NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Travels with George . . . is quintessential Philbrick-a lively, courageous, and masterful achievement." -The Boston Globe Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington's unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonies, which were now an unsure nation. Travels with George marks a new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into a single narrative. When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing-Americans. In the fall of 2018, Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called "the infant woody country" to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his wife, Melissa, and their dog, Dora, Philbrick follows Washington's presidential excursions: from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York; a monthlong tour of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; a venture onto Long Island and eventually across Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The narrative moves smoothly between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries as we see the country through both Washington's and Philbrick's eyes. Written at a moment when America's founding figures are under increasing scrutiny, Travels with George grapples bluntly and honestly with Washington's legacy as a man of the people, a reluctant president, and a plantation owner who held people in slavery. At historic houses and landmarks, Philbrick reports on the reinterpretations at work as he meets reenactors, tour guides, and other keepers of history's flame. He paints a picture of eighteenth-century America as divided and fraught as it is today, and he comes to understand how Washington compelled, enticed, stood up to, and listened to the many different people he met along the way-and how his all-consuming belief in the union helped to forge a nation.

This book focuses on what is arguably the most devastating phenomenon in the history of modern civilization, the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how, on the one hand, the pandemic has exposed governments the world over to deal with a major health crisis; and, on the other, efforts by the ruling forces to enforce surveillance on people and disciplining them by maneuvering cutting-edge digital technology in the name of security and safety. Second, it explores how the mainstream versions of crisis communication and risk communication face huge challenges during a pandemic. Finally, it analyses how the pandemic propels an extraordinary expansion of infodemic - rapid spread of excessive quantities of misinformation and disinformation of the fake and false variety - and how social media in particular becomes its main tool in causing subversion of the prevalent information order. Engaging, comprehensive and accessible, this book will be of immense importance to scholars and researchers of politics, especially governance and political communication, communication studies, and public health management. It will be vital for public policy professionals, experts in thinktanks, career bureaucrats, and non-governmental organizations.

Why are some states able to deliver public services to their citizens while others cannot? Why are some states beset by internal conflict that leaves many impoverished? Much of what has become known as the failed states literature attempts to engage with these questions, but does so in way that betrays a particular bias, engaging in advocacy for intervention rather than analysis. The Idea of Failed States directly challenges existing thinking about conventional state strength as it finds that institutional approaches to state strength obscure as much as they reveal. The question of why some states are strong and others weak has traditionally been addressed using measures of economic growth, resources, and quality of life. This book compares the dimensions of state strength characterised by community, society, and nation and uses social capital concepts to further illuminate them. Applying this approach across forty-two countries shows 'weak' states exhibiting a consistent and unique patterns of relationships between community, society, and nation as well as equally consistent and unique relationships in strong states. A blend of theory and empirics, The Idea of Failed States present a new way to think about the state - one that applies to both strong and weak alike. This work should be of interest to students and scholars researching social capital, public policy, international development and security studies.

When and to what extent external actors, especially the EU, contribute to induce legal and administrative changes and help domestic authorities address the disconnect between good governance standards and corrupt practices? Comparing external promotion of anti-corruption norms and provisions in civil administration, public finance management and public procurement in Turkey this book identifies the domestic conditions under which external actors can affect real-world outcomes. Providing a comprehensive, empirical account of Turkey's fight against corruption, the book's cross-sectoral analysis explores the power relations between major political actors and bureaucratic state elites, and examines how structural administrative factors filter external pressure for anti-corruption reforms and determine the prospects for institutional change in the Turkish public sector. This welcome addition to literature on Europeanisation and external good governance promotion makes an important contribution to the academic and policy debate regarding the "politics" of anti-corruption reforms in Turkey.

A discussion of corruption. The articles illustrate and explain the scope, incidence and consequences of corruption in a variety of political settings in the developed and developing world, addressing issues such as corruption in the Mexican political system and OTRAG in Zaire.

The Fundamentals of Developing Operational Solutions for the Government guides professionals on how to use operations research to solve problems and capture opportunities for government customers. The governments of modern democratic nations manage large complex societal operations to offer national defense, social services, infrastructure sustainment, law enforcement, monetary control, and other benefits for their citizens. The United States government alone spends over $1 trillion per year on these discretionary activities. Within all the spending, deliveries, and oversight, some operational needs require solutions to improve processes, architectures, technologies, and human factors. Without such effective and comprehensive solutions, the most eloquent proposal for government work could end in defeat and the most well-funded government programs could yield operational disruptions and performance failures. There are many books on how to write winning proposals to the government, but this book places winning in the context of deeply understanding government operations and innovatively solving government problems. There are also some books on convincing the government to adopt new transformational processes, but this book seeks to first try to fix current government processes before demanding risky transformation. Finally, there are massive tomes dedicated to the theories and mathematical models of operations research, but this book is devoted to making operations research simple enough for professionals to apply throughout the course of developing proposals and delivering products and services. Presenting the methods and techniques for quickly developing solutions is thus the central focus.

