What does it mean when consumers "shop with a conscience" and choose products labeled as fair or sustainable? Does this translate into meaningful changes in global production processes? To what extent are voluntary standards implemented and enforced, and can they really govern global industries? Looking behind the Label presents an informative introduction to global production and ethical consumption, tracing the links between consumers' choices and the practices of multinational producers...

Eminent scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski's New York Times bestselling blueprint for American foreign policy strategy in the twenty-first centuryThe world today faces a crisis of power, caused by the dramatic shift in its center of gravity from the West to the East, by the dynamic political awakening of people worldwide, and by the deterioration of America's performance both domestically and internationally. As a result, America's position as a world superpower is far fr...

'Before the current global era it is impossible to imagine that comparable events [like September 11] could have occurred, reflecting as they do our new-found interdependence. The rise of global terrorism, like world-wide networks involving in money-laundering, drug-running and other forums of organised crime, are all parts of the dark side of globalisation.' From the new Preface This book is based on the highly influential BBC Reith lecture series on globalisation delivered in 1999 by Ant...

Countries solemnly intone their commitment to human rights, and they ratify endless international treaties and conventions designed to signal that commitment. At the same time, there has been no marked decrease in human rights violations, even as the language of human rights has become the dominant mode of international moral criticism. Well-known violators like Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan have sat on the U.N. Council on Human Rights. But it's not just the usual suspects that flagrantly...

An honest discussion of free trade and how nations can sensibly chart a path forward in today’s global economyNot so long ago the nation-state seemed to be on its deathbed, condemned to irrelevance by the forces of globalization and technology. Now it is back with a vengeance, propelled by a groundswell of populists around the world. In Straight Talk on Trade, Dani Rodrik, an early and outspoken critic of economic globalization taken too far, goes beyond t...

Prompted by the 1998 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Korten's book indicts the world's governments for failing to address growing hunger, housing shortages, unemployment, poverty, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation. He examines the causes of this global crisis and offers fresh solutions reflecting sustainability, community, and equity--the only principles that can assure a healthy future for the world's people.

Regulation by public and private organizations can be hijacked by special interests or small groups of powerful firms, and nowhere is this easier than at the global level. In whose interest is the global economy being regulated? Under what conditions can global regulation be made to serve broader interests? This is the first book to examine systematically how and why such hijacking or "regulatory capture" happens, and how it can be averted.Walter Mattli and Ngaire Woods bring toget...

The Hawks of Peace. Notes of Russian Ambassador is a unique analytical edition where Russian Deputy Premier Dmitry Rogozin shares his notes on personalities and events that shaped the history of post-Communist Russia, believing that without those it would be impossible to understand the past and envisage the future of his country. Permanent Representative of Russia to NATO until recently, in his political dairy Dmitry Rogozin contemplates on the complex relationship between Russia and the ...

This book shows how, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Gospel of the free market became the only world-religion of universal validity. The belief that all value needs to be quantifiable was extended to human beings, whose value became dependent on their rating on the various ranking-scales in the global infotainment system.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, video games are an integral part of global media culture, rivaling Hollywood in revenue and influence. No longer confined to a subculture of adolescent males, video games today are played by adults around the world. At the same time, video games have become major sites of corporate exploitation and military recruitment.In Games of Empire, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter offer a radical political critique of such vide...

From Katy Perry training alongside US Marines in a music video, to the global box-office mastery of the US military-supported Transformers franchise, to the explosion of war games such as Call of Duty, it’s clear that the US security state is a dominant force in media culture. But is the ubiquity of cultural products that glorify the security state a new phenomenon? Or have Uncle Sam and Hollywood been friends for a long time? Hearts and Mines examines the rise a...

Jagdish Bhagwati, the internationally renowned economist who uniquely combines a reputation as the leading scholar of international trade with a substantial presence in public policy on the important issues of the day, shines here a critical light on Preferential Trade Agreements, revealing how the rapid spread of PTAs endangers the world trading system. Numbering by now well over 300, and rapidly increasing, these preferential trade agreements, many taking the form of Free Trade Agreement...