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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Central government > Central government policies
This intriguing volume examines how the small group communication of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and their key advisors influenced the decisions to escalate the war in Vietnam from January 1961 to July 1965. Using an historical-critical research method, Moya Ann Ball traces the Vietnam decisions from the combative rhetoric of Kennedy's presidential campaign through the creation of a small group communication culture in the Kennedy administration, which, sustained and reinforced in the Johnson administration, became the motivating force behind the decisions to overtly escalate the war in July 1965. Ball asserts that this small group communication culture was formed by the convergence of such characteristics as the decision-making group's assembly effect, the group's reaction to situational demands, the sharing of dramatic communication, and normative behavior. The analysis is based on primary sources (many of them declassified through the author's efforts) from the Kennedy and Johnson Libraries, and on correspondence and interviews with advisors such as McGeorge Bundy, Robert S. McNamara, Walt W. Rostow, Dean Rusk, and James C. Thomson. Contrary to current literature, Ball uncovers that: Kennedy was not the "natural leader" of the Vietnam decision-making group, but became the leader in death that he had not been in life; the decision makers' communication rooted them rhetorically to a combat position from which it seemed impossible to move; Johnson stalled on overt action in Vietnam and, rather than leading his advisors, was led by them; and the decisions to escalate the war emerged in a "context of discovery" in the Kennedy administration and then were rationalized in a "context ofjustification" in the Johnson administration. Vietnam-on-the-Potomac will prove invaluable to communication specialists, political scientists, and historians.
In 1997 the United States accepted more legal immigrants than all other countries combined. This large influx of newcomers, however, has alarmed many Americans. Immigration is a controversial issue because it intersects with the most contentious issues of our time: multiculturalism, bilingualism, unemployment, crime, etc. Opinion polls since 1965 show that a strong majority want to reduce immigration. Yet our government has refused to respond to the public's wish. In 1996, Congress scuttled a proposal to reduce immigration by a third. (Earlier, in 1990, Congress voted to increase immigration by a whopping 40 percent.) This is all the more surprising because the United States has had no qualms about severely restricting immigration in the past. Kenneth Lee explains why recent immigration policy has failed to reflect the public opinion by approaching the question from a broad, historical outlook, and from a focused, contemporary perspective. He traces several momentous historical changes that have abetted the pro-immigration block and weakened the restrictionists' clout (mainly, the rise of conservative economics in the 1970s and the growing racial liberalism in America). He also examines immigration policy on a micro-level: detailing the intense lobbying that went on for the 1990 and 1996 immigration bills, and he also shows how unlikely players as, for example, Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed, helped defeat the restrictionist bill in 1996.
The European experience suggests that the efforts made to achieve an efficient trade-off between monetary policy and prudential supervision ultimately failed. The severity of the global crisis have pushed central banks to explore innovative tools-within or beyond their statutory constraints-capable of restoring the smooth functioning of the financial cycle, including setting macroprudential policy instruments in the regulatory toolkit. But macroprudential and monetary policies, by sharing multiple transmission channels, may interact-and conflict-with each other. Such conflicts may represent not only an economic challenge in the pursuit of price and financial stability, but also a legal uncertainty characterizing the regulatory developments of the EU macroprudential and monetary frameworks. In analyzing the "legal interaction" between the two frameworks in the EU, this book seeks to provide evidence of the inconsistencies associated with the structural separation of macroprudential and monetary frameworks, shedding light upon the legal instruments that could reconcile any potential policy inconsistency.
This work examines and contrasts U.S. decisions concerning military intervention in Lebanon in 1958 and 1982, and how the decisions made by Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan resulted in certain outcomes and avoided others. To bring each administration's decisions into perspective, the events that shaped foreign policy are examined, while the quality of the decisions are assessed in terms of each leader's managerial style and cognition. Among the topics addressed with regard to the formulation and conduct of U.S. policy are the premises and rationale behind each president's policy decisions, the events that shaped specific responses, and the resulting lessons that apply to crisis situations. Following a brief introduction, Agnes Korbani offers a concise review of the systematic and motivational opportunities for military intervention in Lebanon. A pair of chapters cover the 1958 intervention, beginning with a survey of the 1955-57 period and the circumstances that shaped U.S. responses, followed by a discussion of how the decision to intervene was formulated and why the action took the form it did. The 1982 interventions are the focus of the next chapters, which review President Reagan's intervention objective, the regional issues that influenced the decision to intervene, and the rationale behind the move. Two concluding chapters suggest ways to apply theory and decision models to the crises, and detail major errors that could have been avoided and lessons that should be learned. This is the first book to deal with decision making in an Arab country from a comparative perspective, and should be an essential reference source for scholars of U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern studies, and presidential studies.
