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Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology (PDF)
by John O. McginnisSuccessful democracies throughout history--from ancient Athens to Britain on the cusp of the industrial age--have used the technology of their time to gather information for better governance. Our challenge is no different today, but it is more urgent because the accelerating pace of technological change creates potentially enormous dangers as well as benefits. Accelerating Democracy shows how to adapt democracy to new information technologies that can enhance political decision making and enable us to navigate the social rapids ahead. John O. McGinnis demonstrates how these new technologies combine to address a problem as old as democracy itself--how to help citizens better evaluate the consequences of their political choices. As society became more complex in the nineteenth century, social planning became a top-down enterprise delegated to experts and bureaucrats. Today, technology increasingly permits information to bubble up from below and filter through more dispersed and competitive sources. McGinnis explains how to use fast-evolving information technologies to more effectively analyze past public policy, bring unprecedented intensity of scrutiny to current policy proposals, and more accurately predict the results of future policy. But he argues that we can do so only if government keeps pace with technological change. For instance, it must revive federalism to permit different jurisdictions to test different policies so that their results can be evaluated, and it must legalize information markets to permit people to bet on what the consequences of a policy will be even before that policy is implemented. Accelerating Democracy reveals how we can achieve a democracy that is informed by expertise and social-scientific knowledge while shedding the arrogance and insularity of a technocracy.
Accelerating Sustainable Energy Transition: The challenges of climate change and sustainable development (Routledge Studies in Energy Transitions)
by Laurence L DelinaAccelerating sustainable energy transitions away from carbon-based fuel sources needs to be high on the agendas of developing countries. It is key in achieving their climate mitigation promises and sustainable energy development objectives. To bring about rapid transitions, simultaneous turns are imperative in hardware deployment, policy improvements, financing innovation, and institutional strengthening. These systematic turns, however, incur tensions when considering the multiple options available and the disruptions of entrenched power across pockets of transition innovations. These heterogeneous contradictions and their trade-offs, and uncertainties and risks have to be systematically recognized, understood, and weighed when making decisions. This book explores how the transitions occur in fourteen developing countries and broadly surveys their technological, policy, financing, and institutional capacities in response to the three key aspects of energy transitions: achieving universal energy access, harvesting energy efficiency, and deploying renewable energy. The book shows how fragmented these approaches are, how they occur across multiple levels of governance, and how policy, financing, and institutional turns could occur in these complex settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of energy and climate policy, development studies, international relations, politics, strategic studies, and geography. It is also useful to policymakers and development practitioners.
Accelerating Sustainable Energy Transition: The challenges of climate change and sustainable development (Routledge Studies in Energy Transitions)
by Laurence L DelinaAccelerating sustainable energy transitions away from carbon-based fuel sources needs to be high on the agendas of developing countries. It is key in achieving their climate mitigation promises and sustainable energy development objectives. To bring about rapid transitions, simultaneous turns are imperative in hardware deployment, policy improvements, financing innovation, and institutional strengthening. These systematic turns, however, incur tensions when considering the multiple options available and the disruptions of entrenched power across pockets of transition innovations. These heterogeneous contradictions and their trade-offs, and uncertainties and risks have to be systematically recognized, understood, and weighed when making decisions. This book explores how the transitions occur in fourteen developing countries and broadly surveys their technological, policy, financing, and institutional capacities in response to the three key aspects of energy transitions: achieving universal energy access, harvesting energy efficiency, and deploying renewable energy. The book shows how fragmented these approaches are, how they occur across multiple levels of governance, and how policy, financing, and institutional turns could occur in these complex settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of energy and climate policy, development studies, international relations, politics, strategic studies, and geography. It is also useful to policymakers and development practitioners.
