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162 books match the query 'Comparative Politics' and 12 start with s

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Silencing the Guns in Haiti

Irwin P. Stotzky

University of Chicago Press, 1997

Silencing the Guns in Haiti traces Haiti's halting and uncertain quest for democracy from the perspective of someone who played a leading part in every stage of that process.

"A provocative study of the prospects for the rule of law in Haiti."—Marilyn Bowden, Miami Today

"[Stotzky] deepens insights into the contradictory obstacles to democratic governance in Haiti."—Library Journal

"Controversial and stimulating."—Choice

"Lucid and informative. . . . Stotzky gives readers a good foundation for understanding the pressures facing the impoverished but determined Caribbean island."—Islands

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Smoldering Ashes

Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840

Charles F. Walker

Duke University Press, 1999

In Smoldering Ashes Charles F. Walker interprets the end of Spanish domination in Peru and that country’s shaky transition to an autonomous republican state. Placing the indigenous population at the center of his analysis, Walker shows how the Indian peasants played a crucial and previously unacknowledged role in the battle against colonialism and in the political clashes of the early republican period. With its focus on Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire, Smoldering Ashes highlights the promises and frustrations of a critical period whose long shadow remains cast on modern Peru.
Peru’s Indian majority and non-Indian elite were both opposed to Spanish rule, and both groups participated in uprisings during the late colonial period. But, at the same time, seething tensions between the two groups were evident, and non-Indians feared a mass uprising. As Walker shows, this internal conflict shaped the many struggles to come, including the Tupac Amaru uprising and other Indian-based rebellions, the long War of Independence, the caudillo civil wars, and the Peru-Bolivian Confederation. Smoldering Ashes not only reinterprets these conflicts but also examines the debates that took place—in the courts, in the press, in taverns, and even during public festivities—over the place of Indians in the republic. In clear and elegant prose, Walker explores why the fate of the indigenous population, despite its participation in decades of anticolonial battles, was little improved by republican rule, as Indians were denied citizenship in the new nation—an unhappy legacy with which Peru still grapples.
Informed by the notion of political culture and grounded in Walker’s archival research and knowledge of Peruvian and Latin American history, Smoldering Ashes will be essential reading for experts in Andean history, as well as scholars and students in the fields of nationalism, peasant and Native American studies, colonialism and postcolonialism, and state formation.

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Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World

Micro-Estimation

Edited by Jonathan Gruber and David A. Wise

University of Chicago Press, 2003

Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World represents the second stage of an ongoing research project studying the relationship between social security and labor. In the first volume, Jonathan Gruber and David A. Wise revealed enormous disincentives to continued work at older ages in developed countries. Provisions of many social security programs typically encourage retirement by reducing pay for work, inducing older employees to leave the labor force early and magnifying the financial burden caused by an aging population. At a certain age there is simply no financial benefit to continuing to work.

In this volume, the authors turn to a country-by-country analysis of retirement behavior based on micro-data. The result of research compiled by teams in twelve countries, the volume shows an almost uniform correlation between levels of social security incentives and retirement behavior in each country. The estimates also show that the effect is strikingly uniform in countries with very different cultural histories, labor market institutions, and other social characteristics.

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South Africa’s Resistance Press

Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid

Les Switzer

Ohio University Press, 2000

South Africa's Resistance Press is a collection of essays celebrating the contributions of scores of newspapers, newsletters, and magazines that confronted the state in the generation after 1960. These publications contributed in no small measure to reviving a mass movement inside South Africa that would finally bring an end to apartheid. This marginalized press had an impact on its audience that cannot be measured in terms of the small number of issues sold, the limited amount of advertising revenue raised, or the relative absence of effective marketing and distribution strategies. These journalists rendered communities visible that were too often invisible and provided a voice for those too often voiceless. They contributed immeasurably to broadening the concept of a free press in South Africa. The guardians of the new South Africa owe these publications a debt of gratitude that cannot be repaid.

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South-South Solidarity and the Latin American Left

Jessica Stites Mor

University of Wisconsin Press, 2024

Transnational solidarity movements often play an important role in reshaping structures of global power. However, there remains a significant gap in the historical literature on collaboration between parties located in the Global South. Facing increasing repression, the Latin American left in the 1960s and 1970s found connection in transnational exchange, organizing with distant activists in Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. By exploring the particularities of South-South solidarity, this volume begins new conversations about what makes these movements unique, how they shaped political identities, and their lasting influence.

