The exploration, use, and exploitation of space resources is the most exciting chapter among today's issues of concern to the space community. At the same time, however, it has generated intense controversy at the international level, since current international and space law do not seem to ensure a stable, clear regime for such activities to take place. Furthermore, some legislative approaches at the national level, which have seen the light of day, do not seem capable of ensuring a universally acceptable solution. It could therefore be said that the question of how the governance of space resources in general should ideally be regulated remains, for the time being, unresolved.

This book thoroughly reviews the relevant international experience and explores why current international law is at an impasse on the issue of space resources. Further, it discusses the possible ways out in the legal field and proposes solutions, some of which have not been presently discussed.

The book, which systematically analyzes private international law rules contained in the Colombian legal system, contributes to the study and knowledge of this legal field, and also has a positive impact on its practical application. In addition, attention is given to the need for a special legislation that not only fits the Colombian reality and takes into consideration the evolution of private international law in Latin America. The book appeals to a worldwide audience. It enables readers to better understand how private law deals with a variety of situations in the Global South. Such situations can be linked to virtually all global phenomena, including at least two: cross-border migration and international trade. Regarding this, Colombia stands out in Latin America because, although it has traditionally been the origin of many migrants, in recent years it has also come to play an important role as a destination and transit country for migrants from different regions. In addition,Colombia's economic growth has led it to become part of several international trade agreements, for example, with the Andean Community, Venezuela, Mexico, MERCOSUR, Chile, the Northern Triangle, which includes Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and also with Canada, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the United States, the European Union, South Korea, Costa Rica and the Pacific Alliance, of which Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru are members. All this, while resulting in an increase in situations with foreign elements that must be dealt with by national authorities, makes it unavoidable to know the Colombian private international law to know the legal landscape of the region in relation to global issues that currently must be addressed worldwide. Thus, the book is of interest to students in different countries. They find in it a guide to understand the theory and dogmatics of private international law in Latin America and Colombia. The academic relevance of the book is alsoreflected in its usefulness for scholars working in private international law and comparative law. It allows for an in-depth study of the problems that underly private international law in this part of the Global South. It is structured and written in such a way that it can be used as a textbook in undergraduate and graduate courses in subjects such as comparative law, private international law, international contracts, international trade, and international movement of persons and goods.

In this book, Oke Heinrich Horstmann explores how young people learn about democracy and their own role within it through out-of-school educational settings. The study is motivated by the political engagement of many youths, particularly in the context of the Fridays for Future protest movement. The author first outlines a conceptual framework for Citizenship education programs within teaching-learning laboratories. Based on an integrated approach of democratic education that combines social and subject-specific learning, he develops an out-of-school educational program implemented at the demokratie:werk of the Kiel Science Outreach Lab (Kieler Forschungswerkstatt).

A quantitative questionnaire-based study investigates changes in participants' individual political dispositions. In addition, guided individual interviews are conducted and analyzed using qualitative research methods to capture processes of meaning-making related to democracy. The results suggest that participation in the program may lead to increases in political self-efficacy, specific action readiness, and, in some cases, political interest. The investigation of learners' conceptions suggests potential for fostering meaning-making but also reveals a need for deeper reflection on the perceived role of the individual in democratic contexts.

This volume sheds light on the complex global landscape of democracy weakening and autocracy strengthening, along with their profound impact on the response to the climate crisis. The book is divided into three sections and adopts a multidisciplinary approach. The first section examines various pathways of global democracy erosion and autocracy growth, including challenges posed by voters, politicians, unelected officials, and climate skeptics.

In the second section, the focus shifts to climate change politics in a divided world, investigating the challenges political polarization poses to a sustainable future. The chapters cover key topics, such as energy security, responses to environmental disasters, environmental sustainability, sustainable development, and human rights.

The impact of eroding democracy on the natural environment and the sustainability concerns during the climate change era is explored in the third section, viewed through a rarely used humanities lens. Studies on pro-climatic national symbols, ecofeminism, eco-justice, and the Sustainable Development Goals ante litteram provide the context for this final section.

