This book offers new and cutting-edge analyses of under-explored subjects and issues in the realm of soft power. It attempts to fill significant scholarly gaps in understanding the process by which soft power is created, as well as gaps in demonstrating its impact. Soft power is one of the most influential ideas in the study of international politics over the past thirty years. Can nations attain their most vital foreign policy objectives in agreeable ways? Advocates of the concept of soft power have vociferously answered in the affirmative. After many years of thinking in the field of international affairs that the only effective path to influence in international politics was military and economic power, the idea of soft power offers new and exciting possibilities of gaining such influence through a more benign path, one that elevates cooperation and esteem as preferred alternatives to violence, threat and military capacity. This book posits that the realization of the full potential of soft power as a foundation for international relations is a crucial goal for our present world, one beset by war and planetary crises. The book will be of special interest to researchers across political science, international relations, cultural studies and foreign policy. It was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Power.

Alternative Pathways to Complexity focuses on the themes of architecture, economics, and power in the evolution of complex societies. Case studies from Mesoamerica, Asia, Africa, and Europe examine the relationship between political structures and economic configurations of ancient chiefdoms and states through a framework of comparative archaeology. A group of highly distinguished scholars takes up important issues, theories, and methods stemming from the nascent body of research on comparative archaeology to showcase and apply important theories of households, power, and how the development of complex societies can be extended and refined. Drawing on the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic records, the chapters in this volume contain critical investigations on the role of collective action, economics, and corporate cognitive codes in structuring complex societies. Alternative Pathways to Complexity is an important addition to theoretical development and empirical research on Mesoamerica, the Old World, and cross-cultural studies. The theoretical implications addressed in the chapters will have broad appeal for scholars grappling with alternative pathways to complexity in other regions as well as those addressing diverse cross-cultural research. Contributors: Sarah B. Barber, Cynthia L. Bedell, Christopher S. Beekman, Frances F. Berdan, Tim Earle, Carol R. Ember, Gary M. Feinman, Arthur A. Joyce, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Lisa J. LeCount, Linda M. Nicholas, Peter N. Peregrine, Peter Robertshaw, Barbara L. Stark, T. L. Thurston, Deborah Winslow, Rita Wright

To stimulate the exploration of African initiative and creativity beyond immediate socio-economic and political circumstances this book demonstrates that societies in Africa have always showed the ability to negotiate whatever constraining ecological, economic and political circumstances they faced.

A substantially revised and updated edition of an earlier volume in the series. Asher presents a number of techniques of causal modelling, beginning with the work of Simon and Blalock, and moving on to recursive and non-recursive path estimation. Special attention is given to a number of problems in the causal analysis of data, with illustrations from studies in political socialization and voting behaviour.

Today, 70 percent of the American public supports reforms that would limit the number of terms a state legislator may serve, and the advocacy group U.S. Term Limits promotes this reform at all levels of government. But are advocates correct that term limits ensure citizens dedicated to the common good—rather than self-serving career politicians—run government? Or does the enforced high rate of turnover undermine the legislature’s ability to function? In Implementing Term Limits, Marjorie Sarbaugh-Thompson and Lyke Thompson bring thirteen years of intensive research and 460 interviews to assess changes since Michigan’s implementation of term limits in 1993 and explore their implications. Paying special attention to term limits’ institutional effects, they also consider legislative representation, political accountability, and the role of the bureaucracy and interest groups in state legislatures. Their thorough study suggests that legislators are less accessible to officials and that there is a larger gap between legislators and their voters. Moreover, legislators become much more politically ambitious after term limits and spend more time on political activities. The selection of top chamber leaders is complicated by newcomers’ lack of knowledge about and experience working with the leaders they elect before being sworn in. As a result, term limits in Michigan fail to deliver on many of the “good government” promises that appeal to citizens. Implementing Term Limits makes a unique and valuable contribution to the debate over the best means by which to obtain truly democratic institutions.

This book identifies drivers of transformation of auditing, including regulation, digitalisation, sustainability, and individual auditor characteristics, and discusses how the drivers affect auditing. It provides a holistic perspective, discussing these current and highly relevant themes in depth and ‘one by one’ and also stresses the importance of the temporal dimension, i.e., offering a historical and a present-day perspective. The book covers several different theoretical perspectives when analysing and discussing how the various drivers affect auditors, the audit process, accounting firms, stakeholders and so on. Sweden is used as a setting to study the effects of these drivers of transition. The Swedish experience is generalisable to other European countries, with a Germanic origin currently influenced by Anglo-American ideas of auditing. In addition, Sweden provides a research setting with unique access to empirical data. The monograph is unique in its broad coverage of drivers of transformation, combined with its clear focus on financial auditing. It is informed by a wide range of research approaches, from qualitative interview studies to recently developed machine learning methods. Readers, therefore, benefit from a comprehensive understanding of current changes in the audit industry. This will be a useful reference work for students of accounting and auditing, as well as for audit practitioners, including both auditors and regulators, and for researchers.

This book studies the relationship between administrative capacity and a member state’s influence in the European Union. More specifically, it studies member states’ ability to exert control over the European Commission during trade negotiations. But what determines administrative capacity and how do member states ensure their preferences are defended during trade negotiations? A combination of qualitative fieldwork and survey-analysis provides the answer. Interviews in Belgium, Poland, Estonia and Spain offer a privileged insight into the functioning of national trade administrations and its effects on their behavior in the Council of Ministers. Through survey data, these findings are further corroborated. The book is aimed at a readership interested in EU decision-making, negotiation theory, comparative public administration and the international political economy of trade.