What is the role of competition in economic activity? How can it be understood? How can it be regulated? Competition is a buzz word in economic policy and in commerce. Yet it is given widely varying roles in different models and is viewed in very different ways by different schools. This book, published in 1991, provides a clear exposition of the major theoretical approaches to competition and an assessment of competition policy in the major economic powers.

In this fascinating study of five populations, author Doug Jones explores the possibility that hardwired into the human psyche are standards of beauty that are really preferences and signals for good health.

To shed light on the global reassertion of authoritarianism in recent years, this volume analyses transnational diffusion and international cooperation among non-democratic regimes. How and with what effect do authoritarian regimes learn from each other? For what purpose and how successfully do they cooperate? The volume highlights that present-day autocrats pursue mainly pragmatic interests, rather than ideological missions. Consequently, the connections among authoritarian regimes have primarily defensive purposes, especially insulation against democracy promotion by the West. As a result, the authors do not foresee a major recession of democracy, as occurred with the rise of fascism during the interwar years. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Democratization.

Higher education is expanding, internationalizing, and changing rapidly around the world. Yet, many of the broader international higher education community and funders are unaware that much of what the United States has achieved in quality higher education derives from the student affairs staff. This volume addresses the opportunities and challenges in creating student learning and development programs and strategies that are culturally appropriate and use best practices from regions around the world. This volume includes: suggestions using the whole institutional environment—curriculum and co-curriculum; examples from China, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, and the United Kingdom; and holistic and engaging approaches through student affairs, student development, and student services. This will be of interest to all those who value quality higher education no matter what their role. The intent is to convince broader constituencies of the merit of enhancing the student experience so that students worldwide will benefit from enhanced learning and development opportunities. This is the 175th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Higher Education. Addressed to presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, it provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.

This study investigates regulatory reforms in the telecommunications sector of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries. It explores telecommunications innovations in three developing economies (Morocco, Jordan and Egypt), with a focus on regional and European trends in telecommunications policies. Common knowledge suggests that the European Union and its member states are the main influential regulatory power in the MENA region. However, the empirical analysis of selected telecommunications regulations: universal service obligation (USO) and spectrum management, reveals that reforms are not always determined by European countries but may also originate from other developing countries, such as Peru and Chile. This finding attests to the rise of regulatory influence from the Global South, which challenges traditional transfers of regulations originating from more industrially advanced countries.

Liberalism holds that individual freedom can be realized under capitalism. “Classical liberalism” tends to focus on excessive state interference as the primary threat to freedom. More recent theorists, however, recognize that capitalism, left to itself, would be characterized by mass social ills and argue that state intervention is necessary to guarantee individual freedom. This book is a Marxist critique of liberalism. Prabhat Patnaik demonstrates that liberalism and Marxism provide vastly differing accounts of individual freedom and the forces that restrict it. In the Marxist view, people, contrary to appearances, lack real agency under capitalism. Competition coerces individuals to act according to the impersonal logic of capitalism, making them mere instruments of the system. In this way, capitalism creates universal alienation, and true individual freedom is possible only through overcoming it. Patnaik argues that socialism can secure individual agency in both economic and political spheres, though actually existing socialism has failed in this respect. He also considers what a socialist society should look like: not a planned economy but a highly decentralized system in which citizens are directly involved in taking decisions affecting their lives and enjoy fundamental economic rights as well as political ones. Readable yet rigorous, Beyond Liberalism brings together political philosophy and political economy to offer a renewed vision of socialism.

Presenting extensive coverage of key theoretical and policy issues within the field of health care research, this forward-looking Research Handbook contends that students of health care need to take policy more seriously.

This book examines the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe since the end of communism and adoption of market oriented reform in the early 1990s, exploring the impact of globalization and economic liberalization on the region’s states, societies and political economy. It compares the different policies and national strategies adopted by key Central and Eastern European states, including the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, showing how initial internally oriented strategies of market reform, privileging domestic sources of investment, had by the late 1990s given way to externally oriented strategies emphasising the promotion of competitiveness by attracting foreign investment. It explores the reasons behind this convergence, considering the influence of internal and external forces, and the roles of interests, institutions and ideas. It argues that internationalization of the state is forged in the processes through which domestic groups linked to transnational capital attain domestic influence necessary to shape state policy and strategy. These groups — the comprador service sector in particular — constitute and organize political, social and institutional support of the competition state in the region. Overall, this book not only provides a detailed account of the political economy of post-communist transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the processes by which states adapt to the forces of globalization.