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Magnificent and Beggar Land is a powerful account of fast-changing dynamics in Angola, an important African state that is a key exporter of oil and diamonds and a growing power on the continent. Based on three years of research and extensive first-hand knowledge of Angola, it documents the rise of a major economy and its insertion in the international system since it emerged in 2002 from one of Africa's longest and deadliest civil wars. The government, backed by a strategic alliance with China and working hand in glove with hundreds of thousands of expatriates, many from the former colonial power, Portugal, has pursued an ambitious agenda of state-led national reconstruction. This has result...
Billions of dollars stolen from citizens are circling the globe, enriching powerful individuals, altering political outcomes, and disadvantaging everyday people. News headlines provide glimpses of how this corruption works and why it matters: President Trump's businesses struck deals with oligarchs and sold property to secretive shell companies; the Panama Papers leak triggered investigations in 79 countries; and, corruption scandals toppled heads of state in Brazil, South Africa, and South Korea. But how do these pieces fit together? And if the corruption is so vast and so tied up with powerful interests, how do we begin to fight back? To find answers, Crude Intentions examines the corrupti...
A Brookings Institution Press and Global Public Policy Institute publication The global market for oil and gas resources is rapidly changing. Three major trends—the rise of new consumers, the increasing influence of state players, and concerns about climate change—are combining to challenge existing regulatory structures, many of which have been in place for a half-century. Global Energy Governance analyzes the energy market from an institutionalist perspective and offers practical policy recommendations to deal with these new challenges. Much of the existing discourse on energy governance deals with hard security issues but neglects the challenges to global governance. Global Energy Gov...
Metalearning is the study of principled methods that exploit metaknowledge to obtain efficient models and solutions by adapting machine learning and data mining processes. While the variety of machine learning and data mining techniques now available can, in principle, provide good model solutions, a methodology is still needed to guide the search for the most appropriate model in an efficient way. Metalearning provides one such methodology that allows systems to become more effective through experience. This book discusses several approaches to obtaining knowledge concerning the performance of machine learning and data mining algorithms. It shows how this knowledge can be reused to select, combine, compose and adapt both algorithms and models to yield faster, more effective solutions to data mining problems. It can thus help developers improve their algorithms and also develop learning systems that can improve themselves. The book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the areas of machine learning, data mining and artificial intelligence.
Transcript of papers presented during an international conference in New Delhi in June 2008 hosted jointly by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
The geopolitical landscape of China-Africa relations has been overlooked during the G8's purported 'Year of Africa', which generated debate in the build-up to the China-Africa Summit in Beijing in 2006. This book offers surveys of China's return to Africa, examining what this relationship holds for diplomacy, trade and development.
Many ask if R2P is legally binding or not. By following the development of R2P from 2000-2022 and governments interactions with it throughout those years internationally, regionally and nationally, a perspective is given regarding its development as a norm within international law. The state practice and opinio juris of countries from different regions, representing varying perspectives, and the application of R2P throughout those years, provide the reader with insights on where R2P stands after more than 20 years of being part of the international fora.
Why the wind, and energy it produces, should not be private property The energy transition has begun. To succeed—to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power—that process must be fair. Otherwise, mounting pop- ular protest against wind farms will prolong carbon pollution and deepen the climate crisis. David McDermott Hughes examines that anti-industrial, anti- corporate resistance, drawing on his time spent conducting field research in a Spanish village surrounded by wind turbines. In the lives of a community freighted with centuries of exploitation—people whom the author comes to know intimately—clean power and social justice fit together only awkwardly. A green economy will require greater efforts to get ordinary people such as these on board. Aesthetics, livelihood, property, and, most essentially, the private nature of wind resources—all these topics must be examined with fresh eyes.
As the geopolitical point of gravity moves to the east, the European Union (EU) faces the challenge of ongoing global power shifts, and this study addresses the options, opportunities, and obstacles that lie ahead as the EU becomes a security actor in Asia and Africa. Contributors address a number of key issues, including the EU’s soft power, overall strategic planning, European interests in Asia, and the role of Russia in Asia’s security climate.
This book is the newest and one of the very few existing examinations of the full nature of corruption throughout Central and South America. In detailed chapters written by experts with extensive in-country experience, it reveals the political and economic roots and consequences of corruption in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru. The editor’s introduction and conclusion texts synthesize their work and provides an over-arching view of corrupt practices and anti-corruption initiatives throughout Latin America. Corruption in Latin America shows the extent to which corrupt practices engulf each of the countries discussed, the involvement of political and corporate entities in the pursuit of ill-gotten gains, and the drag on development caused by corruption in each political entity. The book will be of interest for social scientists, political actors and social activists involved in the fight against corruption in Latin America by providing in-depth analyses of the topic and discussing how best to pursue anti-corruption efforts through civil society actions, judicial endeavors, legal shifts, or elections.