Various forms of sabotage and corruption that stem from workers' inability to voice their discontent at perceived injustices any other way have cost the Soviet and post- Soviet societies dearly. Under what circumstances are workers ready to take overt action against perceived injustices against themselves and the interests of their colleagues?

Using ordered logistic regression models and People's Security Survey data from a 2004 national sample from Ukraine, this paper argues that different forms of socio-economic security significantly increase the readiness of workers to take action if faced with grievances. Our findings add to the body of literature on mobilization in several ways. First, they contribute to the social movement literature on Post-Soviet countries by focusing on Ukraine.

They also enrich the social movement literature by the concept of security or the perception of resources across time. Furthermore, our models translate largely macro-level concepts, such as the political opportunity structure, to the microlevel of an individual's attitudes as they relate to their work life. Finally, our results provide limited support for the older grievance theory in the social movement literature: grievance is not the most influential factor, yet it remains significant.

Building on Gough and Wood et al. (2004), Wood and Gough et al. (2004) and Abu Sharkh (2006), this article extends and tests the regime concept originally popularized by Esping Andersen (1990) geographically, conceptually, temporally and methodologically.

Since the seminal work of Esping-Anderson much has been written about welfare regimes. However, most analyses suffer from three drawbacks. First, most analyses are crosssectional. The notion of a "regime" implies a temporal consistency that cannot be addressed by cross-sectional analyses. Second, they do not assess how the political framework, the welfare spending mix and the well-being outcomes of these regimes are impacted by extraterritorial factors. Above all, very few extend beyond the boundaries of the OECD. In order to adapt the welfare state regime concept to the developing world, some profound adaptations must be made, Gough and Wood et al argue (2004), in order to recognize the very different realities across the world. But with these modifications it remains a promising paradigm for developing typologies across the developing as well as the developed world for several reasons. First, it situates modern "welfare states" within a wider welfare mix: governments interact with markets and families to produce and distribute welfare. Second, it pays attention to welfare outcomes, the final impact on human security, need satisfactions and wellbeing.

Third, it recognizes that social policy is both shaped by and a shaper of patterns of within the deep structures of political economy: social policy is seen not just as a technical issue but a power issue. However, this increase in geographical scope too often comes with a trade-off in accuracy.

This study addresses these shortcomings. First, a cluster analysis of 79 countries
across the world identifies wellbeing regimes. These wellbeing clusters are then examined across time (1990 and 2000) to assess if they exhibit a degree of constancy across time and composition that would allow labeling them as stable regimes. Factor analyses examine the distinct composites of these regimes. Regression analyses assess the heuristic superiority of the cluster concept in explaining wellbeing variations. Lastly, the effects of the national and international political economy on wellbeing and equality outcomes are examined.

This paper considers the links between the extent of economic security and subjective work satisfaction. Special attention is paid to the effects of individually and collectively traumatizing events as well as relative gains and losses. These are aspects of “well-being” that have attracted relatively little empirical research in developing countries. Individually traumatizing events depress work satisfaction more strongly than collective catastrophes. The data also suggests that the predominant focus on income in developing countries is too narrow. While both absolute and relative income constitute strong predictors, especially for men, there are many less costly ways to increase work satisfaction. Across the gender divide, the ability to perform work in accordance with one’s skills and to develop those skills (skill security) strongly increases work satisfaction. Occupational health and safety (work security) as well as participative measures (voice security) further significantly increases subjective work satisfaction.

Using People's Security data from three countries, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, the article examines which objective and subjective work place factors increase work satisfaction. The link between work satisfaction and various exogenous work-related factors is explored within a theoretical framework that integrates the academic work satisfaction literature, especially insights from the human potential movement and newer findings from the hedonic psychology and economics literature, with the more social policy oriented seven dimensions of socioeconomic security codified by the United Nations´ International Labour Organization. Employing ordered probit models, this article argues that aspects such as attending to occupational health and safety hazards, voice representation and confidence in continued employment are key predictors of work satisfaction across countries and occupations.

This paper tests the claim that a small number of distinct „welfare regimes,
combining institutional patterns and social welfare outcomes, can be identified
across the developing world. It develops a methodology for clustering a large
number of developing countries, identifying and ranking their welfare regimes,
assessing their stability over the decade 1990-2000, and relating these to important
structural variables. It identifies three meta-welfare regimes: proto-welfare state
regimes, informal security regimes and insecurity regimes (distinguishing illiterateinsecurity
and morbidity-insecurity regimes). Membership of these is „sticky over
time, but has been modified by two global trends: the HIV-AIDS pandemic in Africa
and the growing role of remittances in some countries.

Modern Lebanese cinema can best be explored in the context of the Civil War, in part because almost all the Lebanese films made since its outset in 1975 have been about this war.  This book takes 1975 Beirut as its starting point, and takes us right through to today for this, the first major book on Lebanese cinema and its links with politics and national identity.
 
The book examines how Lebanon is imagined in such films as Jocelyn Saab's 'Once Upon a Time, Beirut', Ghassan Salhab's 'Terra Incognita', and Ziad Doueiri's 'West Beirut'.  In so doing, it re-examines the importance of cinema to the national imagination. Also, and using interviews with the current generation of Lebanese filmmakers, it uncovers how in the Lebanese context cinema can both construct and communicate a national identity and thereby opens up new perspectives on the socio-political role of cinema in the Arab world.

Why did limited government and 'constitutionalism' (the rule of law, constitutional rules, and political representation) evolve in some societies but not others? Guided by history, this paper examines why this evolution reflects dependence on administrators to implement policy choices including those affecting them. Limited government and constitutionalism are manifestations of equilibria in which the administrators have the power to influence choices. The thesis that constitutionalism reflects an equilibrium among the powerful differs from the prevailing one, which asserts that it reflects gains to the weak from constraining the powerful. Analyzing the determinants and implications of administrative power reveals its impact on trajectories of economic development. Distinct administrative-power equilibria have different impacts on the security of the non-elite's property rights; intra-state and inter-state violence (e.g. civil wars and wars, respectively); policies; entry barriers to new technologies and economic sectors; the nature of political conflicts; and the means to resolve conflicts concerning political rights.

Over the past 25 years, the United States has made support for the spread of democracy to other nations an increasingly important element of its national security policy. Many other multilateral agencies, countries, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also are involved in providing democracy assistance. These efforts have created a growing demand to find the most effective means to assist in building and strengthening democratic governance under varied conditions.

Within the U.S. government the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has principal responsibility for providing democracy assistance. Since 1990, USAID has supported democracy and governance (DG) programs in approximately 120 countries and territories, spending an estimated total of $8.47 billion (in constant 2000 U.S. dollars) between 1990 and 2005. The request for DG programs for fiscal year 2008 was $1.45 billion, which includes some small programs in the U.S. Department of State.

Despite these substantial expenditures, our understanding of the actual impacts of USAID DG assistance on progress toward democracy remains limited—and is the subject of much current debate in the policy and scholarly communities. Admittedly, the realities of democracy programming are complicated, given the emphasis on timely responses in politically sensitive environments and flexibility in implementation to account for fluid political circumstances. These realities pose particular challenges for the evaluation of democracy assistance programs. Nonetheless, USAID seeks to find ways to attempt to determine which programs, in which countries, are having the greatest impact in supporting democratic institutions and behaviors and how those effects unfold. To do otherwise would risk making poor use of scarce funds and to remain uncertain about the effectiveness of an important national policy.