Democracy, power and governance

Exploring the relationship between humour and offensiveness, this book delves into offensive jokes, their impact, and the dark side of laughter. It blends cultural analysis, politics, and philosophy to offer an antidote to positive thinking and guide readers through offensive humour.

Alison Young provides the first consolidated account of constitutional changes taking place which strengthen governmental powers and weaken political and legal checks, arguing that the democracy is being endangered.

With Agenda 2030, the UN adopted wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that integrate development and environmental agendas. This book has a unique focus on the political tensions between environmental and socio-economic objectives and advocates for a cooperative shift towards environmentally sound sustainability.

This topical book offers an analysis of the current state of the planning system in England and an evidence-based review of over a decade of change. With a critique of ongoing UK planning reforms, the book argues that the planning system is often blamed for a range of issues that are in fact the fault of ineffective policymaking.

ePDFs of chapters 4, 5 and 7 are available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

This book illustrates the ways in which contestations in Myanmar society are reflected in civil society. It provides an up-to-date overview of the main identities and contestations in Myanmar society as a whole.

Exploring the creative and destructive ways individuals and groups make use of new digital and social media in democratic societies across the world, this book presents a much-needed critical theory of the public sphere as we enter the new digital age.

Drawing on a wealth of qualitative longitudinal evidence, this book casts light on women’s lived experiences of welfare and work. It uncovers the hidden gendered bias of conditional welfare reforms to challenge dominant political discourses, policy design and practice norms.

Bringing together a team of experts, this volume sheds new light on inter-organizational relations in world politics. It demonstrates that, just as inter-organizations relations themselves are diverse and complex, research on this topic should also be pluralistic in order to draw new and valuable results and insights.

This volume offers an important vision of co-operation as an alternative to the neoliberal market, exploring the cooperative model’s potential for driving environmental and socio-economic transformation in the post-COVID world.

Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really happening in places of detention around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to bring about change.

Discussing the political understandings of trust and mistrust in the context of data, AI and technology at large, this book defines a process of trustification used by governments, corporations, researchers and the media to legitimise exploitation and the increasing of inequalities.