How do Russian leaders balance the need to decentralize governance in a socially and politically complex country with the need to guarantee political control of the state? Since the early 2000s Russian federal authorities have arranged a system of political control on regional elites and their leaders, providing a "police control" of special bodies subordinated by the federal center on policy implementation in the regions. Different mechanisms of fiscal federalism and investment policy have been used to ensure regional elites' loyalty and a politically centralized but administratively decentralized system has been created. Asking clear, direct, and theoretically informed questions about the relationship between federalism, decentralization and authoritarianism, this book explores the political survival of authoritarian leaders, the determinants of policy formulation, and theories of federalism and decentralization, to reach a new understanding of territorial governance in contemporary Russia. As such, it is an important work for students and researchers in Russian studies and regional and federal studies.

Why do the revolving doors of power always leave us disappointed? In Why Politics Fails, award-winning Oxford professor Ben Ansell shows that it's not the politicians that are the problem, it's that our collective goals result in five political 'traps'. Democracy: we all want a say in how we're governed, but it's impossible to have any true 'will of the people'. Equality: we want to be treated equally, but equal rights and equal outcomes undermine each other. Solidarity: we want a safety net when times are tough, but often we care about solidarity only when we need it ourselves. Security: we want protecting from harm, but not if it undermines our freedoms. Prosperity: we want to be richer tomorrow, but what makes us richer in the short run makes us poorer over the long haul. You've probably noticed a pattern here, which is that our self-interest undermines our ability to deliver on our collective goals. And these traps reinforce one another, so a polarized democracy can worsen inequality; a threadbare social safety net can worsen crime; runaway climate change will threaten global peace. Drawing on examples from Ancient Greece through Brexit and using his own counterintuitive and pathbreaking research - on why democracy thrives under high inequality, and how increased political and social equality can lead to greater class inequality - Ansell vividly illustrates how we can escape the political traps of our imperfect world. He shows that politics won't end, but that it doesn't have to fail.

This title was first published in 2001. With the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the legitimacy of one-party, and often one-person rule in other parts of the world has been fundamentally challenged. It appears that for the first time parliamentary democracy has become the universally accepted model to adopt or to be perfected. Newer democracies have started to build the institutions and capacity necessary to sustain democracy, while established democracies continue to refine their democracy, sometimes introducing full-scale reforms. This book examines whether elements of the perfect democracy can be identified and how democratic structures and practices can be improved.

The House of Commons is one of Britain's mysterious institutions: constantly in the news yet always opaque. In this ground-breaking anthropological study of the world's most famous parliament, Emma Crewe reveals the hidden mechanisms of parliamentary democracy.Examining the work of Members of Parliament - including neglected areas such as constituencies and committees - this book provides unique insights into the actual lives and working relationships of parliamentarians. 'Why do the public loathe politicians but often love their own MP?' the author asks. The antagonistic facade of politics irritates the public who tend to be unaware that, backstage, democracy relies on MPs consulting, compromising and cooperating across political parties far more than is publicly admitted. As the book shows, this is only one of myriad contradictions in the labyrinths of power. Based on unprecedented access and two years of interviews and research in the Palace of Westminster and MPs' constituencies, The House of Commons: An Anthropology of MPs at Work challenges the existing scholarship on political institutions and party politics. Moving beyond the narrow confines of rational choice theory and new institutionalism, Emma Crewe presents a radical alternative to the study of British politics by demonstrating that all of its processes hinge on culture, ritual and social relations. A must-read for anyone interested in political anthropology, politics, or the Westminster model.

Fully updated and expanded, the second edition of this still compact text on British politics expertly analyses the major changes in British political life, placing them revealingly within the context of the evolution of British society from absolute monarchy to representative democracy. The author considers each of the major components of British politics in digestible chapters, such as the Monarchy and the House of Lords, the Commons, voting behaviour, parties and pressure groups, the prime minister and cabinet, devolution, local government, and foreign policy. The book includes two new chapters on the EU referendum and Brexit, and the extraordinary December 2019 election, as well as coverage of events such as the coronavirus pandemic, and the respective travails of the increasingly split two major political parties. This readable and comprehensive introduction will be of key interest to A-level students, undergraduates and those new to the study of British politics.

This annotated bibliography assists the reader in locating information about the United States Federal Trade Commission. The book is divided into four chapters, each reflecting the major functions and regulatory responsibilities of the FTC.

