An essential history of India's economic growth since 1947, including the legal reforms that have shaped the country in the shadow of colonial rule. Economists have long lamented how the inefficiency of India's legal system undermines the country’s economic capacity. How has this come to be? The prevailing explanation is that the postcolonial legal system is understaffed and under-resourced, making adjudication and contract enforcement slow and costly. Taking this as given, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy examines the contents and historical antecedents of these laws, including how they have stifled economic development. Economists Roy and Swamy argue that legal evolution in independent India has been shaped by three factors: the desire to reduce inequality and poverty; the suspicion that market activity, both domestic and international, can be detrimental to these goals; and the strengthening of Indian democracy over time, giving voice to a growing fraction of society, including the poor. Weaving the story of India's heralded economic transformation with its social and political history, Roy and Swamy show how inadequate legal infrastructure has been a key impediment to the country's economic growth during the last century. A stirring and authoritative history of a nation rife with contradictions, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand India's current crossroads—and the factors that may keep its dreams unrealized.

Frankfurt School Perspectives on Globalization, Democracy, and the Law makes use of the work of first-generation Frankfurt School theorist Franz L. Neumann, in conjunction with his famous successor, Jürgen Habermas, to try to understand the momentous political and legal transformations generated by globalization. This volume demonstrates that the Frankfurt School tradition speaks directly to some pressing political and social concerns, including globalization, the reform of the welfare state, and the environmental crisis. Despite widespread claims to the contrary, the legal substructure of economic globalization tends to conflict with traditional models of the "rule of law." Neumann’s prediction that contemporary capitalism would decreasingly depend on generality, clarity, publicity, and stability in the law is supported by a surprising variety of empirical evidence. Habermas’s recent work is then interrogated in order to pursue the question of how we might counteract the deleterious trends accurately predicted by Neumann. How might democracy and the rule of law flourish in the context of globalization? The book is intended for scholars and advanced students in political science, sociology, philosophy and cultural studies.

This volume focuses on the integration and globalization of Romania, a prominent emerging market in South-Eastern Europe and one of the major players in the securitization of the Black Sea and the Eastern European border, as both a part of NATO since 2004 and a fully integrated EU Member State since 2007. It will examine the challenges the country has faced in its progression from totalitarianism to democracy through several waves of reform intended to update and streamline its political and economic processes for success in the free-market capitalist arena. Having learned the hard way about some of the key aspects of public administration, Romania has learned a place for itself among the diverse global players of Europe and beyond. The first section reviews current perspectives on globalization and its impact in the late 20th century. It has “flattened” the Earth, generating better communication and exchanges than ever before, but also gathering a fair amount of criticisms from commentators seeing it as little else than neo-colonialism. Cooperative-administrative strategies are being suggested instead, in order for new public administration patterns to smoothly run in coordination with the globalized world. In the second section, the European Union is described as a complex multi-level socio-political entity, itself historically in turmoil over its own style of rule – e.g. hierarchy vs. coordination, integration vs. centralization, etc. – or even its own existence, as the European dream seemed to be losing steam with the general population of Europe several times in the previous century. Powers and responsibilities of the European institutions and agencies are also discussed. Thirdly, the recent history of Romania is approached from the Europeanization context, starting from its post-1989 days of confusion and of attempting to jumpstart democracy. Eventually, it has to undergo a series of reforms and internalize some principles fundamental to the EU in order for the much-awaited accession to occur and its multiple effects to start taking place. A country with a rich cultural heritage and straddling multiple socio-political axes, Romania has plenty more to offer in the new geostrategic, security and development contexts of the 21st-century Europe. As such, this volume provides inspiration for further research and practical application opportunities on topics of local, European and global significance.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso received a phone call in the middle of the night asking him to be the new Finance Minister of Brazil. As he put the phone down and stared into the darkness of his hotel room, he feared he'd been handed a political death sentence. The year was 1993, and he would be responsible for an economy that had had seven different currencies in the previous eight years to cope with inflation that had run at 3000 percent a year. Brazil had a habit of chewing up finance ministers with the ferocity of an Amazon piranha. This was just one of the turns in a largely unscripted and sometimes unwanted political career. In exile during the harshest period of the junta that ruled Brazil for twenty years, Cardoso started his political life with a tentative run for the Federal Senate in 1978. Within fifteen years, and despite himself, this former sociologist was running the country. And what a country! Brazil, it is often said, is on the edge of modernity, striding with one foot in mid-air towards the future, the other still rooted deep in a traditional past. It is a land of sophisticated music and brutal gold-digging, of the next global superpower and the last old-time coffee plantations. It is gloriously ungovernable, irrepressibly attractive, and home to the family, friends and extraordinary life of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This is his story and his love song to his country.