This book offers invaluable insights into our evolving world. For scholars, students, policymakers, and activists in fields such as autocracy, democracy, politics of climate change, political sociology, international relations, and sustainability, it presents strategies to navigate climate change adaptation in a rapidly changing, less democratic world.

In recent years, political scandals involving nepotism, sexual harassment, coercion, and abuses of power have captured global attention. This book sheds light on this phenomenon, highlighting the transformations in media and journalism in the digital age and broader socio-political trends.

Amidst global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, scandals increase rapidly as institutions struggle under pressure, leading to moral and legal transgressions. These scandals drive public conflict along ideological lines and serve as strategic tools in political battles, reinforced by partisan media.

The book explores how scandals contribute to the spread of conspiracy theories, feeding public skepticism towards institutions. Based on recent research by international experts, it comprehensively analyzes the interplay between crises, conflicts, conspiracy narratives, and scandalization in modern society, presenting their impact on political and social dynamics.

This open access book assesses the links between decentralization and crises management in Czechia, paying particular attention to the ways in which local municipalities have dealt with turbulent problems including the Covid-19 pandemic and the migration crises caused by the war in Ukraine. There are more than 6000 municipalities in Czechia, most of which have fewer than 1000 inhabitants. With limited resources, municipalities are often forced to cooperate when it comes to dealing with major political and societal issues. Yet the various ways in which local governments cooperate, and the wider impact this has on the country as a whole, has not been fully examined. Drawing on existing literature and interviews with local governors, the book examines how decentralization affects the way crises are handled, and summarizes experiences and lessons from Czechia. In doing so, it identifies both the challenges brought about by decentralized local government systems, as well as the ways in which they contribute to community governance and its resilience. The book will appeal to all those interested in public administration and local government studies.

This book examines the socially segregated Santals, a tribal community that migrated from various parts of Bengal and its neighbouring states of Bihar, Orissa, and Jharkhand to Kolkata, a city currently driven by capitalist-consumerist forces that pose a challenge in terms of the community's inclusion and accommodation. As residents of Kolkata for more than four decades, the Santal migrants have experienced multiple unique challenges in adapting to modern, urban life.
The book maps the political economy of social change around the globe and in India to understand how such marginalised tribes have coped with attempts to assimilate. By pursuing an ethnographic account and exploring the lived realities of the Santals as they negotiate the socio-cultural world of the city, the book attempts to deconstruct notions of 'pristine' tribal cultures and the need to 'mainstream' tribes, thus conveying a sense of the multiple discourses on the tribal question emerging from within the tribal community. In turn, it critically addresses the tension concerning the theory-practice divide in researching marginality. Combining theoretical insights with empirical discussions and thematic analyses of the qualitative data, the book offers researchers, scholars, students, and policymakers an interesting read on marginality in the context of globalizing urban spaces.

This book, extensively revised and updated in its second edition, presents a comprehensive overview of housing policy in Australia over the last quarter century. At a time of widespread concern about declining housing system performance, it investigates the many dimensions of housing affordability and housing wealth inequality, together with government actions affecting these outcomes.

The authors analyse the causes and implications of falling home ownership, rising rental stress rates and the long-term neglect of social housing, as well as the housing situation of Indigenous Australians.

Building on its analysis of housing policy evolution in modern Australia, this new edition also documents and critiques the numerous government efforts of the early 2020s to halt the decline in housing affordability. These reforms span tenancy regulation, land-use planning and housing supply, first home buyer assistance, and social/affordable housing investment.

Throughout, the book identifies current and future housing challenges for Australian governments, recognising these as a complex set of inter-connected problems. Drawing on its coverage of the economics, politics and governance of housing provision, the final chapter outlines a pathway to the transformational national strategy needed for a fairer and more productive housing system.

As democratic systems come under increasing strain worldwide, assessing their strength and resilience is more urgent than ever. Some argue that local democracy can serve as a bulwark against democratic backsliding-providing institutional resilience, political diversity, and grounded arenas for citizen engagement. But to fulfil this role, it must itself be strong, accountable, and responsive. Swedish Local Democracy at the Crossroads makes the case for continuous, systematic evaluation of democratic institutions at the local level and introduces a structured framework for doing so.

