This volume's coverage includes international agreements, both bilateral and multi-lateral, affecting shipping. The work includes: full texts of reservations or declarations made by bound countries; texts of draft treaties; texts of average adjusting rules for key jurisdictions; and texts of salvage agreements. Texts of treaties and documents are arranged by category: arbitration; carriage of goods and passengers by sea; collision, navigation and rescue; fishing and whaling; international maritime organization (IMO); limitation of liability; miscellaneous international trade; pollution at sea; procedure; regulation of maritime safety and commerce; salvage and general average; seamen; territorial waters and high seas; and war.

Our society's institutional infrastructures--our democratic political system, economic structures, legal practices, and educational establishment--were all created as intellectual outgrowths of the Enlightenment. All our cultural institutions are based on the intellectual idea that an enlightened citizenry could govern its affairs with reason and responsibility. In the late 20th century, however, we are witnessing the disintegration of much of our cultural heritage. Wood argues that this is due to our evolution into a DEGREESUpost-intellectual society DEGREESR--a society characterized by a loss of critical thinking, the substitution of information for knowledge, mediated reality, increasing illiteracy, loss of privacy, specialization, psychological isolation, hyper-urbanization, moral anarchy, and political debilitation. These post-intellectual realities are all triggered by three underlying determinants: the failure of linear growth and expansion to sustain our economic system; the runaway information overload; and technological determinism. Wood presents a new and innovative social theory, challenging readers to analyze all our post-intellectual cultural malaise in terms of these three fundamental determinants.

In a period where social unrest manifests itself by coinciding with young people's dissatisfaction with formal political involvement and the diversification of protest movements across the globe, the question of youth participation is at the forefront of democratic societies. This timely book offers a fresh look at youth participation: examining official and unofficial constructions of participation by young people in a range of socio-political domains, exploring the motivations and rationales underlying official attempts to increase participation among young people, and offering a critique of their effectiveness. Based on original research data, Youth participation in Europe provides a thorough analysis of participation initiatives at the implementation level and gives a transversal approach to various areas of youth participation. Drawing on examples from different European countries, it analyses the results of structure on youth participation and the effects of youth agencies on types of mobilisation.

Voting Rights: A Reference Handbook is a valuable resource for high school and college students curious about the history of voting rights in the United States. Voting Rights: A Reference Handbook chronicles voting rights in the United States, from the colonial period to the present. Following a historical overview is an examination of current controversies in addition to profiles of key persons and reprint important documents. The book also includes a perspectives chapter featuring ten original essays on various topics related to voting rights, as well as an annotated bibliography and chronology. The variety of resources provided, such as further reading, perspective essays about voting rights, a timeline, and useful terms in the voting rights discourse, allow this book to stand out from others in the field. It is intended for readers at the high school through community college levels, along with adult readers who are interested in the topic. Does not assume prior knowledge about the history of voting rights, fully informing students and other readers on the topic Seeks primarily to explain voting rights, rather than to provide advocacy or criticism Provides a balanced analysis of many of the current controversies surrounding voting rights Rounds out the authors' expertise in perspective essays that give readers a diversity of viewpoints on the topic

An analysis of the various challenges faced by police operating in different kinds of democracies. Through a cross-cultural comparison of the various systems, the work highlights the universal observation that police are an anomaly in a democracy. It examines how various influences - for example, large-scale social violence, a zeal for crime fighting, or vulnerability to temptation - often render the police incapable of behaving in a democratic manner. Chapters explore the experiences of police in emerging democracies (Estonia, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, the Russian Federation and Slovenia), established democracies (Austria, the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland), and mixed democracies (South Africa). The book analyzes the similarities and differences of the policing challenges democratic societies face as well as the responses and remedies adopted by police in various countries at different levels of democratic achievement.

Explores the fundamental shift that has occurred in America and Britain as elites accumulate unprecedented capital and influence and a meritocracy has emerged to manage national affairs, a change that means opportunity, affluence, and power have gravitated away from most of the population. Stoesz connects present and past to look at the progressive-era, the history of professions, and questions of welfare state reform, post-neoliberalism, and marketization.

