International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed.This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coi...

This book examines the origin, nature, the portfolio, organizational structure and operation of the seven largest SWFs from the perspective of the holding countries. Uniquely it tackles the issues from the perspectives of those non-OECD countries whose access to funds creates the most concern.

Electricity is a basic requirement for a modern economy, and transmission grids at the center of transition to a low-carbon power system. They are the principal means to integrate large shares of wind and solar power and they are essential to ensuring a secure and reliable electricity supply. Grid companies around the world are struggling to find their niche in this transition. The State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) is one of the principal players in this round of global competition. C...

This title was first published in 2002: This study of the Chinese electric power industry examines the ownership and the restructuring of the industry.The reform of the electric power industry is also seen as part of the wider economic development that has been taking place in China, thus providing fresh perspectives on the changes taking place in both the economy and society more generally. Presenting a wealth of extensive research on the subject, the book elucidates the power str...

International organizations (IOs) matter. This book uncovers the regular working world of IOs, examining whether, to what extent, and how these 'global governing bodies' can act independently of the will of states. This book explores this issue by asking who or what shapes their decisions; how and when decisions are made; how players interact within an IO; and how the interactions vary across IOs. The Working World of International Organizations examines three working groups in t...

International organisations (IOs) often receive a bad press, seen as intrusive, domineering and unresponsive to the needs of the people and countries they are meant to serve. The best way to understand the operation of these international organisations is to bring together those who represent their countries at IOs and those who have been working at IOs at various capacities and then to listen to their experiences.This book develops an alternative approach to the analysis of IOs th...

Published 35 years after Palgrave Macmillan’s landmark International Political Economy (IPE) series was first founded, this Handbook captures the state of the art of contemporary IPE. It draws on the series’ history of focusing on the oft-neglected study of the global South.Providing interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars hailing from the global North and South, the Handbook illustrates the theoretical innovations and empirical richness necessary to explain today’s ever-chang...

This invaluable compendium highlights the challenges of perioperative process in hospitals today. It delves into the development of a multi-agent robotic system where a dirty-side robot that sorts instruments returned from a surgical room into different containers for easy scrubbing, a Traybot that navigates the environment and transports the instrument containers to different stations, a clean-side robot that picks up instruments and places them in surgical kits, and an orchestration soft...

Rather than claim that there exists a common concept of globalization that all parties can agree to, this book seeks to examine some of the conceptions and the way in which they render different interpretations of particular aspects of globalization.The last two decades have witnessed an explosive proliferation of academic writings on the subject of globalization, which has been accompanied by a high level of interest in the media and widespread usage of the term. This has inevitab...

This book provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive account of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) organisation and examines the challenges APEC now faces in the new century. Subjects covered include: * the history of APEC * APEC and the latest WTO round * case-studies of countries in the region including China, Japan, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan * APECs approach to competition and deregulation policy * assessment of APECs standing as an international institution Featuring con...

The renowned economist and New York Times– bestselling author presents a "succinct and sophisticated" account of Western economic decline (Paul Collier, The Observer ).Amid the hype of China's economic rise, the most important story of our generation is being pushed aside: America is not just in decline, but on course to become the biggest welfare state in the history of the Wes...

China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a concise introduction to the most astonishing economic growth story of the last three decades. In the 1980s China was an impoverished backwater, struggling to escape the political turmoil and economic mismanagement of the Mao era. Today it is the world's second biggest economy, the largest manufacturing and trading nation, the consumer of half the world's steel and coal, the biggest source of international tourists, and one of the ...