National Ambition: Reconstructing Nigeria, leverages on the example and experience of Nigeria - a sub-Saharan African Country in West Africa - to discuss National Ambition within the context of national social and economic aspirations, and the impact of corruption on governance, development and peace. The book uses credible sources of information from secondary research to offer a reasoned perspective on core issues and contains concrete pragmatic and common-sense proposals and models that Nigeria and other developing countries especially in Africa can adapt to their environment in the short to long term to improve conditions. It addresses issues on Global Justice and the intersections with Sustainable Development Goals - the responsibility of the global community in improving collaboration and cooperation among nations; creating opportunities for local people; reducing inequality and inequity within countries; promoting greater inclusion and interconnection among diverse peoples; and investing in people to strengthen communities and individuals to fully unleashed human potential for a much better world. The book is compelling with positive, progressive and positive-sum messages. It has been written in a way that is simple to read and easy to understand for a wider audience. Sadly, many people become rich by creating problems. It should be the other way round, solving problems. Grand corruption resulting in 'state capture' increases the vulnerability of citizens and inflicts the most pain on the population. Corruption is the single most important threat to Domestic Policies in Nigeria. It distorts the evidence base and misinforms legislations, policies, regulations, programmes, projects and the activities that drive them. It compromises the impact of social interventions; confusing markets; and business environment. It weakens social, economic, political and environmental systems and leaves Nigerians and Nigeria weak. Corruption is the Master Problem, fuelled by excessive greed, patronage and loyalty networks operating at the expense of national interest. This book proposes the Triple Lock against corruption, contributing new perspectives to addressing fundamental structural deficits that provide the incentives, motivations and opportunities to express corrupt behaviour. Nigeria requires a systematic, holistic and integrated approach to radically reduce the corruption burden that drags Nigeria back. With a large population of young people and huge natural capital, Nigeria potentially has unique assets and opportunities to build a fairer and more progressive country and to tap into the hardwork, ingenuity and resilience of its diverse population. But Nigeria will have to work differently to realise THE FULL POTENTIAL for which it is capable. Working differently would mean unlocking value chains currently locked-in in all the sectors of the Nigerian economy, to improve quality and drive demand and supply of locally made goods and services; promoting enterprise; creating decent jobs; pursuing progressive taxation policies; and building a self-sustaining country that can pay its way and voice its own worldview. The possibilities are enormous, but first, Nigeria needs a smarter government and governance intelligence that knows every Nigerian to invest in them as most important assets; drive efficiency and innovation; operating transparent and accountable systems; joining up government and reducing silo-vertical working that promotes opacities; removing bottlenecks that stifle creativity and ideas to markets; reducing inequalities and inequities; ensuring social justice and solidarity; and enabling the best of Nigeria to emerge and to altogether, thrive. This is the big challenge right now, to define the future!

What the Victorian history of self-help reveals about the myth of individualism. Stories of hardworking characters who lift themselves from rags to riches abound in the Victorian era. From the popularity of such stories, it is clear that the Victorians valorized personal ambition in ways that previous generations had not. In Material Ambitions, Rebecca Richardson explores this phenomenon in light of the under-studied reception history of Samuel Smiles's 1859 publication, Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance. A compilation of vignettes about captains of industry, artists, and inventors who persevered through failure and worked tirelessly to achieve success in their respective fields, Self-Help links individual ambition to the growth of the nation. Contextualizing Smiles's work in a tradition of Renaissance self-fashioning, eighteenth-century advice books, and inspirational biography, Richardson argues that the burgeoning self-help genre of the Victorian era offered a narrative structure that linked individual success with collective success in a one-to-one relationship. Advocating for a broader cultural account of the ambitious hero narrative, Richardson argues that reading these biographies and self-help texts alongside fictional accounts of driven people complicates the morality tale that writers like Smiles took pains to invoke. In chapters featuring the works of Harriet Martineau, Dinah Craik, Thackeray, Trollope, and Miles Franklin, Richardson demonstrates that Victorian fiction dramatized ambition by suggesting where it runs up against the limits of an individual's energy and ability, where it turns into competition, or where it risks upsetting a socio-ecological system of finite resources. The upward mobility plots of John Halifax, Gentleman or Vanity Fair suggest the dangers of zero-sum thinking, particularly evidenced by contemporary preoccupations with Malthusian and Darwinian discourses. Intertwining the methodologies of disability studies and ecocriticism, Material Ambitions persuasively unmasks the longstanding myth that ambitious individualism can overcome disadvantageous systematic and structural conditions.

