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This book analyses the prospects for services integration in South Asia, focusing on member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. SAARC turned to trade promotion in order to achieve greater regional integration, starting with the signing of the SAARC Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA) in April 1993. The book discusses the role and performance of services within the region and identifies those services and areas which offer good and varied prospects for intra-regional integration. It also assesses the status of liberalization and reforms as well as current levels of intra-regional engagement in services in order to highlight the policy environment and existing opportunities and interests in the regional market. Furthermore, the book looks at multilateral and extra-regional/bilateral commitments made by the member countries of the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) in services and their positions on key issues in order to evaluate their preparedness to commit under SAFTA. Finally, the book considers negotiating priorities in different services and on cross-cutting issues to point out possible modalities for negotiation.

This book aims at parsing and explaining some key forces that feature in every one of the global and regional financial crises and monetary crises that erupted in the world economy over the past decades. The text presents historical accounts of the recent major financial crises and then proceeds to present and explain the main streams of theories on the financial crises that featured in these historical episodes: banking crises and panics; credit frictions and market freezes; currency regime crises, births and bursts of asset bubbles, and conflicting forces behind the volatility of international capital flows. The book also deals with the emergence of a new paradigm: the development of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century macroeconomic analytical framework from the pre-2008 paradigm of modern macroeconomic thinking that served as the workhorse of policy making. The old model had been used to provide the theoretical underpinning for monetary and fiscal policy making in the period known as the Great Moderation. But, as part of the intellectual awakening after the 2008 global crisis, there is a surge of remodeling efforts aimed at the development of an analytical framework that can underpin monetary and fiscal policy making in the era of the Great Recession.

This biography of Clarence Samuel Stein comprehensively examines his built and unbuilt projects and his intellectual legacy as a proponent of the “Garden City” for a modern age. This examination of Stein's life and legacy focuses on four critical themes: his collaborative ethic in envisioning policy, design, and development solutions; promotion and implementation of “investment housing;” his revolutionary approach to community design, as epitomized in the Radburn Idea; and his advocacy of communitarian regionalism. His cutting-edge projects such as Sunnyside Gardens in New York City; Baldwin Hills Village in Los Angeles; and Radburn, New Jersey, his “town for the motor age,” continue to inspire community designers and planners in the United States and around the world. Stein was among the first architects to integrate new design solutions and support facilities into large-scale projects intended primarily to house working-class people, and he was a cofounder of the Regional Planning Association of America. As a planner, designer, and, at times, financier of new housing developments, Stein wrestled with the challenges of creating what today we would term “livable,” “walkable,” and “green” communities during the ascendency of the automobile. He managed these challenges by partnering private capital with government funding, as well as by collaborating with colleagues in planning, architecture, real estate, and politics.

This volume tackles the history of Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century by breaking it down into six regions:- Northeast England; Southeast England; Southwest England; Northwest England; Scotland; and Ireland. The intent is to determine the different economic, social, and geographic factors that contribute to the varied rates of rise and decline of Shipbuilding across the United Kingdom, rather than view the nation’s shipbuilding history as a singular narrative, which risks omitting the complexity of each region. Each region has been ascribed an author, and each author seeks to establish the quantitative and qualitative nature of output in their region, assessing individual factors of production, the character of the enterprises, and the nature of the market.

Derived from the nationalist writings of José Martí, the concept of Cubanidad (Cubanness) has always imagined a unified hybrid nation where racial difference is nonexistent and nationality trumps all other axes of identity. Scholars have critiqued this celebration of racial mixture, highlighting a gap between the claim of racial harmony and the realities of inequality faced by Afro-Cubans since Independence in 1898. This book argues that it is not only the recognition of racial difference that threatens to divide the nation, but that popular regional sentiment further contests the hegemonic nationalist discourse. Given that music is a prominent symbol of Cubanidad, musical practices play an important role in constructing regional and local, as well as national, identities, and the book thus suggests that regional identity exerts a significant influence on the aesthetic choices Cuban musicians make. Through the examination of several genres, the book explores the various ways that race and the politics of place are entangled in contemporary Cuban music-making. It argues that racialized discourses that circulate about different cities affect both the formation of local identity and musical performance. Thus, the musical practices discussed—including rumba, timba, eastern Cuban folklore, and son—are examples of the intersections between regional identity formation, racialized notions of place, and music-making.

