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Author: Aeron Davis Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526127296 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 138
Book Description
Aeron Davis takes a close look at the state of elites today. He argues that the Brexit vote and 2017 election outcome are signs of a deeper leadership crisis that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not only upended societies, they have reshaped elite rule itself. Too many leaders today, regardless of intent, are ignorant, precarious, rootless and self-serving. Although richer, they have lost coherence, influence and control. Increasingly, they are just reckless opportunists, getting what they can amid the chaos they have created. Their failings are not only damaging wider society, they are undermining the very foundations of the Establishment itself. The book, based on interviews with over 350 elite figures, asks: how did we end up producing the leaders that got us here and what can we do about it?
Author: Aeron Davis Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526127296 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 138
Book Description
Aeron Davis takes a close look at the state of elites today. He argues that the Brexit vote and 2017 election outcome are signs of a deeper leadership crisis that has been developing over decades. The great transformations of the 1980s onwards have not only upended societies, they have reshaped elite rule itself. Too many leaders today, regardless of intent, are ignorant, precarious, rootless and self-serving. Although richer, they have lost coherence, influence and control. Increasingly, they are just reckless opportunists, getting what they can amid the chaos they have created. Their failings are not only damaging wider society, they are undermining the very foundations of the Establishment itself. The book, based on interviews with over 350 elite figures, asks: how did we end up producing the leaders that got us here and what can we do about it?
Author: Cara Reed Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110734915 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
Enough of Experts: Expert Authority in Crisis analyses the challenges and threats to expert authority in neoliberal political economies and societies. It focuses upon the deep-seated political, economic, social and cultural transformations which have fundamentally destabilized and eroded the institutional foundations of expert authority over more than four decades. The book critically assesses the orthodox or ‘received’ model of expert authority as it has come under escalating pressures from a nexus of ideological, organizational, technological and cultural changes that have radically weakened the former’s core ‘institutional logic’ and practical efficacy. It also looks forward to a range of ‘expert futures’ in which expert groups and organizations decline in power and status as their prevalence proliferates to a stage where they become ubiquitous in neoliberal regimes. Finally, the book presents an alternative reflexive model of expert authority and governance that is grounded in the ‘dynamics of contestation and trust’ and stands in direct contrast to the orthodox, rational model.
Author: Mick Moran Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1847798926 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
For thirty years, the British economy has repeated the same old experiment of subjecting everything to competition and market because that is what works in the imagination of central government. This book demonstrates the repeated failure of that experiment by detailed examination of three sectors: broadband, food supply and retail banking. The book argues for a new experiment in social licensing whereby the right to trade in foundational activities would be dependent on the discharge of social obligations in the form of sourcing, training and living wages. Written by a team of researchers and policy advocates based at the Centre for Research on Socio Cultural Change, this book combines rigour and readability, and will be relevant to practitioners, policy makers, academics and engaged citizens.
Author: Thomas Hartmann Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 131716492X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 170
Book Description
Extreme floods cause enormous damage in floodplains, which levees cannot prevent. Therefore, it is vital for spatial planning to provide space for water retention in these areas. Land use planners, water management agencies, landowners, and policymakers all agree on this challenge, but attempts to make the space for rivers to provide retention are generally not very successful. Adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how society can manage the use of the floodplains along rivers in the face of extreme floods, focusing in particular on the relation between social arrangements and the elemental forces of floods. The book firstly analyses why contemporary floodplain management is so often clumsy and ineffective by looking at various real-life situations in Germany, using Cultural Theory to provide a much-needed, but previously neglected social perspective. These analyses show a pattern of activity resulting from different rationalities which dominate the floodplains in different phases. During extreme floods, it is rational to manage floodplains as dangerous areas; sandbags and disaster management dominate the scene. After some time, the rationality of control takes over the floodplain management; policymakers discuss flood risk and water managers build levees. When public attention diminishes, floodplains become inconspicuous until more and more stakeholders regard floodplains as profitable land. The current system of planning, law, and property rights even encourages stakeholders to act out their plural rationalities. A permanent dynamic imbalance of different rationalities leads to a robust social construction of the floodplains which results in viable but clumsy floodplains. In the course of time, however, the patterns of activity in the floodplains lead to an increase in intensity and frequency of extreme floods, and to more vulnerable potential damages in the floodplains. Risk increases. Coping with this situation needs another kind of floodplain management. This book proposes an innovative concept - Large Areas for Temporary Emergency Retention (LATER) - in "Clumsy Floodplains" as an alternative to levee-based flood protection. The concept aims at reducing damage by extreme floods in a catchment area by inundating less valuable areas to protect places that are more valuable. It finally examines how this LATER concept might be implemented in areas where there is currently a clumsy style of floodplain management, what interventions are required and how these might come about effectively. Again, using Cultural Theory, the book puts forward a valuable land policy solution which aims at implementing LATER in clumsy floodplains and which develops an obligatory insurance against natural hazards as a responsive land policy for LATER. The book represents the author's PhD research, which he conducted as research assistant at the department for Land Policy, Land Management and Municipal Geoinformation at the School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Germany.