Jessica Stites Mor looks at four in-depth case studies: the use of legal reform to accomplish the goals of solidarity embedded in Mexico's revolutionary constitution, visual and print media circulated by Cuba and its influence on the agenda of the Afro-Asian block at the United Nations, organizing on behalf of Palestinian nationalism in reshaping Argentina's socialist left, and the role of Latin American Catholic activists in challenging the South African apartheid state. These examples serve as a much-needed road map to navigate our current political climate and show us how solidarity movements might approach future struggles.

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State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900

Fernando López-Alves

Duke University Press, 2000

Despite a shared colonial past, South American nations experienced different patterns of conflict in the nineteenth century. These differences led to the creation of a variety of states and regimes, from authoritarian military oligarchies to popular democracies. Using a rigorous logic of comparison, Fernando López-Alves explores the roots of state building in five countries and explains why the political systems of these early postindependent societies were prone to militarism, corporatism, or liberal democracy.
Breaking with the traditional economic analysis of South American development, López-Alves argues that civil-military relations lay at the core of state building. By comparing three countries in particular—Uruguay, Colombia, and Argentina—during an intense phase of state and regime formation, he shows how war and the collective action of the rural poor contributed to the construction of central armies, the rise of new social classes, and the emergence of civilian organizations. He also examines characteristics unique to each country’s war-formed culture and discusses how coalitions were built during this period. Examples from Paraguay and Venezuela and references to state formation in Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East add to the complexity and richness of the study’s comparative analysis.
Drawing on a vast bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, López-Alves goes beyond providing insights into the particular development of Latin American countries and introduces a comprehensive theory of state formation applicable to other regions. This book will interest Latin Americanists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists studying state formation.

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State Institutions, Civic Associations, and Identity Demands

Regional Movements in Greater Southeast Asia

Amy H. Liu and Joel Sawat Selway, Editors

University of Michigan Press, 2024

While the media tends to pay the most attention to violent secessionist movements or peaceful independence movements, it is just as important to understand why there are regions where political movements for autonomy fail to develop. In neglecting regions without political movements or full-blown independence demands, theories may be partial at best and incorrect at worst.

State Institutions, Civic Associations, and Identity Demands examines over a dozen regions, comparing and contrasting successful cases to abandoned, unsuccessful, or dormant cases. The cases range from successful secession (East Timor, Singapore) and ongoing secessionist movements (Southern Philippines), to internally divided regional movements (Kachin State), low-level regionalist stirrings (Lanna, Taiwan), and local but not regional mobilization of identity (Bali, Minahasan), all the way to failed movements (Bataks, South Maluku) and regions that remain politically inert (East and North Malaysia, Northeast Thailand). While each chapter is written by a country expert, the contributions rely on a range of methods, from comparative historical analysis, to ethnography, field interviews, and data from public opinion surveys. Together, they contribute important new knowledge on little-known cases that nevertheless illuminate the history of regions and ethnic groups in Southeast Asia. Although focused on Southeast Asia, the book identifies the factors that can explain why movements emerge and successfully develop and concludes with a chapter by Henry Hale that illustrates how this can be applied globally.

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State-building

A Comparative Study of Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia

Verena Fritz

Central European University Press, 2007

Looks at the process of state-building in Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia from a political economy and institutional perspective. Weak and distorted state capacity has come to be widely recognized as a key obstacle to successful transformation—including economic modernization and growth as well as the consolidation of democracy. However, so far little systematic research has been carried out on state capacity per se and on how to explain its development. The book provides new insights in considering the evolution of Ukraine since 1992, offering an in-depth view of institutional development in crucial areas and thus tracing the process of state-building. It draws comparisons with developments in Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia (based on field research). To capture the process of state-building empirically, focuses on the extraction and expenditure systems which are a central pillar of state capacity and also a central link between citizens and the state. The book also sheds light on how Ukraine’s potential ‘second transition’ currently under way will have an impact on its institutional system.