Acceptable Risks: Politics, Policy, and Risky Technologies
by C. F. HeimannComplex and risky technologies--technologies such as new drugs for the treatment of AIDS that promise great benefits to our society but carry significant risks--pose many problems for political leaders and the policy makers responsible for overseeing them. Public agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration are told by political superiors not to inhibit important technological advances and may even be charged with promoting such development but must also make sure that no major accidents occur under their watch. Given the large costs associated with catastrophic accidents, the general public and elected officials often demand reliable or failure-free management of these technologies and have little tolerance for the error. Research in this area has lead to a schism between those who argue that it is possible to have reliable management techniques and safely manage complex technologies and others who contend that such control is difficult at best. In this book C. F. Larry Heimann advances an important solution to this problem by developing a general theory of organizational reliability and agency decision making. The book looks at both external and internal influences on reliability in agency decision making. It then tests theoretical propositions developed in a comparative case study of two agencies involved with the handling of risky technologies: NASA and the manned space flight program and the FDA's handling of pharmaceuticals--particularly new AIDS therapies. Drawing on concepts from engineering, organizational theory, political science, and decision theory, this book will be of interest to those interested in science and technology policy, bureaucratic management and reform, as well as those interested in health and space policy. C. F. Larry Heimann is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University.
The Acceptance of Party Unity in Parliamentary Democracies
by David M. WillumsenDespite the central role of policy preferences in the subsequent behaviour of legislators, preferences at the level of the individual legislator have been almost entirely neglected in the study of parliaments and legislative behaviour. The main reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining measures of legislator preferences that are not based on their behaviour. This book explores direct measures of policy preferences through parliamentary surveys. Building on this, the book develops measures of policy incentives of legislators to dissent from their parliamentary parties, and demonstrates that preference similarity amongst legislators explains a very substantial proportion of party unity, yet cannot explain all of it. Through a quantitative analysis of the attitudes of legislators to the demands of party unity and what drives these attitudes, the book argues that the reason for the difference between observed unity and the levels of unity which can be explained by preference similarity among legislators, is the conscious acceptance by MPs that the long-term benefits of belonging to a united party (such as increased influence on legislation, lower transaction costs and better chances of gaining office) outweigh the short-terms benefits of always voting for their ideal policy outcome. The volume reinforces this argument through the analysis of both open-ended survey questions as well as survey questions on the costs and benefits of belonging to a political party in a legislature.
The Acceptance of Party Unity in Parliamentary Democracies
by David M. WillumsenDespite the central role of policy preferences in the subsequent behaviour of legislators, preferences at the level of the individual legislator have been almost entirely neglected in the study of parliaments and legislative behaviour. The main reason for this is the difficulty of obtaining measures of legislator preferences that are not based on their behaviour. This book explores direct measures of policy preferences through parliamentary surveys. Building on this, the book develops measures of policy incentives of legislators to dissent from their parliamentary parties, and demonstrates that preference similarity amongst legislators explains a very substantial proportion of party unity, yet cannot explain all of it. Through a quantitative analysis of the attitudes of legislators to the demands of party unity and what drives these attitudes, the book argues that the reason for the difference between observed unity and the levels of unity which can be explained by preference similarity among legislators, is the conscious acceptance by MPs that the long-term benefits of belonging to a united party (such as increased influence on legislation, lower transaction costs and better chances of gaining office) outweigh the short-terms benefits of always voting for their ideal policy outcome. The volume reinforces this argument through the analysis of both open-ended survey questions as well as survey questions on the costs and benefits of belonging to a political party in a legislature.
Accepting Authoritarianism: State-Society Relations in China's Reform Era
by Teresa WrightWhy hasn't the emergence of capitalism led China's citizenry to press for liberal democratic change? This book argues that China's combination of state-led development, late industrialization, and socialist legacies have affected popular perceptions of socioeconomic mobility, economic dependence on the state, and political options, giving citizens incentives to perpetuate the political status quo and disincentives to embrace liberal democratic change. Wright addresses the ways in which China's political and economic development shares broader features of state-led late industrialization and post-socialist transformation with countries as diverse as Mexico, India, Tunisia, Indonesia, South Korea, Brazil, Russia, and Vietnam. With its detailed analysis of China's major socioeconomic groups (private entrepreneurs, state sector workers, private sector workers, professionals and students, and farmers), Accepting Authoritarianism is an up-to-date, comprehensive, and coherent text on the evolution of state-society relations in reform-era China.
