"The Transforming Fire" sets out to explain how the rise of Islamism is changing the nature of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours. For a time, the Arab-Israeli conflict seemed a fight over real-estate and recognition, but in recent years it has transformed into an existential battle between Israel and radical Islamism. Today, Israel faces a rising force that is committed to its demise. Spyer, who served as a special advisor on international affairs to Israeli Cabinet ministers, provides a vivid account of what can now be called the Israel-Islamist conflict, outlining the issues at stake and gauging each side's relative strengths and weaknesses. Israel faces not one united Islamist movement, but an array of states and organizations that share a wish to destroy Jewish sovereignty. Combining narrative and argument, Spyer uses first-person accounts of key moments in the conflict to highlight the human impact of this battle of wills. A thought-provoking, balanced work, "The Transforming Fire" provides a new understanding of a particular aspect of the larger conflict between radical Islam and West, which may well become the key foreign policy challenge of the 21st century.

Among American conservatives, the right to own property free from the meddling hand of the state is one of the most sacred rights of all. But the in the American West, the federal government owns and oversees vast patches of land, complicating the narrative of western individualism and private property rights. Hence anti-federal government sentiment, often in the name of private property rights, has animated conservative politics in the West for decades upon decades. In This Land Is My Land, James R. Skillen tells the story of conservative rebellion against federal land management in the America West over the last forty years, which has ranged from legal action to armed confrontations. He traces the most recent waves of conservative rebellion against federal land authority-the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979-1982), the War for the West (1991-2000), and the Patriot Rebellion (2009-2016)-and shows how they evolved from a regional rebellion waged by westerners with material interests in federal lands to a national rebellion against the federal administrative state. Cumulatively, Skillen's account explains how the civil religion and constitutional nationalism in which ranchers, miners, and other traditional federal land users became powerful symbols of conservative American and how federal land issues became inseparably linked to property rights, gun rights, and religious express. Not just a book about property rights battles over western lands, This Land is My Land reveals how evolving rebellions in the west provide insight for understanding the conservative coalition that elected President Donald J. Trump in 2016.

Through the influence of Doctors' Commons and the universities the civilians played an important role in the development of English law, especially in the fields of commercial, estate and admiralty law. Despite its value, study of the civil law had entered a moribund phase by the eighteenth century. Several student handbooks attempted to correct this deficiency, and Beaver's translation of Ferriere's treatise is among the best. Accompanied by Duck's learned essay that connects the civil law to the common law, the work is among the first in English to establish the confluence of these legal traditions. Also included is Beaver's translation of The History of the Origine of the French Laws, Translated from the French by J.B. Esq., Shewing, the Analogy of the Laws of the Antient Gauls and Britons. First published anonymously in 1703, it has been attributed to Ferriere, Gabriel Argou and Claude Fleury.Claude Joseph de Ferriere ca. 1680-ca. 1750] was a well known French jurisconsult, dean of the Faculty of Law in Paris and the author of legal treatises and an important legal dictionary, Dictionnaire de Droit et de Pratique.CONTENTSChap. I. Of the Different Forms of Government in RomeChap. II. Of the Roman Law under the Regal Government Chap. III. Of the Free State of Rome in its Infancy, and the Creation of consuls Chap. IV. Of the Creation of Tribunes of the PeopleChap. V. Of the Decemviri, and Law of the Twelve TablesChap. VI. Of the Consequences that attended the Law of the Twelve TablesChap. VII. Of the LawsChap. VIII. Of the Plebiscita Chap. IX. Of the Interpretation of the LawyersChap. X. Of the Praetor's EdictsChap. XI. Of the Roman Law under the EmperorsChap. XII. The Succession of the Emperors to JustinianChap. XIII. Of the Emperor Justinian Chap. XIV. Of the Roman SenateChap. XV. Of the Senatus-ConsultaChap. XVI. Of the Lawyers Answers Chap. XVII. Of the most Celebrated Roman Lawyers Chap. XVIII. Of the Law-Books before Justinian's Time Chap. XIX. Of Justinian's CodeChap. XX. Of the Digests or Pandects Chap. XXI. Of Justinian's InstitutesChap. XXII. Of the Second Edition of Justinian's Code Chap. XXIII. Of Justinian's latter Constitutions, called Novels Chap. XXIV. Of the Law obscrv'd in the East, after Justinian's DeathChap. XXV. Of the Law obscrv'd in the West, after Justinian's Death Chap. XXVI. Of the Use of the Roman Law in France Chap. XXVII. The Decretal Epistle Super-specula explain'd Chap. XXVIII. The Sixty ninth Article of the Ordonnance of Blois explain'd Chap. XXIX. Of the Excellency of the Roman Law Chap. XXX. Of the most celebrated Interpreters of the Roman Law Chap. XXXI. Of the Dispositions requir'd for the Study of the Roman LawChap. XXXII. Of the Method to be observ'd in studying the Roman LawChap. XXXIII. Of the Quotations and Abbreviation

