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This book provides a thorough review of early English land taxes of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It is a polemical work which is critical of the institutional English state narratives including Brewer's 'Sinews of Power' and North and Weingast's 'credible commitment' and some established works in the field particularly Ward's 'The English Land Tax in the Eighteenth-Century' which is subject to a highly detailed critique. The book proposes that although this was a time of tension, with an English population divided by political and religious affiliations, unprecedented amounts of taxation were still collected. This was achieved by ceding immediate process ownership to local governors whilst arming them with clear success criteria, well-designed processes and innovative legislation targeted on a growing and commercialized economy. An important development was the state's increasing ability to coordinate tax-gathering activities across the country. This book will be of interest to financial historians, academics, and researchers.--

Capitalist globalisation since the 1980s has produced immense benefits in terms of technical progress, poverty reduction and welfare improvement. However, it has been accompanied by profound contradictions, including ecological destruction, global warming, inequality, concentration of business power, and financial instability. Regulation of global political economy in the interests of the majority of the world's population is essential if the human species is to avoid a Darwinian catastrophe. This book explores China's rich history of regulating the market in the interests of the mass of the population. For over two thousand years the Chinese bureaucracy has sought pragmatically to find a Way in which to integrate the 'invisible hand' of market forces with the 'visible hand' of ethically guided government regulation. Instead of seeking confrontation with China, citizens and politicians in the West need to deepen their understanding of the contribution that China can make to globally sustainable development in the decades and centuries ahead.

The delivery of justice is a core function of the modern state. The recent introduction of jury/lay judge systems for criminal trials in Japan, South Korea, Spain, and perhaps soon Taiwan represents a potentially major reform of this core function, shifting decision making authority from professional judges to ordinary citizens. But the four countries chose to empower their citizens to markedly different degrees. Why? Who Judges? is the first book to offer a systematic account for why different countries design their new jury/lay judge systems in very different ways. Drawing on detailed theoretical analysis, original case studies, and content analysis of fifty years of Japanese parliamentary debates, the book reveals that the relative power of 'new left'-oriented political parties explains the different magnitudes of reform in the four countries. Rieko Kage's vital new study opens up an exciting new area of research for comparative politics and socio-legal studies.

What is the relationship between the strength of a country's democracy and the ability of its courts to address deficiencies in the electoral process? Drawing a distinction between democracies that can be characterised as 'dominant-party' (for example Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong), 'dynamic' (for example India, South Korea, and Taiwan), and 'fragile' (for example Thailand, Pakistan ,and Bangladesh), this book explores how democracy sustains and is sustained by the exercise of judicial power. In dominant-party systems, courts can only pursue 'dialogic' pathways to constrain the government's authoritarian tendencies. On the other hand, in dynamic democracies, courts can more successfully innovate and make systemic changes to the electoral system. Finally, in fragile democracies, where a country regularly oscillates between martial law and civilian rule, their courts tend to consistently overreach, and this often facilitates or precipitates a hostile take-over by the armed forces, and lead to the demise of the rule of law.

"In Modernity and Its Other Robert Woods Sayre examines eighteenth-century North America through discussion of texts drawn from the period. He focuses on this unique historical moment when early capitalist civilization (modernity) in colonial societies, especially the British, interacted closely with Indigenous communities (the "Other") before the balance of power shifted definitively toward the colonizers. Sayre considers a variety of French perspectives as a counterpoint to the Anglo-American lens, including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and Philip Freneau, as well as both Anglo-American and French or French Canadian travelers in "Indian territory," including William Bartram, Jonathan Carver, John Lawson, Alexander Mackenzie, Baron de Lahontan, Pierre Charlevoix and Jean-Baptiste Trudeau. Modernity and Its Other is an important addition to any North American historian's bookshelf, for it brings together the social history of the European colonies and the ethnohistory of the American Indian peoples who interacted with the colonizers."--

