The war on Gaza, the war on Ukraine, the energy crisis, and several initiatives to reshape regional and international partnerships and alliances have made the EU Southern Neighbourhood even more strategic for Italian and European interests. The urgency to diversify the energy supply (drawing on both fossil fuels and clean energy sources) has pushed Italy to strengthen old and create new partnerships with countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, as well as turn to countries in ...

Twenty-five years after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda remains a cornerstone of global peace efforts – yet many of its promises are still to be fulfilled. This volume, promoted within the framework of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network (MWMN) – an initiative launched by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in collaboration with the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and Women in Inter...

This book offers a comprehensive and insightful exploration of Oman’s discourses on foreign policy and national identity in the context of the Middle East. The Sultanate of Oman is often hailed as a peaceful exception in the region, but this work goes beyond surface-level observations to reveal the intricate complexities of Oman’s foreign policy and identity construction. With a keen focus on deconstructing essentialist understandings, the chapters delve into how discursive alignments and ...

Weak or failed states - where no government is in control - are the source of many of the world's most serious problems, from poverty, AIDS and drugs to terrorism. What can be done to help? The problem of weak states and the need for state-building has existed for many years, but it has been urgent since September 11 and Afghanistan and Iraq.The formation of proper public institutions, such as an honest police force, uncorrupted courts, functioning schools and medical services and ...

Geographies of Globalization 2nd edition offers an animated and fully-updated exposition of the geographical impacts of globalization and the contribution of human geography to studies and debates in this area. Energetic and engaging, this book:• Illustrates how the core principles of human geography – such as space and scale – lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon• Debates the historical evolution of globalized society• Analyses the interconnect...

Today’s economies fail to recognise that we are in a rapidly worsening crisis, reproducing and often worsening vast and harmful inequalities between people and countries. The current models are unsustainable, and at a time when global temperatures are rising and divides are deepening, humanity is left in a rapidly worsening situation of its own making, the destruction of the living world, which will make large parts of the earth uninhabitable.Without access to the knowledge, skills...

The extensive changes to Emirati women's traditional rights and roles have been one of the most visible transformations taking place in the United Arab Emirates throughout its almost forty years of modern history. This book offers an interpretation of why and how these modifications came about. Its aim is to analyse the promotion of educational, employment and political rights for women as strategic state actions set within a context of broader nation-building goals. The author discovers t...

This book examines some of the most pressing issues facing the Turkish political establishment, in particular the issues of political Islam, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms. The authors explore the rationales of the main political actors in Turkey in order to increase our understanding of the ongoing debates over the secularist character of the Turkish Republic and over Turkey’s longstanding Kurdish issue.Original contributions from respected scholars in the field of Turkish a...

How public affairs are run depends upon the degree of authority and control central government decides to relinquish to regional and local governments, and the extent to which it favors citizen involvement in the governing process. Public administrators do not operate in a vacuum. The context within which decision-making takes place greatly influences public administrators approach to public issues. Consequently, what government decides to do and how it decides to carry it out affects the ...

Francis Fukuyama famously predicted "the end of history" with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states. The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. "Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world's most serious problems," he believes. He traces what we know—and more often don't kn...

In recent years, a number of controversies have emerged from inside Canadian universities. While some of these controversies reflect debates occurring at a broader societal level, others are unique to the culture of universities and the way in which they are governed. In University Commons Divided, Peter MacKinnon provides close readings of a range of recent incidents with a view to exploring new challenges within universities and the extent to which the idea of the university as ...

Participation has established itself as a significant approach to project implementation, policy-making and governance in developing and developed countries alike. Recently, however, it has become fashionable to dismiss participation as more rhetoric than substance, and subject to manipulation by agencies and social change agents intent simply on pursuing their own agendas under cover of community consent. In this important new volume, development and other social policy scholars and pract...