This bold venture into political theory and comparative politics combines traditional concerns about democracy with modern analytical methods. It asks how contemporary democracies work, an essential stage in asking how they can be justified. An answer to both questions is found in the idea of the median mandate. The voter in the middle - the voice of the majority - empowers the centre party in parliament to translate his or her preferences into public policy. The median mandate provides a unified theory of democracy - pluralist, consensus, majoritarian, liberal, and populist - by replacing each qualified 'vision' with an integrated account of how representative institutions work. The unified theory is put to the test with comprehensive cross-national evidence covering 21 democracies from 1950 through to 1995. This exciting book will be of interest to specialists and general readers alike, representing as it does a reaffirmation of traditional democratic practice in an uncertain and threatening world. Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. The General Editors are Max Kaase, Professor of Political Science, Vice President and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, International University, Bremen, Germany; and Kenneth Newton, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Southampton. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research.

How do state parties react to the challenge of peripheral parties demanding political power to be devolved to their culturally distinct territories? Is devolution the best response to these demands? Why do national governments implement devolution given the high risk that devolution will encourage peripheral parties to demand ever more devolved powers? The aim of this book is to answer these questions through a comparative analysis of devolution in four European countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The author argues that electoral competition between state and peripheral parties pushes some state parties to prefer devolution at some particular point in time. Devolution is an electoral strategy adopted in order to make it more difficult in the long term for peripheral parties to increase their electoral support by claiming the monopoly of representation of the peripheral territory and the people in it. The strategy of devolution is preferred over short-term tactics of convergence towards the peripheral programmatic agenda because the pro-periphery tactics of state parties in unitary centralised states are not credible in the eyes of voters. The price that state parties pay for making their electoral tactics credible is the 'entrenchment' of the devolution programmatic agenda in the electoral arena. The final implication of this argument is that in democratic systems devolution is not a decision to protect the state from the secessionist threat. It is, instead, a decision by state parties to protect their needed electoral majorities. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

Collecting original and high-quality analysis by top scholars from Japan, the United States, Australia, and Europe, this volume analyzes the results of the 2014 election, examining each of the major political parties, central policy issues, campaign practices, and considers how the results were used as a mandate for massive policy reform.

African Realism explains Africa's international conflicts of the post-colonial era through international relations theory. It looks at the relationship between Africa's domestic and international conflicts, as well as the impact of factors such as domestic legitimacy, trade, and regional economic institutions on African wars. Further, it examines the relevance of traditional realist assumptions (e.g. balance of power, the security dilemma) to African international wars and how these factors are modified by the exigencies of Africa's domestic institutions, such as neopatrimonialism and inverted legitimacy. This study also addresses the inconsistencies and inaccuracies of international relations theory as it engages African international relations, and especially, its military history