South Korea has been one of the great success stories of postwar economic development, rising from one of the poorest nations on earth in the 1960s to become the world's eleventh-largest economy by 1996. But Korea's model of economic development began to unravel in 1987. When the authoritarian rule that helped propel economic performance gave way to increasing public pressure for democracy, the Korean economy was confronted with fundamental transformations. With democracy came increasing consumption, labor activism, and rising wages. Yet many of the old policies of the export-oriented, pro-business authoritarian rule remained in place. The complex and multifaceted economic effects brought about by democratic change have defied analysis—until now. Democracy and the Korean Economy is an authoritative study of the new model of Korean political economy and the first book to analyze the economic impact of democratic change in South Korea. In addition to analyzing patterns of change in major policy areas, authors Jongryn Mo and Chung-in Moon closely examine specific industries—such as automobiles—and the family-controlled industrial conglomerates known as chaebols to analyze their market positions and political influence under both the authoritarian and democratic regimes. They show how conflicts in key policy areas have evolved, identify the political and economic factors that have been important to resolving those conflicts, and reveal the wide range of effects, both subtle and significant, of democratization on the Korean economy and on its economic policy.

One of Europe's old nations steeped in history, Ukraine is today an undisputed independent state. It is a democracy and has transformed into a market economy with predominant private ownership. Ukraine's postcommunist transition has been one of the most protracted and socially costly, but it has taken the country to a desirable destination. Åslund's vivid account of Ukraine's journey begins with a brief background, where he discusses the implications of Ukraine's history, the awakening of society because of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the early democratization, and the impact of the ill-fated Soviet economic reforms. He then turns to the reign of President Leonid Kravchuk from 1991 to 1994, the only salient achievement of which was nation-building, while the economy collapsed in the midst of hyperinflation. The first two years of Leonid Kuchma's presidency, from 1994 to 1996, were characterized by substantial achievements, notably financial stabilization and mass privatization. The period 1996–99 was a miserable period of policy stagnation, rent seeking, and continued economic decline. In 2000 hope returned to Ukraine. Viktor Yushchenko became prime minister and launched vigorous reforms to cleanse the economy from corruption, and economic growth returned. The ensuing period, 2001–04, amounted to a competitive oligarchy. It was quite pluralist, although repression increased. Economic growth was high. The year 2004 witnessed the most joyful period in Ukraine, the Orange Revolution, which represented Ukraine's democratic breakthrough, with Yushchenko as its hero. The postrevolution period, however, has been characterized by great domestic political instability; a renewed, explicit Russian threat to Ukraine's sovereignty; and a severe financial crisis. The answers to these challenges lie in how soon the European Union fully recognizes Ukraine's long-expressed identity as a European state, how swiftly Ukraine improves its malfunctioning constitutional order, and how promptly it addresses corruption.

Electoral promises help to win votes and political candidates, or parties should strategically choose what they can deliver to win an election. Past game-theoretical studies tend to ignore electoral promises and this book sheds illuminating light on the functions and effects of electoral promises on policies or electoral outcomes through game theory models. This book provides a basic framework for game-theoretical analysis of electoral promises. ​ The book also includes cases to illustrate real life applications of these theories. ​

Progressive intellectual Henry A. J. Ramos believes the United States is at a crossroads, facing the most challenging moment since the civil rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In fact, absent major new interventions and investments, he sees this moment as a pivotal turning point in the American journey in which political polarization, income and wealth disparity and public violence—much of which is race related—threaten the very essence and integrity of our democracy and economy. Ramos examines the policies that have contributed to America’s decline, including those that have led to the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few while condemning many to systemic poverty and inequality. Current economic and social trends, he stresses, are unsustainable and call for organized, concerted action by people of conscience and those affected. Ultimately, Ramos provides a roadmap for the future so the United States can continue to provide opportunities for its people and serve again as a leader in the international community. He offers case studies of organizations that have successfully created and administered programs that further equity in society, restore democratic practices, implement better urban and city planning and protect the environment. Demonstrating both the critical importance and real possibility of leveraging prosperity and justice for all Americans, this compelling work is a must-read for anyone interested in democracy, economic restoration and environmental sustainability.

This highly readable study addresses a range of fundamental questions about the interaction of politics and economics, from a grassroots perspective in post-transition Argentina. Nancy R. Powers looks at the lives and political views of Argentines of little to modest means to examine systematically how their political interests, and their evaluations of democracy, are formed. Based on the author's fieldwork in Argentina, the analysis extends to countries of Latin America and Eastern Europe facing similarly difficult political and economic changes.Powers uses in-depth interviews to examine how (not simply what) ordinary people think about their standard of living, their government, and the democratic regime. She explains why they sometimes do, but more often do not, see their material conditions as political problems, arguing that the type of hardship and the possibilities for coping with it are more politically significant than the degree of hardship. She analyzes alternative ways in which people define democracy and judge its legitimacy.Not only does Powers demonstrate contradictions and gaps in the existing scholarship on economic voting, social movements, and populism, she also shows how those literatures are addressing similar questions but are failing to "talk" to one another. Powers goes on to build a more comprehensive theory of how people at the grassroots form their political interests. To analyze why people perceive only some of their material hardships as political problems, she brings into the study of politics ideas drawn from Amartya Sen and other scholars of poverty.