The object of this book is to provide a reasonably comprehensive survey of the social and economic problems of Northern Ireland. It begins with a brief historical survey that helps to explain why the majority of the people in this area have been unsympathetic to Irish republicanism and anxious to maintain the British connection. The book goes on to describe the Constitution and to show how the governing of the province is divided between Westminster and Belfast. It also deals with social and economic questions.

Who preceded whom? Who wore what? Which form of address should one use? One of the most striking aspects of the early modern period is the crucial significance that contemporaries ascribed to such questions. In this hierarchical world, status symbols did not simply mirror a pre-defined social and political order; rather, they operated as a key tool for defining and redefining identities, relations, and power. Centuries later, scholars face the twofold challenge of evaluating status interaction in an era where its open pursuit is no longer as widespread and legitimate, and of deciphering its highly sophisticated and often implicit codes. Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV addresses this challenge by investigating status interaction - in dress as in address, in high ceremony and in everyday life - at one of its most important historical arenas: aristocratic society at the time of Louis XIV. By recovering actual practices on the ground based on a wide array of printed and manuscript sources, it transcends the simplistic view of a court revolving around the Sun King and reveals instead the multiple perspectives of contesting actors, stakes, and strategies. Demonstrating the wide-ranging implications of the phenomenon, macro-political as well as micro-political, this study provides a novel framework for understanding early modern action and agency.

Alexander is among the most experienced observers of Latin American politics and has been an active correspondent with major figures of the region for decades. In this volume, he provides interview transcripts and letters from most of the recent presidents of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. With some of the correspondence and interviews extending over a considerable period of time, the shifting views and attitudes as well as the comments on other key players makes for fascinating insights into the politics of Latin America.

This volume is a continuation of Alexander's earlier "The ABC Presidents "(Praeger, 1992). This material is of considerable importance to political scientists and other Latin American Studies researchers.

What can international relations scholarship tell us about the global political system? This innovative text examines the contribution made by the principal schools of international relations to our understanding of the global system and draws on them to analyze some crucial issues for 21st century politics. Elegantly synthesising history and theory, this text introduces the concepts that have been used to explain the politics and policies of the global system. It challenges the dominance of purely state-based approaches and shows how non-state-based approaches are essential for a full and integrated understanding of today's global politics. Using both approaches, the author examines key issues in contemporary world politics, from international security to economic stability and migration to human rights.

Explores how the framing of issues on the EU agenda affects policy-making. In a study that traces the highly contested developments in biotechnology policy over twenty years, the book introduces the conceptual and theoretical tenets of policy framing and shows how this analytical lens offers a unique perspective on issues in EU policy-making.

This volume is a study of the orchestration of cordial concurrence at the quadrennial nominating conventions of the two major political parties. The phrase cordial concurrence pertains to a party's endorsement of a candidate at the national convention whose nomination occurred elsewhere. Since the candidate is the product of primaries and caucuses, the convention's primary function involves not the nomination of the party standard-bearer, but the mobilization of party resources in support of a decision rendered elsewhere. Smith and Nimmo oppose the view that national political conventions serve no major purpose and are relics from the past. Instead, they explain that the conventions are products of institutional coordination and reflect the institutional qualities of American democracy.

This definitive analysis examines how political party conventions mobilize resources through political, governmental, and media institutions in a telepolitical era. This volume discusses the history and background of cordial concurrence. It then explores what happens at the conventions and how the media, especially television coverage, has affected this institution. Finally, the authors examine the comments of the critics of national political conventions. This intriguing work will provide both educators and professionals interested in political communication with new insight as to how the conventions are a microcosm of all that is American politics.

Over the past two decades politicians have delegated many political decisions to expert agencies or `quangos', and portrayed the associated issues, like monetary or drug policy, as technocratic or managerial. At the same time an increasing number of important political decisions are being removed from democratic public debate altogether, leading many commentators to argue that they are part of a `crisis of democracy', marking the `end of politics'. Tracing the political uses a broad range of international case studies to chart the politicising and depoliticising dynamics that shape debates about the future of governance and the liberal democratic state. The book is part of the New perspectives in policy and politics series, and will be an important text for students of politics and policy, as well as researchers and policy makers.

This study focuses on the experience in state-managed cooperation and integration between The Gambia and Senegal. Specifically, it examines the nexus between national politics in The Gambia and inter-state cooperation in Senegambia; that is, the impact and implications of politics in The Gambia on the process of cooperation with Senegal in functional areas. The Senegambia case is a microcosm of the African dilemma of reconciling the ideological imperative of African unity and regional integration, recently enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union, and the primordial reality of protecting national statehood and particularistic interests. The experience is instructive in many ways. It is indicative of the problems that arise in any scheme to promote integration between countries with distinctly different colonial heritages. The Senegambia case demonstrates that integration is more problematic after statehood has been achieved, if only because the rewards of statehood are more immediate whereas those of integration and unity are more distant. Then also this case demonstrates that integration can be perceived as a threat to national sovereignty by one or both parties; in fact, sovereignty is often very fragile in these states and is jealously guarded. Finally, the experience reveals the complexities and intricacies of achieving union between African states and demonstrates the tension between constructing a national political state and responding to the demands of inter-national economic integration.