Applying this framework to Sweden-one of the world's most decentralised countries-the book offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Swedish local democracy available in English. Swedish municipalities are key actors in delivering welfare services, upholding political legitimacy, and maintaining citizen trust. Yet they increasingly face rising demands, institutional ambiguity, and weakened party structures that challenge their ability to govern effectively.

Grounded in historical context and detailed empirical analysis, the book explores enduring tensions and outlines potential pathways for reform. It examines core dimensions such as representation, participation, institutional design, and the evolving relationship between politicians and bureaucrats. While centred on the Swedish experience, its insights extend well beyond national borders and will appeal to researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners concerned with democratic governance and institutional renewal.

This collected volume brings attention to the understudied work of the Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialist, Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), showing that his philosophy is important for the present and future. It appeals to students, researchers and the general audience in revealing that through Berdyaev, humanity does not simply evolve from the biological to the technological but rather it is a presence and spiritual experience that places beings in the cosmos and provides real meaning. This edited volume presents contributions from a diverse group of scholars filling a lacuna in the scholarship of this classical thinker.

This book explores the relationship between an introduced gender equality rule and broader gender sensitivity in the Parliament of the Republic of Fiji. Key concepts of gendered institutional transformation - commitment, capacity and will - are contextualized from a Fijian gender politics perspective to uncover the extent to which actors and processes of this parliament are gender sensitive.
Very little of the global research on gender sensitive parliaments has focused on the Pacific region, despite significant investments from international organizations towards gender sensitive parliamentary strengthening. This investment is often predicated on the assumption that the international actors who have been instrumental in defining the norm are best placed to entrench it in local contexts. The case study of Fiji provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges faced in establishing the roots of cultural political change required to achieve truly gender sensitive parliaments.

Bangladesh has one of the most centralized local resource management systems in Asia. It is, however, one of the lowest-performing regions in terms of local resource mobilization. The book focuses on the union council, otherwise known as a Union Parishads (UPs), which is the smallest rural local government unit in Bangladesh. The book examines the legal provisions and practices of resource mobilization at UPs to understand the effects of resource mobilization on development activities and the obstacles encountered by UPs when attempting to mobilize resources. Based on the extensive empirical research into UPs, which includes surveys, focus group discussions, interviews, as well as a review of government reports, working papers, and legal frameworks, the authors argue that current legal provisions and practices in local resource mobilization are ineffective for their intended purpose. The book also suggests remedies and policy recommendations for the effective mobilization of local resources.

This book explores how public appointments influence and are shaped by political and administrative factors, and their impact on governance, state capacity, and democratic legitimacy across Latin America. Through comparative analyses and case studies from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru, it investigates the complex interplay between political interests and meritocratic principles. The volume examines how politicized appointments affect institutional performance, corruption, and societal inequality, shedding light on strategic calculations behind cabinet formation, bureaucratic recruitment, and professionalization efforts. By dissecting the tensions between politics and bureaucratic expertise, it also highlights the challenges of politicization and the possibilities of professionalization and merit-based reforms. Rich with nuanced insights, this work serves as a valuable resource for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners aiming to understand and enhance public sector governance, institutional reform, and democratic stability in Latin America and beyond.

Public Administration, Civic Engagement, and Spanish-Speaking Communities builds on the first bilingual (Spanish-English) special session at the National Academy of Public Administration's 2022 Social Equity Leadership Conference. Expanding on the themes of that groundbreaking conversation, this interdisciplinary volume addresses the urgent need to center multilingual voices in the pursuit of social equity in public administration. It examines the lived experiences and systemic challenges faced by Spanish-speaking communities in the United States-from language and cultural barriers to generational divides and unequal access to technology-while also highlighting innovative approaches to inclusive service delivery and democratic participation.

