What is meant by the concept of civil society? Why do some equate it with liberal democracy, while others think it simply a guise for a market economy? Who benefits from globalization and who loses out? Can civil society prosper in an era of globalization? Can global civil society restrain some of the negative consequences of economic globalization? Through a series of unique case studies and theoretical inquiries, this volume aims to provide a set of concrete answers to questions such as these.

This provocative new study explores the reasons for the dramatic decline in confidence which the political institutions of the U.S. have suffered since the 1960s. The author demonstrates the limitations of existing attempts to account for this heightened political alienation, particularly spirit of the times explanations which claim that events like the Vietnam War and Watergate affected the entire U.S. population in a similar fashion and political socialization and culture theories which, Herring argues, do not accurately gauge the amount of change that has occurred in the past 25 years. Instead, Herring proposes and tests a welfare split model which posits that conflicts over spending priorities of the state have led to spiraling alienation among different class fractions. Ideal as supplemental reading for advanced courses in political sociology, political economy, and political science, Splitting the Middle offers important new insights into the nature and causes of political alienation among America's middle layers.

After pointing out the polarizing effects of the movements and events since the 1960s, Herring shows that the increasing lack of confidence in political institutions has a class basis. The War on Poverty and the progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s, he demonstrates, forced irreconcilable demands on government and produced dual tendencies among different classes. On the one hand, levels of political alienation swelled among members of the capitalist, professional-managerial, and traditional working classes as a reaction to protest movement activities, growing deficits and the increasing burdens of the welfare state. At the same time, Herring asserts, political distrust among the new layer of public sector professionals and the poor grew because of cutbacks in government programs and worsening economic conditions. Using data from the "National Elections StudieS" and other sources, Herring shows how the government's oscillation between mutually contradictory sets of demands led to higher levels of political distrust. Finally, Herring analyzes what consequences these higher levels of alienation have had on political behaviors and the society.

The years 1978 and 1979 were dramatic throughout south and western Asia. In Iran, the Pahlavi dynasty was toppled by an Islamic revolution. In Pakistan, Zulfigar Ali Bhutto was hanged by the military regime that toppled him and which then proceeded to implement an Islamization programme. Between the two lay Afghanistan whose "Saur Revolution" of April 1978 soon developed into a full scale civil war and Soviet intervention. The military struggle that followed was largely influenced by Soviet-US rivalry but the ideological struggle followed a dynamic of its own.;Drawing on a wide range of sources, including such previously unused archival material as British Intelligence reports, this is a detailed study of the Afghan debate on the role of Islam in politics from the formation of the modern Afghan state around 1800 to the present day.

In Donald Trump’s Digital Diplomacy and Its Impact on US Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East, Ahmed Y. Zohny develops a well-blended mix of history and political science, supplemented by content analysis and critical discourse analysis of Trump’s statements and tweets. Americans are primarily interested in the domestic implications of Trump’s presidency, whereas people around the globe are more interested in his foreign policy’s implications. Both remain puzzled by Trump’s mixed messaging, his tendency to change his mind and make decisions on the impulse of the moment. The findings indicate that, by scuttling U.S. adherence to the Iran Accord, Trump has guaranteed its collapse, and contributed to an already volatile Middle East. Trump recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel brought an international crisis. Under international law and countless decisions by the UN, the final status of Jerusalem should be decided by negotiation, not unilateral action by the United States or Israel. The Abraham Peace Accord with the four normalizing relations agreements which were signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco mark a new and important shift in the Middle East geopolitics, it can be considered as a success for Trump’s foreign policy.

Latin America is an increasingly important geopolitical entity and its nations are emerging as some of the most influential and radical states in the modern world. The media conglomerates which control the television and radio platforms in these countries, such as the Globo organization in Brazil and the Mercurial S.P.A. media corporation in Chile, have great political influence across the region. Here, Carolina Matos contrasts public service broadcasting in Latin America to that in Europe and the UK, engaging with current debates on globalization and theories of cultural imperialism. She examines the role public media has played in the processes of national development, democratization, and international dialogue across South and Central America, arguing that it can be a powerful tool for political and social inclusion. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Media, Politics, and Cultural Studies, as well as those with an interest in Latin American culture. As key polities, such as Brazil and Mexico, begin to flex their economic and demographic muscle, Media and Politics in Latin America is a timely examination of society and politics in the region.