This book addresses how the Conservative Party has re-focused its interest in social policy. Analysing to what extent the Conservatives have changed within this particular policy sphere, the book explores various theoretical, social, political, and electoral dimensions of the subject matter.
Spanish politics has been transformed. Using new techniques, this book looks at 30 years of Spanish political history to understand party competition, the impact of the EU, media-government relations, aspirations for independence in Catalonia and the Basque region, and the declining role of religion.
This book examines an important socio-political challenge to the ruling party regime in Vietnam. Vietnam has been the subject of substantial controversy and challenge to the Vietnamese party regime since market reform in the 1980s, especially since the controversy over bauxite mining in the late 2000. Using the environmental dimensions of this problem to highlight a confluence of trends disrupting the nation's "encrusted politics", this book open up a space for the in-depth study of the most sensitive issues, bravest activists, and most off limit struggles with the party-state in Vietnam today.
In this volume Rozell and Peterson bring together a collection of new essays exploring the unparalleled impact of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the modern presidency. Of all the modern presidents, FDR looms largest. Indeed, most scholars date the origins of the modern presidency to FDR, and many assert that no one since has achieved his level of greatness in office. The essays are organized into two broad sections: The first examines FDR's impact on the creation and development of the administrative presidency and the legacy of the New Deal; the second looks at FDR's legacy to presidential leadership and the exercise of presidential powers. An important volume for scholars and other researchers of the FDR era and the modern American presidency.
This book is about the varied range of emerging applications using specially trained detection dogs to monitor and protect aquatic ecosystems, animals, plants and related resources. Featuring contributions from those at the forefront of converging disciplines ranging from canine training, ecological and biological monitoring, water resource management, law enforcement, and eco-toxicology, it addresses everyone already immersed in these or related fields, and anyone seeking to gain a broader understanding of them. Chapters cover several common themes including monitoring presence/absence through biological and ecological surveys; maintaining and evaluating water quality; law enforcement and anti-poaching initiatives; public education, awareness and compliance; standards and best practices; optimal uses of dogs in relation to and in conjunction with other available tools and pragmatic considerations for selecting and working with dogs and handlers. The aim of the book is to stimulate new ideas, promote the sharing and dissemination of information and findings - and, ideally, to catalyze new and innovative partnerships, to strengthen the preservation and conservation of our aquatic heritage.
In the United States, government participation in education has traditionally involved guaranteeing public access, public funding, and public governance to achieve accountability, representativeness and equality. This volume discusses the role of broad regimes of local community actors to promote school improvement through greater civic engagement. Taking a historical perspective, this text examines the relationship between government at the federal, state, and local level and local actors both inside the traditional education regime and those stakeholders outside the schools including parents, non-profit organizations, and businesses. It then drills deeper into the role of state legislatures and finally local leadership both inside and outside the schools to promote change, focusing on efforts that include parental choice through tax incentives, charter schools, magnet schools, and school vouchers to achieve accountability, representativeness and equality. The text examines the perceptions and relationships of various actors in urban education reform in numerous cities across the country with special attention dedicated to Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin to offer a deeper understanding of the barriers to and opportunities for fostering greater civic capacity and engagement in urban education reform, as well as developing inclusive educational policy. Attention is also given to accountability and measuring success, traditionally defined by high stakes testing which fails to consider non-classroom factors within the community that contribute to student performance. An alternative approach is offered driven by a wholistic accounting of various factors that contribute to school success centered around third-party inspections and accreditation. Providing insight into school reform at the local level, this book will be useful to researchers and students interested in public policy, education policy, urban governance, intergovernmental relations, and educational leadership, as well as teaching professionals, administrators, and local government officials.