With 31 contributors representing diverse identities and disciplines, this volume models walking the social equity talk. Most chapters are coauthored by teams of scholars, students, and practitioners at different career levels, bringing forward the voices of Spanish-speaking communities alongside allies and social equity champions.

Designed for faculty, students, researchers, and practitioners alike, the book offers both breadth and depth: each chapter can be read on its own, yet together they create a comprehensive portrait of civic engagement, governance, and social equity in Spanish-speaking contexts.

This edited book reflects on the development and importance of psychosocial and mental health support in disaster interventions and management in India. Drawing on scientific studies and reports from the Indian context and Asian countries, this collection discusses the importance of psychosocial support for effective recovery, strengthening resiliency, and long-term sustainable development. The chapters examine the role of government's policies and humanitarian organizations in relation to critical situations due to disasters (earthquakes, floods, landslides, cyclones, tsunamis, conflicts), health emergencies (COVID-19), or human error (gas leak).

An invaluable read for researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners in the field of disaster management & risk reduction, mental health and psychosocial support, crisis intervention, community based interventions, and clinical services, this book collects examples and case studies to promote the development of four strategies of psychosocial support in disaster interventions: micro level interventions; standardized practice; knowledge sharing; government policy initiatives.

This open access book examines how policymakers respond to natural hazards in the wake of global climate change. Through a series of five case studies it assesses how changing patterns of natural hazards collide with established patterns of spatial planning, and how alternative strategies could be operationalised in local policy practice. Due to global warming, wildfires and floods are occurring in regions where they had previously been virtually unknown. Yet local public policy for immediate protection against natural hazards has remained at the margins of both public and scholarly attention. The book argues that when it comes to the containment and mitigation of natural hazards as the consequence of climate change, effective prevention requires accurate anticipation of impacts, appropriate policy settings, and the mobilization of administrative skill.

What if the FBI's surveillance of the New Left wasn't only about repression and cynical self-interest?

This book revisits one of the most controversial episodes of the Cold War: the FBI's counterintelligence investigations into the activist leaders of SDS and other radical groups. While scholars have rightly emphasized political overreach, constitutional violations, and the Bureau's institutional self-interest, newly declassified documents reveal that it also possessed a stream of intelligence - often fragmentary, sometimes credible - that pointed to international ties many scholars have overlooked or discounted.

Through close historical analysis of this evolving intelligence picture, the book complicates the dominant narrative of Hoover-era surveillance. It shows how the FBI and other agencies perceived the New Left's developing connections to Cuba, North Vietnam, and other Communist powers, and why they came to see those ties as potential counterintelligence threats.

Rather than defending the Bureau's conduct, the book seeks to understand it on its own terms, emphasizing how counterintelligence agencies operate amid deep uncertainty and limited oversight. In doing so, it offers a new perspective on the internationalization of the New Left, the nature of foreign influence, and the machinery of Cold War security. A work of historical and analytical recovery, it challenges prevailing narratives in U.S. political history, intelligence studies, and the historiography of the 1960s.

This book is the first study of how President Barack Obama and his administration used the negotiation and ratification of an arms control treaty, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), as a vehicle for advancing one of the president's primary foreign policy objectives, a reset of US relations with Russia in the early years of his first term of office. It is a study of the administration's efforts to move from a president's strategic vision to defining that vision as a policy priority and ultimately, successfully negotiating what the president deemed the first and most important element of the reset agenda.

Many attempts have been made to explain Russia's fateful decision to invade Ukraine, but the distinguished political scientist Sabine Fischer argues that we can only fully understand Russia's foreign policy and its aggressive war of annihilation against Ukraine by putting Russian chauvinism at the heart of our analysis. Fischer argues that Putin's regime has long been driven by a mixture of aggressive nationalism, sexism and autocracy: taken together, these three elements constitute the chauvinist threat that stems from Moscow and that led to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

An internationally renowned expert on Russia and Eastern Europe with decades of experience in EU-Russia relations, Fischer enriches her analysis with observations drawn from her own experiences in Russia and Eastern Europe over the past thirty years, including conversations with senior Russian politicians and colleagues shortly before and after the invasion. She also shows that the chauvinist threat stemming from Moscow is a threat not just to Ukraine but also to liberal democracy and the rules-based world order, and she outlines steps that liberal democracies should take to counter this danger.