Democracy, Agency, and the State aims to contribute to a comparatively informed theory of democracy. Professor O'Donnell begins by arguing that conceptions of 'the state' and 'democracy', and their respective defining features, significantly influence each other. Using an approach that is both historical and analytical, he traces this relationship through the idea of legally sanctioned and backed agency which grounds democratic citizenship. From this standpoint he explores several aspects of the democratic regime and of the state, distinguishing four constitutive dimensions (bureaucracy, legality, focus of collective identity, and filter). He goes on to examine the role played by the idea of 'the nation' or 'the people', and the ways in which the state represents itself to different sections of society, especially in countries marred by deep inequality and pervasive poverty.
Drawing on the examples of democratic and non-democratic regime, he discusses the dialogical spaces congenial to democracy, as well as examining the options that may or may not enable agency, and the complex comparative and ethical issues raised by the intersection of agency with globalization and legal pluralism.Throughout these discussions several comparative vistas are opened, especially but not exclusively toward Latin America. The book concludes by offering a justification of democracy, even of the flawed democracies that nowadays abound.
Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford University.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, why has the reform process been incremental although the conditions for more rapid and abrupt transformations appeared to exist? Is there anything specific about financial policy that prevents more radical reforms? Drawing from Comparative Politics and Historical Institutionalism in particular, as well as International Political Economy, this book answers these questions by examining the particular institutional frictions that characterise global financial governance and influence the activity of agents and veto players involved in the process of global regulatory change. The chapters in this volume collectively demonstrate that the process of change in financial rule-making as well as in the institutions governing finance does not fit with the punctuated model of policy change. The book also shows, however, that incremental changes can lead to fundamental shifts in the basic principles that inform global financial governance. 'In this timely, tightly argued, and empirically trenchant study, Moschella and Tsingou provide the strongest statement yet of why national and international post-crisis reform packages have fallen short of their most ambitious goals. Covering virtually every area of the international fi nancial system, the editors and their collaborators detail the origins and consequences of incremental policy changes, but note that, in the end, reforms may produce a subtle transformation in fi nancial market regulation. Great Expectations, Slow Transformations will long remain a major resource for scholars of post-crisis capitalism.' Dr. Orfeo Fioretos, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA 'The Global Financial Crisis was, by any measure, a great systemic shock that has so far led to a series of less-than-great systemic transformations - at least in the area of financial reform. Moschella and Tsingou explain why this is the case. By harnessing the insights of historical institutionalism to those of agent centered constructivism, they show us why great institutional transformations may take a lot longer, and may be significantly more contingent, than we generally think.' Mark Blyth, Professor of International Political Economy, Brown University, Providence, USA 'Many expected the financial collapse of 2007/8 to evoke signifi cant reform of financial systems around the globe. So far, at least, national governments have been slow to act. Moschella and Tsingou's fascinating volume, Great Expectations, Slow Transformations, helps us understand why. In this thoughtful volume the editors have pulled together a series of well reasoned and persuasive essays examining the politics and political economy of financial reform efforts around the globe. Eschewing the temptation to blame specific interests and their compliant politicians, these authors give us a set of nuanced stories that go beyond the politics of fi nancial reform helping us better understand why institutional change itself is so diffi cult. This book will be of great interest both for political economists interested in the politics of banking and financial regulation in the early 21st century, as well as for Historical Institutionalists interested in the politics of institutional change. Sven Steinmo, Professor and Chair in Political Economy and Public Policy, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

This book addresses the challenge of reforming defense and military policy-making in newly democratized nations. By tracing the development of civil-military relations in various new democracies from a comparative perspective, it links two bodies of scholarship that thus far have remained largely separate: the study of emerging (or failed) civilian control over armed forces on the one hand; and work on the roots and causes of military effectiveness to guarantee the protection and security of citizens on the other. The empirical and theoretical findings presented here will appeal to scholars of civil-military relations, democratization and security issues, as well as to defense policy-makers.

Based on cutting-edge research, this edited volume examines how citizens and political elites perceive the legitimacy of regional integration in Europe and the Americas. It analyses public opinion and political discourse on the EU, NAFTA and MERCOSUR, arguing that legitimation patterns shape the development of regional governance.