Author: Richard Lourie Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 435
Book Description
Seemingly shy, Andrei Sakharov was in fact a man of three great passions. His passion for physics ultimately lead him to create the Soviet H-Bomb, making the USSR a super power. But he rejected all the position and prestige his inventions had brought him in the name of a greater passion — for justice. And yielding nothing to these two passions was his passion for human rights activist Elena Bonner, their love story one of the great romances of our time. This book tells the story of the man, his passions, and the time and place where they all played out. “As Richard Lourie’s new, subtle and revealing biography of Sakharov demonstrates... [Sakharov] ranks with Nelson Mandela as a person who helped guide his country to democracy, changing himself in the process. One of the strengths of Lourie’s biography is his description and analysis of how this transition occurred... a fascinating account of Sakharov... [Lourie’s] analysis of [Sakharov’s] complicated political journey seems authentic and immensely revealing.” — Loren Graham, The New York Times “A vivid portrait of [Sakharov,] this moral and intellectual giant... Lourie has written a highly intelligent and exceptionally readable book. He not only captures his protagonist admirably but exhibits a fine feel for the social and political backdrop as well as for the peculiar mixture of fearful servility and courageous generosity of the Russian people. Among other things, he vividly brings to life how the Communist regime constrained scientists, sometimes even arresting and murdering them, while those who survived persevered in their work to achieve remarkable results.” — Aleksa Djilas,Commentary Magazine “Lourie does full justice to a life that could not be more engrossing. The socially introverted son of Moscow intelligentsia, Andrei Sakharov became a star physics pupil, then chief architect of the Soviet Union’s first thermonuclear device, and later on a dissident and target of KGB ire — and finally the moral conscience of a democratically awakening Russia... The evolution from a politically passive scientist to a lonely figure holding sidewalk vigils outside kangaroo courtrooms is almost unfathomable for a non-Russian. Lourie, however, makes it comprehensible, not least by painting with an artist’s spare, deft strokes this transcendent figure into the history of his day.” — Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs “Richard Lourie is ideally placed to write the first full biography of this remarkable man. He was able to interview Sakharov and many of his colleagues. He has translated Sakharov’s memoirs, and often uses direct speech drawn from them to take us behind the scenes without giving rise to the usual suspicion of novelistic invention. This makes for an engagingly readable book... Lourie’s appraisal of Sakharov as a man is scrupulously balanced, with as much emphasis on his obstinacy as on his compassion... The book conveys both the elation of scientific work, the intense love between Sakharov and his second wife, and the bewildering nature of human courage.” — Elaine Feinstein, The Telegraph “The inventor of the Soviet H-bomb, [Sakharov] was in the forefront of the post-war breakthrough in thermonuclear physics that led to the creation of atomic energy. Yet he also stood, heroically at times, in the vanguard of the movement for human rights in the Soviet Union. Richard Lourie tells both these stories in this first full-length biography of the physicist and dissident. Lourie has benefited from the recent publication of the KGB files on Sakharov. He also knew the man himself, whose Memoirs he helped to smuggle out of Russia to the West (where they were published in Lourie’s translation a year after Sakharov’s death in 1989). Sakharov’s widow, Elena Bonner, has helped Lourie’s research, which adds a welcome new perspective on the last 20 years of his eventful life, when husband and wife were subjected to a bullying campaign of threats and slander by the KGB in a vain attempt to silence them.” — Orlando Figes, The Telegraph “A solid factual and interpretive study... Sakharov is an important account of one scientist’s courage and his quest for a humane world at peace.” — Herbert Mitgang, Chicago Tribune “This first biography of the renowned physicist, Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner weaves the details of Sakharov’s life together with the history of the Soviet Union, which barely outlasted him. Lourie... describes Sakharov’s upbringing in a liberal family and his rise through the Soviet science program during the 1930s and ‘40s. Lourie’s vivid accounts of Sakharov’s meetings with Stalin and KGB chief Beria, his role in the intelligentsia, his marriages and his cramped apartments offer a textured picture of Soviet life during the Cold War... Lourie’s intelligent, engaging biography will be appreciated by those interested in Russian and Cold War history.” — Publishers Weekly