Examines the South American country that is destined to be one of the world's premier economic powers by the year 2030, and considers some of the abundant problems the nation faces.

Theories of ambition teach us that elected offices are valuable commodities to certain politicians, and under the right circumstances, the benefits of running for an office outweigh the associated risks. Yet, some ambitious politicians emerge as candidates while others do not. This book analyzes strategic candidacy decisions to explain how primary elections for the United States Senate unfold. With new, comprehensive data on pools of potential candidates, it examines the determinants of electoral and fundraising success, analyzes the importance of the timing of candidacy decisions and the strategic interactions of prospective officeholders, and investigates the impact of strategic retirements. Using both qualitative and quantitative tools, including event history techniques to capture the complex dynamics of these races, it concludes that the manner in which politicians interact with one another and the unique context within each campaign leads to individuals emerging from the pool of potential candidates in systematic ways. In the end, the strategic behavior of ambitious politicians has important implications for the slate of candidates available to the electorate and ultimately, the quality of representation between constituents and their legislators.

Seoul Ambition is the remarkable story of how the nation of South Korea—despite its infamous obsession with academics—focuses feverishly on sports in ways much different than what we’re used to in the West. South Korean athletes dominate leaderboards in international golf events and have won the most Olympic medals of all-time in archery and short track speed skating. The country has produced transcendent talents in figure skating and the budding arena of esports, creating a seemingly never-ending pipeline of children who want to emulate their success. Yet, the talent development process in Korea presents an interesting conundrum. Though all young athletes pour in hours of practice, Korean athletes traditionally only become world class in a select few niche sports. One victory from a 20-year-old golfer caused one of the greatest talent rushes in modern sports, but a captivating World Cup run in men’s soccer did not. In fact, Son Heung-min, the most dynamic Korean soccer player of all time, actually had to rebel against the system to become a creative genius. What is happening behind the scenes? After spending years as a coach and physical education teacher in Seoul, author Joel Cressman set out to answer that question. Seoul Ambition explores the amazing stories of: • A young baseball prodigy who taught himself how to throw left-handed to become one of the most accurate Major League pitchers of all time • How South Korea intentionally used East Germany as a model to win more medals and the ideological battle over North Korea • An educational system that pushes athletes to focus full-time on their sports while ignoring academics to get into top universities • Why the Korean Basketball League banned tall players to help save the sport • The story and the surprising neuroscience behind how Korea became the global hotbed of professional video gaming • The misconceptions of “Tiger Parenting” and how a hands-on parenting style is viewed differently by East Asian children than Western kids • Why the country’s best speed skater was forced to defect to Russia • How the national men’s and women’s hockey teams willed themselves from obscurity to compete with the world’s best at the 2018 Olympics Full of extraordinary stories of athletes and their dedicated parents, the book explores the science and history behind one of the most interesting sports cultures in the world. Seoul Ambition will change the way you think about talent and creativity, the power of community and national identity, and the fascinating process of creating world-class athletes.

Ambition theory suggests that scholars can understand a good deal about politics by exploring politicians' career goals. In the USA, an enormous literature explains congressional politics by assuming that politicians primarily desire to win re-election. In contrast, although Brazil's institutions appear to encourage incumbency, politicians do not seek to build a career within the legislature. Instead, political ambition focuses on the subnational level. Even while serving in the legislature, Brazilian legislators act strategically to further their future extra-legislative careers by serving as 'ambassadors' of subnational governments. Brazil's federal institutions also affect politicians' electoral prospects and career goals, heightening the importance of subnational interests in the lower chamber of the national legislature. Together, ambition and federalism help explain important dynamics of executive-legislative relations in Brazil. This book's rational-choice institutionalist perspective contributes to the literature on the importance of federalism and subnational politics to understanding national-level politics around the world.

Fundraising for the party has rapidly replaced more traditional criteria for advancement and other rewards in Congress

In Heavenly Ambitions, Joan Johnson-Freese lays out her vision of the future of space as a frontier where nations cooperate, and military activity is circumscribed by arms control treaties that would allow no one nation to dominate—just as no one nation's military dominates the world's oceans.