Within the liberal tradition, the physical body has been treated as a focus of rights discussion and a source of economic and democratic value; it needs protection but it is also one's dominion, tool, and property, and thus something over which we should be able to exercise free will. However, the day-to-day reality of how we live in our bodies and how we make choices about them is not something over which we can exercise full control. In this way, embodiment mirrors life in a pluralist body politic: we are interdependent and vulnerable, exposed with and to others while desiring agency. As disability, feminist, and critical race scholars have all suggested, barriers to bodily control are often a problem of public and political will and social and economic structures that render relationality and caring responsibilities private, invisible, and low value. These scholarly traditions firmly maintain the importance of bodily integrity and self-determination, but make clear that autonomy is not a matter of mere non-interference but rather requires extensive material and social support. Autonomy is thus totally intertwined with, not opposed to, vulnerability. Put another way, the pursuit of autonomy requires practices of humility. Given this, what do we learn about agency and self-determination, as well as trust, self-knowledge, dependence, and resistance under such conditions of acute vulnerability? The Virtues of Vulnerability looks at the question of how we navigate "choice" and control over our bodies when it comes to conditions like birth, illness, and death, particularly as they are experienced within mainstream medical institutions operating under the pressures of neoliberal capitalism. There is often a deep disconnect between what people say they want in navigating birth, illness, and death, and what they actually experience through all of these life events. Practices such as informed consent, the birth plan, advanced directives, and the patient satisfaction survey typically offer a thin and unreliable version of self-determination. In reality, "choice" in these instances is encumbered and often determined by our vulnerability at the most critical moments. This book looks at the ways in which we navigate birth, illness, and death in order to think about how vulnerability and humility can inform political will. Overall, the book asks under what conditions vulnerability and interdependence enhance or diminish our sense of ourselves as agents. In exploring this question it aims to produce a new vocabulary for democratic politics, highlighting traits that have profound political implications in terms of how citizens aspire, struggle, relate to, and persevere with each other.

Why would an authoritarian regime expand social welfare provision in the absence of democratization? Yet China, the world's largest and most powerful authoritarian state, has expanded its social health insurance system at an unprecedented rate, increasing enrollment from 20 percent of its population in 2000 to 95 percent in 2012. Significantly, people who were uninsured, such as peasants and the urban poor, are now covered, but their insurance is less comprehensive than that of China's elite. With the wellbeing of 1.4 billion people and the stability of the regime at stake, social health insurance is now a major political issue for Chinese leadership and ordinary citizens. In Social Protection under Authoritarianism, Xian Huang analyzes the transformation of China's social health insurance in the first decade of the 2000s, addressing its expansion and how it is distributed. Drawing from government documents, filed interviews, survey data, and government statistics, she reveals that Chinese leaders have a strategy of "stratified expansion," perpetuating a particularly privileged program for the elites while developing an essentially modest health provision for the masses. She contends that this strategy effectively balances between elites and masses to maximize the regime's prospects of stability. In China's multilevel governance, both centralized and decentralized structures are involved in the distribution of social health insurance. When local leaders implement the stratified expansion of social health insurance, they respond to varied local conditions. As a result, China's health insurance policies differ dramatically across subnational regions as well as socioeconomic groups. Providing an in-depth look into China's health insurance system, this book sheds light not only on Chinese politics, but also on how social benefits function in authoritarian regimes and decentralized multilevel governance settings.

