A history of Nepal from the Medieval/Early Modern period through to the present day with particular attention to contemporary Nepal, and the prospects for democracy.

This book carries out an initial assessment of Nepal s urban growth and spatial transformation, with a focus on spatial demographic and economic trends, economic growth drivers and infrastructure requirements of Nepal s urban regions.

Ten years in the making, this magisterial work—the second of a two-volume study—provides a unique perspective on uprisings in nine Asian nations in the past five decades. While the 2011 Arab Spring is well known, the wave of uprisings that swept Asia in the 1980s remain hardly visible. Through a critique of Samuel Huntington’s notion of a “Third Wave” of democratization, the author relates Asian uprisings to predecessors in 1968 and shows their subsequent influence on uprisings in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. By empirically reconstructing the specific history of each Asian uprising, significant insight into major constituencies of change and the trajectories of these societies becomes visible. This book provides detailed histories of uprisings in nine places—the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Thailand, and Indonesia—as well as introductory and concluding chapters that place them in a global context and analyze them in light of major sociological theories. Profusely illustrated with photographs, tables, graphs, and charts, it is the definitive, and defining, work from the eminent participant-observer scholar of social movements.

Without significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will cause substantial damage to the environment and the economy. The scope of the threat demands a close look at the policies capable of reducing the harm. Confronting the Climate Challenge presents a unique framework for evaluating the impacts of a range of U.S. climate-policy options, both for the economy overall and for particular household groups, industries, and regions. Lawrence Goulder and Marc Hafstead focus on four alternative approaches for reducing carbon dioxide emissions: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, a cap-and-trade program, a clean energy standard, and an increase in the federal gasoline tax. They demonstrate that these policies—if designed correctly—not only can achieve emissions reductions at low cost but also can avoid placing undesirable burdens on low-income household groups or especially vulnerable industries. Goulder and Hafstead apply a multiperiod, economy-wide general equilibrium model that is distinct in its attention to investment dynamics and to interactions between climate policy and the tax system. Exploiting the unique features of the model, they contrast the shorter- and longer-term policy impacts and focus on alternative ways of feeding back—or “recycling”—policy-generated revenues to the private sector. Their work shows how careful policy design, including the judicious use of policy-generated revenues, can achieve desired reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at low cost, avoid uneven impacts across household income groups, and prevent losses of profit in the most vulnerable U.S. industries. The urgency of the climate problem demands comprehensive action, and Confronting the Climate Challenge offers important insights that can help elevate policy discussions and spur needed efforts on the climate front.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the interrelationship between long-standing caste discrimination in Nepal, its vicious circle of impact upon the Dalit groups and the changes brought by the recent political transformations. It explores the links between identity politics, Dalit struggle and Dalit rights although Dalit identity is contested within the group. The author explores the types of institutional measures that would be required to achieve social justice for Dalit in Nepal and analyses the underlying causes and nature of the deeply entrenched social, economic, education and political inequality manifested in the life cycle of Dalit. The book examines contemporary political transformations, including state restructuring and federalism processes, and explores different models of federalism by a variety of experts in detail; this is done with a view to making specific findings on the required institutional reform measures for the improvement of Dalit inclusion and representation in state mechanisms and policies. This book contributes to the literature on the caste and Dalit discourse by proposing that the hegemonic caste structure is deeply entrenched and needs to be deracinated by asserting unified group politics of recognition in Nepal. Political Transformations in Nepal will be of interest to academics working on South Asian Politics, Identity Politics, and Asian Social Policy.

The journal of the OECD Development Assistance Committee. This issue includes Development Co-operation Reviews of The United Kingdom and Germany as well as the DAC Joint Assessment of the Aid Programmes of Germany, The Netherlands and The UK in Mozambique and an article on Poverty-Enviro-Gender.