Nongovernmental Politics

Nongovernmental Politics PDF Author: Michel Feher
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 704

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Book Description
The past, present, and future prospects of nongovernmental politics--political activism that withdraws from traditional government but not from the politics associated with governing. To be involved in politics without aspiring to govern, without seeking to be governed by the best leaders, without desiring to abolish all forms of government: such is the condition common to practitioners of nongovernmental politics. Whether these activists concern themselves with providing humanitarian aid, monitoring human rights violations, protecting the environment, educating consumers, or improving the safety of workers, the legitimacy and efficacy of their initiatives demand that they forsake conventional political ambitions. Yet even as they challenge specific governmental practices, nongovernmental activists are still operating within the realm of politics.Composed of scholarly essays on the challenges and predicaments facing nongovernmental activism, profiles of unique and diverse NGOs (including Memorial, Global Exchange, World Vision, and Third World Network), and interviews with major nongovernmental actors (Gareth Evans of International Crisis Group, Anthony Romero of the ACLU, Rony Brauman of M decins sans Fronti res, and Peter Lurie of Public Citizen, among others), this book offers a groundbreaking survey of the rapidly expanding domain of nongovernmental activism. It examines nongovernmental activists' motivations, from belief in the universality of human rights to concerns over the fairness of corporate stakeholders' claims, and explores the multiple ways in which nongovernmental agencies operate. It analyzes the strategic options available and focuses on some of the most remarkable sites of NGO action, including borders, disaster zones, and the Internet. Finally, the book analyzes the conflicting agendas pursued by nongovernmental advocates--protecting civil society from the intrusions of governments that lack accountability or wresting the world from neo-liberal hegemony on the one hand and hastening the return of the Savior or restoring the social order prescribed by the Prophet on the other.

Nongovernmental Politics

Nongovernmental Politics PDF Author: Michel Feher
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 704

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Book Description
The past, present, and future prospects of nongovernmental politics--political activism that withdraws from traditional government but not from the politics associated with governing. To be involved in politics without aspiring to govern, without seeking to be governed by the best leaders, without desiring to abolish all forms of government: such is the condition common to practitioners of nongovernmental politics. Whether these activists concern themselves with providing humanitarian aid, monitoring human rights violations, protecting the environment, educating consumers, or improving the safety of workers, the legitimacy and efficacy of their initiatives demand that they forsake conventional political ambitions. Yet even as they challenge specific governmental practices, nongovernmental activists are still operating within the realm of politics.Composed of scholarly essays on the challenges and predicaments facing nongovernmental activism, profiles of unique and diverse NGOs (including Memorial, Global Exchange, World Vision, and Third World Network), and interviews with major nongovernmental actors (Gareth Evans of International Crisis Group, Anthony Romero of the ACLU, Rony Brauman of M decins sans Fronti res, and Peter Lurie of Public Citizen, among others), this book offers a groundbreaking survey of the rapidly expanding domain of nongovernmental activism. It examines nongovernmental activists' motivations, from belief in the universality of human rights to concerns over the fairness of corporate stakeholders' claims, and explores the multiple ways in which nongovernmental agencies operate. It analyzes the strategic options available and focuses on some of the most remarkable sites of NGO action, including borders, disaster zones, and the Internet. Finally, the book analyzes the conflicting agendas pursued by nongovernmental advocates--protecting civil society from the intrusions of governments that lack accountability or wresting the world from neo-liberal hegemony on the one hand and hastening the return of the Savior or restoring the social order prescribed by the Prophet on the other.

Sensible Politics

Sensible Politics PDF Author: Meg McLagan
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9781935408246
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The interaction of politics and the visual in the activities of nongovernmental activists. Political acts are encoded in medial forms--punch holes on a card, images on a live stream, tweets about events unfolding in real time--that have force, shaping people as subjects and forming the contours of what is sensible, legible, and visible. In doing so they define the terms of political possibility and create terrain for political acts. Sensible Politics considers the constitutive role played by aesthetic and performative techniques in the staging of claims by nongovernmental activists. Attending to political aesthetics means focusing not on a disembodied image that travels under the concept of art or visual culture, nor on a preformed domain of the political that seeks subsequent expression in media form. Instead it requires bringing the two realms together into the same analytic frame. A diverse group of contributors, from art historians, anthropologists, and political theorists to artists, filmmakers, and architects, considers the interaction of politics and the visual in such topics as the political consequences of a photograph taken by an Israeli soldier in a Palestinian house in Ramallah; AIDS activism; images of social suffering in Iran; the "forensic architecture" of claims to truth; and the "Make Poverty History" campaign. Transcending disciplines, they trace a broader image complex whereby politics is brought to visibility through the mediation of specific cultural forms that mix the legal and the visual, the hermeneutic and the technical, the political and the aesthetic. Their contributions offer critical insight into the practices of mediation whereby the political becomes manifest.