This book reveals the mechanisms underlying the convergence of car fuel economy regulations in Europe, Japan and the US by drawing upon a constructivist theory of International Relations and law that focuses on business competition and environmental regulations. It offers new understanding of the topic of cars and an issue of climate change, discussing the emerging phenomenon of convergence of fuel economy regulations; addressing the role of business actors in pushing for climate change action; proposing the new model of agency with and beyond states; and providing insightful case studies from Europe, Japan and the US. The opening chapter reviews the automobile industry and global climate change, providing a background for the discussion to follow. Chapter 2, Business Actors and Global Environmental Governance, grounds the discussion in the field of environmental governance. The third chapter is a case study examining the construction and timing of the European Union's climate policies for automobile CO2 emissions, discussing the underlying factors and the actors influencing the policies. The following chapter argues that Japan adopted its stringent fuel economy regulations primarily because of industry competitiveness, motivated by stringent environmental regulations in export markets and encouraged by a tradition of 'co-regulation' and 'corporatism' to enhance the regulations. Chapter 5 asks why the US, the first country to introduce fuel economy regulations, spent two decades in regulatory stagnation, and discusses how recent US fuel economy regulations came to converge with Japanese and European standards. Chapter 6 compares, contrasts and analyzes fuel economy regulations among the three case studies and identifies policy implications for the future climate governance for 2015 and beyond. The final chapter explores applicability of the 'agency with and beyond the state' model to other sectors and to climate governance as a whole.

Why do states similar in size, resources and capabilities significantly differ in their basic orientations and actions across major domains in foreign policy, security and defense? This book addresses this important question by analyzing the major differences between the foreign policies of France and Germany over extended periods of time.

Kofi Abrefa Busia (1914–1978), born a member of the royal house of Wenchi, Ghana was a Ghanaian political leader and sociologist. He was a scholar by inclination and temperament and symbolized the dilemma of the intellectual in politics – the man of thought forced by events to become the man of action. These three volumes, originally published between 1962 and 1967, reissued here together for the first time, each with new introductory material, were all written in exile, and contemplate the continent of Africa undergoing rapid social transformation. Together they act as testimonials to the importance of, and difficulty in, implementing democratic traditions. In these works Busia considered the centrality of traditional African ideologies and practices and the institutions they supported, to comprehend the influence of native institutions and systems of thought on the modern national state and to reflect on their continuing role in creating a healthy democratic environment. The principles he taught continue to live on in the influences he made on African studies in general and Ghanaian politics in particular to the extent that his name had become a shorthand for the establishment of free Democratic traditions in Ghana today.

Taking the reader through a long view of American history, What Happened to the Vital Center? offers a novel and important contribution to the ongoing scholarly and popular discussion of how America fell apart and what might be done to end the Cold Civil War that fractures the country and weakens the national resolve. In What Happened to the Vital Center?, Nicholas Jacobs and Sidney Milkis tackle a foundational question within American political history: Is current partisan polarization, aggravated by populist disdain for constitutional principles and institutions, a novel development in American politics? Populism is not a new threat to the country's democratic experiment, but now insurgents intrude directly on elections and government. During previous periods of populist unrest, the US was governed by resilient parties that moderated extremist currents within the political system. This began to crumble during the 1960s, as anti-institutionalist incursions into the Democratic and Republican organizations gave rise to reforms that empowered activists at the expense of the median voter and shifted the controlling power over parties to the executive branch. Gradually, the moderating influence that parties played in structuring campaigns and the policy process eroded to the point where extreme polarization dominated and decision-making power migrated to the presidency. Weakened parties were increasingly dominated by presidents and their partnerships with social activists, leading to a gridlocked system characterized by the politics of demonization and demagoguery. Executive-centered parties more easily ignore the sorts of moderating voices that had prevailed in an earlier era. While the Republican Party is more susceptible to the dangers of populism than the Democrats, both parties are animated by a presidency-led, movement-centered vision of democracy. After tracing this history, the authors dismiss calls to return to some bygone era. Rather, the final section highlights the ways in which the two parties can be revitalized as institutions of collective responsibility that can transform personal ambition and rancorous partisanship into principled conflict over the profound issues that now divide the country. The book will transform our understanding of how we ended up in our current state of extreme polarization and what we can do to fix it.

