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By highlighting the many ways that constitutions vary, comparative constitutional law raises interesting and important causal questions: What explains cross-national constitutional variation, and what are the real-world consequences of different constitutional arrangements? But comparative constitutional law scholarship so far has done relatively little to address these issues of constitutional causes and consequences in a rigorous manner. In this paper, I argue that scholars have much to gain from taking causality seriously in comparative constitutional law, and I suggest that scholarship on comparative politics and comparative political economy provides useful insights about how this might be done. First, I provide an overview of recent comparative constitutional law scholarship to highlight the pervasive issues of causality that it raises. Second, I introduce some of the interesting work that political scientists and economists have done on comparative constitutional law. They are asking questions about the origins and consequences of constitutions that are similar to those raised in comparative constitutional law scholarship - but they are framing them in explicitly causal terms, developing positive theories about cause-and-effect relationships, and testing them empirically using social science methods of inference. Third, I illustrate one such method that can be used to address causal claims and causal questions in comparative constitutional law. Using regression analysis of cross-national data on constitutions, government spending, and other institutional, demographic and economic factors in 80 democracies, I test a series of hypotheses about the effects of different constitutional arrangements on government spending. I also show how multiplicative interaction terms can be used to model and empirically test for conditional relationships between constitutions and various political, social or economic outcomes. I conclude with a proposed agenda for empirical comparative constitutional law, outlining its theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications.

This book is the outcome of a project of scholarly collaboration between social scientists from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Taking into consideration the worsening of social, economic, political and environmental conditions now overwhelming these regions and the shortcomings of the responses offered by the conventional wisdom, the concerned institutions intend with this project to open new paths in the production and distribution of relevant knowledge from a Southern perspective. The chapters included in this book were presented and discussed in a workshop on South/South Scholarly Collaboration held in Havana, Cuba, in October 2003, sponsored by Sida/SAREC, and within the framework of CLACSO's XXI General Assembly. The authors reflect their perceptions and shared concerns about issues such as the new "rules of the game" prevailing in the current international order and its consequences on state and politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America; the unsettled questions of land and agrarian reform; the uprising of new social actors and protest movements; and the possibilities and prospects arising from a new dialogue and concertation between states, societies and social forces in the South. ; Atilio A. Boron & Gladys Lechini Introduction Part I. Contending Visions in the Current International (Dis)Order Luis Maira Aguirre Relations Between Latin America and the United States: Balance and Prospects Emir Sader Latin America in the XXI Century Samir Amin The Driftages of Modernity: the Case of Africa and the Arab World Hari Singh Asia-Pacific in (America's) New World Order Xu Shicheng The New Empire and the New US Hegemony Part II. Society and Politics in a Neoliberal Age Atilio A. Boron After the Sacking: Latin American Capitalism at the Beginning of the xxi Century Adebayo Olukoshi Changing Patterns of Politics in Africa Musa Abutudu Human Security in Africa: Challenges and Prospects Part III. Social Movements and the Peasant Question José Seoane, Emilio Taddei & Clara Algranati The New Configurations of Popular Movements in Latin America Madeleine Andebeng L. Alingué African Transatlantic Resistance and Movements Kande Mutsaku Kamilamba & Mariana Castro Álvarez The NGOs of Development in the South: Neo-liberalism's Instruments or Popular Alternatives? A Critical Approach to the Third Sector Sam Moyo The Land Question and the Peasantry in Southern Africa François Houtart Why Should Small Rice Farmers in Sri Lanka Disappear? Part IV. Building a New African, Asian and Latin American Dialogue Gladys Lechini Is South-South Co-operation still Possible? The Case of Brazil's Strategy and Argentina's Impulses Towards the New South Africa and Africa Garth Shelton China, Africa and Asia Advancing South-South Co-operation Miryam Colacrai Steps Towards Integration in Latin America The Role of Ideas, Institutions and Policies in the MERCOSUR Jaime Zuluaga Nieto A Tricontinental of Knowledge: A Space for South-South Co-operation