"Why has the relationship between the state and the Islamic revivalist movement known commonly as 'Wahhabism' persisted under Saudi rule since 1744? In Securitising Identity Ben Rich traces the symbiosis between these two entities across three distinct periods of Saudi rule over the past four centuries, showcasing the consistent conditions, patterns of behaviour and political logics that surround their interplay. Collectively, these reveal a recurrent tendency in which the state paradoxically offers protections to the preservation of revivalism while generating threats against this same religious identity in order to ensure its hold on power. Such a pattern, he argues, not only transcends all discrete periods of Saudi rule, but also manifests regardless of the conservative or progressive nature of a particular administration. Understanding such a pattern not only helps to explain why Saudi Arabia today remains a source of regional sectarianism, but also how such an idiomatic ideology has endured..."--back cover

Located in the small kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Dag (c.50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars. Qualified as a Greco-Persian hybrid instigated by a lunatic king, this fascinating project of bricolage has been written out of history. This volume redresses that imbalance, interpreting Nemrud Dag as an attempt at canon building by Antiochos I in order to construct a dynastic ideology and social order, and proving the monument's importance for our understanding of a crucial transitional phase from Hellenistic to Roman. Hellenistic Commagene therefore holds a profound significance for a number of discussions, such as the functioning of the Hellenistic koine and the genesis of Roman 'art', Hellenism and Persianism in antiquity, dynastic propaganda and the power of images, Romanisation in the East, the contextualising of the Augustan cultural revolution, and the role of Greek culture in the Roman world

This edited volume discuses urban transport issues, policies, and initiatives in twelve of the world's major emerging economies - Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam - countries with large populations that have recently experienced large changes in urban structure, motorization and all the associated social, economic, and environmental impacts in positive and negative senses. Contributions on each of these twelve countries focus on one or more major cities per country. This book aims to fill a gap in the transport literature that is crucial to understanding the needs of a large portion of the world's urban population, especially in view of the southward shift in economic power. Readers will develop a better understanding of urban transport problems and policies in nations where development levels are below those of richer countries (mainly in the northern hemisphere) but where the rate of economic growth is often increasing at a faster rate than the wealthiest nations

"Neoliberal calls for welfare state reforms, especially cuts to public pensions, are a contentious issue for employees, employers, and national governments across the western world. But what are the underlying factors that have shaped the response to these pressures in Canada and Australia? In Beyond the Welfare State, Sirvan Karimi utilizes a synthesis of Marxian class analysis and the power resources model to provide an analytical foundation for the divergent pattern of public pension systems in Canada and Australia. Karimi reveals that the postwar social contract in Australia was market-based and more conducive to the privatization of retirement income. In Canada, the social contract emphasized income redistribution that resulted in strengthening the link between the state and the citizen. By shedding light on the impact of national settings on public pension systems, Beyond the Welfare State introduces new conceptual tools to aid our understanding of the welfare state at a time when it is increasingly under threat."--

"Contents" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "List of Figures" -- "Notes on Contributors" -- "Introduction. Visual Cultures of Islam: The Seen, Unseen and the in Between" -- "Part 1 Imaging Histories" -- "Chapter 1 The Arrest of Diponegoro: Visual Orientalism and Its Alternative" -- "Chapter 2 Images of the Prophet Muhammad: Brief Thoughts on Some European-Islamic Encounters" -- "Part 2 Unseen Reality" -- "Chapter 3 Nightmarish Visions? Shifting Visual Representations of the 'Islamic' Terrorist Throughout the 'War on Terror'" -- "Chapter 4 Oil and Women: Invisibility as Power in Nawal El-Saadawi's Love in the Kingdom of Oil" -- "Chapter 5 'World Hijab Day': Positioning the Hijabi in Cyberspace" -- "Part 3 Interrogating Visual Representations" -- "Chapter 6 Contemporary Bruneian Cinema in the Context of Sharia Law" -- "Chapter 7 Visual Discourses of (Un)veiling: Revisiting Women of Allah" -- "Chapter 8 Visibility and Veiling: Iranian Art on the Global Scene" -- "Chapter 9 From Woman to Tehran: The Shifting Representations of the Islamic Republic of Iran on Book Covers by Iranian Writers in English

Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: Benghazi or Bust -- Part 1: The Uprising -- 1 The Arabs Awaken -- 2 The Libyan Uprising -- 3 Memorandum of Misunderstandings -- 4 Libya, Bahrain and the 'Responsibility to Protect' -- 5 Passing Through the Egyptian Revolution -- 6 Entering Rebel-Held Libya -- 7 Experiencing Rebel-Held Benghazi -- 8 Misrata and Negotiating with the NTC -- 9 Leaving Rebel-Held Libya -- Part 2: The British Intervention in Libya -- 10 Towards a New MENA Policy -- 11 Bahrain -- 12 Stabilising Libya -- 13 Endgame in Libya -- 14 Whither the Revolution? -- 15 The Fall of the House of Gaddafi -- 16 Ambassador Stevens -- Part 3: The Aftermath -- 17 Reflections for the Future -- 18 Terrorism, Democracy and the Right to Resist Oppression -- 19 The Rise of Non-State Mediation -- 20 The Power of Cultural Dialogue and Small Nation Diplomacy -- Epilogue: Benghazi or Bust -- Appendix: Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee -- Notes -- Index -- Plates

The present work analyzes the various expressions of the corporeal condition of human existence, from the complex, social and cultural construction of the subject and the subjectivities in Modernity, and works the metaphors of bodies (in their soma and in their psyche which are intimately linked with embodiment) disdained, mutilated and painful that are put on the scene of Latin American society, projecting what is admitted and what is forbidden, in the places of memory of resistances and dominations. Here, a problematic relationship is drawn to the order and corporeal cosmos of history and society; In this way, the book expands an analysis by an inter and transdisciplinary history of the body in terms of symbolic construction and power-knowledge relations, which make it a field of events, a terrain of marriage of technical, linguistic and psychosocial devices in the aesthetic and suffering framework of the human and in the processes of subjectivation of the world

Prologue -- Games people play courting -- Why him? why her? -- The drive to love and who we choose -- Is monogamy natural? -- Of human bonding-- and cheating -- Why adultery? -- The nature of philandering -- Blueprint for divorce -- The three to four-year itch -- "When wild in woods the noble savage ran" -- Life in the trees -- Out of eden -- On the origin of monogamy and desertion -- The tyranny of love -- Evolution af attachment and love addictions -- Dressed to impress -- Nature's lures for seduction -- Men and women are like two feet-- they need each other to get ahead -- Gender differences in mind -- Women, men, and power -- The nature of sexual politics -- Almost human -- Genesis of kinship and the teenager -- The first affluent society -- That short but imperious word "ought" -- Fickle passion -- Romance in yesteryears -- "Till death do us part" -- Birth of sexual double standards -- Future sex -- Forward to the past -- Appendices -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Modern investment treaties give private arbitrators power to determine whether governments should pay compensation to foreign investors for a wide range of sovereign acts. In recent years, particularly developing countries have incurred significant liabilities from investment treaty arbitration, which begs the question why they signed the treaties in the first place. Through a comprehensive and timely analysis, this book shows that governments in developing countries typically overestimated the economic benefits of investment treaties and practically ignored their risks. Rooted in insights on bounded rationality from behavioural psychology and economics, the analysis highlights how policy-makers often relied on inferential shortcuts when assessing the implications of the treaties, which resulted in systematic deviations from fully rational behaviour. This not only sheds new light on one of the most controversial legal regimes underwriting economic globalization but also provides a novel theoretical account of the often irrational, yet predictable, nature of economic diplomacy

"There was once a national consensus in Israeli society: despite a left-right political split, its people were broadly secular and liberal. Over the past decade, the country has fractured into tribes with little shared understanding of what it means to be a Zionist--let alone an Israeli--and contesting the very notion of a 'Jewish and democratic' state. While this shift has profound implications for Israel's relationship with the broadly liberal Jewish diaspora, the greatest consequences will be felt at home. Israel's tribes increasingly lead separate lives; even the army, once a great melting-pot, is now a political and cultural battleground. Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, has warned of the risk of civil war. Gregg Carlstrom maps this conflict, from cosmopolitan Tel Aviv to the hilltops of the West Bank, and asks a pressing question: will the Middle East's strongest power survive its own internal contradictions?" (Publisher's description)