Leila Patel and Marianne S. Ulriksen, editors

Solutions to poverty and inequality are often designed, implemented, and evaluated in a top-down manner. The authors of this book turn things around, using a range of research approaches to show how social-assistance policies can be crafted to support local communities to effect positive change. Though based on studies conducted in the urban area of Doornkop, South Africa, the work applies equally  More >

Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff, editor

For some time in diaspora studies, attention to remittances has overshadowed the growing impact of emigrant groups both within the social and political arenas in their homelands and with regard to fundamental economic development. The authors of Diasporas and Development redress this imbalance, focusing on three core issues: the responses of diasporas to homeland conflicts, strategies for  More >

John P.J. Dussich, Paul C. Friday, Takayuki Okada, Akira Yamagami, and Richard D. Knudten

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Jay Ulfelder

Why have so many attempts at democracy in the past half-century failed? Confronting this much discussed question, Jay Ulfelder offers a novel explanation for the coups and rebellions that have toppled fledgling democratic regimes and that continue to threaten many new democracies today. Ulfelder draws on an original dataset of 110 democratic failures spanning 1955–2007 and also presents  More >

Andrew J. Nathan, Zhaohui Hong, and Steven R. Smith, editors

As China enters a stage of economic reform more challenging and risky than any that has gone before, the pressure for political liberalization grows apace. This volume explores the dilemmas of this new phase of complex change. The authors—most of whom write with the insight that comes from having lived and worked within the Chinese system—analyze how the evolution of China’s  More >

Shauna Reilly

Direct democracy typically is lauded for putting power in the hands of the people. But is it really as democratic as it seems? To what extent, and in what circumstances, is it less about citizen power and more about external influences seeking to manipulate outcomes? Addressing these issues, Shauna Reilly draws on and compares case studies of referendums, recall elections, and initiatives  More >

Jeffrey S. Kahana and Eva Kahana

Choice Outstanding Academic Book! What is the lived experience of previously healthy older adults as they face disability in late life, and how is disability assimilated in their identity? How do prevailing practices facilitate—or limit—options for elders living with new disabilities? To address these questions, Jeffrey Kahana and Eva Kahana uniquely synthesize disability and  More >

Rosalyn Benjamin Darling

Choice Outstanding Academic Book! Rosalyn Darling offers a sweeping examination of disability and identity, parsing the shifting forces that have shaped individual and societal understandings of ability and impairment across time. Darling focuses on the relationship between societal views and the self-conceptions of people with mental and physical impairments. She also illuminates the impact  More >

Paul T. Jaeger

From websites to mobile devices, cyberspace has revolutionized the lived experience of disability—frequently for better, but sometimes for worse.  Paul Jaeger offers a sweeping examination of the complex and often contradictory relationships between people with disabilities and the Internet. Tracing the historical and legal evolution of the digital disability divide in the realms of  More >

Emmeline Burdett

During the Nuremberg Medical Trial (1946-1947), the perpetrators of the Nazi euthanasia program were barely prosecuted. The program, also known as Aktion T4, was essentially a campaign of mass murder, designed to cleanse society of individuals who were deemed undesirable: incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, or simply old. Emmeline Burdett's close reading of the trial transcript and  More >