In this edited volume, leading experts of human rights measurement address the challenges scholarship of human rights face as well as explore approaches and means to overcoming them.The book seeks to further answer three specific and related questions. First, what do existing measures of human rights conditions tell us about the state of human rights? Are conditions improving or deteriorating? Second, how might scholars improve their measurement efforts and observe states’ human ri...

Violations of the right to the physical integrity of the person, such as torture, cruel and unusual punishment, extra-judicial executions, disappearances, and political imprisonment have long been treated as an anomaly in democratically governed societies. In the current literature on human rights, violations of this right are by-and-large seen as the hallmark of autocratic and repressive regimes.This study takes on this dominant paradigm and shows not only that the common assumpti...

One of the most urgent challenges in African economic development is to devise a strategy for improving statistical capacity. Reliable statistics, including estimates of economic growth rates and per-capita income, are basic to the operation of governments in developing countries and vital to nongovernmental organizations and other entities that provide financial aid to them. Rich countries and international financial institutions such as the World Bank allocate their deve...

'A valuable corrective to the fraying narrative of [African] failure.'Foreign AffairsNot so long ago, Africa was being described as the hopeless continent. Recently, though, talk has turned to Africa rising, with enthusiastic voices exclaiming the potential for economic growth across many of its countries.What, then, is the truth behind Africa's growth, or lack of it? In this provocative book, Morten Jerven fundamentally reframes the debate, challenging main...

A comprehensive introduction to public policy and the policy cycle, the fully revised second edition of this popular textbook offers a practical guide to the topic while remaining underpinned by cutting-edge research. Bringing together analysis of classic works alongside the most recent developments in the field, this book is guided by the following three crucial questions: What is public policy? Who participates in making and putting public policy in practice as well as in assessing its s...

This introduction applies analytic models to policymaking challenges, equipping students with tools to evaluate core policymaking dilemmas. Students are introduced to the approaches of game theory, social choice theory, research design and causal inference. Key terms, along with current research, are highlighted to build an understanding of public policy study. Exercises and thought questions enable students to develop skills to assess public policy dilemmas. The analytically rigorous styl...

This volume argues that international human rights law has made a positive contribution to the realization of human rights in much of the world. Although governments sometimes ratify human rights treaties, gambling that they will experience little pressure to comply with them, this is not typically the case. Focusing on rights stakeholders rather than the United Nations or state pressure, Beth Simmons demonstrates through a combination of statistical analyses and case studies that the rati...

How did the United States go from being a country that tries to rehabilitate street criminals and prevent white-collar crime to one that harshly punishes common lawbreakers while at the same time encouraging corporate crime through a massive deregulation of business? Why do street criminals get stiff prison sentences, a practice that has led to the disaster of mass incarceration, while white-collar criminals, who arguably harm more people, get slaps on the wrist--if they are prosecuted at ...

Politicians and the political process, even in ostensibly democratic countries, can be deadly. James Gilligan has discovered a devastating truth that has been "hiding in plain sight" for the past century - namely, that when America's conservative party, the Republicans, have gained the presidency, the country has repeatedly suffered from epidemics of violent death. Rates of both suicide and homicide have sky-rocketed. The reasons are all too obvious: rates of every form of social and econo...

This award-winning book "skillfully blends economic and political analysis" to assess the challenges of urban governments (Emmett H. Buell, Jr., American Political Science Review).Winner of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairsMany simply presume that a city's politics are like a nation's politics, just on a smaller scale. But the nature of the...

This Handbook provides a comprehensive global survey of the policy process. Written by an outstanding line up of distinguished scholars and practitioners, the Handbook covers all aspects of the policy process including:Theory – from rational choice to the new institutionalismFrameworks – network theory, advocacy coalition and development modelsKey stages in the process – Formulation, implementation and evaluation

Congress is crippled by ideological conflict. The political parties are more polarized today than at any time since the Civil War. Americans disagree, fiercely, about just about everything, from terrorism and national security, to taxes and government spending, to immigration and gay marriage.Well, American elites disagree fiercely. But average Americans do not. This, at least, was the position staked out by Philip Converse in his famous essay on belief systems, which drew ...