For decades, Central America has faced market dependency, natural disasters, and political systems characterized by protectionist policies and low participation--situations that have had a tremendous impact on its economic development.

This two-volume set is a comprehensive assessment of Central America's position in the world economy, and it serves as a handbook for the important economic reforms Central America must undertake to become a viable competitor in the international economy.

For decades, Central America has faced market dependency, natural disasters, and political systems characterized by protectionist policies and low participation--situations that have had a tremendous impact on its economic development.

This two-volume set is a comprehensive assessment of Central America's position in the world economy, and it serves as a handbook for the important economic reforms Central America must undertake to become a viable competitor in the international economy.

The clearest and most up-to-date account of the achievements—and setbacks—of the European Union since 1945.

Europe has been transformed since the Second World War. No longer a checkerboard of entirely sovereign states, the continent has become the largest single-market area in the world, with most of its members ceding certain economic and political powers to the central government of the European Union. This shift is the product of world-historical change, but the process is not well understood. The changes came in fits and starts. There was no single blueprint for reform; rather, the EU is the result of endless political turmoil and dazzling bureaucratic gymnastics. As Brexit demonstrates, there are occasional steps backward, too. Cutting through the complexity, Richard Pomfret presents a uniquely clear and comprehensive analysis of an incredible achievement in economic cooperation.

The Economic Integration of Europe follows all the major steps in the creation of the single market since the postwar establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. Pomfret identifies four stages of development: the creation of a customs union, the deepening of economic union with the Single Market, the years of monetary union and eastward expansion, and, finally, problems of consolidation. Throughout, he details the economic benefits, costs, and controversies associated with each step in the evolution of the EU. What lies ahead? Pomfret concludes that, for all its problems, Europe has grown more prosperous from integration and is likely to increase its power on the global stage.

A common critique of globalization is that it causes economic segmentation and even disintegration of the national economy. Quite to the contrary, Baldev Raj Nayar provides a thorough empirical treatment of India’s political economy that challenges this critique by demonstrating that, on balance, both state and market have functioned to attenuate such a disintegrative impact and to accentuate economic integration. The active role of the Indian state in the areas of economic planning, fiscal federalism, and tax reform has resulted in improved economic integration and not increased segmentation. Similarly, his investigation of trade, investment, entrepreneurship, and migration suggests tendencies inherent in the market in favor of economic integration, especially when assisted by the state. While globalization has its benefits, such as higher economic growth, and costs, such as external shocks, Nayar’s findings show that India has benefited from globalization more than it has been victimized by it.

Globalization and India’s Economic Integration shows how globalization’s pressures favoring efficiency paradoxically induced the state to push for consolidation on a pan-Indian scale in the area of fiscal federalism and to advance the cause of the common market through reforming the indirect tax system; meanwhile, the state has pressed forward with social inclusiveness as never before in its economic planning. For another, the market, too, has been instrumental, because of its widened scope and its inherently expanding character, in strengthening economic integration through trade expansion, diffusion of industry, and increased inter-state migration. Nayar’s groundbreaking work will interest students, scholars, and specialists of India, South Asia, globalization, and political economy.

First published in Chile in 1969 as Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano, this classic is now available in English. The first attempt at an integrated analysis of modern Central America's socioeconomic structure, Torres Rivas's work traces the social development of Central America from independence (1871) up to the 1960s.

Using a dependency framework, but not limited by it, Torres Rivas describes the various divisions of Central American society and their evolution within the liberal development model that has been so much a part of the past century of Central American economic history. The book is compelling in its explanation of the relationship between foreign and native elements in the social development of the region. Torres Rivas describes and analyzes the resulting long-term problems this development has posed for Central America. With a new chapter added for the English edition, History and Society in Central America remains vital for readers interested in the region.

Where Latin American government leaders once looked at free trade agreements as solely about trade and trading policies, they are increasingly viewing them as the next beacon of hope in the long and arduous road of economic reform.

