"The book uses analyses of general macro-economic policy, center-local relations, budgeting, labor market, and welfare state transfers and services in three critical areas to present a comprehensive picture of the governance of and interactions between the Danish welfare state and political economy at all levels. A critical introductory survey of the welfare state literature and a synthetic conclusion frame these studies."--BOOK JACKET.

Thsi book examines the impact of OECD country policies on East Asia in such areas as trade, investment, environment, agriculture, finance and aid, as well as on macroeconomic policies and regional co-operation. It also examines the coherence lessons of these OECD country policies.

In this volume, Terrence Paupp critically describes the various dimensions of today's global crisis. Among other things, this volume analyzes nuclear weapons proliferation climate change, and international lawlessness in the form of wars of aggression. Paupp argues that much human conflict and environmental degradation is the direct consequence of poverty and inequality. Until these issues are addressed, many of the world's problems will remain. Paupp asserts that around the world, peoples and nations are becoming more open to a strategy and culture of peace that evolves through discovering a commonality of interests, the value of mutual cooperation, and the desirability of forging consensus. By using various road maps and remedies supplied by noted Japanese peace activist Daisaku Ikeda and his contemporaries, viable solutions will emerge. In this new endeavor, equipped with some of the proposed solutions and strategies that this book provides, humanity will collectively become engaged in remaking the character of global governance in order to build a global culture of peace.

In Sparks' third book on South Africa, he writes about the outcomes and continuing struggles of a post-Mandela elected government. The democracy faces a widening gap between rich and poor, continued racial and ethnic tensions, and conflicts with other countries such the Congo and Zimbabwe. He describes it as a land where the First and Third World meet, with examples that are important to other countries facing the same challenges.

Our very existence on a planet that is lost in a universe that defies measurement is a miracle beyond our comprehension. We are guests on an extremely rare and beautiful planet that God has prepared for us to care for and enjoy. We need to realize the importance of this gift and praise and thank God for his love for us. We are his creation and we need to share his love with others. He loved us first. Isaiah 44:24 reads, "Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself." In the beginning it was God's breath that created man as a spiritual being. We have both a physical body and a spirit. We also have free will that allows us to make the decision to accept or reject the belief that Jesus (God's only Son) came to this earth to die for our sins that our spirits may live forever with God our Creator. It is God's grace, mercy, and love that allows miracles to take place today.

Denmark and Switzerland are small and successful countries with exceptionally content populations. However, they have very different political institutions and economic models. They have followed the general tendency in the West toward economic convergence, but both countries have managed to stay on top. They both have a strong liberal tradition, but otherwise their economic strategies are a welfare state model for Denmark and a safe haven model for Switzerland. The Danish welfare state is tax-based, while the expenditures for social welfare are insurance-based in Switzerland. The political institutions are a multiparty unicameral system in Denmark, and a permanent coalition system with many referenda and strong local government in Switzerland. Both approaches have managed to ensure smoothly working political power-sharing and economic systems that allocate resources in a fairly efficient way. To date, they have also managed to adapt the economies to changes in the external environment with a combination of stability and flexibility.

This book examines five countries in South East Asia that are instructive case studies of how the region has had to negotiate pathways of development beyond crises and traps. At two ends of just one decade, 1997–2007, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam all had to weather the shocks of an East Asian financial crisis and a global financial crisis. Some economies might have buckled completely under those shocks and been condemned to long-term stagnation. Yet these five economies, part of the larger Asian region, emerged with continued if slower economic growth. An important theme of this book is that their resilience has been partly derived from the pursuit of growth and competitiveness along less known or recommended pathways. The chapters of this book take a novel approach to South East Asia’s search for growth and improvement. They do not begin by evaluating how far macro-level performances would take a particular country towards high-income status. Instead they provide original insights into actual cases of intermediate ways of achieving growth, upgrading and income improvement in non-privileged sectors. Such cases may hold more relevant lessons for the majority of developing countries than the experiences of highly developed economies.