|
|
UNRISD pursues an active and varied publications programme, which includes in-house and commercially published books, special reports, programme and occasional papers, as well as newsletters on specific events and the Institute’s work in general.
This section provides a catalogue of our publications, and free online access to many of them. We encourage you to subscribe to our free email alerts service to be informed when new publications are posted on this Web site.
Unpublished papers may be accessed via the Research section of the site.
Highlights...
-
November 2009
Corporate Social Responsibility and Regulatory Governance: Towards Inclusive Development?
Author: José Carlos Marques, Peter Utting
The corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has been instrumental in raising awareness that firms have responsibilities other than to their owners and 'the bottom line'. Yet despite all the talk about the importance of stakeholders, transparency, corporate citizenship and sustainability, the developmental and regulatory impacts of CSR remain highly questionable. This book, edited by Peter Utting and José Carlos Marques, assesses the global rise of private regulation and CSR from the perspective of social and sustainable development. By adopting a multidisciplinary lens, it examines why the experience of CSR pales in comparison with the promise, what needs to be done to address 'the intellectual crisis' of CSR, and forms of corporate accountability and regulation more conducive to inclusive patterns of development.
Read more
-
October 2009
Financing Social Policy: Mobilizing Resources for Social Development
Author: Katja Hujo, Shea McClanahan
There has never been a more urgent need for governments to secure adequate and stable resources for social development: inequalities are on the rise, a severe global food crisis threatens to eliminate the achievements some countries have made over recent years, and the neoliberal policy toolkit has been largely discredited. 'Financing Social Policy' shifts the policy debates beyond examining expenditures and austerity, to revenues and resources. It examines financing options that would be conducive to social development, creating and strengthening sustainable social programmes that work together with economic policies.
The contributors in this volume edited by Katja Hujo and Shea McClanahan explore the economic, social and political implications and the developmental impact of a wide range of potential resources – including taxation, aid, mineral rents, social insurance, pension funds and remittances – for financing social policy in development countries.
Read more
-
August 2009
The United Nations and Civil Society: Legitimating Global Governance-Whose Voice?
Author: Nora McKeon
In this book, Nora McKeon provides a comprehensive analysis of UN engagement with civil society. The book pays particular attention to food and agriculture, which now lie at the heart of global governance issues. McKeon shows that politically meaningful space for civil society can be introduced into UN policy dialogue.She also makes the case that it is only by engaging with organizations which legitimately speak for the 'poor' targeted by the Millennium Development Goals that the UN can promote equitable, sustainable development and build global democracy from the ground up.
Read more
-
July 2009
Localizing and Transnationalizing Contentious Politics: Global Civil Society Movements in the Philippines
Author: Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem
The Philippines makes an interesting case for examining direct and collective acts of contention against the neoliberal project of economic globalization. Crippled by foreign debt, indiscriminate liberalization of trade, falling stock markets, and perpetual corruption, the Philippines is also a democratic polity and one of the few countries in Asia with a vibrant and dynamic civil society sector. This collection has chapters on the Freedom from Debt Coalition's campaign on debt relief, the Stop-the-New-Round Coalition's advocacy to change international trade rules and barriers, the global taxation initiative as embodied in Tobin tax advocacy in the country, the Transparency and Accountability Network's anti-corruption effort, and the Philippine Fair Trade Forum's enterprise on fair trade. Localizing and Transnationalizing Contentious Politics is the first work of its kind to focus on five global civil society movements in the Philippines and their responses to the inequities of neoliberal globalization. Northern scholars have acknowledged the persistent absence of the South in research on activism around global issues, and this book can help fill this gap. Using political process theory as a framework, the book traces the emergence, development and diffusion of these social movements in the Philippines. Globalization is taken as the environment in which they operate to highlight the role of increased interdependence and internationalization, and the predominance of a particular ideology in the dynamics of contention.
Read more
-
December 2008
The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization: Towards "Embedded Liberalism"?
Author: Shahra Razavi
In the last two decades public policies have reflected a drive for accelerated global economic integration ("globalization), associated with greater economic liberalization. The outcomes have been largely disappointing, even in the estimate of their designers. Rural livelihoods have become more insecure, and the expected growth has rarely materialized. Insecurity is also etched into the growth of informal economies across the world. Yet the economic policy agenda that has been so adverse to many people around the world has also provided new opportunities to some social groups, including some low-income women. In response to widespread discontent with the liberalization agenda, more attention is now being given to social policies and governance issues, viewed as necessary if globalization is to be "tamed" and "embedded". The contributors to this volume address key issues and questions such as whether states have the capacity to remedy the social distress unleashed by liberalization in the absence of any major revision of their macroeconomic policies and whether the proposed social reforms can redress gender-based inequalities in access to resource and power.
Read more
|