Integrating the Americas: FTAA and Beyond discusses how these governments have become embroiled in a larger set of issues affecting both institutions. This work, based on a conference sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, examines how this free trade process is surging ahead, while at the same time taking on a broader set of issues including institutional reform, transparency, the environment, labor, and social cohesion. The payoffs to the strategy of liberalization, privatization, and openness have been meager and disappointing to date. Will the FTAA be able to reverse this and allow Latin America to reap the benefits of globalization?

Europe’s financial crisis cannot be blamed on the Euro, Harold James contends in this probing exploration of the whys, whens, whos, and what-ifs of European monetary union. The current crisis goes deeper, to a series of problems that were debated but not resolved at the time of the Euro’s invention.

Since the 1960s, Europeans had been looking for a way to address two conundrums simultaneously: the dollar’s privileged position in the international monetary system, and Germany’s persistent current account surpluses in Europe. The Euro was created under a politically independent central bank to meet the primary goal of price stability. But while the monetary side of union was clearly conceived, other prerequisites of stability were beyond the reach of technocratic central bankers. Issues such as fiscal rules and Europe-wide banking supervision and regulation were thoroughly discussed during planning in the late 1980s and 1990s, but remained in the hands of member states. That omission proved to be a cause of crisis decades later.

Here is an account that helps readers understand the European monetary crisis in depth, by tracing behind-the-scenes negotiations using an array of sources unavailable until now, notably from the European Community’s Committee of Central Bank Governors and the Delors Committee of 1988–89, which set out the plan for how Europe could reach its goal of monetary union. As this foundational study makes clear, it was the constant friction between politicians and technocrats that shaped the Euro. And, Euro or no Euro, this clash will continue into the future.

Post-Communist tax reform, like institutional reform in other areas of the post-Communist transition, holds tremendous material consequences for different groups in society. Consequently, one would expect the allocation of resources and the distribution of the financial burden of that allocation to be highly sensitive to domestic politics. Indeed the political stakes should be especially high since post-Communist tax reform requires not merely a simple adjustment at the margin, but the fundamental reallocation of the responsibility for government revenue. In Eastern Europe, however, important areas of tax policy do not reflect traditional domestic variables (e.g., interest groups and partisanship) so much as the international imperatives associated with regional and global economic integration.

"The premise of mainstreaming gender is to bring equality concerns into every aspect of policy-making, and this brave book offers a close look at how feminists have taken up the challenge to transform the hidden dynamics of male domination in agricultural policy in Europe. In contrast to the automatic assumption that (neo)liberal policy always works against women’s interests, Prügl demonstrates the potential for feminist ju-jitsu to take advantage of multiple levels of governance to empower women in some circumstances. Although feminists were not always successful, the story of their efforts to remake agricultural policy should encourage activists to look for points of leverage in this and other contested and changing multilevel power systems."
---Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin

"Information on policy development, conflicts about improving the status of farm women, and using rural development policies to foster gender equality is hard to access in English and extremely useful for researchers concerned with the specifics of gender equality policy in the EU."
---Alison Woodward, Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

"This book is a must-read for scholars interested in the gendered process of global restructuring. Elisabeth Prügl succeeds superbly in teasing out the power politics involved in European agricultural policy. Through the lens of a feminist-constructivist approach, she makes visible the multiple mechanisms of gendered power within the state. This very lucid narrative is a milestone in a new generation of feminist theoretical scholarship."
---Brigitte Young, University of Muenster, Germany

Taking West and East Germany as case studies, Elisabeth Prügl shows how European agricultural policy has cemented long-standing gender-based inequalities and how feminists have used liberalization as an opportunity to challenge such inequalities. Through a comparison of the EU’s rural development program known as LEADER as it played out in the Altmark region in the German East and in the Danube/Bavarian Forest region in the West, Prügl provides a close-up view of the power politics involved in government policies and programs.

In identifying mechanisms of power (refusal, co-optation, compromise, normalization, and silencing of difference), Prügl illustrates how these mechanisms operate in arguments over gender relations within the state. Her feminist-constructivist approach to global restructuring as a gendered process brings into view multiple levels of governance and the variety of gender constructions operating in different societies. Ultimately, Prügl offers a new understanding of patriarchy as diverse, contested, and in flux.

Jacket photograph: © iStockphoto.com/Wojtek Kryczka