The growing presence of China in Africa has drawn increasing scholarly and public attention. With Beijing's announcement of the 'going global' policy in the early 2000s and further institutionalization through the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Chinese policy banks and state-owned companies have cooperated with African countries to finance and complete multiple infrastructure projects. These projects, despite their 'Chinese-ness,' demonstrate starkly different development trajectories in different countries. Why do some Chinese-financed and constructed projects develop better than others? And what explains the variation in the effectiveness of different African states with regard to public goods delivery? The Railpolitik: Leadership and Agency in Sino-African Infrastructure Development uses three case studies of Chinese-financed and constructed rail projects to explore the broader phenomenon of the fast-progressing relations between China and Africa and to offer insights into African domestic politics. Relying primarily on over 250 in-depth interviews and unpublished documents collected during extensive fieldwork from 2014-2019 in Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, and China, Yuan Wang traces the trajectories of the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway in Ethiopia, and the Caminho de Ferro de Benguela in Angola, and finds that African political championship is the central factor that determines the outcomes of this type of project. Contrary to the conventional understanding that centralized political institutions such as those in the developmental states are more conducive to rulers' commitment to developmental projects, the book finds that political championship can be generated from leaders' perceived threats of competitive elections in democratic states such as Kenya. These Chinese-financed and constructed projects coincided with African rulers' strategies for political survival, and are therefore instrumentalized politically to demonstrate rulers' performance legitimacy and to fuel their patronage machine. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The series focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford; Peace Medie, Senior Lecturer, School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies, University of Bristol.

Numerous countries have attempted to improve the performance of their railways by introducing more competition, but there is fierce debate and no consensus on how this is best achieved. This book reveals how railways were an obvious target for reform because they were often losing traffic and money, and because the government was typically deeply involved as either owner or regulator.

The privatisation of the British railway industry was a unique political and economic event. An integrated industry was broken-up into numerous component parts and sold off to private sector interests. The result was a highly fragmented industry that was structurally unsound and operationally dysfunctional. This authoritative volume presents an enlightening portrait of an industry that is less efficient, more costly and still more dependent on state subsidy today than its nationalised predecessor. The nine chapters in this work present a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of how and why the industry has become so dysfunctional and costly, supported by detailed financial analysis and industry examples. Seven chapters comprise a series of peer-reviewed academic papers by Professor McCartney and Dr Stittle and published in leading international journals over the period 2004–2017 which analyse selected key segments of the privatised industry: where appropriate, updates are provided at the end of these chapters outlining developments since initial publication relevant to the analysis therein. Two chapters are published here for the first time: Chapter 7 reviews the performance of the freight sector, while Chapter 1 ‘bookends’ the volume by providing first, an account of how rail privatisation was conceived and implemented in the 1980s/90s, and then reviews the impact of the pandemic and the proposals of the Williams-Shapps White Paper of 2021 which, if enacted, will effectively end the Major government’s experiment. Going far beyond the usual superficial analysis of the topic, this volume will be of significant interest to researchers and advanced students of accounting, economics, business history, transport studies, as well as industry and specialised business interests in transport and privatisation.

This is the first critical work on the history of the French Riviera from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present day in the English language. It makes the argument that multi-faceted power and violence – war, murder, land dispossession and other privations targeted at the poor, imperialism and ecological degradation (land, sea, rivers and air) – has been integral to the making of the Côte d’Azur. Invariably, this has been downplayed in previous general histories that tend to focus on the personal lives and loves of famous outsiders. In effect, the complex general history of the place is rarely told. Bryant seeks to set that record straight in an innovative work crisscrossing the borders of European and imperial history, geography, politics and environmental studies that will be of interest to an array of scholars, students and general readers who wish to learn about how the planet’s most famous coastal resort was made.

This book looks at the state of British democracy and how it has been undermined by the power of money, changes in society and changes in the nature of politics. It argues that politics should belong to us all and that citizens should be sovereign. Ken Ritchie and guest contributors propose reforms, including changes to the electoral system, controlling the influence of corporate interests, regulating the media while protecting freedoms, replacing the monarchy with an elected head of state, defending human rights and giving the UK a written constitution.

Why don't trains run on time? Why are fares so expensive? Why are there so many strikes? Few would disagree that Britain's railways are broken, and have been for a long time. This insightful new book calls for a radical rethink of how we view the railways, and explains the problems we face and how to fix them. Haines-Doran argues that the railways should be seen as a social good and an indispensable feature of the national economy. With passengers and railway workers holding governments to account, we could then move past the incessant debates on whether our railways are an unavoidably loss-making business failure. An alternative vision is both possible and affordable, enabling the railways to play an instrumental role in decreasing social inequalities, strengthening the economy and supporting a transition to a sustainable future. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 9, Industry, innovation and infrastructure