
The Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles
This Handbook provides a systematic overview of the study of policy styles provided by leading experts in the field.
The book unites theoretical bases and advancements in practice, ranging from the fundamentals of policy styles to its place in greater policy studies, and responds to new questions regarding policy style dynamics across a range of government levels and activities, including contemporary trends affecting styles such as the use of digital tools and big data in government. It is a comprehensive reference for students and scholars of public policy.
Key features:
consolidates and advances the contemporary body of knowledge on policy styles and defines its distinctiveness within broader policy studies;
provides a detailed picture of national policy styles in a wide range of countries as well as insights concerning sectoral and other kinds of styles within countries, including executive styles and styles of policy advice;
systematically explores questions dealing with how policy styles impact policy goals, and the realization of policies, including how styles affect instrument choices and impact;
provides a guide to future comparative research pathways and cross-sectoral dialogue on the concept and practice of policy styles.
The Routledge Handbook Policy Styles is essential reading and an authoritative reference for scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners of public policy, public administration, and public management as well as for comparative politics and government, public organizations, and individual policy areas such as health policy, welfare policy, industrial policy, and environmental policy, among others.
eBook
Democratic laboratories
\"Observers have long marveled at the spread of ideas and policies from state to state in American democracy. But why and how do politicians, professionals, and citizens in one state take inspiration from national policy debates and imitate, resist, and rework legislative models from other states? For the first time in this important new book, Andrew Karch analyzes in depth the process of policy 'diffusion' across the states, offering a nuanced and powerful framework to explain one of the most important and recurrent features of U.S. politics.\" —Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard University \"Karch does two things with remarkable skill. First, he makes sense of the copious literature on policy diffusion and extends that literature in a very fruitful way. Second, he conducts the most thorough and methodologically sound empirical study of policy diffusion to date, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis. This book is so well written and thoughtful that it will likely stimulate a whole new wave of study of state policy and its diffusion.\" —Chris Mooney, editor of State Politics and Policy Quarterly \"Democratic Laboratories goes beyond standard 'diffusion of innovation' approaches to analyze the complex interaction of interstate and intrastate political forces that shapes policy change. The book is a major contribution to the study of American federalism—and a very good read.\" —Kent Weaver, Brookings Institution \"Andrew Karch has something new and important to say about the states as laboratories of democracies. In his masterful account we learn about the actual process of diffusion of recent health and welfare policy reforms. \" —Virginia Gray, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill \"Democratic Laboratories is the seminal work on policy diffusion among the American states. Rigorously designed and well written, it is the new starting place for anyone interested in this important topic. The findings are copious and loaded with insights into the future of this valuable research.\" —Harrell Rodgers, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Houston
eBook