This book examines the frequency, causes and management of divided government in comparative context, identifying the similarities and differences between the various experiences of this increasingly frequent form of government. The countries studied include Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Poland, and the US.

The Origins of the English Parliament is a magisterial account of the evolution of parliament, from its earliest beginnings in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Starting with the national assemblies which began to meet in the reign of King AEthelstan, it carries the story through to the fully fledged parliament of lords and commons of the early fourteenth century, which came to be seen as representative of the whole nation and which eventually sanctioned the deposition of the king himself in 1327.
Throughout, J. R. Maddicott emphasizes parliament's evolution as a continuous process, underpinned by some important common themes. Over the four hundred years covered by the book the chief business of the assembly was always the discussion of national affairs, together with other matters central to the running of the state, such as legislation and justice. It was always a resolutely political body. But its development was also shaped by a series of unforeseen events and episodes. Chief among these were the Norman Conquest, the wars of Richard I and John, and the minority of Henry III. A major turning-point was reached in 1215, when Magna Carta established the need for general consent to taxation -- a vital step towards the establishment of parliament itself in the next generation.
Covering an exceptionally long time span, The Origins of the English Parliament takes readers to the roots of the English state's central institution, showing how the more familiar parliament of late medieval and early modern England came into being and illuminating the close relationship between particular political episodes and the course of institutional change. Above all, it shows how the origins of parliament lie not in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as has usually been argued, but in a much more distant past.

Granstaff argues that in current partisan politics Congress systematically fails to fulfil its primary constitutional function of specifying the national interest. He begins by showing why full-representative-deliberation, or deliberation in which all representatives can participate, is one of three congressional institutions necessary to the maintainance of the country's democratic integrity. He then looks at the framers' writings, the practices of the first Congresses, and democratic theory to suggest a deliberative theory for the American constitutional system. Next, he reviews, criticizes, and supplements the literature on congressional deliberation from the theoretic perspective established earlier. After detailing his methodology, Granstaff applies it to three case studies: the use of American troops in Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, and Somalia. The findings in each case study are consistent with the hypothesis that the discourses--as deliberation--are phony. He then discusses the implications within the three case studies and for the American constitutional system as a whole. Ultimately, the book shows that when true deliberation is replaced by partisan posturing, various constituencies effectively lose their legitimate voice in national affairs. As a result, special interests usually guide federal policy. Granstaff concludes with a procedural suggestion that might alleviate this problem. This work is a timely critique for researchers and students of political communication, Congress, and democratic theory.

This book systematically assesses the value systems of active Muslims around the globe. Based on a multivariate analysis of recent World Values Survey data, it sheds new light on Muslim opinions and values in countries such as Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Due to a lack of democratic traditions, sluggish economic growth, escalating religiously motivated violence, and dissatisfaction with ruling elites in many Muslim countries, the authors identify a crisis and return to conservative values in the Muslim world, including anti-Semitism, religious and sexual intolerance, and views on democracy and secularism, business and economic matters. Based on these observations, they offer recommendations for policymakers and civil societies in Muslim countries on how to move towards tolerance, greater democratization and more rapid economic growth.

In this book, a new general model of delayed transitions to democracy is proposed and used to analyze Mexico's transition to democracy. This model attempts to explain the slow, gradual dynamics of change characteristic of delayed transitions to democracy and is developed in a way that makes it generalizable to other regional contexts. Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data based on an original data set of forty thousand individual interviews, Schatz analyzes how the historical authoritarian corporate shaping of interests and forms of political consciousness has fractured the social base of the democratic opposition and inhibited democratizing social action. Using comparative cases of delayed transitions to democracy, the author's conclusions challenge and improve upon current theories of democratization.

In elaborating a model for the delayed transition to democracy, the author argues that the emphasis on transformative industrialism in both political modernization and class-analytic theories of social bases of democratization is modeled too closely on the western European process of democratization to allow a full explanation of the case of Mexico's transition to democracy. In addition, she argues that a delayed transitions model provides a more adequate explanation of gradual transitions to democracy because such a model builds on a the insights of structural theories regarding the social bases of anti-authoritarian mobilization. To support the delayed transitions model, Schatz compares Mexico with Taiwan and Tanzania, countries also characterized by delayed transitions to democracy in the late twentieth century. This important book fills a considerable gap in the literature on democratization at the end of the century.