The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare

The Politics of Non-state Social Welfare PDF Author: Melani Cammett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Across the world, welfare states are under challenge—or were never developed extensively in the first place—while non-state actors increasingly provide public goods and basic welfare. In many parts of the Middle East and South Asia, sectarian organizations and political parties supply basic services to ordinary people more extensively and effectively than governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, families struggle to pay hospital fees, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launch welfare programs as states cut subsidies and social programs. Likewise, in parts of Latin America, international and domestic NGOs and, increasingly, private firms are key suppliers of social welfare in both urban and rural communities. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is far more developed, secular NGOs and faith-based organizations are critical components of social safety nets. Despite official entitlements to public welfare, citizens in Russia face increasing out-of-pocket expenses as they are effectively compelled to seek social services through the private market In The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare, a multidisciplinary group of contributors use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens. The book highlights the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare, including the ramifications for equitable and sustainable access to social services, accountability for citizens, and state capacity. The authors do not assume that non-state providers will surpass the performance of weak, inefficient, or sometimes corrupt states but instead offer a systematic analysis of a wide spectrum of non-state actors in a variety of contexts around the world, including sectarian political parties, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, family networks, informal brokers, and private firms.

NGOs in International Politics

NGOs in International Politics PDF Author: Shamima Ahmed
Publisher: Kumarian Press
ISBN:
Category : Non-governmental organizations
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Non-governmental organizations have gained a great deal of popularity in recent years. The awarding of the Nobel Prize to The International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1997 and to Medicins Sans Frontieres in 1999 has highlighted the emergence of these organizations as "new" forces in international politics. Yet, there is no work to date that has provided an overview of the varieties of interaction between NGOs and states, international organizations and in international politics. This is especially true of books aimed at undergraduates. NGOs in International Politics surveys a range of NGO activities and relationships in a manner accessible to students in the classroom. Despite the gap in the textbook literature, non-governmental organizations are being taught in undergraduate courses, either in theoretical terms or as components of service learning. This book is designed to remedy the gap between interest in NGOs and accessible literature for use in the classroom.

Environmental NGOs in World Politics

Environmental NGOs in World Politics PDF Author: Matthias Finger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113482162X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
At a time when states are reactive, at best, to the global ecological crisis and when economic globalization seems to be significantly contributing to the acceleration of that crisis, environmental non-governmental orgainisations (NGOs) are proliferating. This book explains the key role of NGOs in an emerging world environmental politics, showing how NGOs act both as independent bargainers and as agents of social learning, to link biophysical conditions to the political realm at both the local and global levels. Throught the use of case studies the authors reveal the richness and diversity of NGO activity and the dificulty of the choices facing decision-makers in their attempts to protect the environment, seek new forms of governance and foster social environmental learning. The book generates questions that are central, not only to an understanding of NGO relations, but to the study of international environmental politics. Environmental NOGs in World Politics will be of great interest to upper level student sand scholars of both environmental politics and international relations. It will also appeal to environmental-policy professionals.

NGO Accountability

NGO Accountability PDF Author: Lisa Jordan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136560424
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
As the fastest growing segment of civil society, as well as featuring prominently in the global political arena, NGOs are under fire for being 'unaccountable'. But who do NGOs actually represent? Who should they be accountable to and how? This book provides the first comprehensive examination of the issues and politics of NGO accountability across all sectors and internationally. It offers an assessment of the key technical tools available including legal accountability, certification and donor-based accountability regimes, and questions whether these are appropriate and viable options or attempts to 'roll-back' NGOs to a more one-dimensional function as organizers of national and global charity. Input and case studies are provided from NGOs such as ActionAid, and from every part of the globe including China, Indonesia and Uganda. In the spirit of moving towards greater accountability the book looks in detail at innovations that have developed from within NGOs and offers new approaches and flexible frameworks that enable accountability to become a reality for all parties worldwide.