During the 1990s, Russia has been building a new political order. This collection of essays offers a progress report on this effort, recording the projects for institutional reform, their successes and their many failures. Institutions covered include the presidency, the State Duma, regional government, the judiciary, the power ministries, the foreign policy and economic policy making establishments. Other chapters examine popular attitudes towards institutions and the crises of state society relations in Russia.

The opinion-editorial, or op-ed, is among the most powerful and persuasive types of writing in modern American journalism. In just 600-800 words, writers dig deep lines in the sand and give readers unfiltered and unashamed opinion. Now, in a collection of his most popular and sometimes most controversial op-eds, George Landrith takes his shots at junk science, high-profile liberals, big government hypocrites, media bias, and more. * Is global warming a reality that deserves serious attention or a myth perpetuated by leftist scientists and Hollywood liberals? * Does America's mainstream media bring you unbiased, unfiltered news, or is there a legitimate liberal media bias that paints their reporting? * Do liberals get a bad rap as being soft on defense or do they really operate under the John Kerry Global Test doctrine that requires international permission slips to defend America? All good questions you might ask your neighbor, your know-it-all brother-in-law, or Dan Rather from CBS. Or you could ask someone with more than 20 years' experience in politics and public policy. A good op-ed writer aims to change minds. In Mr. change yours.

This book examines the economic theories and policies that underline the governance of the European Union. Through exploring the history of European economic governance and how this framework has evolved over time, it contextualises theoretical influences, policy debates surrounding the European Union and its instruments of governance, including the European Semester, Six Pack, Two Pack, and Fiscal Compact. Forthcoming reforms to fiscal rules and the economic policy architecture of the European Union are also discussed, with a particular focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This book aims to give readers a broad understanding of the framework and dynamics that define European economic governance. It will be relevant to researchers and policymakers interested in the European political economy.

In 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally to the United States and its allies, thereby planting the seed from which would spring one of the world's most successful and stable democracies. In an age when democracy is often pursued, yet rarely accomplished, in which failed democracies are found throughout Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Japan's transformation from an utterly defeated military power into a thriving constitutional democracy commands attention. It has long been assumed that postwar Japan was largely the making of America, that democracy was simply imposed on a defeated land. Yet a political and legal system cannot long survive, much less thrive, if resisted by the very citizens it exists to serve. The external imposition of a constitution does not automatically translate into a constitutional democracy of the kind Japan has enjoyed for the past half-century. Apparently Japan, though under military occupation, was ready for what the West had to offer. Ray A. Moore and Donald L. Robinson convincingly show that the country's affirmation of democracy was neither cynical nor merely tactical. What made Japan different was that Japan and the United States-represented in Tokyo by the headstrong and deeply conservative General Douglas MacArthur-worked out a genuine partnership, navigating skillfully among die-hard defenders of the emperor, Japanese communists, and America's opinionated erstwhile allies. No dry recounting of policy decisions and diplomatic gestures, Partners for Democracy resounds with the strong personalities and dramatic clashes that paved the way to a hard-won success. Here is the story of how a devastated land came to construct--at times aggressively and rapidly, at times deliberately and only after much debate-a democracy that stands today as the envy of many other nations.

Global, national and subnational change (political, economic, social and demographic) are forcing local governments to search, reactively or proactively, for alternative organizational patterns and management styles. This book explores different approaches toward local government reorientation in selected Western countries as well as the 'reinvention' of local government in Eastern Europe. Eight national case-studies (U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, Norway, Israel, the Czech Republic and Russia) provide the empirical basis. From a theoretical point of view, the book exposes three main critical factors: the range of policy options facing local governments (strategic choice), their organizational capabilities to cope with major environmental shifts (strategic capabilities), and their capacity for organizational learning (including programmed experimentation, innovation and creativity).

