The Lower !Garib, or Orange River, flows through the historical Namaqualand and since 1990 has formed the international border between Namibia and South Africa. The contributors to this volume focus on this hardly discussed stretch of the Orange River to understand the region's social history, geography, and economy. This book brings together scholars from Namibia, South Africa, and overseas, as well as the knowledge and analysis from people living in the region. In concise chapters and short portraits, they discuss the region's past and present from a variety of perspectives.

From the global geopolitical arena to the smart city, control over knowledge-particularly over data and intellectual property-has become a key battleground for the exercise of economic and political power. For companies and governments alike, control over knowledge-what scholar Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure-has become a goal unto itself.

The rising dominance of the knowledge structure is leading to a massive redistribution of power, including from individuals to companies and states. Strong intellectual property rights have concentrated economic benefits in a smaller number of hands, while the "internet of things" is reshaping basic notions of property, ownership, and control. In the scramble to create and control data and intellectual property, governments and companies alike are engaging in ever-more surveillance.

This open access book is a guide to and analysis of these changes, and of the emerging phenomenon of the knowledge-driven society. It highlights how the pursuit of the control over knowledge has become its own ideology, with its own set of experts drawn from those with the ability to collect and manipulate digital data. Haggart and Tusikov propose a workable path forward-knowledge decommodification-to ensure that our new knowledge is not treated simply as a commodity to be bought and sold, but as a way to meet the needs of the individuals and communities that create this knowledge in the first place.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

American Political Rhetoric is the only reader for introductory classes in American politics, government, and political communication designed to explore fundamental political principles through examples of political rhetoric ranging from the founding to today. Now in its eighth edition, its selections include the entire political spectrum and contributors range from our nation's founders to contemporary elected public officials, Supreme Court opinions, and representatives of historic movements for social change. The eighth edition includes new selections of recent Supreme Court decisions, including the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, foreign policy, and expanded coverage of individual rights and privileges, including freedom of speech and voting rights.
The book is now more useful than ever for students and teachers thanks to a supplementary website available at americanpoliticalrhetoric.com.

This textbook is an introductory guide to applying behavioral sciences and systemic thinking into public policy design and implementation. It presents an innovative public management toolkit to handle 'wicked' social problems - those not very responsive to traditional public policy instruments - by incorporating insights from the behavioral sciences and systemic design in the diagnostics of public problems, based on the motivations and constraints of the 'real citizen' - beyond the ideal citizen's perfectly rational intentions and plans devoid of social context or self-control problems.

This volume aims to motivate the inclusion of broader and deeper insights from the behavioral sciences - especially behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and social psychology - to the repertoire of public managers by introducing new methodologies for diagnosing the root causes behind public problems and for designing effective policies to address them. The new diagnosis tool - theMSI framework (an acronym for Motivation, Self-control, and Inattention problems) -, will help identify new mechanisms underlying social problems or reinterpret known problems based on behavioral insights. The new methodology for policy design - the PRIx framework (an acronym for Pricing policies, Regulatory policies, and Information policies) -, will enrich existing policy tools with such behavioral insights.

Behavioral Insights for Policy Design: A New Framework for Understanding Wicked Social Problems and Designing Policies for Real Citizens will be a useful and practical guide to public managers and students of graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in public management interested in learning how to apply innovative tools and methodologies inspired by the behavioral sciences into public policy design in a simple and practical way, even when dealing with complex social problems.

The first detailed account in English of an unprecedented moment in Sri Lanka's history, Debt Crisis and Popular Social Protest in Sri Lanka chronicles the 2022 popular uprising where mass protests forced the country's autocratic president to flee.

Exploring how the uprising, triggered by a debt crisis, relates to deeper problems of democracy, civil war and development, Janaka Biyanwila challenges numerous misunderstandings about the protests and uncovers how global financial markets and platform economies contributed to the upheaval. Locating the crisis within Global North-South dynamics, Biyanwila outlines how market-driven economic growth strategies restrain public involvement in decision making while asserting ethno-centric collective identities and hypermasculine cultures. Framing citizenship as well as justice in terms of cultural recognition, economic redistribution and political representation, chapters foreground the role of democratic social movements that encourage artistic engagement and collective learning as central for renewing citizenship as well as democracy. Reimagining development that embeds Global Production Networks within local communities and rethinking democracy across multiple tiers of governance, Biyanwila concludes by shifting his narrative to a broader focus on the Global South, and South Asia specifically.

Fusing the regional with the global, Debt Crisis and Popular Social Protest in Sri Lanka widens its perspective from a distinct, national moment to an international interdependency with the power to ripple across every corner of the globe.