Using a feminist lens and bringing into sharp focus the sexism of Putin's regime and its explosive interaction with nationalism and autocracy, this book makes an important contribution to understanding both the brutal war in Ukraine and the serious threats faced by all liberal democracies today.

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the full spectrum of Russian influence operations targeting international actors and various segments of society following the onset of the war in Ukraine. It explores Russia's revisionist foreign policy, which has long aimed to challenge the post-Cold War international order through a combination of information operations and military power.

Russia's extensive military campaign in Ukraine is framed not merely as an assault on the Ukrainian nation but as a broader confrontation with Western countries, as orchestrated by the Kremlin. The book examines the deliberate escalation of tensions since the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv (2013-2014) and the subsequent overthrow of the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime. This period marked the beginning of intensified hostilities, culminating in the annexation of Crimea and the establishment of pro-Russian puppet states in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014, followed by their incorporation into the Russian Federation in February 2022.

In addition to providing a historical overview, the book examines the organization and structure of Russian influence operations. It introduces modernized concepts and offers a novel classification of "influence operations," exploring their connections to information warfare, computational propaganda, disinformation, cyberattacks, AI-generated attacks, and the manipulation of politicians and opinion leaders, among other tactics. This study presents a critical resource for understanding the multifaceted nature of Russian influence strategies in the contemporary geopolitical landscape.

This book offers the first in-depth analysis of the evolution of Russia's relations with the Global South across political, military-political, and economic domains.

Though formally part of the Global North, Russia has, since 2007, increasingly positioned itself as an independent-and often opposing-actor to the West, aligning more closely with the Global South. This volume explores Russia's foreign policy during the 2022-2024 war with Ukraine and confrontation with the West, analyzing it at both global and regional levels.

The contributors propose models for understanding the Kremlin's shifting strategies, including doctrinal orientations, redefinitions of national interest, and the role of personal leadership. The book also examines the tools of Russian foreign policy in the evolving geopolitical context.

It highlights key areas such as Russia's efforts to reshape BRICS as a geo-economic counterweight to the West, its renewed activism in Sub-Saharan Africa, complex Middle Eastern diplomacy, and its strategic turn to Latin America-all within the broader pivot to the Global South.

Placed in long-term historical context-from the medieval era to the 2000s-the book combines theoretical and applied analysis. It is written for a multidisciplinary audience and is suitable for academic and classroom use.

This book offers an introduction to the history and course of the Russian war against Ukraine. Through this book, readers will:

- gain data, facts, and a general understanding of Russia's current war against Ukraine;
- understand the connections between history, culture, and politics on the one hand, and Russia's aggression toward its neighbors on the other;
- learn about the legal, economic, and humanitarian dimensions of the war;
- be able to correctly interpret new developments related to the war;
- expand their knowledge of international relations, international law, and the positions of individual states and organizations beyond the current war.

The book has a modular structure. Each chapter examines a different aspect of the war.

This edited volume is the fifth in the Japan Decides series and the premier venue for scholarly research on the 2024 general election for the Japanese House of Representatives. The 2024 election was historic, with Japan's long-ruling LDP suffering its second worst showing at the ballot box since it was founded. The volume features a broad range of scholarship from top researchers in Japan, the United States, and Europe. After an introduction that sets the stage, the second section analyzes political parties, including the LDP, CDP, Komeito, and Ishin. The third section explores the campaign, and features chapters on the policy positions of candidates, social media, public opinion, party manifestos, and turnout. The fourth section analyzes the major policy issues surrounding the election, including the Unification Church and money scandals, women's representation, LGBTQ+ rights, childcare, macroeconomics and inflation, and Japan's role in the global economy. The conclusion synthesizes the original research in the volume's chapters to provide a coherent overall explanation for understanding the election in both historical and comparative perspective.

