Book picks similar to
International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects by Bruce Currie-Alder


comparative-politics
academic
development-studies
international-development

International Human Rights


Jack Donnelly - 1993
    Eminently readable, chock-full of information, Donnelly's book is a must-read. (Human Rights Quarterly) In this new edition, Jack Donnelly updates his classic text on the rise of human rights issues since World War II to reflect the new challenges posed by globalization and the war on terrorism. The third edition includes two entirely new chapters on the Universality of Human Rights and Terrorism, and focuses on the recent emergence of nonstate actors such as the UN and NGO's.

Cases in Comparative Politics


Patrick H. O'Neil - 2009
    This casebook applies the conceptual framework developed in the text across countries with a consistent organization that facilitates comparison and aids understanding.

Development as Freedom


Amartya Sen - 1999
    Freedom, Sen argues, is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world's entire population. Releasing the idea of individual freedom from association with any particular historical, intellectual, political, or religious tradition, Sen clearly demonstrates its current applicability and possibilities. In the new global economy, where, despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers—perhaps even the majority of people—he concludes, it is still possible to practically and optimistically regain a sense of social accountability. Development as Freedom is essential reading.

Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach


Martha C. Nussbaum - 2011
    For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model.

Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective


Ha-Joon Chang - 2002
    Adopting a historical approach, Dr Chang finds that the economic evolution of now-developed countries differed dramatically from the procedures that they now recommend to poorer nations. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing counties from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used. This book is the winner of the 2003 Myrdal Prize, European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy. For more information please see the book website: http: //kickingawaytheladder.anthempressblog.com

Globalization and its Discontents


Joseph E. Stiglitz - 2002
    Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank. Particularly concerned with the plight of the developing nations, he became increasingly disillusioned as he saw the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions put the interests of Wall Street and the financial community ahead of the poorer nations. Those seeking to understand why globalization has engendered the hostility of protesters in Seattle and Genoa will find the reasons here. While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that will provoke debate for years to come. Rarely do we get such an insider's analysis of the major institutions of globalization as in this penetrating book. With a new foreword for this paperback edition.

Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations


Ray Fisman - 2008
    He's the United Nations diplomat who double-parks his Mercedes on New York City streets at rush hour because the cops can't touch him--he has diplomatic immunity. He's the Chinese smuggler who dodges tariffs by magically transforming frozen chickens into frozen turkeys. The dictator, the warlord, the unscrupulous bureaucrat who bilks the developing world of billions in aid. The calculating crook who views stealing and murder as just another part of his business strategy. And, in the wrong set of circumstances, he might just be you.In Economic Gangsters, Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel take readers into the secretive, chaotic, and brutal worlds inhabited by these lawless and violent thugs. Join these two sleuthing economists as they follow the foreign aid money trail into the grasping hands of corrupt governments and shady underworld characters. Spend time with ingenious black marketeers as they game the international system. Follow the steep rise and fall of stock prices of companies with unseemly connections to Indonesia's former dictator. See for yourself what rainfall has to do with witch killings in Tanzania--and more.Fisman and Miguel use economics to get inside the heads of these "gangsters," and propose solutions that can make a difference to the world's poor--including cash infusions to defuse violence in times of drought, and steering the World Bank away from aid programs most susceptible to corruption.Take an entertaining walk on the dark side of global economic development with Economic Gangsters.

Free Speech & Postmodernism


Stephen R.C. Hicks - 2010
    The attacks have come not only from traditional conservatives but increasingly from the postmodern left. In this essay, Stephen Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.

Basics of Social Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches


W. Lawrence Neuman - 2003
    This text teaches students to be a better consumer of research results, understand how the research enterprise works, and prepares them to conduct small research projects. Upon completing this text, students will be aware of what research can and cannot do, and why properly conducted research is important. Using clear, accessible language and examples from real research, this discusses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to social research, emphasizing the benefits of combining various approaches. Briefer, paperback text, adapted from Neuman's Social Research Methods, Sixth Edition.

Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1992


Charles Tilly - 1990
    Specifically, Tilly charges that most available explanations fail because they do not account for the great variety of kinds of states which were viable at different stages of European history, and because they assume a unilinear path of state development resolving in today's national state.

Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention


Severine Autesserre - 2014
    Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation - strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These common attitudes and actions enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they also result in unintended consequences that thwart international efforts. Certain expatriates follow alternative modes of thinking and acting, often with notable results, but they remain in the minority. Through an in-depth analysis of the interveners' everyday life and work, this book proposes innovative ways to better help host populations build a sustainable peace.

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy


Daron Acemoğlu - 2001
    It revolutionizes scholarship on the factors underlying government and popular movements toward democracy or dictatorship. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Their book, the subject of a four-day seminar at Harvard's Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, was also the basis for the Walras-Bowley lecture at the joint meetings of the European Economic Association and Econometric Society in 2003 and is the winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal awarded by the American Economic Association as the best economist working in the United States under age 40. He is the author of the forthcoming text Introduction to Modern Economic Growth. James A. Robinson is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is a Harvard Faculty Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Program on Institutions, Organizations, and Growth. He is coeditor with Jared Diamond of the forthcoming book Natural Experiments in History.

The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho


James Ferguson - 1990
    When these projects fail, as they do with astonishing regularity, they nonetheless produce a host of regular and unacknowledged effects, including the expansion of bureaucratic state power and the translation of the political realities of poverty and powerlessness into "technical" problems awaiting solution by "development" agencies and experts. It is the political intelligibility of these effects, along with the process that produces them, that this book seeks to illuminate through a detailed case study of the workings of the "development" industry in one country, Lesotho, and in one "development" project.Using an anthropological approach grounded in the work of Foucault, James Ferguson analyzes the institutional framework within which such projects are crafted and the nature of "development discourse," revealing how it is that, despite all the "expertise" that goes into formulating development projects, they nonetheless often demonstrate a startling ignorance of the historical and political realities of the locale they are intended to help. In a close examination of the attempted implementation of the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho, Ferguson shows how such a misguided approach plays out, how, in fact, the "development" apparatus in Lesotho acts as an "anti-politics machine," everywhere whisking political realities out of sight and all the while performing, almost unnoticed, its own pre-eminently political operation of strengthening the state presence in the local region.James Ferguson is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine.

Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century


Immanuel Wallerstein - 1998
    In Utopistics, Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the global order that nourished those dreams is on the brink of disintegration. Pointing to the globalization of commerce, the changing nature of work and the family, the failures of traditional liberal ideology, and the danger of profound environmental crises, the founder of world-systems analysis argues that the nation-state system no longer works. The next twenty-five to fifty years will see the final breakdown of that system, and a time of great conflicts and disorder. It will also be a period in which individual and collective action will have a greater impact on the future than has been possible for 500 years. Utopistics distills Wallerstein’s hugely influential work on the modern world-system in an accessible way. This fascinating and provocative look into our collective political destiny poses urgent questions for anyone concerned with social change in the next millennium.

The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power


Wolfgang Sachs - 1991
    Exposing their historical obsolescence and intellectual sterility, the authors call for a bidding farewell to the whole Eurocentric development idea. This is urgently needed, they argue, in order to liberate people’s minds - in both North and South - for bold responses to the environmental and ethical challenges now confronting humanity.These essays are an invitation to experts, grassroots movements and students of development to recognize the tainted glasses they put on whenever they participate in the development discourse.