Contents:
1. Introduction: aims and objectives Karl Cordell
2. Contemporary government attitudes towards the European Union Teresa Los-Nowak
3. Polish perceptions of the European Union in the 1990s Elzbieta Stadtmüller
4. Emergent democratic citizenship in Poland: a study of changing value patterns Kazimierz Dziubka
5. Political competition in Poland: traditionalisation or westernisation? Andrzej Antoszewski
6. Parties and the Polish party system: the process of structuring the political space Ryszard Herbut
7. The marketing of political parties in the 1990s: a comparative study Robert Wiszniowski
8. The Europeanisation of government in Poland in the 1990s Andrzej W. Jablonski
9. The reform of Polish local government, and the Europe of the regions Wieslaw Bokajlo
10. Poland, die Vertriebenen, and the road to integration with the European Union Tadeusz Lebioda
11. The European Union and Ukrainian-Polish relations Andrzej Dybczynski
12. Conclusion Karl Cordell

Encarnación makes the controversial argument that a strong civil society and social capital are not necessary to enhance either democratization or the stability of a new democracy. Tracing the development of the concept "civil society," he argues that what matters are the political institutions existing in a state and the strategies and decisions of political leaders. The importance of these are examined through careful case studies of Brazil, where a strong civil society was not critical in the transition to democracy and has not led to a robust democracy, and Spain, where a weak civil society neither prevented the transition nor strong democratic institutions.

Scholars offer clearly written coverage of the relationship between political parties and democracy in the Western Hemisphere. Political Parties and Democracy: Volume I: The Americas is the first volume in this five volume set. It offers clearly written, up-to-date coverage of the political parties of this diverse region from the unique perspective of distinguished indigenous scholars who have lived the truths they tell and, thus, write with unique breadth, depth, and scope. Presented in two parts, this volume first studies political parties in the United States and Canada, with one chapter on each nation. It then discusses the realities on the ground in the Latin American nations of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Throughout, contributors explore the relationship between political parties and democracy (or democratization) in their respective nations, providing necessary historical, socioeconomic, and institutional context, and clarifying the balance of power among parties—and between them and competing agencies of power—today.

Present day knowledge about public sector reforms in Asia is quite scattered and seldom focuses on the challenges of leadership. This edited collection seeks to address this issue by presenting country cases that reflect the great diversity of the region. Home to roughly one-third of the world's population, Asia-Pacific governments typically play leading roles in social and economic development, yet by measures of expenditures or civil servants per capita, most are among the smaller ones in the world. These regimes include democracies, one-party states and unstable systems; there is a broad range of cultural legacies including Confucian, Buddhist, and Western, and vastly different levels of economic development; the region includes some of the very least corrupt countries and those with high corruption levels; it includes the world's most populous country, as well as some of the smallest. Public sector reforms are very relevant to these countries and their leaders. In Asia, a strong government is invaluable and public sector reforms are relevant to helping modern states meet their goals and performance. This collection explores what is known about these reforms with an eye towards helping leaders responsible for reforms. Clearly, there is very large variation; some Asia-Pacific countries are leading in public sector reforms, while others are not, and this book also seeks to further our understanding what leaders might need to do to be successful.

Direct democracy, or pure democracy, is a concept spreading throughout the world, now adopted by nearly 30 countries on the national level. While the concept is not new, it is important to investigate the current benefits or hinderances of direct democracy related to local governments so that they may be implemented further. Direct Democracy Practices at the Local Level deepens the knowledge of direct democracy in political science. This book explores how local governments utilize these instruments in international governments and analyzes a series of popular initiatives and local referenda to how successful these initiatives are. Covering topics such as religious rights, street committees, and climate change, this book is essential for political science students and professors, policymakers, faculty, local governments, academicians, and researchers in political science with an interest in direct democracy procedures in representative systems.

This volume is the first comprehensive analysis of a new type of executive instability without regime instability in Latin America referred to as "presidential breakdown." It includes a theoretical introduction framing the debate within the institutional literature on democracy and democratization, and the implications of this new type of executive instability for presidential democracies. Two comparative chapters analyze the causes, procedures, and outcomes of presidential breakdowns in a regional perspective, and country studies provide in-depth analyses of all countries in Latin America that have experienced one or several presidential breakdowns: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. The book also includes an epilogue on the 2009 presidential crisis in Honduras.