Reshaping World Politics

Reshaping World Politics PDF Author: Craig Warkentin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742509726
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This text examines the ways in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) contribute to the development and maintenance of global civil society. The author investigates eight NGOs and connects their organizational activities to global civil society's constitutive dynamics and processes.

Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics

Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics PDF Author: Peter Willetts
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136848533
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Amnesty International and Oxfam to Greenpeace and Save the Children are now key players in global politics. This accessible and informative textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the significant role and increasing participation of NGOs in world politics. Peter Willetts examines the variety of different NGOs, their structure, membership and activities, and their complex relationship with social movements and civil society. He makes us aware that there are many more NGOs exercising influence in the United Nations system than the few famous ones. Conventional thinking is challenged in a radical manner on four questions: the extent of the engagement of NGOs in global policy- making; the status of NGOs within international law; the role of NGOs as crucial pioneers in the creation of the Internet; and the need to integrate NGOs within mainstream international relations theory. This is the definitive guide to this crucial area within international politics and should be required reading for students, NGO activists, and policy-makers.

NGO Diplomacy

NGO Diplomacy PDF Author: Michele M. Betsill
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262524767
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Provides an analytical framework for assessing the impact of NGOs on intergovernmental negotiations on the environment and identifying the factors that determine the degree of NGO influence, with case studies that apply the framework to negotiations on climate change, biosafety, desertification, whaling, and forests. Over the past thirty years nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played an increasingly influential role in international negotiations, particularly on environmental issues. NGO diplomacy has become, in the words of one organizer, an “international experiment in democratizing intergovernmental decision making.” But there has been little attempt to determine the conditions under which NGOs make a difference in either the process or the outcome of international negotiations. This book presents an analytic framework for the systematic and comparative study of NGO diplomacy in international environmental negotiations. Chapters by experts on international environmental policy apply this framework to assess the effect of NGO diplomacy on specific negotiations on environmental and sustainability issues. The proposed analytical framework offers researchers the tools with which to assess whether and how NGO diplomats affect negotiation processes, outcomes, or both, and through comparative analysis the book identifies factors that explain variation in NGO influence, including coordination of strategy, degree of access, institutional overlap, and alliances with key states. The empirical chapters use the framework to evaluate the degree of NGO influence on the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations on global climate change, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, negotiations within the International Whaling Commission that resulted in new management procedures and a ban on commercial whaling, and international negotiations on forests involving the United Nations, the International Tropical Timber Organization, and the World Trade Organization. Contributors Steinar Andresen, Michele M. Betsill, Stanley W. Burgiel, Elisabeth Corell, David Humphreys, Tora Skodvin

Power, Interdependence, and Nonstate Actors in World Politics

Power, Interdependence, and Nonstate Actors in World Politics PDF Author: Helen V. Milner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830788
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Since they were pioneered in the 1970s by Robert Keohane and others, the broad range of neoliberal institutionalist theories of international relations have grown in importance. In an increasingly globalized world, the realist and neorealist focus on states, military power, conflict, and anarchy has more and more given way to a recognition of the importance of nonstate actors, nonmilitary forms of power, interdependence, international institutions, and cooperation. Drawing together a group of leading international relations theorists, this book explores the frontiers of new research on the role of such forces in world politics. The topics explored in these chapters include the uneven role of peacekeepers in civil wars, the success of human rights treaties in promoting women's rights, the disproportionate power of developing countries in international environmental policy negotiations, and the prospects for Asian regional cooperation. While all of the chapters demonstrate the empirical and theoretical vitality of liberal and institutionalist theories, they also highlight weaknesses that should drive future research and influence the reform of foreign policy and international organizations. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Vinod Aggarawal, Jonathan Aronson, Elizabeth DeSombre, Page Fortna, Michael Gilligan, Lisa Martin, Timothy McKeown, Ronald Mitchell, Layna Mosley, Beth Simmons, Randall Stone, and Ann Tickner.