Author: John Mair Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000618455 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
Populism is on the rise across the globe. Authoritarian populist leaders have taken over and solidified their control over many countries. Their power has been cemented during the global coronavirus pandemic, though perhaps the defeat of populist-in-chief Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election (despite his continuing protestations to the contrary) has seen the start of the waning of this phenomenon? In the UK Brexit is 'done'; Britain is firmly out of the EU; Covid is vaccinated against; and Boris Johnson has a huge parliamentary majority and, despite never-ending problems, of his own and others' making, his grip on power with a parliamentary majority of more than 80, still seems secure. Meanwhile culture wars continue to rage. How has media, worldwide, contributed, fulled or fought this populism. Cheerleaders? Critics? Supplicants? This book examines those questions in 360 degrees with a distinguished cast of authors from journalism and academia.
Author: R. A. W. Rhodes Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192691112 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
Court politics is about who in British government did what to whom, when, how, why, and with what consequences. In The Prime Ministerial Court Rod Rhodes provides a thorough depiction of the court politics of the Conservative governments of the twenty-first century, namely the courts of David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson. Exploring specific topics, including the courtiers, the prime minister's craft, reshuffles, resignations, and leadership challenges, and the political games and feuds in the court between ministers, advisers, and civil servants, Rhodes concludes that the British government has a new Establishment in which the skills of 'knavery' abound. He finds evidence of betrayal, revenge, lying, scandals, and bullying with such machinations oiled by gossip, humour, and alcohol. Analysing the everyday practice of the 'dark arts' by the British political and administrative elite, each chapter includes a short case study of the court in action, covering the education wars, the 2018 election, and the Covid-19 crisis. Each case illustrates the personal, electoral, and governmental consequences of court politics. Rhodes warns that there are more and more knaves, decency is in decline, and British government needs 'rules for rulers'. Above all, he cautions citizens - 'beware, here be dragons'.
Author: S. Ann Cole Publisher: S. Ann Cole ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 345
Book Description
I’m in love with him. I chose him. So why did I do it? He wants me. He waited for me. So why did he do it? She’s a sweetheart. A kind heart. So why did she do it? I love him. But I didn’t choose him. Why couldn’t he respect it? There are no good guys in this game. We’re all liars, cheaters, secret-keepers. We know what we need, still we take what we don’t want. I wanted a happy ending. But with my struggle to be a better me without him, and his struggle to live clean without me, plus a cruel twist of fate we weren’t prepared for, there’s no chance in hell either of us will be walking away with our hearts still whole. k here to edit. ***OFF HER ROCKERS is the sequel to ICE STEAM in the "Loving All Wrong Duet" and should be read after ICE STEAM.****
Author: The Foundational Economy Collective Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526165406 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 100
Book Description
The foundational economy is everywhere: from clean water to care homes, schools to hospitals, these vital services were established between 1880 and 1980 to be collectively paid for, collectively delivered and collectively consumed. This essential framework has transformed the lives of billions, but in the last generation it has come under considerable attack. Privatisation, market choice and outsourcing have depleted the material infrastructure at the core of everyday life, and the foundational economy is in desperate need of renewal. This book sets out the principles and initiatives to end the degradation of the foundational economy and restore its essential place in society. In the face of our growing needs, the authors argue, politics must refocus on foundational consumption and universal minimum access and quality.
Author: Aeron Davis
Author: Aeron Davis
Author: Cara Reed
Author: Cornelia Funke
Author: Mick Moran
Author: Thomas Hartmann
Author: Richard Lourie
Author: John Mair
Author: R. A. W. Rhodes
Author: S. Ann Cole 
Author: The Foundational Economy Collective