Steering Political Currents

Chinas Einsatz von Industriepolitik hat die Debatte über staatliche Intervention in der Wirtschaft neu entfacht. Nur wenige Branchen erleben die lenkende Hand des Staates wie der chinesische Elektrizitätssektor. Dieser sieht sich aber einem radikalen Umbruch ausgesetzt. Der Begriff "Smart Grid" umfasst technische und systemische Reformen, die für einen Strukturwandel erforderlich sind. Diese Studie untersucht durch die Linse der Steuerungstheorie die Auswirkungen einer Gesetzgebung auf Machtkämpfe im Elektrizitätssektor Chinas. Anhand von Dokumentenanalyse und Interviews wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie Steuerungsprozesse durchgeführt und Gegensteuerungsstrategien entwickelt werden, um Verhandlungen auf politischer Ebene zu beeinflussen.

Fifth report of Session 2009-10 : Documents considered by the Committee on 6 January 2010, including the following recommendations for debate, Financial management; Mutual legal assistance in criminal proceedings, report, together with formal Minutes

At a time of potentially radical changes in the ways in which humans interact with their environments - through financial, environmental and/or social crises - the raison d'être of spatial planning faces significant conceptual and empirical challenges. This Companion presents a multidimensional collection of critical narratives of conceptual challenges for spatial planning. The authors draw on various disciplinary traditions and theoretical frames to explore different ways of conceptualising spatial planning and the challenges it faces. Through problematising planning itself, the values which underpin planning and theory-practice relations, contributions make visible the limits of established planning theories and illustrate how, by thinking about new issues, or about issues in new ways, spatial planning might be advanced both theoretically and practically. There cannot be definitive answers to the conceptual challenges posed, but the authors in this collection provoke critical questions and debates over important issues for spatial planning and its future. A key question is not so much what planning theory is, but what might planning theory do in times of uncertainty and complexity. An underlying rationale is that planning theory and practice are intrinsically connected. The Companion is presented in three linked parts: issues which arise from an interactive understanding of the relations between planning ideas and the political-institutional contexts in which such ideas are put to work; key concepts in current theorising from mainly poststructuralist perspectives and what discussion on complexity may offer planning theory and practice.

This book, the last volume in the Social Morphogenesis series, examines whether or not a Morphogenic society can foster new modes of human relations that could exercise a form of ‘relational steering’, protecting and promoting a nuanced version of the good life for all. It analyses the way in which the intensification of morphogenesis and the diminishing of morphostasis impact upon human flourishing. The book links intensified morphogenesis to promoting human flourishing based on the assumption that new opportunities open up novel experiences, skills, and modes of communication that appeal to talents previously lacking any outlet or recognition. It proposes that equality of opportunity would increase as ascribed characteristics diminished in importance, and it could be maintained as the notion of achievement continued to diversify. Digitalization has opened the cultural ‘archive’ for more to explore and, as it expands exponentially, so do new complementary compatibilities whose development foster yet further opportunities. If more people can do more of what they do best, these represent stepping stones towards the ‘good life’ for more of them.

This book is the essential guide for understanding how state power and politics are contested and exercised on social media. It brings together contributions by social media scholars who explore the connection of social media with revolutions, uprising, protests, power and counter-power, hacktivism, the state, policing and surveillance. It shows how collective action and state power are related and conflict as two dialectical sides of social media power, and how power and counter-power are distributed in this dialectic. Theoretically focused and empirically rigorous research considers the two-sided contradictory nature of power in relation to social media and politics. Chapters cover social media in the context of phenomena such as contemporary revolutions in Egypt and other countries, populism 2.0, anti-austerity protests, the fascist movement in Greece's crisis, Anonymous and police surveillance.

Having started out as a new and alternative way of thinking about policy making and governing more broadly, governance is now established as a dominant paradigm in understanding national, subnational and global politics. The long-awaited second edition of this textbook takes into account the significant growth and proliferation of the field in recent years and offers a state of the art introduction to how governance is being theorised and studied today. Written by two leading political scientists, Governance, Politics and the State considers how societies are being, and can be, steered in a complex world where states must increasingly interact with and influence other actors and institutions to achieve results. It is a valuable book for all students of governance. New to this Edition: - A fully updated and revised set of chapters, including four new chapters – on multilevel governance, global governance, metagovernance and populism and governance. - A postscript on how to study governance

A new title in the Oxford Handbooks in History series, offering an authoritative view of British political history from 1800 to 2000, engaging with the sweeping changes in the ways in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world, and suggesting avenues of future research.

The events of 1989/90 in Europe demonstrated the renewed relevance of the mid-nineteenth century uprisings: both by showing, once again, how a revolutionary initiative could quickly spread through different European countries, but also by calling into question the nature of revolution and the criteria for a revolution's success and failure. To commemorate the 1848 revolution in a spirit of renewed critical inquiry, an international team of prominent historians have come together to produce what must be the most comprehensive work on this topic to date and to offer a synthesis that sums up the current state of scholarly research, emphasizing the many new interpretations that have developed over several decades.