This is the first scholarly study of the political role of the Order of the Garter during the late middle ages. It evaluates the relationship between the practical objectives served by the institution and its status as a chivalric elite. Focusing on the years between the Garter's inception in 1348 and the deposition of Henry VI in 1461, the study considers the Order's conception, companionship and collective activities, and places them against the political backdrop of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Hugh Collins highlights the potential of the fraternity as an instrument of political patronage, and attributes its success in this area to the important balance achieved in the Garter's constitution and fellowship between pragmatic considerations and knightly ideas. His examination of the interdependence of these two facets thus reveals the extent to which political society in the late middle ages founded its ambitions and aspirations on the cult of chivalry.

Collaboration is a ubiquitous yet contested feature of contemporary public policy. This book offers a new account of collaboration's appeal to human actors drawing on empirical examples across time and space. It provides a novel and comprehensive framework for analysing collaboration, that will be of use to those interested in understanding what happens when human actors collaborate for public purpose.

This book focuses on critical approaches to the state and state theory in the Global South. In light of the reemergence of the post-colonial and peripheral state as a crucial institution and actor in the 21st century's capitalist world-system, the book examines the nature, functions and development dynamics of the state in the periphery, as well as its constituting interests and struggles. Drawing on the works of Poulantzas and Gramsci, dependency and world-systems theory, as well as the regulation school and the German Ableitungsdebatte, stategraphy and critical realism, it analyzes the development of different theoretical perspectives on the state, elaborates on their theoretical, ontological and epistemological presuppositions, and illustrates their methodological, practical and ethical implications. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which provides an overview of recent global capitalist developments and challenges for state theory and lays the theoretical, ontological and hermeneutic foundation for studies of the state and statehood in the Global South. In turn, the second part introduces readers to different schools of state theory, including critical theory and materialism, as well as approaches derived from postcolonial, anthropological, and feminist thought. Lastly, the third part presents various empirical studies, highlighting concrete methodological and practical experiences of conducting critical state theory.

This landmark study describes the momentous events from 1989 to 1991 that led up to German unification, explaining how and why they happened as they did, and analyzing them in relation to issues in comparative and international politics and to current theories in political science. Two specialists, one on Western Germany and the other on Eastern Germany, who were observers there during the period, provide the background for understanding trends in German and European politics in the early 1990s. This text is intended for students of European contemporary history, comparative politics, and international relations. This study links the current history of the peaceful revolution in Germany to an analysis of established theories in comparative politics. An introduction provides some historical background prior to 1989. The text goes on to define conditions in the two Germanies in 1989 and then launches into a discussion about the attitudes and expectations in the West as prospects for unity dawned. Careful attention is then given to the East German revolution and the March 1990 elections. Reasons are given for plans for the early unification of the two Germanies. Then the study focuses on the Federal Republic election of December 1990. The impact of these elections and the unification process on Germany and Europe and the world in the near future is discussed at some length. An appendix provides some basic information about Germany's system of government. A selected bibliography points to important primary and secondary sources.

When 170 000 black farmers occupied 4 000 white farms in Zimbabwe in 2000, it caused world-wide shockwaves. A decade later, Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land finds that the new farmers are doing relatively well, improving their lives and becoming increasingly productive, especially since the US dollar became the local currency. While not minimising the depredations of the Mugabe government, and accepting that many of President Mugabe's supporters benefited from the ruler's largesse, the book counters the dominant media narratives of oppression and economic stagnation in Zimbabwe. The book is based on a detailed study of what is actually happening on the ground, drawing on the authors' own fieldwork and extensive other research. Hanlon, Manjengwa, and Smart show how, despite political violence and mind-boggling hyperinflation, "ordinary" Zimbabweans took charge of their destinies in creative and unacknowledged ways. This raises important questions for the upcoming elections, and also presents new issues for the international community, because United States and European Union sanctions are not just against a corrupt and dictatorial elite, but also against 170 000 ordinary farmers who now use more of the land than the white farmers they displaced and are already producing nearly as much as those white farmers. With stories and pictures, real farmers tell of their own experiences of setting up the farms and building up production. Fanuel Mutandiro tells how he built up his farm and the 70 trips to Mbare Market in Harare with a tractor and trailer full of tomatoes before he could afford a truck. Esther Makwara shows off her maize field with 8 tonnes per hectare - better than nearly all white farmers. And Mrs Chibanda shows off with pride her new tobacco barn where she cures the tobacco from her 1.5 hectare. But these stories are backed up by data - from the authors' own fieldwork and extensive other research.

