As the first book in the Restructuring Rural Areas series, "Constructing the countryside" presents a new methodological approach to the analysis of rural change. The authors seek to link wider developments in the global political economy to the behaviour of local actors and, in so doing, they place research into rural studies much more firmly than hitherto in the mainstream of social science enquiry. The outcome is a book that promotes a truly interdisciplinary approach through which the c...

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminish...

Welfare states vary across nations and change over time. And the balance between markets and government; free enterprise and social protection is perennially in question. But all developed societies have welfare states of one kind or another - they are a fundamental dimension of modern government. And even after decades of free-market criticism and reform, their core institutions have proven resilient and popular. This Very Short Introduction describes the modern welfare state, ex...

Global distributive justice is now part of mainstream political debate. It incorporates issues that are now a familiar feature of the political landscape, such as global poverty, trade justice, aid to the developing world and debt cancellation. This is the first textbook to focus exclusively on issues of distributive justice on the global scale. It gives clear and up-to-date accounts of the major theories of global justice and spells out their significance for a series of important politic...

This book offers a significant contribution to the globalization debate, and examines the complexities surrounding modern globalization. It will be of great interest to scholars of international political economy, international relations and globalization studies.

During his successful campaign to become Conservative Party leader in the spring of 2004, Stephen Harper said of the Maritime provinces, "We will see the day when the region is not the place where you visit your grandparents, but instead more often than not the place where you visit your grandchildren." In Visiting Grandchildren, esteemed policy analyst and scholar Donald J. Savoie explores how Canadian economic policies have served to exclude the Maritime provinces from the wealt...

In this book Australian economist, Graham Dunkley, explains and critiques the crucial concept of free trade. A policy of free trade is central to today's world-dominating globalization project. The more euphoric globalists uncritically assume that it has universal and unequivocal benefits for all people and countries. And the perpetual negotiations of the World Trade Organization are wholly based on this presumption.Graham Dunkley shows, however, that leading economists have always...

This unique book explores a very broad range of ideas and institutions and provides thorough and detailed case studies in the context of broader theoretical analysis.Key topics such as poverty, global governance, sustainable development and the environment are closely examined, with detailed case studies of the World Bank, the WTO, the IMF, Asian Development Bank, UN Development Programme and the OECD's Development Assistance Committee.The impact multilateral institutions s...

Economic globalisation and universal human rights both have the aspiration and power to improve and enrich individuals and communities. However, their respective institutions, methods, practices and goals differ, leading to both detrimental clashes and beneficial synergies. In this book, David Kinley analyses how human rights intersect with the trade, aid and commercial dimensions of global economic relations, taking the view that, while the global economy is a vitally important civilising...

Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO’s centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative fra...

This book explores the links between European integration and globalisation, and examines the potential for social transformation in the context of the global economic crisis and the resulting EU reforms.Divided into three parts, this book offers both empirical and theoretical analyses of social integration, supranationality and global competition. Drawing on Critical Political Economy research, Neo-Gramscian, Open Marxist, Regulationist and Post-structuralist scholars subject a wi...

The relationship between global governance and regionalization is fraught with ambiguity. Understanding regionalization in this context requires an understanding of its relationship, and reactive condition, with both the constellations of global governance and globalization.This book presents an overview and explores the distinctive but intersecting trajectories of regionalization and global governance. It surveys:the theoretical debatesthe economi...