One of the most challenging questions of today concerns how human activities threaten the conditions for our very own existence. With one crisis leading into the next, the need for socio-political change is necessary and desirable, yet so hard to imagine in practice. At the heart of the matter is a deeper crisis of the socio-political imagination.
To understand how a society produces and changes itself, Ingerid S. Straume points to historical and contemporary institutions and the imaginaries they embody, and argues that the key to social creativity is found in the reflexive potential of institutions, especially politics and education. Neoliberal rationality, on its part, has become dominant in many parts of the world, precisely by occulting the socio-political capacity for self-reflection. This occultation takes place in academic theories, policy reforms, technologies, and in individuals' self-understanding. In response to the planetary eco-crises and the weakening of democratic ideals, a new approach is needed where collectives, not individuals in isolation, become the mode for living well within existing, natural limits.
Inspired by important political thinkers such as Cornelius Castoriadis and Hannah Arendt, How Does a Society Change? develops a theoretical framework to elucidate how politics and education are two interrelated domains wherein a society may openly reflect upon itself. In short, a society that recognizes its capacity to change itself also recognizes the transformative, instituting potential of politics and education.

Is America in the midst of an electoral transformation? What were the sources of Joseph Biden's victory in 2020, and how do they differ from Republican and Democratic coalitions of the past? Does the Democratic victory signal a long-term decline for Republicans' chances in presidential elections?
Change and Continuity in the 2020 and 2022 Elections explores those questions by analyzing and explaining the voting behavior in the most recent presidential and midterm elections, as well as setting the results in the context of larger trends and patterns in elections studies. The authors present the latest National Election Studies data to help students see how social forces, party loyalties, and prominent issues affect voting behavior, turnout, and ultimately the results of presidential and congressional elections. Readers will come away with a better understanding of what the most recent elections mean for the future of American politics.

A sweeping narrative of America's imperial history and its long entanglement with China.

In Terminus, Stuart Rollo examines the origins and trajectory of American empire in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on its westward expansion and historic entanglement with China. American foreign and strategic policy in this region, Rollo argues, has always been shaped by broader economic and political concerns centered on China. China's current rise, and the economic and strategic systems that China is developing, represents the most serious challenge to the structure of American empire to date.

Rollo paints a sweeping historical narrative of American imperial history and its relationship with China from 1776 to the present. Grounded in archival research, official and personal correspondence, policy documents, declassified intelligence material, and congressional records, Terminus traces the development of American empire building from the pre-independence period to the eve of World War I, arguing that this new empire was primarily driven by commercial interests in China. Rollo explores shifts in global power, resource politics, and international economic structures that led the United States to transition from one of several imperial powers to the world's sole superpower by the last decade of the twentieth century. Finally, he examines the decline of American empire since its brief period of unipolarity in the 1990s, explaining the new pressures and challenges posed by the rise of China.

Rollo proposes three scenarios for how the United States might manage its inevitable imperial decline: a vain attempt to shore up and extend the empire, an exploitative hegemony, or a post-imperial foreign policy. This last option would work to repair the damaged fabric of American social and political life, providing a long-term, stable foundation for national security, prosperity, and the well-being of its citizens. All empires eventually end, but with the benefit of hindsight, Rollo urges us to consider how to engineer a softer landing.

The central purpose of this book is to examine answers to questions regarding the kind of political system that Myanmar urgently needs to develop. Myanmar has suffered the endless civil war for decades since regaining its sovereignty in 1948. Therefore, the lead research question is: What kind of federal democratic model is the most suitable for Myanmar and what kind of political arrangements should be in place?
To examine answers for this question, the author employed a descriptive-qualitative approach and triangulation research method including interviews with politicians and activists in Myanmar, field observation and analysis of historical documents. The author examines the contemporary political issues of Myanmar in term of federalism to ensure that analysis of this book does not omit the actual political process performed by the government. As a result of the study, Myanmar needs a tailored federal model which is the best to accommodate the ethnically divided country that would enhance solutions to ethnic conflicts and end the civil war.

An engaging look at how American politics and media reinforce partisan identity and threaten democracy.

Why are so many of us wrong about so much? From COVID-19 to climate change to the results of elections, millions of Americans believe things that are simply not true-and act based on these misperceptions. In Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, expert in media and politics Dannagal Goldthwaite Young offers a comprehensive model that illustrates how political leaders and media organizations capitalize on our social and cultural identities to separate, enrage, and-ultimately-mobilize us. Through a process of identity distillation encouraged by public officials, journalists, political and social media, Americans' political identities-how we think of ourselves as members of our political team-drive our belief in and demand for misinformation. It turns out that if being wrong allows us to comprehend the world, have control over it, or connect with our community, all in ways that serve our political team, then we don't want to be right.

Over the past 40 years, lawmakers in America's two major political parties have become more extreme in their positions on ideological issues. Voters from the two parties have become increasingly distinct and hostile to one another along the lines of race, religion, geography, and culture. In the process, these political identities have transformed into a useful but reductive label tied to what we look like, who we worship, where we live, and what we believe.

Young offers a road map out of this chaotic morass, including demand-side solutions that reduce the bifurcation of American society and increase our information ecosystem's accountability to empirical facts. By understanding the dynamics that encourage identity distillation, Wrong explains how to reverse this dangerous trend and strengthen American democracy in the process.