Focusing on the development of the Communist Party in Moscow between 1925 and 1932 and its ultimate assumption of absolute power. This volume examines in detail the political changes in Moscow, including the crisis over collectivization, and the organization strategy of the Party in Moscow.

This book offers a comparative study of the political debate on the Euro crisis in the press. In the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis, it investigates the ways in which discourse produces and reproduces social domination, and demystifies the hegemony of specific discourses. Combining quantitative content-based and qualitative text-based analyses, the book examines the discursive constructions of the crisis in a selection of broadsheet newspapers in Germany, Poland, and the UK, and discloses their ideological foundations. The analysis of the representations of the crisis, social actors and their agency, and legitimating strategies, including the use of metaphors, demonstrates how neoliberalism determined the hegemonic discourse on the Euro crisis. It resulted in ideologically biased discursive constructions that created and legitimised an image of non-agentic social change. The book will appeal to an international audience of discourse and media studies. It will be of interest to university teachers, graduate and undergraduate students and researchers of international and comparative media studies, political communication, linguistics, and politics.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

American military bases encircle the globe. More than two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States still stations its troops at nearly a thousand locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken for granted or overlooked entirely, a little-noticed part of the Pentagon's vast operations. But in an eye-opening account, Base Nation shows that the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills and actually makes the nation less safe in the long run. As David Vine demonstrates, the overseas bases raise geopolitical tensions and provoke widespread antipathy towards the United States. They also undermine American democratic ideals, pushing the United States into partnerships with dictators and perpetuating a system of second-class citizenship in territories such as Guam. They breed sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local economies. And their financial cost is staggering: though the Pentagon underplays the numbers, Vine's accounting proves that the bill approaches $100 billion per year. For many decades, the need for overseas bases has been a quasi-religious dictum of U.S. foreign policy. But in recent years, a bipartisan coalition has finally started to question this conventional wisdom. With the United States withdrawing from Afghanistan and ending thirteen years of war, there is no better time to re-examine the tenets of our military strategy. Base Nation is an essential contribution to that debate.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Although the control or regulation of political conflict is a constant concern of governments and a source of substantial speculation, empirical investigation of systems of regulation is a relatively recent enterprise. How destabilizing events such as separatism, trans-national disputes and decolonization are translated into political conflict through economic, political, and social systems is explored in this in-depth study of eight nations in southern Europe for the period 1946 to 1986.

This book is especially relevant in light of the recent conflicts that have exploded into civil war in Yugoslavia. It will be of great interest to political scientists, economists, social scientists, and others studying the conflicts within southern Europe.

First published in 1991. This is Volume 16 of 18 in a series of works on Civil Rights, the White House and the Justice Department from 1945 to 1968. This volume looks at Civil Rights policies prior to 1960 in the Justice Department.

This book discusses the current tendencies in women's representation and their role in politics in Latin American countries from three different perspectives. Firstly, the authors examine cultural, political-partisan and organizational obstacles that women face in and outside institutions. Secondly, the book explores barriers in political reality, such as gender legislation implementation, public administration and international cooperation, and proposes solutions, supported by successful experiences, emphasising the nonlinearity of the implementation process. Thirdly, the authors highlight the role of women in politics at the subnational level. The book combines academic expertise in various disciplines with contributions from practitioners within national and international institutions to broaden the reader's understanding of women in Latin American politics.

American Political Rhetoric is the only reader for introductory classes in American politics, government, and political communication designed to explore fundamental political principles through examples of political rhetoric ranging from the founding to today. Now in its eighth edition, its selections include the entire political spectrum and contributors range from our nation's founders to contemporary elected public officials, Supreme Court opinions, and representatives of historic movements for social change. The eighth edition includes new selections of recent Supreme Court decisions, including the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, foreign policy, and expanded coverage of individual rights and privileges, including freedom of speech and voting rights. The book is now more useful than ever for students and teachers thanks to a supplementary website available at americanpoliticalrhetoric.com.