This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The key to sustained and equitable development in Latin America is high quality education for all. However, coalitions favoring quality reforms in education are usually weak because parents are dispersed, business is not interested, and much of the middle class has exited public education. In Routes to Reform, Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning--especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political--are possible. Several Andean countries and state governments in Brazil achieved notable reform since 2000, though on markedly different trajectories. Although rare, the first bottom-up route to reform was electoral. The second route was more top-down and technocratic, with little support from voters or civil society. Ultimately, by framing education policy in a much broader comparative perspective, Schneider demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, but rather--due to the emptiness of the education policy space--on more micro factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

This book examines the conditions under which new democracies succeed or fail in establishing firm and lasting civilian control of the military. David Kuehn and Aurel Croissant introduce a multi-dimensional conceptual framework to evaluate the degree of civilian control in new democracies and to trace developments over time. The theory of civilian control in new democracies that they propose integrates rationalist, structuralist, and institutionalist arguments into acoherent model to explain when, how, and through which causal mechanism new democracies succeed or fail in establishing and sustaining civilian control over the military. This theory is tested on an original dataset on civilian control over the military in 66 countries that have made the transitionfrom authoritarian to democratic rule at least once in the period from 1974 to 2010. The study traces the effects of different degrees of civilian control on the survival and democratic quality of third wave democracies, combining large-N statistical analyses with detailed case study narratives of several countries. The book establishes a comprehensive understanding of the conditions and processes under which third wave democracies succeeded or failed in establishing firm and lasting civiliancontrol of the military-and its consequences for the survival and quality of the new democratic structures, processes, and practices.

"Compared to other policy areas like health care, education is a relatively empty policy area because the beneficiaries--students and families, and business--are not politically active or relevant. This emptiness allows reform opponents like teacher unions and clientelist politicians to have greater impact, as well as pro-reform groups like civil society, policy networks and technocrats. Governments that managed to overhaul teacher careers took either a bottom-up electoral route (Chile and Ecuador) or a top-down technocratic route (Peru and Colombia). In other cases, machine unions (Mexico) or clientelist politicians (state of Rio de Janeiro) overturned career reforms."--

Despite the decision of the WTO members to launch a new round of negotiations at their Doha Ministerial in November 2001, developing countries continue to have very real concerns on a number of key issues. The successful completion of the Doha trade round and the realization of the goals of its Development Agenda represent a major challenge for both the developed and the developing world. The primary aim of this volume is to improve understanding of the issues, the objectives of policy and the options for trade policy reform particularly as they impact on the Asia-Pacific region. A team of authors from developing and developed countries in the Asia-Pacific identify ways in which progress might be made on the key negotiating topics, including market access and related issues in agriculture, non-agriculture merchandise and in trade in services.

Current Directions in Postal Reform brings together leading practitioners, worldwide postal administrations, and the courier industry as well as a number of regulators, academic economists, mailers and lawyers, to examine some of the major policy and regulatory issues facing the postal and delivery industry. Issues addressed include international postal policy; the universal service obligation; regulation; competition, entry, and the role of scale and scope economies; the nature and role of cost analysis in the postal service; productivity; interaction of law and economics; and service standards.

This review of regulatory reform in Greece presents an integrated assessment of areas such as the quality of the public sector, competition policy and enforcement, and market openness. It also contains chapters on sectors such as telecommunications, electricity, domestic ferries and trucking.