A deepening crisis in accountability in developing democracies has triggered much debate on accountability and the mechanisms needed for overcoming deficiencies of democracy. This book analyzes a wide variety of contemporary efforts to reform accountability systems in developing countries. It makes an original contribution to the debate by dealing with a variety of novel approaches to accountability and it combines these approaches in both a systematic and analytic fashion. The book also includes case study material on successful accountability initiatives.

This text examines the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their consequences for political institutions, and assesses critically the concept of an emergent electronic democracy. The first section discusses the concepts and issues of "Electronic Democracy" with chapters on democracy and cyberspace, local democracy, global control and interactive ICTs. In the second section, entitled ICTs and the state, the chapters examine the impacts and implications of televising the British "House of Commons", the effects of ICTs on political parties, and closed circuit television. The final section discusses ICTs and the citizen with chapters covering democracies online, strengthening communities in the information age and the community network. This book provides a source for those studying social policy, politics and sociology as well as for policy analysts, social scientists and computer scientists.

The rise of presidential power poses a significant threat to America's democratic values. It is clear that the tectonic plates of the American political system are gravitating towards a model of presidential government not envisioned and, in fact, precluded by the constitutional design of the framers of the United States Constitution. As the presidency eclipses Congress, the courts in power, and public/media attention, the balance of powers has tilted. In this accessible book, leading scholars explore the reasons for and implications of the rising power of the presidency.

Political corruption has traditionally been presented as a phenomenon characteristic of developing countries, authoritarian regimes, or societies in which the value system favored tacit patrimony and clientelism. Recently, however, the thesis of an inverse correlation between corruption and economic and political development (and therefore democratic "maturity") has been frequently and convincingly challenged. Countries with a long democratic tradition, such as the United States, Belgium, Britain, and Italy, have all experienced a combination of headline-grabbing scandals and smaller-scale cases of misappropriation.

In "Corrupt Exchanges," primary research on Italian cases (judicial proceedings, in-depth interviews, parliamentary documents, and press databases), combined with a cross-national comparison based on a secondary analysis of corruption in democratic systems, is used to develop a model to analyze corruption as a network of illegal exchanges. The authors explore in great detail the structure of that network, by examining both the characteristics of the actors who directly engage in the corruption and the resources they exchange. These processes of degeneration have caused a crisis in the dominant paradigm in both academic and political considerations of corruption.

The book is organized around the analysis of the resources that are exchanged and of the different actors who take part. Politicians in business, illegal brokers, Mafia members, protected entrepreneurs, and party-appointed bureaucrats exchange resources on the illegal market, altering the institutional system of interactions between the state and the market. In this complex web of exchanges, bonds of trust are established that allow the corrupt exchange to thrive. The book will serve both as a theoretical approach to a political problem of large bearing on democratic institutions and a descriptive warning of a system in peril.

In these interconnected essays the late Geoffrey de Ste. Croix defends the institutions of the Athenian democracy, showing that they were much more practical, rational, and impartial than has usually been acknowledged. A major essay provides a new view of Aristotle's use of sources in The Constitution of the Athenians, on which so much of our knowledge of Athenian constitutional history depends. Ste. Croix also argues that commercial factors had much less influence on Greek politics than modern scholars tend to assume, and that there was no such thing in any Greek state as a `commercial aristocracy'. As always, he works out these general positions with the utmost lucidity and pungency, and in meticulous detail. Though written in the 1960s, these hitherto unpublished essays by a great radical historian will still constitute a major contribution to contemporary debate. The editors and other specialists have supplied an updating Afterword to each chapter, and the book contains a thorough index.

The Politics of Problem-solving in Postwar Democracies focuses explicitly on the way in which and the extent to which public policy formation in multi-party systems can be both effective and legitimate; effective in finding solutions for societal problems which are beyond the citizens capacity; and legitimate in formulating policies that are acceptable to most involved. Cross-national variations in the way political institutions work and can be conducive to political consensus and cooperative behaviour are - so it is argued and evidenced throughout the book - the key factors for successful policy-making and related problem-solving.

