The world currently faces a number of challenges that no single country can solve. Whether it is managing a crisis-prone global economy, maintaining peace and stability, or trying to do something about climate change, there are some problems that necessitate collective action on the part of states and other actors. Global governance would seem functionally necessary and normatively desirable, but it is proving increasingly difficult to provide. This accessible introduction to, and analysis of, contemporary global governance explains what it is and the obstacles to its realization. Paying particular attention to the possible decline of American influence and the rise of China and a number of other actors, Mark Beeson explains why cooperation is proving difficult, despite its obvious need and desirability.

This book considers why the level of party presidentialization varies from one country to another, and how constitutional structures and party genetics affect both the level and the degree it is present. Presenting an international collection of case studies from the US, Latin America, Australia, Japan and Europe, including France, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Ukraine, it examines how the presence of presidential features in political parties varies in terms of the constitutional framework. Highlights the importance of institutions in political life, the case studies provide empirical evidence that no stable presidentialization is possible outside regimes where a presidential dynamic is introduced by the institutions.

Recent trends in shareholder empowerment have spurred a heated debate whether empowered shareholders will ultimately cure corporate ills or adversely affect corporate fortunes. While some scholars claim that further strides in empowering shareholders will improve managerial accountability and firm performance, critics warn that shareholder empowerment will merely amplify corporate myopia and shift the problem of managerial self-serving to shareholders' self-serving. In this volume we address this paradox by bringing together both proponents and skeptics of the shareholder empowerment movement, and focusing on management scholars’ insights on the implications of shareholder empowerment for contemporary corporations and their practices.

A surprising look at the origins of creativity, and why future innovators are best forged through group collaboration and adaptive social networking. Companies and organizations everywhere cite creativity as the most desirable – and elusive – leadership quality of the future. Yet scores measuring creativity among American children have been on the wane for decades. A specialist in creative leadership, professor James Haywood Rolling, Jr. knows firsthand that the classroom is a key to either unlocking or blocking the critical imagination. He argues that today’s schools, with their focus on rote learning and test-taking, work to stymie creativity, leaving children cut off from their natural impulses and boxed in by low expectations. Drawing on cutting-edge research in the realms of biological swarm theory, systems theory, and complexity theory, Rolling shows why group collaboration and adaptive social networking make us both smarter and more creative, and how we can design education and workplace practices around these natural principles, instead of pushing a limited focus on individual achievement that serves neither children nor their future colleagues, managers and mentors. The surprising truth is that the future will be pioneered by the collective problem-solvers, making this a must-read for business leaders, educators, and anyone else concerned with nurturing creative intelligence and innovative habits in today’s youth.

Until recently the impact of the Lutheran Reformation has been largely regarded in political and socio-economic terms, yet for most people it was not the abstract theological debates that had the greatest impact upon their lives, but what they saw in their parish churches every Sunday. This collection of essays provides a coherent and interdisciplinary investigation of the impact that the Lutheran Reformation had on the appearance, architecture and arrangement of early modern churches. Drawing upon recent research being undertaken by leading art historians and historians on Lutheran places of worship, the volume emphasises often surprising levels of continuity, reflecting the survival of Catholic fixtures, fittings and altarpieces, and exploring how these could be remodelled in order to conform with the tenets of Lutheran belief. The volume not only addresses Lutheran art but also the way in which the architecture of their churches reflected the importance of preaching and the administration of the sacraments. Furthermore the collection is committed to extending these discussions beyond a purely German context, and to look at churches not only within the Holy Roman Empire, but also in Scandinavia, the Baltic States as well as towns dominated by Saxon communities in areas such as in Hungary and Transylvania. By focusing on ecclesiastical 'material culture' the collection helps to place the art and architecture of Lutheran places of worship into the historical, political and theological context of early modern Europe.

Introduction in "Transnational Japan as History: Empire, Migration, and Social Movements" (Palgrave, New York: 2015) http://www.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137568779_sample.pdf