In Continent by Default, Anne Marie Le Gloannec, a distinguished analyst of contemporary Europe, considers the European Union as a geopolitical project. This book offers a comprehensive narrative of how the European Union came to organize the continent, first by default through enlargement and in a more proactive, innovative, but not always successful way. The EU was not conceived as a foreign-policy actor, she says, and the Union was an innocent on questions of geopolitics. For readers who may wonder how the EU arrived at Brexit, the invasion of Ukraine, and the refugee crisis, Le Gloannec ties events to the EU’s long-term failure to think in politically strategic terms. Le Gloannec takes readers through the process by which, under the security umbrella of the United States, the European Commission engineered a new way for states and societies to interact. Continent by Default shows the Commission domesticated international relations and promoted peace by including new members—enlargement was the most significant tool the EU used from its inception to organize the continent, but the EU also tied itself to its regional neighbors through various programs that too often gave those neighbors the advantage. As Continent by Default makes clear, the EU cannot devise strategy because foreign policy remains the privilege of national governments. It is a geopolitical actor without geopolitical means.

How creditors came to wield unprecedented power over heavily indebted countries—and the dangers this poses to democracy The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. Why Not Default? unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates—why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts? In this compelling and incisive book, Jerome Roos provides a sweeping investigation of the political economy of sovereign debt and international crisis management. He takes readers from the rise of public borrowing in the Italian city-states to the gunboat diplomacy of the imperialist era and the wave of sovereign defaults during the Great Depression. He vividly describes the debt crises of developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s and sheds new light on the recent turmoil inside the Eurozone—including the dramatic capitulation of Greece’s short-lived anti-austerity government to its European creditors in 2015. Drawing on in-depth case studies of contemporary debt crises in Mexico, Argentina, and Greece, Why Not Default? paints a disconcerting picture of the ascendancy of global finance. This important book shows how the profound transformation of the capitalist world economy over the past four decades has endowed private and official creditors with unprecedented structural power over heavily indebted borrowers, enabling them to impose painful austerity measures and enforce uninterrupted debt service during times of crisis—with devastating social consequences and far-reaching implications for democracy.

The last time global sovereign debt reached the level seen today was at the end of the Second World War, and this shaped a generation of economic policymaking. International institutions were transformed, country policies were often draconian and distortive, and many crises ensued. By the early 1970s, when debt fell back to pre-war levels, the world was radically different. It is likely that changes of a similar magnitude -for better and for worse - will play out over coming decades. Sovereign Debt: A Guide for Economists and Practitioners is an attempt to build some structure around the issues of sovereign debt to help guide economists, practitioners and policymakers through this complicated, but not intractable, subject. Sovereign Debt brings together some of the world's leading researchers and specialists in sovereign debt to cover a range of sub-disciplines within this vast topic. It explores debt management with debt sustainability; debt reduction policies with crisis prevention policies; and the history with the conjuncture. It is a foundation text for all those interested in sovereign debt, with a particular focus real world examples and issues.

While Excel remains ubiquitous in the business world, recent Microsoft feedback forums are full of requests to include Python as an Excel scripting language. In fact, it's the top feature requested. What makes this combination so compelling? In this hands-on guide, Felix Zumstein--creator of xlwings, a popular open source package for automating Excel with Python--shows experienced Excel users how to integrate these two worlds efficiently. Excel has added quite a few new capabilities over the past couple of years, but its automation language, VBA, stopped evolving a long time ago. Many Excel power users have already adopted Python for daily automation tasks. This guide gets you started. Use Python without extensive programming knowledge Get started with modern tools, including Jupyter notebooks and Visual Studio code Use pandas to acquire, clean, and analyze data and replace typical Excel calculations Automate tedious tasks like consolidation of Excel workbooks and production of Excel reports Use xlwings to build interactive Excel tools that use Python as a calculation engine Connect Excel to databases and CSV files and fetch data from the internet using Python code Use Python as a single tool to replace VBA, Power Query, and Power Pivot

Provides insight into Europe's current political and financial crisis, citing such factors as dependence on foreign oil and a lack of a unified foreign policy and making predictions about future prospects while explaining the role of Europe's success in American security.

Civil Procedure: Cases and Problems, Seventh Edition by Barbara Allen Babcock, Toni M. Massaro, Norman W. Spaulding, and new co-author Myriam Gilles (the #5 most cited civil procedure scholar in the country) is the ideal casebook for the modern Civil Procedure course. With lightly-edited cases, both canonical and contemporary, and engaging hypothetical problems, the Seventh Edition of Civil Procedure: Cases and Problems promotes student understanding of modern procedure, the adversary system and alternatives, the relationship between substance and procedure, and systemic problems in access to justice. This casebook pioneered the “due process approach” to the study of procedure and is designed to create an inclusive learning environment, emphasizing the formative role of public interest litigation in modern procedural law and the voices of women and people of color in shaping the field in both practice and scholarship. It is the only major casebook on the market written by co-authors who together have received more than a dozen awards for excellence in teaching. New to the Seventh Edition: Shorter notes and materials after principal cases Updated cases and materials on personal and subject matter jurisdiction, plausibility pleading, affirmative defenses, the new proportionality requirement in discovery, and more Revised and expanded treatment of arbitration and ADR Revised and expanded treatment of MDL Revised and streamlined treatment of class action doctrine Revised and streamlined treatment of preclusion Professors and students will benefit from: Lightly-edited cases paired with thoughtful notes and questions. Concise examination of scholarship and empirical data bearing on various procedural rules Close attention to the underlying social and economic contexts in which the rules function with emphasis on the consequences for vulnerable populations Meaningful discussion of oft-marginalized topics, including: Alternative Dispute Resolution, Discovery (including e-discovery), Aggregate Litigation, Remedies, Adversary Ethics, and Trial Practice. Hypothetical problems presented in each chapter and revisited in later chapters to support in-class exercises and awareness of how phases of litigation influence each other. A casebook designed to create an inclusive classroom experience