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Statesmanship and Party Government

A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke

Harvey C. Mansfield

University of Chicago Press, 1965

In this incisive look at early modern views of party politics, Harvey C. Mansfield examines the pamphlet war between Edmund Burke and the followers of Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke during the mid-eighteenth century. In response to works by Bolingbroke published posthumously, Burke created his most eloquent advocacy of the party system. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the material, Mansfield shows that present-day parties must be understood in the light of the history of party government. The complicated organization and the public actions of modern parties are the result, he contends, and not the cause of a great change in opinion about parties.

Mansfield points out that while parties have always existed, the party government that we know today is possible only because parties are now considered respectable. In Burke’s day, however, they were thought by detractors to be a cancer in a free polity. Even many supporters of the parties viewed them as a dangerous instrument, only to be used cautiously by statesmen in dire times. Burke, however, was an early champion of the party system in Britain and made his arguments with a clear-eyed realism. In Statesmanship and Party Government, Mansfield provides a skillful evaluation of Burke’s writings and sheds light present-day party politics through a profound understanding of the historical background of the their inception.

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Strengthening Peace in Post-Civil War States

Transforming Spoilers into Stakeholders

Edited by Matthew Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell

University of Chicago Press, 2010

Among the more frequent and most devastating of conflicts, civil wars—from Yugoslavia to Congo—frequently reignite and even spill over into the international sphere. Given the inherent fragility of civil war peace agreements, innovative approaches must be taken to ensure the successful resolution of these conflicts. Strengthening Peace in Post–Civil War States provides both analytical frameworks and a series of critical case studies demonstrating the effectiveness of a range of strategies for keeping the peace.

Coeditors Matthew Hoddie and Caroline A. Hartzell here contend that lasting peace relies on aligning the self-interest of individuals and communities with the society-wide goal of ending war; if citizens and groups have a stake in peace, they will seek to maintain and defend it. The rest of the contributors explore two complementary approaches toward achieving this goal: restructuring domestic institutions and soft intervention. Some essays examine the first tactic, which involves reforming governments that failed to prevent war, while others discuss the second, an umbrella term for a number of non-military strategies for outside actors to assist in keeping the peace.

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Sustainable Capitalism

Essential Work for the Anthropocene

Edited by Inara Scott

University of Utah Press, 2024

Capitalism has been linked to climate change, racism and slavery, wealth inequality, and the decline of democracy. At the same time, capitalism may have been instrumental in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, facilitating vast technological innovations, and improving standards of living across the globe. As climate change accelerates and the world is threatened with existential crises, we must ask: Is capitalism incompatible with sustainability? While this question is as complex and urgent as it is resistant to simple answers, the contributors to this volume make the case that a more sustainable capitalism is within our reach.

Sustainable Capitalism takes on the challenge of sustainability from a uniquely interdisciplinary and diverse perspective, offering both theory and tools for action. Topics range from an analysis of the foundations and definition of capitalism to the specific regulatory mechanisms that may be necessary to rein in its current, unsustainable trajectory. Readers will find nuanced and important analyses of options and potential outcomes that are not available in any other work. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the path we are on and how we might improve the lives of people around the globe.

https://www.sustainablecapitalismbook.com/

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System and Succession

The Social Bases of Political Elite Recruitment

By John D. Nagle

University of Texas Press, 1977

System and Succession provides a comparative analysis of the social composition of national political leadership in the United States, Russia, Germany, and Mexico. These systems were chosen as case studies because their forms of government are representative of many others, because they are conveniently suited for comparison, and because they have high internal control over their own means of recruitment. Drawing on a mass of data and an extensive bibliography, Nagle's comprehensive study exhibits a mastery of the intricacies of these four quite divergent political systems. Complete time-series data covering several generations of elite recruitment provide the basis for a new methodological approach to comparative elite analysis.

The author investigates, among other issues, elite displacements associated with revolution, economic crises, and postwar peace and prosperity. Especially important differences along class and generational lines are found in the elite displacements associated with the revolutions in Germany (1918), Russia (1917–1921), and Mexico (1910–1920). The American case serves as a nonrevolutionary control case. The overriding theoretical issue throughout System and Succession is the debate among Marxists, radical democrats, and pluralists over the importance of elite social composition for equitable representation of social or class interests. Nagle develops a convincing argument supporting the Marxist thesis that the importance of class in elite recruitment is a defining characteristic of the political system.

System and Succession will be of particular interest to scholars in comparative politics. Political scientists in other areas, as well as historians and sociologists interested in the four countries examined, will also find this book provocative.

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