The 2008 financial crash continues to ravage Britain’s economy and push millions into austerity while many more faced a cost of living crisis. These were only some of the events that started a new year in Britain and as the bad news continued into the year,   the demise of the retail sector; thousands of job losses and cuts in welfare spending were only some of the daily stories that marked 2012 as a defining year for Britain; by which time an extra trillion or so was added to Britain’s na...

The Regional Handbooks of Economic Development series provides accessible overviews of countries within their larger domestic and international contexts, focusing on the relations among regions as they meet the challenges of the twenty first century. The series allows the non-specialist student to explore a wide range of complex factors-social and political as well as economic-that affect the growth of developing regions in Asia, Europe, and South America. Each Handbook provides an overvie...

The Regional Handbooks of Economic Development series provides accessible overviews of countries within their larger domestic and international contexts, focusing on the relations among regions as they meet the challenges of the twenty first century.The series allows the non-specialist student to explore a wide range of complex factors-social and political as well as economic-that affect the growth of developing regions in Asia, Europe, and South America. Each Handbook...

The Regional Handbooks of Economic Development series provides accessible overviews of countries within their larger domestic and international contexts, focusing on the relations among regions as they meet the challenges of the twenty first century.The series allows the non-specialist student to explore a wide range of complex factors-social and political as well as economic-that affect the growth of developing regions in Asia, Europe, and South America. Each Handbook...

First Published in 2002. The Regional Handbooks of Economic Development series provides accessible overviews of countries within their larger domestic and international contexts, focusing on the relations among regions as they meet the challenges of the twenty first century. The series allows the non-specialist student to explore a wide range of complex factors-social and political as well as economic-that affect the growth of developing regions in Asia, Europe, and South America. Each Han...

The Regional Handbooks of Economic Development series provides accessible overviews of countries within their larger domestic and international contexts, focusing on the relations among regions as they meet the challenges of the twenty first century.The series allows the non-specialist student to explore a wide range of complex factors-social and political as well as economic-that affect the growth of developing regions in Asia, Europe, and South America. Each Handbook...

Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. After providing an accessible history of the nation, he turns his focus to ...

The Romanian revolution was motivated by a desire for greater political and intellectual freedom and economic prosperity. It was the bloodiest of the eastern European transitions due to Ceausescu's cult of personality. However, many of the goals of the revolution are still unfulfilled. The lack of civil society, charges of political corruption, the failure to transform the economy, and concerns over the protection of ethnic minority rights are all factors in Romania's failure to become a f...

" Pluralism by Default will change the way we understand the emergence of democracies and the consolidation of autocracies." —Chrystia Freeland, author of PlutocratsExploring sources of political contestation in the former Soviet Union and beyond, Pluralism by Default proposes that pluralism in "new democracies" is often grounded less in democratic leadership or emerging civil society and more in the failure of authoritarianism. Dynamic co...

How will Russia redraw post-Soviet borders? In the wake of recent Russian expansionism, political risk expert Agnia Grigas illustrates how—for more than two decades—Moscow has consistently used its compatriots in bordering nations for its territorial ambitions. Demonstrating how this policy has been implemented in Ukraine and Georgia, Grigas provides cutting-edge analysis of the nature of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy and compatriot protection to warn that Moldova, Kazakhstan, the Balt...

This book builds on the strengths of the previous volumes by the same author to provide the most detailed and nuanced account of the man, his politics and his profound influence on Russian politics, foreign policy and society.However, this is not a new edition of the earlier books but is an entirely new work. The focus now is on the dilemmas of power since 2008. There is a brief biographical sketch of Vladimir Putin and much analysis of his ideas and policies, but the book now focu...

Can Russia ever become a normal, free-market, democratic society? Why have so many reforms failed since the Soviet Union's collapse? In this highly-original work, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy argue that Russia's geography, history, and monumental mistakes perpetrated by Soviet planners have locked it into a dead-end path to economic ruin. Shattering a number of myths that have long persisted in the West and in Russia, The Siberian Curse explains why Russia's greatest assetsits gigantic ...