In America's foreign affairs there has been a delicate balance between often conflicting imperatives of interests, ideals, and power. How these imperatives have intersected to shape the constellation of American foreign policy decisions throughout the nation's history and, indeed, how they have served to advance or subvert attainment of America's regional, hemispheric and global ambitions, is the subject of this study. This collection of essays explores seminal decisions in American foreign policy and diplomatic history, from the early National period to the Vietnam War, each of which proved to be a turning point, and then asks readers to consider alternative futures based upon different courses of action. Nielson underscores how history could, and perhaps should, have been different. U.S. foreign policy has in large measure been contingent upon decisions made by individuals in positions of power. Their personalities, characters, and assumptions about duty and America's role in the world have uniquely shaped policy choices and, thus, the course of foreign affairs, for better or worse. This book hopes to show that history is ever fluid, unpredictable, and problematic. It will complement traditional texts as a "what if" counterpoint which will stimulate interest in and speculation about leadership roles, national interest, and decision making in foreign policy.
This book comprehensively analyzes COVID-19 and its impact as well as the response from the perspectives of humanities and social sciences. This book covers topics ranging from geopolitical relations to regional integration, public health governance and even the evolution of professional practices in the time of COVID-19. It constitutes a precious and timely interdisciplinary reference for anyone aspiring not only to grasp the origins and dynamics of the present challenge, but also to identify future opportunities for further growth and holistic progress for humanity.
How are political systems likely to shape the choices, uses, and effects of technological progress? This important new book addresses that question in a case study of Brazil's national alcohol program, Proalcool. Proalcool's stated goals are economic growth, and the reduction of personal regional income disparities, through the production of alcohol as a substitute for petroleum fuels used in internal combustion engines. Established by presidential decree in 1975, the program sought to save Brazil's floundering sugar industry and today can be counted as one of the world's largest and most advanced alternative energy experiments. To better understand how Brazil's political system has shaped this technology, the author investigates the prograM's actual social and economic consequences. He then seeks explanations for these outcomes focusing on the systemic or structural reasons that determined the development of Proalcool's technology. He concludes that the program is best understood as an agent and as a product of an authoritarian political regime, and goes further to analyze its potential role in Brazil's nascent democracy. The book offers an evaluation of the ways in which the new democratic regime in Brazil is likely to shape the choice, use and development of technologies with the potential for profound and lasting changes on the Brazilian economy. By comparing and contrasting the essential features of a democratic regime with a bureaucratic authoritarian one, the author outlines the ways in which the new Brazilian regime--and other Latin American regimes--are likely to shape their technological choices and the futures of their citizens.
This book explores the impact on EU member states of intensified European cooperation in the field of vocational education and training. By employing the Varieties of Capitalism approach as an analytical framework, it seeks to bridge diverging views from an innovative standpoint: While many experts argue that EU policies liberalize national training systems in spite of being 'soft law', Varieties of Capitalism argues that these polices do not produce a convergence of national institutions. The book maintains that European instruments such as the European Qualifications Framework and the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training are indeed biased towards liberal training regimes. On the basis of case studies on Germany, the Netherlands and England, it shows that the initiatives were implemented in line with national training systems. Thus, European soft law does not lead to a convergence of training regimes - or, as the book posits, of welfare states in general.