For more than forty years, Western policymakers defined communism as the central threat to international peace and stability. They responded by confronting it with a counterbalancing threat of force, and pursuing a strategy of containment. With the collapse of communism, the challenge to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic community has changed. Soviet expansionism has been supplanted by powerful, internal forces arising out of the clash of competing ethnic nationalisms. This challenge, argues Steven L. Burg, cannot be met by force alone, or neutralized through a strategy of containment. It requires Western states to act decisively to influence the internal political development of the post- communist states themselves.

Burg surveys the challenges that the ethnic diversity in Eastern Europe present to domestic stability, international peace, and American interests, and suggests policies and practices by which the United States and its allies might contribute to the consolidation of peace in the region. He provides a concise explanation and analysis of the issues, evaluates the usefulness of scholarly approaches to the resolution of ethnic conflicts, and offers a strategy of what he calls preventive engagement by which policymakers may prevent conflicts such as the one that destroyed the former Yugoslavia.

War or Peace? offers clear and direct recommendations to guide both interested citizens and national policymakers as they attempt to grapple with the complexities of ethnic and nationalist politics in Europe.

Democracy is joint government of peoples. This book justifies principles of government for liberal democratic peoples who are willing to enhance the transnational rights of their citizens and accept institutional constraints in the pursuit of common goals. Unlike individualistic accounts of cosmopolitan democracy, this book constructs the design of a free political community of democracies from the perspective of the liberal democratic peoples. If liberal peoples want to govern by common institutions without forgoing their sovereignty--many have good reasons to do so--they should consider the conceptual and normative guidance offered in this book.

Including contributors with diverse backgrounds and outlooks, this volume provides an unconventional and provocative look at how Japan is situated in a globally unfolding transition from representative democracy to monitoring democracy. In Japan's case, the transition is unfolding from karaoke democracy to kabuki democracy. Karaoke democracy focuses on collectively redistributing benefits with many intervening institutions whereas kabuki democracy focuses on striking an emotional chord with direct conversations between leaders and citizens. A must read for those interested in knowing where Japan is heading.

This book presents up-to-date empirical research on crucial questions of political socialisation. It suggests new approaches and answers to a classic but still valid question of political socialisation research: 'Who learns what from whom under what circumstances with what effects?' (Greenstein 1965: 13). The volume maintains that political socialisation is no universal or independent phenomenon, but one significantly shaped by the surrounding parameters of the society in which it is embedded. Therefore, deficits in political socialisation research have become especially clear in light of political and societal changes over recent decades. The book contributes to two important discussions in the study of political socialisation: first, the question of the (relative) importance of socialisation agents and contexts, second - inextricably interwoven with the first - the timing of political socialisation. From a European perspective, articles in the volume shed light on old problems and topics of the field, using new methodological approaches or dealing with long-neglected perspectives such as young children's democratic learning or political socialisation. Includes quantitative approaches as well as innovative and explorative case studies.

Former slaves, with no prior experience in electoral politics and with few economic resources or little significant social standing, created a sweeping political movement that transformed the South after the Civil War. Within a few short years after emancipation, not only were black men voting but they had elected thousands of ex-slaves to political offices. Historians have long noted the role of African American slaves in the fight for their emancipation and their many efforts to secure their freedom and citizenship, yet they have given surprisingly little attention to the system of governance that freedpeople helped to fashion. Justin Behrend argues that freed-people created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy.
"Reconstructing Democracy" tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people who lived in the Natchez District, a region of the Deep South where black political mobilization was very successful. Behrend shows how freedpeople set up a political system rooted in egalitarian values wherein local communities rather than powerful individuals held power and ordinary people exercised unprecedented influence in governance. In so doing, he invites us to reconsider not only our understanding of Reconstruction but also the nature and origins of democracy more broadly.

What makes for an ongoing, successful democracy in Latin America? The essays in this collection emphasize the inherent dynamicism needed to sustain democratic governance. Organized around analyses of political institutions, political parties, public administration and corruption, public opinion, and continuity and change in Venezuelan politics, the essays advance the proposition that Venezuelan democracy survived recent threats because of its capacity to reform institutions and absorb new actors.

The chapter authors include prominent scholars from both the United States and Venezuela, and each grapples with two related questions: What types of reforms are necessary to sustain the process of democratization? And, are actors in the Venezuelan system capable of adopting these changes? A stimulating collection for scholars and researchers dealing with Latin American politics and for those examining democratization in the developing world.