This pioneering study examines regional British television drama from its beginnings on the BBC and ITV in the 1950s to the arrival of Channel Four in 1982. It discusses the ways in which regionalism, regional culture and regional identity have been defined historically, outlines the history of regional broadcasting in the UK, and includes two detailed case studies – of Granada Television and BBC English Regions Drama – representing contrasting examples of regional television drama production during what is often described as the ‘golden age’ of British television. The conclusion brings the study up to date by discussing recent developments in regional drama production, and by considering future possibilities. A Sense of Place is based on original research and draws on interviews by the author with writers, producers, directors and executives including John Finch, Denis Forman, Alan Plater, David Rose, Philip Saville and Herbert Wise. It analyses a wide range of television plays, series and serials, including many previously given little attention such as The Younger Generation (1961), The Villains (1964-65), City ’68 (1967-68), Second City Firsts (1973-78), Trinity Tales (1975) and Empire Road (1978-79). Written in a scholarly but accessible style the book uncovers a forgotten history of British television drama that will be of interest to lecturers and students of television, media and cultural studies, as well as the general reader with an interest in the history of British television.

What has driven neighboring states to intervene in the Afghan conflict? This book challenges mainstream analyses which place Afghanistan at the center – the so-called “heart” – of a large pan-Asian region, whose fate is predicated on Afghan stability. Instead, the authors situate Afghanistan on the margins of three regional security complexes – those of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf – each characterized by security dynamics and rivalries, which, in turn, inform the engagement of their constituent states in Afghanistan. The book thus adapts the analytical framework developed by Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver in their book Regions and Powers (2003) to the region neighboring Afghanistan. Within the South Asia Security Complex, Pakistan and India’s sustained engagement with Afghanistan can thus be understood in the context of their own perennial rivalries. Within Central Asia, security cooperation is hampered by competition for regional supremacy and great power support, a dynamic reflected in these states’ half-hearted engagement in Afghanistan. In the Persian Gulf, Iran and Saudi Arabia are locked in a rivalry for economic and political influence, which is in turn mirrored in their Afghan engagements. The implication is that neighborly interference in the Afghan conflict is best addressed by resolving tensions within each of its surrounding regions. Based on a careful account of the recent history, the book explains why recent efforts to build a comprehensive Afghanistan-centric regional security order have failed, and suggests what might be done to reset inter-state relations in the wider neighborhood.

Much has been said about the re-emergence of China to its historical position of eminence in the world economy, yet little is understood about the kind of economic system China is evolving. What are the rules of the game of business in today's China, and how are they likely to change over the next decades? This book sheds much-needed light on these questions. Building on recent conceptual and empirical advances, and rich in concrete examples, it offers a comprehensive and systematic exploration of present-day Chinese capitalism, its component parts, and their interdependencies. It suggests that Chinese capitalism, as practiced today, in many respects represents a development from traditional business practices, whose revival has been greatly aided by the influx of investments and managerial talent from the Regional Ethnic Chinese. On the basis of present trends in the Chinese economy as well as through comparison with five major types of capitalism — those of France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United States — the book derives a prediction of the probable development paths of Chinese capitalism and its likely competitive strengths and weaknesses.

The aim of the book is to closely study regime responses and the principal transformations that have occurred in the MENA countries and in the region overall as a result of the Arab Spring, with the purpose of assessing whether the nature of power and power relations has changed since 2011.Thus, this book analyses comparatively the consequences of the political changes that have taken place following the Arab Spring in MENA countries, not only at national level (within political regimes), but also at regional and international level (the MENA region and western policies towards MENA countries). The monograph opts for a horizontal comparative analysis by theme: parties and political groups, elections, constitutional frameworks, power relations, governance, civil society, rights and freedoms, regional powers, security issues and foreign policies. In order to complement this comparative analysis, this book also employs a typology to study change processes undertaken in specific countries in the MENA region: democratisation, autocratisation, political liberalisation, authoritarian progression and the breakdown of state authority. Thus, political change can and often does take different directions, not all of which necessarily have to lead to regime change. Transitions may occur from authoritarianism toward democracy, but may also give rise to a reconfiguration of authoritarianism. Authoritarian rulers can undertake political reforms without democratic motivations. Thus, the broad concept of ‘political change’ is used in this monograph not only in the sense of provoking democratic developments, but also as an element in reshaping authoritarian regimes.