Social Policy, Welfare State, and Civil Society in Sweden I-II gives a comprehensive account of the global invention of the welfare state, from the far north of the West to the global East and Southeast, and from its social policy origins to the most recent challenges from civil society. This first volume includes four essays, by now minor classics in welfare state literature. "Before Social Democracy: The Early Formation of a Social Policy Discourse in Sweden" set the stage for a research current that shifted from state welfare to welfare mix and civil society. "Working Class Power and the 1946 Pension Reform in Sweden" examined a key thesis in Peter Baldwin's seminal work The Politics of Social Solidarity, and led to a lively polemic among social historians. The third text was first published (as "Sweden") in volume 1 of Peter Flora's magnum opus Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States Since World War II. The final essay, "The Dialectics of Decentralization and Privatization," is a path-breaking study of the Swedish welfare state's reconstruction in the 1980s. The second volume covers the period since 1988 - "the lost world of social democracy" - and recent changes in comparative welfare state research and the Nordic Model. This work is an updated and enlarged edition in two volumes of Sven Hort's well-known and wide-ranging dissertation Social Policy and Welfare State in Sweden, published under the author's birth name Sven E. Olsson in 1990. This first volume contains the original four essays of the first edition. In praise of the new edition: "This is an impressive, comprehensive and knowledgeable contribution to the analysis of the early history and long-term development of the Swedish welfare state. Through a prime focus on reform actors at various stages we are persuasively reminded that there was a history before the ascendance of Social Democracy from the early 1930s, that the Social Democrats played a crucial role in the expansionary phase, and that one must go beyond theories of class politics to get a proper understanding of the evolution and characteristics of the modern welfare state." - Stein Kuhnle, Professor in Comparative Politics, Hertie School of Governance and University of Bergen "The development of the Swedish welfare state is often sketched in fairly simplistic terms. Professor Hort's analysis remains the most penetrating of the complex and fascinating interplay between politics, social forces, and economic development that explains much of the intricacies of the system that eventually emerged." - Gunnar Wetterberg, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Sven E. O. Hort is Professor in Social Welfare at the College of Social Sciences, Seoul National University, Korea. He is an alumnus of Lund University. In Sweden he taught sociology at Linneaus and Sodertorn universities. Currently he is the chief editor of the Swedish journal Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys and a deputy editor of European Societies. With Stein Kuhnle he is the author of "The Coming of East and South-East Asian Welfare States," Journal of European Social Policy (2000).
This collection of essays by Israeli, Palestinian, and American scholars and activists examines the impact of the June 1967 War on Palestinians and Israelis alike in the thirty years following the war. Israel became an occupying power in 1967, ruling more than one million Palestinians in territories it had captured. Using military strength, with the tacit agreement and support of the United States and other Western democracies, Israel exploited and oppressed the Palestinians, brutally suppressing their civil, human, and political rights. This book evaluates and examines the injustices done to the Palestinians during this period. In this first attempt to look back at those thirty years and assess what has happened to Israeli and Palestinian society, the contributing scholars provide a critique of the prevailing "Realpolitik" in the Middle East and, indeed, the world today. Bound to be controversial, the collection will be of great interest to scholars and policy makers, as well as concerned citizens interested in the contemporary Middle East.
Capitalism is criticized as both the cause of, and the main barrier to, effective mitigation of climate change. Yet, from the earliest days of the international negotiations, states have agreed that technological innovation, believed to be a primary strength of capitalism, is crucial to prevention of a dangerous accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Nations prefer to rely on innovative technologies to reduce emissions than to use regulations to constrain markets and limit social choice. The contributors to this volume show that the strengths of the system that creates ever new consumer products and industrial processes actually prevent the generation of technological innovations that would most effectively mitigate climate change. Through comprehensive research of the US innovation system and how companies respond to its supporting institutions, they demonstrate that liberal capitalism's perceived strengths are also its weaknesses. They also show that current theories of technological innovation are incomplete and suggest the institutional changes needed to generate climate innovations.
This intriguing book investigates the technical information quandary created by post-industrial changes, which have produced demands for citizen involvement in public policy processes while complex scientific and technical issues increasingly make public involvement difficult. Authors Pierce, Steger, Steel, and Lovrich address the degree to which interest groups might serve to bridge the knowledge gap between public policy processes and the citizenry in U.S. and Canadian settings. The focus of the study is on acid rain policy in Michigan and Ontario, an area of considerable scientific and technical complexity as well as political and public interest. The authors examine how the U.S. and Canadian publics acquire, process, and communicate policy-relevant information so that it can influence policymaking. Do interest groups play the information dissemination role in a manner that could address the technical information quandary? Are interest groups playing the same or different roles in the United States and Canada? What different factors cause U.S. and Canadian interest groups to behave as they do in the political arena? Recommended for scholars of Political Science, Communication, Environmental Studies, and Comparative Public Policy.