This comparative work examines the political role played by armed forces in South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The work brings together theory and empirical study, analyzing how security threats have shaped the military's organization, doctrine, and domestic political role at various stages of political development, from the state-building period to today's post-democratization era. Using four representative case studies, Woo sets to answer: What determines the armed forces' political influence? How does it affect political development? How do democratically elected leaders establish civilian control over them? The book first looks at how security threats led to military expansion and authoritarianism at the onset of the Cold War. Next, it examines military dictatorial rule, followed by a study of the military's withdrawal process during democratization. Lastly, it focuses on contemporary civil-military dynamics in the four countries, discussing the obstacles faced by civilian authority and what maybe the most desirable model for civil-military relations in post-democratization Asian societies. "Security Challenges and Military Politics in East Asia" will be an essential resource for anyone studying Asian political development, civil-military relations, and comparative democratization.

This book is a collection of diverse essays by scholars, policy-makers and creative practitioners who explore the burgeoning field of cultural measurement and its political implications. Offering critical histories and creative frameworks, it presents new approaches to accounting for culture in local, national and international contexts.

This in-depth study of the decision-making processes of the early 2000s shows that the Swiss consensus democracy has changed considerably. Power relations have transformed, conflict has increased, coalitions have become more unstable and outputs less predictable. Yet these challenges to consensus politics provide opportunities for innovation.

The book traces three main approaches to the sociology of post-Soviet societies: studies guided by neoliberal theory and/or practice; work which may be termed neoconservative in orientation, and which is often a response to the first; and a third type of work that is considered both critical and reflexive, and which seeks to transcend the limitations of the other approaches. The book is divided into three parts, addressing polity, culture and economy. In each section, authors endeavour to transcend both neoliberalism and neoconservatism, and reach for a third approach, 'critical social science'. This is a broad movement, and the authors vary in their own explanatory and normative ideas as they carve out frameworks that will enable them to develop a more rigorous and at the same time more comprehensive and critical understanding of social change.

As the tensions in the Greek economy take centre stage in the international headlines, this book examines the working of the Greek political system and the way it relates with the Greek society. It investigates how and why Greece is just the first, prototype country of the fall of the western debt party.

This book focuses on a key aspect of the German question--the problem of German national identity and communist ideology in their historical perspective since 1945 and their immediate clash in the downfall of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989. The book's theme might be summarized as German identity recovered. The book is unique in that it is in part an eyewitness account of one of Europe's most startling transformations.

In the four decades of its existence, the GDR did not succeed in fostering a separate political or social identity, and thus an underlying difficulty of the state was never resolved. The overriding objective of the political socialization process in the GDR was to instill socialist political culture into the citizenry. This political culture had not only to be uniform with ideological imperatives and aspirations, but had to stand on its own because of the absence of a broader-based national culture. Given the newness of the state and its political institutions, and the continual challenge on the national question presented by the mere existence of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the East German Communist Party (SED) always faced an uphill task. This book should be of interest to students and scholars interested in Germany, in Europe, and in the fate of communism.

This authoritative text examines the arrangements at the centre of Whitehall for advising the British prime minister and Cabinet, especially during the Thatcher and Major governments. The traditional coordinating centre has shifted from the Treasury to the Prime Minister's Office and the Chief Whip's Office in Downing Street, and to the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. Exploration of the separate but interlinking contributions made by these three parts of the centre shows they form a flexible but not entirely adequate support for modern government.

American politics and government are so moribund, according to Erwin Jaffe, that serious political dialogue is a stranger in a land celebrated for freedom of expression. Healing the Body Politic examines the sources of this condition, among them the loss of connectedness (society's orientation toward mobility and its relative disinterest in place, neighborhood, and community), widespread misunderstanding of the distinction and relationship between power and violence, and a distorted image of political life and responsibility. This broad-based work examines these problems and proposes, both in theoretical and practical terms, a rethinking and rediscovery of political power and political life as the only viable solution. Drawing on a variety of fields, including traditional political theory, this work points the way to a restoration of American political life and our ability to cope once again with the problems of civil society. It will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, political theory, and American government.

President Bush is fond of saying, "When Iraq can stand up, America can stand down." A large part of "standing up" is having a well-trained police force in place to maintain peace and order.Why is it taking so long to put a solid police force together? How prepared are the Iraqis to carry out their duties? What pitfalls are Americans facing as they try to get Iraqi police up to speed?
In this book Robert Cole--a retired California police officer hired by DynCorp as an international police trainer--presents a vivid account of the challenges of training the Iraqis to handle their own security. In blunt, everyday language, Cole gives the reader an unusually candid and often hair-raising glimpse into reality at the street level as he and his colleagues navigate the dangerous sectors of Baghdad, Tikrit, and Kirkuk, dodging explosions and bullets aimed at them by young, Iraqi, wannabe heroes. Cole describes situations not shown in the media that fly in the face of the party line from Washington: men in their sixties being hired as policemen, Iraqi detectives who extract information from people by ramming toothpicks under their fingernails, officers suggesting that the best way to subdue potential suspects who flee is by shooting them in the back, police hunkered down in their barracks who refuse to patrol neighborhoods for fear of violence, an enemy that easily blends into a population armed to the teeth with loaded AK-47s, and the routine frustrations of cultural and language barriers to communication.
In sharp contrast to the usual bromides about staying the course, Under the Gun in Iraq paints a brutally realistic picture of the bleak, perilous road ahead. This is essential reading for all Americans seeking an honest understanding of the dire situation in Iraq.

