Citizen Engagement in Cuba: Neighbors and the State in Pogolotti examines citizen engagement at the local level in Cuba through projects initiated by the community since the 1990s. The nature of citizen participation in Cuba is not clearly understood by many in the United States, where the communist government is conflated with the Soviet states of Eastern Europe as a totalitarian regime in which the people of Cuba are helpless to confront, and punished when they do. The reality in Cuba is much more nuanced. This book discusses this reality through a focus on Pogolotti, reflecting on its history as the first low-cost housing community in Cuba in 1910. This community is but one example of a neighborhood where projects represent active participation by citizens. The willingness of communist authorities to work with officially sanctioned workshops and partner with civic groups indicates a level of citizen participation that has not been studied fully and provides an understanding of the relationship between citizens and the state in Cuba.

Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.

This book studies civic organizations in Miami’s Cuban community. Few places in the United States have been transformed by immigration the way Miami has been transformed by Cuban exiles. Cuban civic organizations help to explain why this is the case. Civic organizations are the heart of the story of the social and political power and influence of Miami’s Cuban community. This community is home to a broad tradition of active political participation and many civic organizations. The sheer number of organizations suggests they have something to do with the community’s considerable vibrancy and civic capacity. How do the organizations work? How have they managed to be so successful over so many years? What can be learned about successful civic organizing from their experience? How will changing United States-Cuba relations impact Cuban civic organizations, and, in turn, broader Miami? These are questions this book helps to answer.

The Cuban revolution served as a rallying cry to people across Latin America and the Caribbean. The revolutionary regime has provided vital support to the rest of the region, offering everything from medical and development assistance to training and advice on guerrilla warfare. Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America is the first oral history of Cuba’s liberation struggle. Drawing on a vast array of original testimonies, Dirk Kruijt looks at the role of both veterans and the post-Revolution fidelista generation in shaping Cuba and the Americas. Featuring the testimonies of over sixty Cuban officials and former combatants, Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America offers unique insight into a nation which, in spite of its small size and notional pariah status, remains one of the most influential countries in the Americas.

Oleksandra Keudel proposes a novel explanation for why some local governments in hybrid regimes enable citizen participation while others restrict it. She argues that mechanisms for citizen participation are by-products of political dynamics of informal business-political (patronal) networks that seek domination over local governments. Against the backdrop of either competition or coordination between patronal networks in their localities, municipal leaders cherry-pick citizen participation mechanisms as a tactic to sustain their own access to resources and functions of local governments. This argument is based on an in-depth comparative analysis of patronal network arrangements and the adoption of citizen participation mechanisms in five urban municipalities in Ukraine during 2015-2019: Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Lviv, and Odesa. Fifty-seven interviews with citizen participation experts, local politicians and officials, representatives of civil society and the media, as well as utilization of secondary analytical sources, official government data, and media reports provide a rich basis for an investigation of context-specific choices of municipal leaders that result in varying mechanisms for citizen participation.

"This volume argues that recent technological developments are reconfiguring the cultural, economic, social, and political spheres of Cuba's Revolutionary project in unprecedented ways"--

Communities in rural America are a complex mixture of peoples and cultures, ranging from miners who have been laid off in West Virginia, to Laotian immigrants relocating in Kansas to work at a beef processing plant, to entrepreneurs drawing up plans for a world-class ski resort in California's Sierra Nevada. Rural Communities: Legacy and Change uses its unique Community Capitals framework to examine how America's diverse rural communities use their various capitals (natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built) to address the modern challenges that face them. Each chapter opens with a case study of a community facing a particular challenge, and is followed by a comprehensive discussion of sociological concepts to be applied to understanding the case. This narrative, topical approach makes the book accessible and engaging for undergraduate students, while its integrative approach provides them with a framework for understanding rural society based on the concepts and explanations of social science. This fifth edition is updated throughout with 2013 census data and features new and expanded coverage of health and health care, food systems and alternatives, the effects of neoliberalism and globalization on rural communities, as well as an expanded resource and activity section at the end of each chapter.