Access All Areas: The Diversity Manifesto for TV and Beyond
by Lenny HenrySir Lenny Henry rang up the Office for National Statistics to confirm something he'd been thinking about for a long time. They told him that only 29.5% of the United Kingdom's population is made up of white, heterosexual, able-bodied men; so, he wonders, why do they still make up the vast majority of people we see in our media?Joining forces with the former Chair of the Royal Television Society's Diversity Committee Marcus Ryder, he draws on decades of experience to reveal why recent efforts to diversify media have been thus far ineffective, and why they are simply not enough. With wit, humour and unflinching gravitas they analyse the flaws of current diversity initiatives, point out the structural and financial imbalances working against the cause, and provide clear solutions to get the media industry back on track.Access All Areas is an urgent, actionable manifesto that will dramatically shift the debate around diversity and the media.
Access and Benefit-sharing in Global Aquaculture: Genetic Resources, Digital Sequence Information and Traditional Knowledge (New Horizons in Environmental and Energy Law series)
by Charles Lawson John A.H. Benzie Fran Humphries Clare MorrisonThis illuminating book incisively surveys the complex legal regime of access and benefit-sharing in key aquaculture countries. With an international focus spanning countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, the authors explore the application of international legal standards and how these translate into domestic measures.Presenting key critical perspectives, the book examines the ways in which access and benefit-sharing laws facilitate access to aquaculture resources and how they could, in return, deliver a fair and equitable share of the benefits, promoting conservation and longer term food security. The authors’ in-depth analysis of various case studies reveals that these legal standards rarely accommodate the distinctive features of aquatic genetic resources, digital sequence information and traditional knowledge. They argue that the access and benefit-sharing concept is not fit for purpose and suggest how the concept could be re-imagined to achieve more efficient outcomes for conservation, sustainability, fairness and equity.Access and Benefit-sharing in Global Aquaculture is a fundamental resource for academics, researchers and students of environmental law and governance, environmental politics and policy, management, and regulation. Policymakers working with the aquaculture industry will similarly benefit from the authors’ practical recommendations.
Access and Benefit Sharing of Genetic Resources, Information and Traditional Knowledge
by Charles Lawson, Michelle Rourke and Fran HumphriesAddressing the management of genetic resources, this book offers a new assessment of the contemporary Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) regime. Debates about ABS have moved on. The initial focus on the legal obligations established by international agreements like the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the form of obligations for collecting physical biological materials have now shifted into a far more complex series of disputes and challenges about the ways ABS should be implemented and enforced. These now cover a wide range of issues, including: digital sequence information, the repatriation of resources, technology transfer, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions, open access to information and knowledge, naming conventions, farmers’ rights, new schemes for accessing pandemic viruses sharing DNA sequences, and so on. Drawing together perspectives from an interdisciplinary range of leading and emerging international scholars, this book offers a new approach to the ABS landscape; as it breaks from the standard regulatory analyses in order to explore alternative solutions to the intractable issues for the Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources. Addressing these modern legal debates from a perspective that will appeal to both ABS scholars and those with broader legal concerns in the areas of intellectual property, food, governance, Indigenous issues, and so on, this book will be a useful resource for scholars and students as well as those in government and in international institutions working in relevant areas.
Access and Benefit Sharing of Genetic Resources, Information and Traditional Knowledge
by Charles Lawson Michelle Rourke Fran HumphriesAddressing the management of genetic resources, this book offers a new assessment of the contemporary Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) regime. Debates about ABS have moved on. The initial focus on the legal obligations established by international agreements like the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the form of obligations for collecting physical biological materials have now shifted into a far more complex series of disputes and challenges about the ways ABS should be implemented and enforced. These now cover a wide range of issues, including: digital sequence information, the repatriation of resources, technology transfer, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions, open access to information and knowledge, naming conventions, farmers’ rights, new schemes for accessing pandemic viruses sharing DNA sequences, and so on. Drawing together perspectives from an interdisciplinary range of leading and emerging international scholars, this book offers a new approach to the ABS landscape; as it breaks from the standard regulatory analyses in order to explore alternative solutions to the intractable issues for the Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources. Addressing these modern legal debates from a perspective that will appeal to both ABS scholars and those with broader legal concerns in the areas of intellectual property, food, governance, Indigenous issues, and so on, this book will be a useful resource for scholars and students as well as those in government and in international institutions working in relevant areas.
