The Political Economy Of Non Territorial Exit

Territorial political organisation forms the backbone of western liberal democracies. However, political economists are increasingly aware of how this form of government neglects the preferences of citizens, resulting in dramatic conflicts. The Political Economy of Non-Territorial Exit explores the theoretical possibility of ‘unbundling’ government functions and decentralising territorial governance.

Examining the effects of economic and political restructuring on regions in Europe and North America, the main themes here are: international economic restructuring; political realignments questions of territorial identity; and policy choices and policy conflicts in regional development.

Panarchy is a normative political meta-theory that advocates non-territorial states founded on actual social contracts that are explicitly negotiated and signed between states and their prospective citizens. The explicit social contract, or a constitution, sets the terms under which a state may use coercion against its citizens and the conditions under which the contract may be annulled, revised, rescinded, or otherwise exited from. Panarchy does not advocate any particular model of the state or social justice, but intends to encourage political variety, innovation, experimentation, and choice. With its emphasis on explicit social contracts, Panarchy offers an interesting variation on traditional social contract theories. Today, Panarchist political thought is particularly relevant and interesting in the context of globalization, increased international migration, the weakening of national sovereignty, the rise of the internet "cloud" as a non-territorial locus of political and protopolitical social networks that are not geographic, the invention of cryptocurrencies that may replace national currencies, and the rise of urban centers where people of many different political identities live and work together. This is the first volume to bring together key philosophically and politically interesting yet often overlooked Panarchist texts. From the first published translation of de Puydt seminal 1860 article to contemporary Silicon Valley political theory, the volume includes Panarchist texts from different eras, cultures and geographical regions. The amassed wealth of theoretical insight enables readers to compare different texts in this tradition of political thought and distinguish different streams and varieties within this political tradition, in comparison with Cosmopolitanism, Contractarianism, and Anarchism.

The Territorial Imperative explores a growing area of interest in comparative political economy--the interaction of politics and economics and the meso-level of the polity. Noting the ubiquity of regional economic disparities within advanced industrial democracies, Jeffrey Anderson undertakes a sophisticated analysis of the complex political conflicts, involving myriad actors across multiple levels of the polity, which are generated by declining regional economies. The principal theoretical focus centers on the impact of constitutional orders as bona fide political institutions. Based on a carefully constructed comparison of four declining industrial regions embedded within a broader cross-national comparison of unitary Britain and federal Germany, Anderson concludes that constitutional orders as institutions do, in fact, matter. In short, the territorial distribution of power, encapsulated in the federal unitary distinction, is shown to exercise a strong political logic of influence on the distribution of interests and resources among subnational and national actors and on the strategies of cooperation and conflict available to them. In the course of the study, the author brings together in a creative manner theories of intergovernmental relations, center-periphery, corporatism, pluralism and the state. Viewed in this context of widespread optimism surrounding the future of regions in a post-1992 Europe, Anderson's findings underscore the need for caution when assessing the horizons of action for subnational interests in advanced industrial democracies.

'Cities in the International Marketplace' looks at the political responses of ten cities in North America and Western Europe as they grappled with the forces of global restructuring during the past 30 years.

Since Garrett Hardin published The Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, critics have argued that population growth and capitalism contribute to overuse of natural resources and degradation of the global environment. They propose coercive, state-centric solutions. This book offers an alternative view. Employing insights from new institutional economics, the authors argue that property rights, competitive markets, polycentric political institutions, and social institutions such as trust, patience and individualism enable society to conserve natural resources and mitigate harms to the global environment.

We are on the cusp of a dramatic wave of technological change - from blockchain to automated smart contracts, artificial intelligence and machine learning to advances in cryptography and digitisation, from Internet of Things to advanced communications technologies. These are the new technologies of freedom. These tools present a historical unprecedented opportunity to recapture individual freedoms in the digital age - to expand individual rights, to protect property, to defend our privacy and personal data, to exercise our freedom of speech, and to develop new voluntary communities. This book presents a call to arms. The liberty movement has spent too much time begging the state for its liberties back. We can now use new technologies to build the free institutions that are needed for human flourishing without state permission. The New Technologies of Freedom is part of a joint project between the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, an academic research centre based at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia, and the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation. Mannkal's mission is developing future free market leaders. Mannkal promotes free enterprise, limited government and individual initiative for the benefit of all Australians. The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.