This comparative study examines the dialectical tensions between global and regional interdependence and the fragmentation of humankind into territorial entities. Political authority may remain territory-bound, but borders increasingly are penetrated by pollutants, individuals, noncentral governments in search of foreign trade and investment, and transnational corporations, as well as the traditional exchanges of trade, media, and culture. The result of these transborder flows, accelerated by new technologies, is a new variety of international relations among “perforated sovereignties.†Dr. Duchacek analyzes the territorial organization of political authority in both democratic and authoritarian frameworks as well as in unitary and federal systems. Case studies focus on new forms of transborder interactions between neighboring countries, especially in North America and in Western Europe. The book is of major interest to scholars in the fields of political science and political economy. Quotations from a variety of political theorists and practitioners, illustrative diagrams, and maps make the book suitable for students of comparative politics, international relations, comparative federalism, and public policy.

Across Europe and beyond, economic woes in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 unleashed fundamental changes in politics, with new parties emerging and populism surging.

First published in 1985, Decentralization provides an analytical framework for the comparative study of decentralization in contemporary systems of government. It discusses the structures and processes of all forms of decentralized government and administration, drawing on a wide range of states, developed and developing, capitalist and socialist. The book provides a comparative and theoretical treatment of a subject that for too long has been dealt with in a fragmented and ethnocentric fashion. Decentralization is examined from a theoretical perspective and the political demand for it is analysed. Four key universal themes are then explored: areas, intergovernmental relations, finance and institutions. Decentralization to small-scale communities is discussed and the special claims made for decentralization in developing countries are assessed. Examples are drawn from a wide range of countries throughout the world. The book is intended for courses in public administration, comparative government, urban studies and public policy. It will help both the student and the non-specialist understand an important and topical aspect of government everywhere.

This book offers a broad perspective of revolutionary territorial politics by putting secession in the context of other forms of revolutionary territorial politics. This allows for a more complex and profound account of secession and offers the reader a conceptual approach to politics of revolutionary discontent with territorial status quo. Second, the book provides a multidiscoursive approach which combines the efforts of constitutional and comparative constitutional law scholars with international lawyers, EU lawyers and specialists in international relations. This allows for multifaceted and, in that regard, more adequate, balanced and rich analysis of secession and the other forms of revolutionary territorial politics.

Our world is currently divided into territorial states that resist all attempts to change their borders. But what entitles a state, or the people it represents, to assume monopoly control over a particular piece of the Earth's surface? Why are they allowed to prevent others from entering? What if two or more states, or two or more groups of people, claim the same piece of land? Political philosophy, which has had a great deal to say about the relationship between state and citizen, has largely ignored these questions about territory. This book provides answers. It justifies the idea of territory itself in terms of the moral value of political self-determination; it also justifies, within limits, those elements that we normally associate with territorial rights: rights of jurisdiction, rights over resources, right to control borders and so on. The book offers normative guidance over a number of important issues facing us today, all of which involve territory and territorial rights, but which are currently dealt with by ad hoc reasoning: disputes over resources; disputes over boundaries, oceans, unoccupied islands, and the frozen Arctic; disputes rooted in historical injustices with regard to land; secessionist conflicts; and irredentist conflicts. In a world in which there is continued pressure on borders and control over resources, from prospective migrants and from the desperate poor, and no coherent theory of territory to think through these problems, this book offers an original, systematic, and sophisticated theory of why territory matters, who has rights over territory, and the scope and limits of these rights.

Douglas M. Gibler argues that threats to homeland territories force domestic political centralization within the state. Using an innovative theory of state development, he explains patterns of international conflict and democracy in the world over time.