This volume focuses on the evolution of public policy and the role of agenda setting with regard to policymaking in countries of the Global South. The authors illustrate the emergence of public policy research as an academic discipline, and highlight various aspects of history, governance, politics, and economics as components of public policy theory development. By offering a cross-national perspective, the papers contribute to a better understanding of when, how, and by whom a given policy agenda is designed, which is essential to grasping how policy is implemented. In turn, the authors investigate how the development of public policy research has influenced policymaking in fields such as democratization, migration, corruption, agriculture, environment, education, and entrepreneurship and, more specifically, agenda setting in selected countries of the Global South.

This book explains the historical and philosophical understanding of Eurasia and its current relevance to the formation of the Eurasian Union. It considers Eurasia's historical underpinnings, and its current economic, political and geo-strategic relevance in world politics.

Although there is no doubt that the constitution has been significantly reformed since the election of New Labour in 1997 the degree to which these reforms have altered the nature of democracy in the United Kingdom remains highly contested. A major problem within this debate is that it has become polarized around a binary distinction between power-sharing and power-hoarding models of democracy when the contemporary situation is actually far more complex. This book draws upon theories and methods from comparative political analysis in order to argue and then demonstrate three central and inter-related arguments.
Firstly, that the distinctive element of New Labour's approach to constitutional engineering is not that it has shifted the nature of democracy in the United Kingdom from one model to another but has instead sought to apply different models at the periphery and core: bi-constitutionality.
Secondly, that contemporary evidence of both increasing levels of public disengagement from conventional politics and falling levels of public trust in politicians, political institutions and political processes originate from the 'expectations gap'. This 'gap' is created by the process of political competition artificially increases public expectations; only for these expectations to be dashed as the elected party either seeks to renege upon certain pre-election commitments or fails to achieve them.
Finally, democracy in the United Kingdom is currently drifting. The old rules do not appear to suit the new game, and yet the government continues to insist that the old rules still apply. The critical challenge for any future government, of any political complexion, will be to articulate a new form of constitutional morality with the capacity to clarify exactly what its reforms in the sphere of constitutional reform and democratic renewal are seeking to achieve.
The analysis offered in this book focuses on the evolution of democracy in the United Kingdom since the election of New Labour in 1997. However in order to achieve both depth and breadth this analysis is then located within the contours of much broader longitudinal and comparative analyses. This involves examining the trajectory of democracy in the United Kingdom from 1945 onwards, and then comparing this long-term view within a much broader comparative perspective to examine the degree to which recent developments in the United Kingdom fit within global democratic trends.

Eleonora Poli analyses how ideas and material interests have come to determine the evolution of antitrust policies in the USA, EU, Japan and BRICS. She argues that three major economic crises together with market globalisation have changed governments' perceptions of market competition, giving rise to a neo-liberal global phase.

This book presents an in-depth exploration of the impact of the Arab Uprisings on the relationship between constructions of (in)security, narratives of threat and patterns of socio-political change within the Middle East and North Africa region. It also offers insights into the study of regional security and the operation of threat perceptions.

A landmark in the study of Roman lawReprint of the only edition. The final edition of Ortolan's Explication Historique des Instituts de Justinien (1873) is a vast three-volume work containing a history of Roman law, a treatise on Roman jurisprudence and a complete commentary on the Institutes, the textbook of Justinian's law from the Corpus Juris Civilis. It was the standard textbook in its day and often the basis for examinations. Conceived for students with limited time and fluency in French, Mears's Analysis is a skillful condensation of Ortolan's work. Still a remarkably comprehensive study, it provides an excellent contextual overview of Roman law.CONTENTSPART I. History of Roman LegislationFirst Epoch -The KingsSecond Epoch -The RepublicThird Epoch -The EmperorsRoman Law after JustinianPART II. Generalisation of Roman LawIntroductionPersonsThingsFacts, Events, or ActsRightsPART III. Commentary on Justinian's InstitutesArgument and PrefaceBook IBook IIBook IIIBook IVT homas]. Lambert Mears 1839-1918] was a barrister of the Inner Temple and taught at the University of London.