In his foreword to this work, Valery Giscard d'Estaing characterizes the recent changes in Central and Eastern Europe as a great victory for the values of liberal democracy and a testament to the firmness and cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance. But as Karel De Gucht and Stephan Keukeleire go on to point out, these events were neither a necessity nor an accident, as they were the consequence of many small steps and measures whose effects were incalculable at the time as well as of fundamental long-term developments. De Gucht and Keukeleire see these developments as the building blocks for Europe's future and the opportunities for choice that could allow these European nations to once again take control of their history.

Giscard d'Estaing's foreword and the authors' preface set the stage for a complete discussion of the myriad elements that have gone into the European upheaval. The work then explores a wide range of events and topics that had and will further have an impact on the formation of the new Europe, including growing doubts about the United States and nuclear deterrence, French independence, the pressure for reform in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, and the growing role of the European Community. Also discussed at length is the nation of Germany, its view of its own identity, the change in the German perception of security, and the German contribution to the European upheaval. The authors conclude their book with a policy-oriented blueprint for a future European security structure. This timely study will be an essential resource for students and scholars of European studies and political science, as well as an important addition to both academic and public libraries.

International education in the United States is at a significant crossroads. The magnanimity of the 102nd Congress has raised the possibility of federal financial support of international studies to a new level. The newly established governing board of the National Security Education Act can provide unprecedented coordination of federally supported international education programs. If federal financial support can be maintained and coordination achieved, the objectives of the IEA of 1966 can be realized in the 1990s. The academic community and public policy makers need to be made aware of the opportunities at hand in order for this to be possible. U.S. education generally and higher education specifically have a responsibility to improve our international capabilities in order to meet the post-Cold War challenges of a complex world.

Building from the history of inequality in education up to current problems, this text posits viewpoints on how to cultivate humanistic leaders in education to best benefit underserved children around the world. Among perspectives examined are economic, cultural, and political circumstances that benefit some and harm others, creating educational inequality. To illustrate the work that must be done, this book connects vignettes of compelling school issues to educational philosophies, e.g., Makiguchi's work, to bridge the theoretical and the practical and pose real solutions.

In this chilling account of an America in political and cultural decline, media critics Elliot D. Cohen and Bruce W. Fraser show how mainstream media corporations like CNN, Fox, and NBC (General Electric) together with giant telecoms like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have become administration pawns in a well-organized effort to hijack America. Cohen and Fraser show in blunt terms how incredible power, control, and wealth have been amassed in the hands of an elite few while the rest of us have been systematically manipulated, deceived, and divested of our freedom. Calling attention to the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a carefully devised plan for international dominion launched by high officials in the Bush administration, this book tells the story of an America quietly being stripped of its democratic way of life on its way to becoming a full-blown authoritarian state. The authors detail how mainstream media have failed us in covering issues crucial to the survival of American democracy - the Bush administration's domestic spying program; the facts about the September 11 attacks; presidential election fraud; the events leading up to the Iraq war; and the selling out of Internet freedom, to name just some. They reveal how corporate media have systematically attempted to dumb down and distract us from reality with sex and violence; how government has used corporate media to "shock and awe" Americans into surrendering their constitutional rights in the name of the "War on Terrorism"; and how media personalities have been complicit in the mass deception. The final chapter points out important ways in which Americans can counter the erosion of democracy by relying less on mainstream media and more on independent news sources, through grassroots activism, peaceful assembly, and exercising their free speech, and by using critical thinking to expose the dangers we face.

In a powerful new book, Boggs traces the historical evolution of American politics by focusing on the gradual triumph of corporate and military power over democratic institutions and practices. The consequences of expanding United States global presence since World War II--involving an integrated and interwoven system of power based in the permanent war economy, national security-state, and corporate interests--has meant erosion of democratic politics, strengthening of the imperial presidency, increased corporate and military influence over elections and legislation, weakening of popular governance, and diminution of citizenship. The events of 9/11 and their aftermath, including the War on Terror, two lengthy wars and foreign occupations, new threats of war, and massive increases in Pentagon spending, have only deepened the trend toward ever-more concentrated forms of power in a society that ostensibly embraces democratic values. Such developments, Boggs argues, have deep origins in American history going back to the founding documents, ideological precepts of the Constitution, early oligarchic rule, slavery, the Indian wars, and westward colonial expansion.