This book provides the most extensive comparative survey of the state and conditions of democracy ever made. It focuses on 172 contemporary states, with historical data on the measures of democracy and on explanatory variables extending back to the 1850s. It presents a comprehensive exploration of democratization, its successes and failures, making predictions on the prospects for democracy for single countries and for seven regions of the world. As well as presenting empirical analyses of democratization on the basis of Vanhanens's resource distribution theory of democratization and making predictions on the prospects, the book includes contributions from five commentators, Mitchell A. Seligson on Latin America, Samuel Decalo and John W. Forje on Africa, John Henderson on Oceania and Ilter Turan on why some of the countires that pass Vanhanen's democratic threshold cannot in fact be seen as democracies. The volume also includes an introductory chapter which examines and compares other theoretical interpretations of democratization. Prospects for Democracy will be essential reading for all serious students of comparative politics and democracy.

Rice production, area, and yield; Imports and exports; Food aida; Consumption and stocks; Domestic prices; World prices and tariff and nontariff measures; Land use, irrigation, and farm size; Population, labor force, and wages; Modern rice varieties; Fertilizer use and prices; Rice costs and returns.

This document is part of the FAO Statistics working paper series and part of the series of operational guidelines of the FAO Survey Team providing practical cost effective orientations to countries on agricultural surveys from the conception and implementation to data dissemination. The present document is focused on operational clarifications on the definitions of agricultural holdings and operational guidance for establishing lists of agricultural holdings for agricultural surveys. This document is the result of a collaborative work of experienced experts of FAO Survey Team and national consultants working in statistical offices in countries where agricultural surveys cover agricultural holdings in both household and non-household sectors and special farms.

What can we do to unlock the unrealised potential of the hundreds of millions of rural poor and landless workers? The ever-topical central theme in this collection of essays is the mixed role of government and the institutionally regulated market in tackling rural poverty and land distribution inequality. Drawing on over half a century of M. Riad El-Ghonemy’s academic and field experience in developing countries across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South East Asia, this is a comprehensive record of the late-twentieth century study of and struggle against rural inequality, seen through the eyes of one of its foremost observers. Containing a balance of in-depth field studies and El-Ghonemy’s personal observations from 1952 onwards, this volume provides the basis for discussion and debate on a range of developmental issues. Foremost among these is the appropriate approach both to explain the factors underlying developing countries' rural backwardness, and to enable them to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the incidence of poverty and hunger by 2015. The compelling argument made here is that redistributive land reform, combined with non-farm intensive employment opportunities and investment in education within rural areas are necessary to tackle persistent poverty effectively. Anti-Poverty Land Reform Issues Never Die is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students learning rural development and institutional and development economics. M.Riad El-Ghonemy is Senior Research Associate at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford and Research Fellow at the Department of Economics, the American University in Cairo, and Emeritus Professor, Ein-Shams University, Cairo. He is the author of several publications, including The Political Economy of Rural Poverty, Routledge (1990).

The consumption and distribution of food, as well as its production, has become a major public policy issue over the past few decades; what we eat is no longer merely a private matter but carries significant externalities for wider society. Its increasing significance within the public arena implies a dissonance regarding the boundaries of food; where do we draw the line between food as private and food as public? What are the rights of society to impinge upon individual food consumption, and what conflicts will ensue when this boundary is disputed? The Consuming Geographies of Food explores these multiple issues of food across different regions of the world from the consumer’s perspective. It uniquely explicates the factors that lead customers towards certain typologies of consumption and towards certain types of retailing, offering a comprehensive review of the obesity problem, the phenomenon of food deserts and the issue of exclusion from a healthy diet. It then considers the effects of food on the consumer, the dynamic relationship between food and people, and the issue of food exclusion before concluding with possible futures for food consumption, from low-technology projects to high-technology scenarios. Based on original research into food access, ethics and consumption in both developed and less-developed countries this book will be of interest to students, researchers and academics in the fields of geography, economics, hospitality health, marketing, nutrition and sociology.