In this book, Li Xiaoyun tries to address these questions that attract public attention in today’s China. Drawing on classic and cutting-edge poverty research from political economy, economics and social psychology, Li elaborates on the political and social meanings of China’s recent war on extreme poverty and the institutional set-ups that helped the country successfully escape the poverty trap. Adopting a quasi auto-ethnography of his poverty experiment in a poor ethnic village in China,...

This book offers a comprehensive comparative perspective on the increasingly significant development cooperation activities of the BRICS. Providing a powerful set of insights into the drivers for engagement within each country, it brings together leading experts from Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and OECD countries. The authors review the empirical evidence for the BRICS’ modes of development cooperation and their geographical reach, and explore the historical background and p...

In the wake of the post-Cold War era, the aftermath of 9/11, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the emergence of the G20 at the leaders level, few commentators expected a reshaping of the global system towards multipolarity, and away from the United States. And yet, the BRICS - encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - has emerged as a challenge to the international status quo. But what is its capacity as a transformative force? And can it provide a significant counte...

In the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, renowned public intellectual and scholar Stephen Clarkson asks whether North America "exists" in the sense that the European Union has made Europe exist.Clarkson's rigorous study of the many political and economic relationships that link Canada, the United States, and Mexico answers this unusual question by looking at the institutions created by NAFTA, a broad selection of econom...

This book applies the conceptual framework of Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast's Violence and Social Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2009) to nine developing countries. The cases show how political control of economic privileges is used to limit violence and coordinate coalitions of powerful organizations. Rather than castigating politicians and elites as simply corrupt, the case studies illustrate why development is so difficult to achieve in societies where...

Following the acclaimed Uncle Sam and Us and the influential Does North America Exist? Stephen Clarkson — the preeminent analyst of North America's political economy — and Matto Mildenberger turn continental scholarship on its head by showing how Canada and Mexico contribute to the United States' wealth, security, and global power.This provocative work documents how Canada and Mexico offer the United States open markets for its investments and exports, massive flo...

This book comprises the discussions recorded in two roundtables organized by Funag, attended by academics, journalists and businessmen, along with diplomats and negotiators who worked at meetings of the BRICS. Thus, it represents a suitable repository for updated information and critical reviews of the trajectory of the group, in a direct and accessible language to all those who are interested in the current international relations.

Can North America survive as a region in light of the political turbulence provoked by the global economic crisis? Or have regional integration and collaboration reached a plateau beyond which disintegration is likely? In North America in Question, leading analysts from Canada, the United States, and Mexico provide theoretically innovative and rich empirical reflections on current challenges sweeping the continent and on the faltering political support for North American regionali...

The current framework of development cooperation is dominated by the experiences of industrialized countries. But emerging economies have begun to accelerate their own development programmes, and attempts to bring them into existing aid models have been met with caution and reservation.This expert, topical volume explores the development policies of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, analysing how South-South cooperation has evolved and where it differs from traditional...

Challenging the main ways we debate globalization, Global Displacements reveals how uneven geographies of capitalist development shape—and are shaped by—the aspirations and everyday struggles of people in the global South.Makes an original contribution to the study of globalization by bringing together critical development and feminist theoretical approachesOpens up new avenues for the analysis of global production as a long-term development strategy

Orthodox international relations theory considers foreign affairs to be the exclusive purview of national governments. Yet as Rodrigo Tavares demonstrates, the vast majority of leading sub-states and cities are currently practicing foreign affairs, both bilaterally and multilaterally. Subnational governments in Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa are changing traditional notions of sovereignty, diplomacy, and foreign policy as they carry out diplomatic endeavors and establish transnation...

Migration has become business, big business. Over the last few decades a host of new business opportunities have emerged that capitalize both on the migrants’ desires to migrate and the struggle by governments to manage migration. From the rapid growth of specialized transportation and labour immigration companies, to multinational companies managing detention centres or establishing border security, to the organized criminal networks profiting from human smuggling and trafficking, we are ...