Search results
The book is about the changing nature of work and employment relations power. It is directed at those who are activists or supporters of goals for a better and more equitable working life, including students, policy makers, trade unionists and CSO/NGO activists. The book engages with competing debates and perspectives about labour agency, examining inter alia the power of the nation state, issues of bogus self-employment and the gig economy, and the inequalities from market reform and globalisation. The book supports a range of modes of student learning, including courses for trade union and community groups. Its contents cover the employment contract, the power of the state, technology and work, globalisation, employee voice and union mobilisation, worker voices beyond the workplace, the future of work and the goals towards a ‘decent’ work agenda.
2 The power politics of representation Saami poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapää called for a vision of the Arctic as a horizontal highway of movement and conversation, with its treeless expanses providing opportunity to roam and the long polar nights providing opportunity to talk and listen (1998). This evocative image of a highway of interconnection is a counterpoint to the typical ways in which the Arctic is divided by standard maps and globes, with North–South political lines transecting the Saami homeland in the European North. Maps, films, poetry and policy
3 The classic balance of power, 1648–1814 Power politics and small state survival: the classic balance of power, 1648–1814 Elle [la politique] maintient l’Europe indépendante et libre. [Frederic the Great]1 How safe was the largely unbridled balance of power of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the small state? This chapter will show that the balance-of-power system was in fact rather accommodating and allowed small states to survive in historically large numbers. Moreover, small state death was measured and gradual only. In short, the loose and
in several aspects. It builds on the findings of critical research published by major authors in the field who examine in detail the history of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, map out alterations in the balance of power between the two countries and reject sectarian politics as a key driver of the ties but reaffirm its role as only a motivator of foreign policy behaviour. 2 But it parts ways with previous research to offer a glimpse at the narrative of power politics in Iran’s ties with Saudi Arabia. To justify this
This chapter explores the power dynamics in emotional prescription, as well as the political conceit implicit in separating emotion from reason in discourses of entitlement to power. This encompasses a discussion of how emotions come to be ‘lost’, and of the social evaluation of emotions along lines of class, gender, race and species. This chapter ultimately focuses on the importance of emotional prescription and emotive success in qualifications of what it means to be a human being.
: Realism and Post-Fordism ’, Critical Enquiry , 39 : 2 , 347 – 66 . Geotz , T. ( 2011 ), ‘ Harnessing the Poer of Feedback Loops ’, Wired , 19 June , www.wired.com/2011/06/ff_feedbackloop/ (accessed 19 November 2015 ). Green , D. ( 2014 ), ‘ The New World Development Report (on Mind, Society and Behavior): Lots to Like, but a Big Fail on Power, Politics and Religion ’, Oxfam , 16 December , http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/lots-to-like-in-the-new-world-development-report-on-mind-society-and-behavior-but-a-big-fail-on-power-politics
Small states are survival artists. Understanding the story of small state survival requires a clear focus on the international states system. This book finds that different variations of the Westphalian states system had very different effects on small state survival. The most hostile environment for the small state was the late nineteenth-century concert system; the most supportive environment was the bipolar world of the later twentieth century. The book investigates the era of the classic balance of power which began after the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 and ended during the French Revolutionary Wars and the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Surprisingly, the crude balance-of-power system of the eighteenth century proved fairly accommodating of small state survival. Looking to the future, a modest rise in the number of small states can be predicted. The book views international relations since at least the mid seventeenth century to be driven by concerns over state power. Consequently, it deals with power, weakness, and power politics. To do so properly, a theoretical framework was needed that puts power and power balancing front and center. Power and power politics are important concepts in the academic discipline of International Relations theory, and particularly in Realist thinking.
How does migration feature in states’ diplomatic agendas across the Middle East? Until recently, popular wisdom often held that migration is an important socio-economic, rather than political, phenomenon. Migration diplomacy in the Middle East counters this expectation by providing the first systematic examination of the foreign policy importance of migrants, refugees, and diasporas in the Global South. Gerasimos Tsourapas examines how emigration-related processes become embedded in governmental practices of establishing and maintaining power; how states engage with migrant and diasporic communities residing in the West; how oil-rich Arab monarchies have extended their support for a number of sending states’ ruling regimes via cooperation on labour migration; and, finally, how labour and forced migrants may serve as instruments of political leverage. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork and data collection and employing a range of case studies across the Middle East and North Africa, Tsourapas enhances existing understandings of regional migration governance in the Global South. The book identifies how the management of cross-border mobility in the Middle East is not primarily dictated by legal, moral, or human rights considerations but driven by states’ actors key concern – political power. Offering key insights into the history and current migration policy dilemmas, the book will provide both novices and specialists with fresh insights on migration into, out of, and across the modern Middle East.
fascinating one. Inevitably there have been some events that could have been studied in more depth, and one of the main challenges of this study has been to edit down the coverage of any one issue and to decide to cut out some things all together. This study also constructs a framework through which Labour’s foreign policy and its outlook on the world can be analysed and interpreted. It argues that Labour did seek to offer an alternative to the traditional power politics or realist approach of British foreign policy, which had stressed national self-interest, and to provide
Small state survival as a historical phenomenon 1 Introducing small state survival as a historical phenomenon Small states are survival artists. In a states system shaped by power politics and dominated by great powers, the survival and especially the proliferation of small states is a remarkable phenomenon. But what is the actual magnitude of this phenomenon and how can it be explained? In short, what is the ‘big story’ behind small state survival? Understanding the survival of small states as one consistent historical phenomenon stretching over the past three