Latin America underwent remarkable change in the 1980s as country after country cast off authoritarian regimes and instituted democratic policies and practices. Since then, the Left has weakened, and many of the groups commonly labeled the Right--including traditional groups linked with the Church, the military, and the economically privileged, as well as new groups of neo-liberal intellectuals and businessmen--have moved to a new form of active electoral politics. The future of democracy in the region will depend heavily on how these groups act. This book of up-to-date studies by a group of research scholars from Latin America and the United States examine the factors essential to an understanding of the Right's goals, organizations, and commitment to democracy. The book is divided into four distinctive sections, the first of which deals with the general characteristics of the Right. The following three sections explore in-depth the political strategies and organizations of the Right in elections and governing coalitions, the conservative trends that are changing the Church, and the fate of neo-liberal ideas among businessmen traditionally dependent on the State. Several chapters are devoted to the distinctive dynamics in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru.

Taken together, the essays in this book document the profound changes of the Right. But it also shows that the impact of the Right on democracy--whether it will improve it or weaken it--is not yet clear. The Right is increasingly involved in democratic institutions, but political parties are still weak and authoritarian temptations still strong. In this time of economic crises, business organizations have remained fragile. Conservative social policies have created terrifying social problems. Offering a unique analysis of the contemporary Right, this work is an essential tool in understanding the fate of democracy in post-Cold War Latin America.

Democratization in the Third World addresses many current issues of development, democratization and civil society in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America against the background of theoretical introductions and comparisons with the Swedish historical experience of democratisations. The authors, from seven different continents, examine civil society and its relation to the state throughout the world and assess prospects for sustainable democratization.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Is information technology enhancing democracy? Developments in information technology and the Internet are taking place at an almost bewildering pace. Such improvements, however, are believed to present opportunities for improving the responsiveness and accountability of political institutions and enhancing citizen participation. In this text the theoretical arguments for and against "electronic democracy" and the potential of information and communication technology are closely examined. The book is underpinned by a series of case studies in the US and Europe that demonstrate the application of "electronic democracy" in a number of city and civic projects. The book aims to provide a balanced and considered evaluation of the potential for "electronic democracy" based on empirical research.

In the Introduction, the editor gives an historical overview of the tradition of the political involvement of intellectuals in these countries, especially in the 19th Century. The chapters which follow describe the typical political and social attitude of Central European intellectuals, including writers, poets, artists, and scientists.

Spain and Portugal have recently adopted European-style democratic and political systems. Yet their pattern of historical development is distinctive and, in many respects, their political systems still reflect unique features. In this provocative text Wiard and Mott analyze the special features of Spanish history: the Catholic tradition, seven centuries of Moorish rule, the Christian Reconquest, and the special nature of Spanish feudalism and nationalism. Building on these foundations, the authors analyze Spanish and Portuguese modern history, the regimes of Franco and Salazar, and the recent transitions to democracy. Successive chapters deal with class structure and interest groups, political parties and elections, the structure of the state and state-society relations, regional politics, and patterns of public policy. While becoming more European socially, culturally, and politically, these two Iberian political systems show also some remarkable continuities with the past, including notions of organic democracy, neocorporatism, and tensions between regionalism and centralism, democracy and authoritarianism, and religiousity and secularism. Students and scholars involved with European politics, comparative politics, Iberian Studies, and transitions to democracy will find this an accessible and provocative analysis.

The relevance of social participation and intermediary associations for democracy has been at the centre of approaches to democratic politics since the 19th century. More recently the rise of new states in Central and Eastern Europe and contemporary discussions about social conflict, civil society, communitarianism, and social capital have stimulated a revival of the subject. This study explores the changing role and functions of voluntary associations, intermediary organizations and other social movements in democratic societies. The contributors employ macro- and mico-perspectives to examine the relationship between social and political involvement in the democratic process, and use previously unpublished empirical data from countries such as Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Norway and Spain. They find the structure of voluntary associations and intermediary organizations throughout these countries has changed significantly and their membership levels and relevance to democratic decision-making have grown pointing to a changing, but not declining, democratic culture in Western Europe.