"This book is a political, social, and environmental history of the many attempts to drain the Fens of eastern England during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both the early failures and the eventual successes. Fen drainage projects were supposed to transform hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands into dry farmland capable of growing grain and other crops, and also reform the sickly, backward fenland inhabitants into civilized, healthy farmers, to the benefit of the entire commonwealth. Fenlanders, however, viewed the drainage as a grave threat to their local landscape, economy, and way of life. At issue were two different understandings of the Fens, what they were and ought to be; the power to define the Fens in the present was the power to determine their future destiny. The drainage projects, and the many conflicts they incited, illustrate the ways in which politics, economics, and ecological thought intersected at a time when attitudes toward both the natural environment and the commonwealth were shifting. Promoted by the crown, endorsed by agricultural improvement advocates, undertaken by English and Dutch projectors, and opposed by fenland commoners, the drainage of the Fens provides a fascinating locus to study the process of state building in early modern England, and the violent popular resistance it sometimes provoked. In exploring the many challenges the English faced in re-conceiving and re-creating their Fens, this book addresses important themes of environmental, political, economic, social, and technological history, and reveals new dimensions of the evolution of early modern England into a modern, unitary, capitalist state"--

Going against both the naive techno-optimism of 'greening business as usual' and a resurgent 'catastrophism' within green thinking and politics, 'The Politics of Unsustainability' offers an analysis of the causes of unsustainability and diminished human flourishing.

Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich mit der Protestbewegung gegen die neoliberale kapitalistische Weltordnung, die, inspiriert von den mexikanischen Zapatistas, in der zweiten Hälfte der 1990er Jahre entstand. Sie war stärker globalisiert und trotz unterschiedlicher Strömungen charakterisiert durch ein pluralitätsaffines und eher anarchistisches Politikverständnis. Ihr gelang es teilweise, weitere Liberalisierungen des Welthandels zu verhindern und v.a. zahlreiche Reformprozesse in den von ihr kritisierten Institutionen der globalen politischen Ökonomie in Gang zu setzen. Aus einer postkolonialen Perspektive wird am Beispiel der Erlassjahrkampagne deutlich, dass trotz einer gestiegenen Sensibilität gegenüber der Problematik auch sie nicht ganz frei ist von Paternalismus und Dominanz im Nord-Süd Verhältnis.

Los Angeles Times - 'Mansfield Favors a Single 6-Year Term to Separate Presidency from Politics'

Global politics has been completely transformed by the rise of digitalisation and the politicised use of everyday digital communication tools by ordinary people in citizen engagement and mass protest. And yet, digital politics as a field is rarely explored holistically and interdisciplinary beyond a narrow focus on digital activism, digital warfare or Internet governance. Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures addresses this gap. Bringing together contributions from junior and experienced scholars, the book examines digital politics theoretically, methodologically, and ethically, offering interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative pedagogies. The first part of the book presents research chapters that look at misinformation and reactionary online activism, digital imperialism and capitalism, future internet governance, digital memory, digital waste, and environmental imagination. The second part showcases several creative and experimental tools for studying digital politics historically, and for analysing and creating future imaginaries of digital politics. By sharing these tools and reflecting on the process of their creation, the book aims to simultaneously push the boundaries of, and inspire new teaching and research in, the field of digital politics.

"Despite implicating ethnicity in everything from civil war to economic failure, researchers seldom consult psychological research when addressing the most basic question: What is ethnicity? The result is a radical scholarly divide generating contradictory recommendations for solving ethnic conflict. Research into how the human brain actually works demands a revision of existing schools of thought. Hale argues ethnic identity is a cognitive uncertainty-reduction device with special capacity to exacerbate, but not cause, collective action problems. This produces a new general theory of ethnic conflict that can improve both understanding and practice. A deep study of separatism in the USSR and CIS demonstrates the theory's potential, mobilizing evidence from elite interviews, three local languages, and mass surveys. The outcome significantly reinterprets nationalism's role in CIS relations and the USSR's breakup, which turns out to have been a far more contingent event than commonly recognized"--Back cover