Politics As Development

Nineteenth-century Serbia was an economically and socially backward country with an urban population of approximately 3 percent and a literacy rate in the countryside of less than 10 percent. Still, during that century it created a functioning democracy with a constitution, independent courts, political parties, and civil liberties. The Serbian experience challenges the view that political structures fundamentally depend on socioeconomic ones, since Serbia created a modern political system without developing economically. Politics as Development analyzes one aspect of that process, the emergence of political parties in the 1870s and the 1880s, especially the creation of the Serbian Radical Party under the leadership of Nikola Pasic. By mobilizing the peasantry through organizing the countryside, the Radicals proved themselves the most original nineteenth-century Balkan political movement. Based on thorough research of primary documents, Stokes's study supports the view that the state and its attending class constitute an independent variable in the developmental process.

The Politics of Development: A Survey provides an overview of the intrinsically political relations of development. It brings together essays written by experts in the politics of development and covers a range of significant and topical concerns: gender, race, indigenous development, social movements, religion, security, environmental concerns, colonialism and its legacies, migration, the political economy of development, trajectories in urbanization, and the agrarian question. It introduces and examines key concepts and approaches which have underpinned development, as well as the struggles it has engendered historically, and in contemporary contexts. This volume provides critical insights into the global politics of development and offers alternative analytical frameworks for understanding the relationships around development and inequalities. The Politics of Development: A Survey is organized in an accessible manner, catering to a wide audience (ranging from undergraduates at University level to practitioners and Non-Governmental Organizations [NGOs] engaged in advocacy as well as practical political aspects), and provides introductions to key issues and themes around contemporary challenges and opportunities in development. The title also includes an A-Z Glossary, covering key terms, organizations, concepts and actors in the politics of development.

Body Politics in Development sets out to define body politics as a key political and mobilizing force for human rights in the last two decades. This passionate and engaging book reveals how once-tabooed issues, such as rape, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive rights, have emerged into the public arena as critical grounds of contention and struggle. Engaging in the latest feminist thinking and action, the book describes the struggles around body politics for people living in economic and socially vulnerable communities and covers a broad range of gender and development issues, including fundamentalism, sexualities and new technologies, from diverse viewpoints. The book's originality comes through the author's rich experience and engagement in feminist activism and global body politics and was winner of the 2010 FWSA Book Prize.

The Politics of Developmentreveals the full extent of state involvement in the exploitation of natural resources in the province of Ontario and the reciprocal impact resource development has had in shaping politics in the province. H. V. Nelles offers a revised staples interpretation, exposing the resource politics at the heart of central Canadian economic development. He explains the business history of the forestry and mining industries from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, stressing the importance of public policy in their development. He offers a definitive interpretation of the emergence, development, and political dynamics of public ownership within the hydro-electric sector. Considered one of the seminal works on Canadian political economyThe Politics of Developmentstill has important things to say about public policy and will be of interest to historians, political scientists, economists, and those interested in environmental history.

This major textbook provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the main analytical approaches and their use in the study of third world politics and development. The author outlines the difficulties in the various analytical approaches to the study of development within political science; presents a critical overview of each of the main schools of thought and explores the contemporary issue of democratization to illustrate how students can apply a framework for research and critically develop a perspective on their own.

Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

This collection brings together internationally-renowned experts to offer a comprehensive review of how politics shapes inclusive development in the global south. Each aspect of development is covered: social, economic, environmental and cultural, with each substantive chapter offering a systematic review of the evidence in the relevant field.