Access and Participation in Irish Higher Education
by Ted Fleming Andrew Loxley Fergal FinneganThis book explores the access and participation issues present within Higher Education in Ireland. It examines policy, pedagogy and practices in relation to widening participation and documents the progress and challenges encountered in furthering the ‘access agenda’ over the past two decades. Access has become an integral part of how Higher Education understands itself and how it explains the value of what it does for society as a whole. Improving access to education strengthens social cohesion, lessens inequality, guarantees the future vitality of tertiary institutions and ensures economic competitiveness and flexibility in the era of the “Knowledge Based Economy”. Offering a coherent, critical account of recent developments in Irish Higher Education and the implications for Irish society as a whole, this book is essential for those involved both in researching the field and in Higher Education itself.
Access Points: An Institutional Theory of Policy Bias and Policy Complexity
by Sean D. EhrlichAccess Points develops a new theory--Access Point Theory--about how democratic institutions influence policy outcomes, arguing that the more points of access institutions provide to interest groups, the cheaper lobbying is, and the more lobbying will occur. This creates more complex and biased policy as policymakers insert specific provisions that benefit lobbyists. Access Point Theory explains bias and complexity in trade and tax policy and environmental and banking regulations around the world, and the book provides scholars with a powerful tool to explain how political institutions matter and why countries implement the policies they do.
Access to Education: New Possibilities (Plan Europe 2000, Project 1: Educating Man for the 21st Century #3)
by A. SauvyIt is difficult for us today to imagine that equal educational opportunity, with which we are so deeply preoccupied, was at one time considered to be if not an evil at least a futile objective, and that those who held such an opinion were completely insincere and even disinterested. For a vertically stratified society equality of education had to be opposed be cause it would disturb an equilibrium as vital as that of a building. In the Middle Ages only the Church was able to look for new members at the bottom of the social ladder, since ecclesiastical office was not inherited by birth. But efforts in this direction were necessarily very limited, even if only because of the material obstacles to such an aim. Equality of education, as well as any other type of equality could not even be imagined by the aristocracy whose very existence would have been threatened. Its initial indifference was followed by active opposition. When it became possible to formulate the question of the diffusion of education, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the principle itself met with a fundamental objection. The ruling class, idle by its very nature, feared that the workers and especially those on the land would abandon their productive labours, now felt to be degrading, and swell the ranks of the parasites in the cities.
Access to Health Care
by Martin Gulliford Myfanwy MorganTo what extent can we have truly universal, comprehensive and timely health services, equally available to all? Access to Health Care considers the meaning of 'access' in health care and examines the theoretical issues that underpin these questions. Contributors draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives to investigate key aspects of access, including:· geographical accessibility of services· socio-economic equity of access· patients' help-seeking behaviour· organisational problems and access· methods for evaluating access.Access is considered in both a UK and international context. The book includes chapters on contrasting health policies in the United States and European Union. Access to Health Care provides both health care researchers as well as health professionals, managers and policy analysts, with a clear and wide-ranging overview of topical and controversial questions in health policy and health services organization and delivery.
Access to Health Care
by Martin Gulliford Myfanwy MorganTo what extent can we have truly universal, comprehensive and timely health services, equally available to all? Access to Health Care considers the meaning of 'access' in health care and examines the theoretical issues that underpin these questions. Contributors draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives to investigate key aspects of access, including:· geographical accessibility of services· socio-economic equity of access· patients' help-seeking behaviour· organisational problems and access· methods for evaluating access.Access is considered in both a UK and international context. The book includes chapters on contrasting health policies in the United States and European Union. Access to Health Care provides both health care researchers as well as health professionals, managers and policy analysts, with a clear and wide-ranging overview of topical and controversial questions in health policy and health services organization and delivery.
