A New Weave Of Power People And Politics

This book provides an approach for promoting citizen participation; separating human rights, rule of law, development, and governance, reconnecting them in order to create an integrated approach to rights-based political empowerment; delving into questions of citizenship, constituency-building, social change, gender, and accountability.

A New Weave of Power, People & Politics is a guide that combines concrete and practical 'action steps' with a sound theoretical foundation to help users understand the process of advocacy planning and implementation

Feminist Policymaking in Turbulent Times offers a unique and timely reflection of the critical debates around the institutionalisation of feminist and gender-focused ideas and norms into policy. Many states and non-governmental organisations are increasingly invested in ‘feminist policymaking’ at the domestic and international levels. Yet, this liberal (feminist) agenda is also vastly disputed by critical, intersectional, and decolonial voices on the one hand, and by anti-gender movements around the world on the other hand. Indeed, while opposition to ‘gender ideology’ is mounting from reactionary, religious, and secular forces, feminist policymaking is also being challenged in important ways from within. Thus, this book situates feminist policymaking in a challenging and ‘turbulent’ global context. This book explores feminist policymaking in multiple areas of policy, examining various gender-focused programmes that states and international organisations have undertaken in the last decade, offering critical interventions and rethinking the relationship between feminism and policy. This book not only reflects on the advances of feminist policymaking globally but also critically assesses the intersectional challenges embedded within it and lying ahead. It moves the field forward by creating opportunities, based on lived experiences, for re-imagining the transformative potential of the nexus between feminism and policymaking. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing to the fore the voices of both academics and practitioners, this book is the product of an international collaboration, forging links and dialogue that are increasingly necessary to question some of the exclusionary, militaristic, and hierarchical assumptions of policymaking which is labelled as feminist. Feminist Policymaking in Turbulent Times will be of interest to all scholars, students, and practitioners interested in the role of gender in policymaking and concerned with contestations around gender-focused projects.

In this insightful new book, Moncrieffe argues that the traditionally narrow interpretation of accountability obscures relationships, power dynamics, structures, processes and complexities. The relational view, in contrast, seeks to understand the ways in which people perform in their roles as social actors, and how the quality of relationships influences the character of accountability. This book will provide a grounded theoretical background to accountability, using vivid case evidence to emphasize the significance of relational approaches to accountability using empirical data (from Jamaica, Haiti, Ethiopia and Uganda). Ultimately arguing that accountability is much more than a managerial concept; rather, it is deeply social and political. The result is a unique, coherent, perspective that will both explain and 'debunk' this central developmental concept.

The Second Edition of The Handbook of Community Practice is expanded and updated with a major global focus and serves as a comprehensive guidebook of community practice grounded in social justice and human rights. It utilizes community and practice theories and encompasses community development, organizing, planning, social change, policy practice, program development, service coordination, organizational cultural competency, and community-based research in relation to global poverty and community empowerment. This is also the first community practice text to provide combined and in-depth treatment of globalization and international development practice issues—including impacts on communities in the United States and on international development work. The Handbook is grounded in participatory and empowerment practices, including social change, social and economic development, feminist practice, community-collaborative, and engagement in diverse communities. It utilizes the social development perspective and employs analyses of persistent poverty, asset development, policy practice, and community research approaches as well as providing strategies for advocacy and social and legislative action. The handbook consists of forty chapters which challenge readers to examine and assess practice, theory, and research methods. As it expands on models and approaches, delineates emerging issues, and connects policy and practice, the book provides vision and strategies for local to global community practice in the coming decades. The handbook will continue to stand as the central text and reference for comprehensive community practice, and will be useful for years to come as it emphasizes direction for positive change, new developments in community approaches, and focuses attention on globalization, human rights, and social justice. It will continue to be used as a core text for multiple courses within programs, will have long term application for students of community practice, and will provide practitioners with new grounding for development, planning, organizing, and empowerment and social change work.

Human Rights, Power and Civic Action examines the interrelationship between struggles for human rights and the dynamics of power, focusing on situations of poverty and oppression in developing countries. It is argued that the concept of power is a relatively neglected one in the study of rights-based approaches to development, especially the ways in which structures and relations of power can limit human rights advocacy. Therefore this book focuses on how local and national struggles for rights have been constrained by power relations and structural inequalities, as well as the extent to which civic action has been able to challenge, alter or transform such power structures, and simultaneously to enhance protection of people’s basic human rights. Contributors examine and compare struggles to advance human rights by non-governmental actors in Cambodia, China, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The country case-studies analyse structures of power responsible for the negation and denial of human rights, as well as how rights-promoting organisations challenge such structures. Utilising a comparative approach, the book provides empirically grounded studies leading to new theoretical understanding of the interrelationships between human rights struggles, power and poverty reduction. Human Rights, Power and Civic Action will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights politics, power, development, and governance.

Political leadership has returned to the forefront of research in political science in recent years, after several years of neglect. This Handbook provides a broad-ranging and cohesive examination of the study of political leadership.