Mary Alice Haddad - Böcker

A timely collection examining a diverse region’s environmental shiftsEast Asia hosts a fifth of the world’s population and consumes over half the world’s coal, a quarter of its petroleum products, and a tenth of its natural gas. It also produces a third of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change. The region—whose countries share ecological, sociocultural, and political characteristics while varying in size, resource wealth, history, and political systems—offers excellent insights into the complex dynamics influencing environmental politics, advocacy, and policy. With essays addressing Japan after Fukushima, coal plants and wind turbines in China, environmental activism in Taiwan, and sustainable rural development in South Korea, Greening East Asia explores a region’s shift from development to “eco-development” in acknowledgment that environmental sustainability is a critical component of economic growth.

A timely collection examining a diverse region’s environmental shiftsEast Asia hosts a fifth of the world’s population and consumes over half the world’s coal, a quarter of its petroleum products, and a tenth of its natural gas. It also produces a third of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, making it a major contributor to climate change. The region—whose countries share ecological, sociocultural, and political characteristics while varying in size, resource wealth, history, and political systems—offers excellent insights into the complex dynamics influencing environmental politics, advocacy, and policy. With essays addressing Japan after Fukushima, coal plants and wind turbines in China, environmental activism in Taiwan, and sustainable rural development in South Korea, Greening East Asia explores a region’s shift from development to “eco-development” in acknowledgment that environmental sustainability is a critical component of economic growth.

Politics and Volunteering begins by painting a portrait of volunteering in Japan, and demonstrates that our current understandings of civil society have been based implicitly on a U.S. model that does not adequately consider participation patterns found in other parts of the world. The book develops a theory of civic participation that, incorporates citizen attitudes about governmental and individual responsibility, with societal and governmental practices that support (or hinder) volunteer participation. This theory is tested using cross-national and sub-national statistical analysis, and it is refined through detailed case studies of volunteering in three Japanese cities. The findings are then used to build the Community Volunteerism Model, which explains and predicts both the types and rates of volunteering in communities around the world. The model is tested using four cross-national case studies (Finland, Japan, Turkey and the United States) and three sub-national case studies in Japan.

Once viewed as an environmental hazard to the planet, East Asia is now at the forefront of pro-environmental policymaking. The region's progress has been both remarkable and surprising given the pro-business orientation of its political systems and their ideological diversity. Through a focus on three environmental policy areas exhibiting different levels of success, this Element shows how governments in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have been able to craft pro-environmental policy by working in collaboration with business and societal interests. The evolution of the region's eco-developmental states has resulted in exceptional progress in the areas of green technology and green finance, mixed outcomes in pollution management, and negligible improvement in addressing environmental justice. As the planet seeks guidance in addressing our collective climate crisis, East Asia offers both hope and caution for how we can craft pro-environmental policies in diverse political contexts.

How is democracy made real? How does an undemocratic country create new institutions and transform its polity such that democratic values and practices become integral parts of its political culture? These are some of the most pressing questions of our times, and they are the central inquiry of Building Democracy in Japan. Using the Japanese experience as starting point, this book develops a new approach to the study of democratization that examines state-society interactions as a country adjusts its existing political culture to accommodate new democratic values, institutions and practices. With reference to the country's history, the book focuses on how democracy is experienced in contemporary Japan, highlighting the important role of generational change in facilitating both gradual adjustments as well as dramatic transformation in Japanese politics.

How is democracy made real? How does an undemocratic country create new institutions and transform its polity such that democratic values and practices become integral parts of its political culture? These are some of the most pressing questions of our times, and they are the central inquiry of Building Democracy in Japan. Using the Japanese experience as starting point, this book develops a new approach to the study of democratization that examines state-society interactions as a country adjusts its existing political culture to accommodate new democratic values, institutions and practices. With reference to the country's history, the book focuses on how democracy is experienced in contemporary Japan, highlighting the important role of generational change in facilitating both gradual adjustments as well as dramatic transformation in Japanese politics.

Once viewed as an environmental hazard to the planet, East Asia is now at the forefront of pro-environmental policymaking. The region's progress has been both remarkable and surprising given the pro-business orientation of its political systems and their ideological diversity. Through a focus on three environmental policy areas exhibiting different levels of success, this Element shows how governments in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have been able to craft pro-environmental policy by working in collaboration with business and societal interests. The evolution of the region's eco-developmental states has resulted in exceptional progress in the areas of green technology and green finance, mixed outcomes in pollution management, and negligible improvement in addressing environmental justice. As the planet seeks guidance in addressing our collective climate crisis, East Asia offers both hope and caution for how we can craft pro-environmental policies in diverse political contexts.

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) protests are often criticized as parochial and short-lived, generating no lasting influence on broader processes related to environmental politics.  This volume offers a different perspective.  Drawing on cases from around the globe, it demonstrates that NIMBY protests, although always arising from a local concern in a particular community, often result in broader political, social, and technological change. Chapters include cases from Europe, North America, and Asia, engaging with the full political spectrum from established democracies to non-democratic countries. Regardless of political setting, NIMBY movements can have a positive and proactive role in generating innovative solutions to local as well as transnational environmental issues. Furthermore, those solutions are now serving as models for communities and countries around the world.