Access to History: Great Britain and the Irish Question 1800-1922 2nd Edition (PDF)
by Paul Adelman Robert D. PearceThis second edition has been thoroughly updated to take account of the latest research. The authors provide a lucid and detailed account of the Irish question, from the Act of Union in 1800 to the Anglo-Irish Settlement of 1922. Important events such as the Great Famine and the Easter Rising are explained, and key figures such as Parnell, Gladstone and de Valera are assessed. This is an essential text for students and readers seeking to understand the complex but compelling issues that arose in Ireland and Britain during this period.
Access to History: Germany 1918-45 (PDF)
by Geoff LaytonGive your students the best chance of success with this tried and tested series' combination of in-depth analysis, engaging narrative, and accessibility.
Access to History: Protest, Agitation and Parliamentary Reform in Britain 1780-1928 (PDF)
by Michael Scott-BaumannEndorsed for Edexcel. Give your students the best chance of success with this tried and tested series, combining in-depth analysis, engaging narrative and accessibility. Access to History is the most popular, trusted and wide-ranging series for A-level History students. This title: - Supports the content and assessment requirements of the 2015 A-level History specifications - Contains authoritative and engaging content - Includes thought-provoking key debates that examine the opposing views and approaches of historians - Provides exam-style questions and guidance for each relevant specification to help students understand how to apply what they have learnt This title is suitable for a variety of courses including: - Edexcel: Protest, Agitation and Parliamentary Reform in Britain, c. 1780-1928
Access to History for the IB Diploma (PDF)
by Michael LynchThe renowned IB Diploma History series, combining compelling narratives with academic rigor. A new edition for World History Topic 10: Authoritarian states (20th Century) An authoritative and engaging narrative, with the widest variety of sources at this level, helping students to developtheir knowledge and analytical skills.
Access to History: (3rd edition) (PDF)
by Mark RobsonFor over twenty years Access to History has been providing students with reliable, engaging and accessible content on a wide range of topics. Each title in the series provides comprehensive coverage of different history topics on current AS and A2 level history specifications, alongside exam-style practice questions and tips to help students achieve their best.
Access to International Justice (Challenges of Globalisation)
by Patrick Keyzer Vesselin Popovski Charles SampfordThere is much debate about the scope of international law, its compatibility with individual state practice, its enforceability and the recent and limited degree to which it is institutionalized. This collection of essays seeks to address the issue of access to justice, the related element of domestic rule of law which does not yet figure significantly in debates about international rule of law. Even in cases in which laws are passed, institutions are present and key players are ethically committed to the rule of law, those whom the laws are intended to protect may be unable to secure protection. This is an issue in most domestic jurisdictions but also one which poses severe problems for international justice worldwide. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners of international law, environmental law, transitional justice, international development, human rights, ethics, international relations and political theory.
Access to International Justice (Challenges of Globalisation)
by Patrick Keyzer Vesselin Popovski Charles SampfordThere is much debate about the scope of international law, its compatibility with individual state practice, its enforceability and the recent and limited degree to which it is institutionalized. This collection of essays seeks to address the issue of access to justice, the related element of domestic rule of law which does not yet figure significantly in debates about international rule of law. Even in cases in which laws are passed, institutions are present and key players are ethically committed to the rule of law, those whom the laws are intended to protect may be unable to secure protection. This is an issue in most domestic jurisdictions but also one which poses severe problems for international justice worldwide. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners of international law, environmental law, transitional justice, international development, human rights, ethics, international relations and political theory.
Access to Justice
by Deborah L. Rhode"Equal Justice Under Law" is one of America's most proudly proclaimed and widely violated legal principles. But it comes nowhere close to describing the legal system in practice. Millions of Americans lack any access to justice, let alone equal access. Worse, the increasing centrality of law in American life and its growing complexity has made access to legal assistance critical for all citizens. Yet according to most estimates about four-fifths of the legal needs of the poor, and two- to three-fifths of the needs of middle-income individuals remain unmet. This book reveals the inequities of legal assistance in America, from the lack of access to educational services and health benefits to gross injustices in the criminal defense system. It proposes a specific agenda for change, offering tangible reforms for coordinating comprehensive systems for the delivery of legal services, maximizing individual's opportunities to represent themselves, and making effective legal services more affordable for all Americans who need them.