The increasing impact of neoliberalism across the globe means that a complex interplay of democratic, economic and managerial rationalities now frame the parameters and practices of community development. This book explores how contemporary politics, and the power relations it reflects and projects, is shaping the field today.
This first title in the timely Rethinking Community Development series presents unique and critical reflections on policy and practice in Taiwan, Australia, India, South Africa, Burundi, Germany, the USA, Ireland, Malawi, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazonia and the UK. It addresses the global dominance of neoliberalism, and the extent to which practitioners, activists and programmes can challenge, critique, engage with or resist its influence.
Addressing key dilemmas and challenges being navigated by students, academics, professionals and activists, this is a vital intellectual and practical resource.
CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE 2015
Do women national leaders represent a breakthrough for the women’s movement, or is women’s leadership weaker than the numbers imply? This unique book, written by an experienced politician and academic, is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of how and why women in 53 countries rose to the top in the years since World War II. Packed with fascinating case studies detailing the rise to power of all 73 female presidents and prime ministers from around the world, from 1960 (when the first was elected) to 2010, the motives, achievements and life stories of the female top leaders, including findings from interviews carried out by the author, provide a nuanced picture of women in power. The book will have wide international appeal to students, academics, government officials, women’s rights activists and political activists, as well as anyone interested in international affairs, politics, social issues, gender and equality.
Featuring a substantial new introduction and two new chapters in the Postscript, this new edition makes one of the most significant works on power available in paperback and online for the first time. The author extensively engages with a body of new literature to elucidate and expand upon the original work, using rational choice theory to provide:
• An examination of how, due to the collective action problem, groups can be powerless despite not facing any resistance
• Timely engagement with feminist accounts of power
• An explanation of the relationship of structure and agency and how to measure power comparatively across societies
This book’s unique interaction with both classical and contemporary debates makes it an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying power in the disciplines of sociology, philosophy, politics or international relations.
This book presents an academically rigorous yet practical guide to efforts to understand how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change.It offers a power analysis perspective on the knowledge-policy process, illustrated with rich empirical examples from the field of international development, combined with practical guidance on the implications of such an approach. It provides ways to identify and address problems that have hampered previous attempts to improve the space between knowledge and policy; such as difficulties in analysing political context, persistent asymmetric relationships between actors, ignorance of the contributions of different types of knowledge, and misconceptions of the roles played by intermediary organisations. Most importantly, the book gives readers the ability to develop strategies for negotiating the complexity of the knowledge-policy interface more effectively, so as to contribute to policy dialogues, influence policy change, and implement policies and programmes more effectively.The authors focus on the dynamics of the knowledge-policy interface in international development; offering novel theoretical insights and methodological approaches that are applicable to a broader array of policy arenas and their audiences, including academics, practitioners and students.
Globalization is an extraordinary phenomenon affecting virtually everything in our lives. And it is imperative that we understand the operation of economic power in a globalized world if we are to address the most challenging issues our world is facing today, from climate change to world hunger and poverty.
This revolutionary work rethinks globalization as a power system feeding from, and in competition with, the state system. Cutting across disciplines of law, politics and economics, it explores how multinational enterprises morphed into world political organisations with global reach and power, but without the corresponding responsibilities.
In illuminating how the concentration of property rights within corporations has led to the rejection of democracy as an ineffective system of government and to the rise in inequality, Robé offers a clear pathway to a fairer and more sustainable power system.
Anyone working, or planning to work, as an advocate for people who need help in dealing with public services will want to read this book. Advocacy is an area of increasing importance in service provision, where new ways of working have to be found that increasingly create an enabling, rather than a providing, state. Advocacy has an important part to play in this shift.
Based on the experience of real advocates, “Speaking to power” is written in a vivid, jargon-free style. As well as practical chapters on ‘what advocates do’, using case studies from Scotland where important developments are taking place, the book discusses how advocacy fits into the broader scheme of things. Donnison describes and discusses examples of advocacy, with chapters dealing with management, training and evaluation of the work. The book concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of various strategies which help vulnerable people speak to power on more equal terms.
“Speaking to power” will be particularly helpful to advocates working with people who have mental health or learning difficulties, for doctors, nurses and social workers involved in advocacy, and for students preparing to enter those professions. It will also be of interest to students of social policy and other readers concerned about Britain’s broader social and political development.
Power is a central concept in social theory and political discourse. Yet we use this word metaphorically all of the time. To speak of ‘the power of metaphor’ is to invoke a powerful metaphor. The same goes for soft power . Joseph Nye introduced this terminology more than a quarter of a century ago. 1 Since then we find it everywhere: in scholarly discussions of power, in policy pronouncements, in newspaper stories. Searching ‘soft power’ on Google yields half a million results. Even if power were not obviously a metaphor, the addition of an adjective like
183 NINE Conclusion: power, participation and political renewal The case studies in this book have not been presented as examples of ‘good practice’ in public participation. Rather, they highlight a set of issues and raise a series of questions that we argue might productively be addressed in future policy and practice. The value of the case study material lies in the detailed empirical work that underpins it: that is, our arguments and analyses go beyond normative approaches to public participation (this is what should happen, or this is what organisations ought
This will lead to a fundamental and long overdue rebalancing of power, away from the centre and back into the hands of local people … as planning shifts away from being an issue principally for ‘insiders’ to one where communities take the lead in shaping their own surroundings. The Conservative Party (2010: 2) Introduction As exemplified by the opening quotation from Open Source Planning , the Conservative Party Green Paper that formally established the concept of neighbourhood planning, this was promoted as an initiative to transfer power from
Public participation is central to a wide range of current public policies - not only in the UK, but elsewhere in the developed and the developing world. There are substantial aspirations for what enhanced participation can achieve. This book offers a critical examination of both the discourse and practice of participation in order to understand the significance of this explosion in participatory forums, and the extent to which such practices represent a fundamental change in governance. Based on 17 case studies across a range of policy areas in two English cities, the authors address key issues such as: the way in which notions of the public are constructed; the motivation of participants; how the interests and identities of officials and citizens are negotiated within forums; and the ways in which institutions enable and constrain the development of participation initiatives. Much of the literature on public participation is highly normative. This book draws from detailed empirical work, theories of governance, of deliberative democracy and social movements to offer a nuanced account of the dynamics of participation and to suggest why experiences of this can be frustrating as well as transformative. This book will be essential reading for students of public and social policy and offers important insights for those directly engaged in developing participation initiatives across the public sector