As political leaders acknowledge the limits of their power they increasingly integrate constructive input from inside and outside government into their decision-making. A Ministry or Commission of Public Input is necessary to collect, process and communicate input more effectively and politicians need to work with the public to identify solutions.

In his most powerful book to date, award-winning author TimothyFerris makes a passionate case for scienceas the inspiration behind the rise of liberalismand democracy. Ferris showshow science was integral to the AmericanRevolution but misinterpreted inthe French Revolution; reflects on thehistory of liberalism, stressing its widelyunderestimated and mutually beneficialrelationship with science; and surveysthe forces that have opposed scienceand liberalism--from communism andfascism to postmodernism and Islamicfundamentalism. A sweeping intellectualhistory, The Science of Liberty is a stunninglyoriginal work that transcends theantiquated concepts of left and right.

How can the culturally diverse communities of America live justly and fruitfully together? Not by assimilation into the dominant culture -- nor by fighting for the freedom to pursue our own self-interest at the cost of our repressing both the wounds and the promising potential of our own cultural roots. This book offers a theory and practice of transformation that shows, especially through literature, education, and politics, how we can create a multicultural society that liberates our being as a fulfillment of the story of democracy. Perhaps for the first time in American history we are seeing the personal, political, historical, and sacred faces of women, people of color, and all ethnic groups as they tell their stories. It is this emerging scholarship that constitutes the new multicultural and feminine face of the story of democracy.

What does political representation in the European Union look like? This volume argues that the transformation of representation in the EU is characterized by diversification processes, albeit with an uncertain ability to re-configure the link between representation and democracy.

Through case-analysis and cross-sectional assessment of eleven countries this collection explores the most deeply divided societies in the world in order to highlight what deliberative democracy looks like in a deeply divided society and to understand the conditions that deliberative democracies could realistically emerge in difficult circumstances

Among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, lawyers were heavily represented. To a large extent, they also shaped the evolution of French political culture of the ancien regime. Lawyers and Citizens traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. David Bell analyzes how these key "middling" figures in French society were transformed from the institutional technicians of absolute monarchy into the self-appointed "voices of public opinion", and leaders of opposition political phamphleteering. He describes the birth of an independent legal profession in the late seventeenth century, its alienation from the monarchy under the pressure of religious disputes in the early eighteenth century, and its transformation into a standard-bearer of "enlightened" opinion in the decades before the Revolution. Lawyers and Citizens also illuminates the workings of politics under a theoretically absolute monarchy, and the importance of long-standing constitutional debates for the ideological origins of the Revolution. It also sheds new light on the development of the modern professions, and of the French legal system. Based on extensive primary research, this study will be of interest to historians and legal scholars alike.

In this thought-provoking collection, leading scholars explore democracy in the United States from a sweeping variety of perspectives. A dozen contributors consider the nature and prospects of democracy as it relates to the American experience--free markets, religion, family life, the Cold War, higher education, and more. These probing essays bring American democracy into fresh focus, complete with its idealism, its moral greatness, its disappointments, and its contradictions. Based on DeVane lectures delivered at Yale University, these writings examine large themes and ask important questions: Why do democratic societies, and the United States in particular, tolerate profound economic inequality? Has the United States ever been truly democratic? How has democratic aspiration influenced the development of practices as diverse as education, religious worship, and family life? With deep insights and lively discussion, the authors expand our understanding of what democracy has meant in the past, how it functions now, and what its course may be in the future.

For the first two thirds of the twentieth century, British government was among the most stable in the world. In the last three decades it has been a leader in innovation and its governing system has been in constant turmoil. This book, by one of Britain's leading political scientists, explains this transformation and traces its consequences. It will be essential reading for all those interested in British political development and, in particular, the central role of regulation in the modern state.

Across the globe, more powers are being devolved to local and regional levels of government. This book provides an innovative analysis of such decentralisation in transition states in the Balkans. Using new and rich data, it shows how political elites use decentralisation strategically to ensure their access to state resources.

This in-depth analysis of the American imperialism debate after the Spanish-American War of 1898 elucidates how Americans understood their international role and national identity during a crucial period of their foreign relations. Transcending the immediate historical context, this book also explores why such debates remain similar and why they end up affirming a belief in American exceptionalism. Obituaries for the idea have frequently been written in response to controversial foreign policies, but exceptionalism remains vibrant and at the heart of the arguments of those who support and those who oppose these policies - whether in the Philippines, Vietnam, or Iraq.