The political practice of declaring victory and coming home has provided a false and dangerous domestic impression of great success for U.S. unilateral and multilateral interventions in failing and failed states around the world. The reality of such irresponsibility is that the root causes and the violent consequences of contemporary "intranational" conflict are left to smolder and reignite at a later date with the accompanying human and physical waste. This book discusses why it is incumbent on the international community and individual powers involved in dealing with the chaos of the post-Cold War world to understand that such action requires a long-term, holistic, and strategic approach. The intent of such an approach is to create and establish the proven internal conditions that can lead to a mandated peace and stability--with justice. The key elements that define those conditions at the strategic level include: (1) the physical establishment of order and the rule of law; (2) the isolation of belligerents; (3) the regeneration of the economy; (4) the shaping of political consent; (5) fostering peaceful conflict resolution processes; (6) achieving a complete unity of effort toward stability; and (7) establishment and maintenance of a legitimate civil society. These essential dimensions of contemporary global security and stability requirements comprise a new paradigm that will, hopefully, initiate the process of rethinking both problem and response.
Galia Golan's concise but richly detailed monograph gives us the first look at Soviet policy toward terrorism under Gorbachev. Drawing on a wide array of Soviet sources, Dr. Golan traces the evolution in Soviet attitudes toward terrorism and support for movements of national liberation from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. She focuses specifically on the change in Soviet public positions toward a more explicit condemnation of terrorist acts. The debate is likely to continue over whether changing public positions reflect an actual shift in Soviet behavior, but Golan's book helps to frame that debate. All those who are interested in evaluating Soviet `new thinking' on an important global and regional issue should read this book. Dennis B. Ross Director, Policy Planning Staff U.S. Department of State This book examines the reevaluation of Soviet foreign policy under Gorbachev, known as the new thinking. This new foreign policy has produced a new Soviet attitude and, apparently, different behavior toward terrorism. In the past, terrorism was officially condemned either as a method employed by imperialist or capitalist regimes against an oppressed population or as an illegitimate offshoot of armed struggle, having nothing in common with genuine liberation struggles. Under Gorbachev, there is a reduction in Soviet aid to many groups using terrorism and a call for political solutions to ongoing conflicts. The latest volume in The Washington Papers series, Gorbachev's New Thinking on Terrorism will be of special interest to political scientists, Soviet specialists, or anyone interested in terrorism today. With a foreword by Walter laqueur Laqueur, this book begins with a detailed background study of Soviet attitudes toward terrorism, demonstrating the changes in Gorbachev's approach to the problem. Galia Golan, Darwin professor of Soviet and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, defines the differences between Gorbachev's rhetoric and the reality of the new thinking as the book explores reports and rumors of Soviet involvement in Pakistan and the Philippines. The book concludes with a look at current Soviet policy toward terrorist groups traditionally backed by the Soviet Union.
Kauffman's perspective on progress in America-from the point of view of those who lost-revives forgotten figures and reinvigorates dormant causes as he examines the characters and arguments from six critical battles that forever altered the American landscape: the debates over child labor, school consolidation, women's suffrage, the back-to-the-land movement, good roads and the Interstate Highway System, and a standing army. The integration of these subjects and the presentation of the anti-Progress case as a coherent political tendency encompassing several issues and many years is unprecedented. With wit, passion, and an arsenal of long-neglected sources, Kauffman measures the cost of progress in 20th-Century America and exposes the elaborate plans behind seemingly inevitable reforms. Kauffman brings to life such people and places as Ida Tarbell, the muckraker who thought that suffrage would ruin women; Onward, Indiana, the town that took up arms to defend its high school from death by consolidation; and the motley band of agrarian poets and ghetto dwellers who tried to stop the bulldozers that paved over America. He maintains that these forlorn causes-usually regarded as quaint, archaic, and hopeless-rested, in large part, upon quintessential American ideals: limited government, human-scale community, and family autonomy. The victory of progress has uprooted our citizens, swollen the central state at the expense of liberty, and sucked much of the life from what was once a nation of small communities.
This book discusses all the questions related to Kashmiri Pandits and their relation and current issues regarding their return to Kashmir. The book explores the importance of return of Kashmiri Pandits for Kashmir and both major Kashmiri communities, especially those who really want to return home, out of their own volition and for all right reasons. The book shows how to bring about a reasonable and realistic degree of practical and sustainable reconciliation between the two communities, whilst trying to make them stand in each other's shoes, understand each other's perspective and pain and then self-introspect sincerely, so that a bridge of mutual trust and acceptance is rebuilt between the two communities, which can then allow those Pandits who genuinely want to return cross over and be home. |
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