This book poses a provocative question: what happens when academic writing is imported not just as a skill set, but as an ideology, one that dictates whose knowledge counts, which languages belong, and how scholarly voice should sound? Focusing on English-medium instruction (EMI) universities in Central Asia, the book reimagines academic writing as a social practice rooted in power, identity, and institutional histories. Across chapters, contributors examine how students and educators negotiate imported norms, develop scholarly voice, and contest epistemic hierarchies through feedback, supervision, and writing groups. Rather than adopting global prescriptions, the book foregrounds local pedagogies, culturally embedded challenges, and creative responses to writing in EMI university contexts. As one of the first regionally grounded academic literacies volumes in Central Asia, this book offers essential insights for scholars of writing development, decolonial education, and the politics of knowledge production in global higher education reform.

This book takes a step back from the usual debates over conscience in medicine and asks whether the conscientious practice of individual healthcare practitioners is coherent and acceptable on its own. This book argues in the affirmative and describes how we move forward in light of the deep moral and professional disagreement that exists. The book explains why the current framing within the debate is mistaken and offers an alternative framing. In so doing, the author discusses disagreement within healthcare professions, the distinction between conscience protectors and conscience dissenters, and how to properly understand the role of religious and personal philosophical reasons in practicing conscientiously. The book articulates the key confusion in much of the current debate - that disagreement over conscience in medicine is due to religious or personal philosophical beliefs - and rejects it. The book then, positively, argues that differing accounts of moral responsibility are at the root of this disagreement, opening up new avenues for dialogue and potentially fruitful collaborations. The book concludes with a much needed and basic discussion of what is going on when practical judgements are made in healthcare: the medical act. This book is of great interest to both advanced undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, bioethics, and medicine, as well as researchers, physicians, and health professionals.

This book explores how South-South Cooperation (SSC) is influencing Latin America's foreign policy and development choices in a changing world shaped by China's growing global role. It looks at how countries in the region are rethinking their international strategies to gain more autonomy and reduce their dependence on traditional powers like the United States.

By examining the history of SSC, the book shows how Latin American governments are turning to new partnerships and development paths. It explains how global and domestic factors combine to shape foreign policy decisions in the 21st century, especially as both China and the United States compete for influence. A detailed case study of Ecuador (2000-2025) highlights the counter-hegemonic diplomacy of Rafael Correa's presidency and the key changes that followed. This accessible and timely study offers valuable insight for anyone interested in Latin America, international cooperation, global power shifts, and the search for new models of development.

This book examines the role and impact of European Union (EU) agencies in the areas of justice and home affairs, common foreign and security policy, and common security and defense policy. Through comparative case studies of thirteen key agencies, including the European Defense Agency (EDA), Europol, Frontex, and the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), it sheds light on the agencies' roles and impacts.

The book explores four main areas: the conditions that led to the establishment of these agencies, their institutional structures, how they execute their powers, and how they have responded to Russia's war against Ukraine. Using the principal-agent concept, the book analyzes power delegation, information asymmetry, accountability, and control.

The book provides insight into the agencies' activities, their role in enhancing the security of EU citizens, and their response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Additionally, it discusses future challenges and prospects for EU agencies in the evolving security landscape. Therefore, this book will appeal to scholars, students, policymakers, security professionals, and anyone interested in the EU's security framework and the role, impact, and future challenges of EU agencies in security and defense.

This book assesses the oversight regime in Afghanistan to identify and characterize the oversight failures, and then links them to specific negative strategic outcomes. Although there are high-quality analyses available about what went wrong in Afghanistan and why, few of them are grounded in scholarly research that uses empirical methods. This book fills that epistemological gap as well as provides a unique contribution to the body of literature, which does not contain any comprehensive studies of Afghanistan oversight. This type of study is important because certain characterizations of an oversight failure-e.g., Congress knowing that things were going badly in Afghanistan but choosing not to do anything about it-point to several pathologies about political control of the military and the incentive structures contained therein. Understanding and proactively managing these pathologies will be critical to improving strategic outcomes in future complex military interventions of the Afghanistan type.