The contemporary state is not only the main force behind environmental change, but the reactions to environmental problems have played a crucial role in the modernisation of the state apparatus, especially because of its mediatory role. The Political Ecology of the State is the first book to critically assess the philosophical basis of environmental statehood and regulation, addressing the emergence and evolution of environmental regulation from the early twentieth century to the more recent phase of ecological modernisation and the neoliberalisation of nature. The state is understood as the result of permanent socionatural interactions and multiple forms of contestation, from a critical politico-ecological approach. This book examines the tension between pro- and anti-commons tendencies that have permeated the organisation and failures of the environmental responses put forward by the state. It provides a reinterpretation of the achievements and failures of mainstream environmental policies and regulation, and offers a review of the main philosophical influences behind different periods of environmental statehood and regulation. It sets out an agenda for going beyond conventional state regulation and grassroots dealings with the state, and as such redefines the environmental apparatus of the state.

Originally published in 1993, this title provides a unique insight into the challenges faced by the women who shaped United States foreign policy at the time. The authors examine the "Gender Gap" in beliefs between men and women in the State and Defense departments. Highlighted by interviews with ten leading women in the field - including Jeane Kirkpatrick and Rozanne Ridgway, then the two highest ranking women in foreign policy - the book provides an intimate glimpse into the making of foreign policy during the Reagan administration. Based on 79 interviews with women and men senior executives in the departments of State and Defense, this title poses a number of key questions. Who are the women in the State and Defense Departments, and how do their background and lifestyle choices compare with those of their male colleagues? What problems do they confront in an attempt to influence policy in the international arena? Do the women on the inside make a difference in how policy is formulated or how the departments are managed? Are women by nature more peaceful than men? Will they alter the face of foreign policy? Or are they more likely to hold the same views as men? This title provided an important insight into these questions, and would have been provocative reading at the time of publication.

This book analyzes the food revolution that has occurred in Russia since the late 1980s, documenting the transformation in systems of production, supply, distribution, and consumption. It examines the dominant actors in the food system; explores how the state regulates food; considers changes in patterns of food trade interactions with other states; and discusses how all this and changing habits of consumption have impacted consumers. It contrasts the grim food situation of 1980s and 1990s with the much better food situation that prevails at present and sets the food revolution in the context of the wider consumer revolution, which has affected fashion, consumer electronics, and other sectors of the economy.

Featuring a range of experts on the American presidency, this book offers both European and American perspectives on both the successes and failures of President Obama's tenure in the White House. Focusing primarily on domestic policy, these essays explain why Obama's widely anticipated moment of change did not fully materialise.

This book presents a comprehensive view of the state of the Russian economy under President Putin. It considers the extent of Russia's integration in the world economy, where Russia's exports of oil and gas are a key factor, discusses Russia's internal challenges, including changing demographics, declining government revenue, the need to counter over-reliance on the oil and gas sector and the consequences of high military spending, and assesses the prospects for economic reform, highlighting especially the power struggles between different vested interests. Overall, the book provides a basis for understanding what has been going on in the Russian economy under President Putin and what the future may look like given the external environment, internal challenges and reform processes.

The first comprehensive account of the Trump administration's efforts to destroy our government institutions, by the man Ralph Nader says "writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about important topics that few others cover" "Tom McGarity writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about important topics that few others cover." -Ralph Nader Koch Industries spent $3.1 million in the first three months of the Trump administration, largely to ensure confirmation of Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA. By July 2018, more than sixteen federal inquiries were pending into Pruitt's mismanagement and corruption. But Pruitt was just the first in a long line of industry-friendly, incompetent, and destructive agency heads put in place by the Trump administration in its effort to dismantle the federal government's protective edifice. Remember Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who, before he faced eighteen separate federal inquiries and was fired, made a deal with Halliburton to build a brewery on land that Zinke owned in Montana? Or how about Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who rescinded requirements that high-hazard trains install special braking systems, weakened standards for storing natural gas, and lengthened the hours that truck drivers could be on the road without a break, even as she failed for two years to divest her interest in a road materials manufacturer? And then there were Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue, Andrew Puzder . . . the list goes on. In an original and compelling argument, Thomas McGarity shows how adding populists to the Republican's traditional base of free market ideologues and establishment Republicans allowed Trump to come dangerously close to achieving his goal of demolishing the programs that Congress put in place over the course of many decades to protect consumers, workers, communities, children, and the environment. Finally, McGarity offers a blueprint for rebuilding the protective edifice and restoring the power of the American government to offer all Americans better lives.

This book reveals how an empire that stretched from Glasgow to Aswan in Egypt could be ruled from a single city and still survive more than a thousand years. The Government of the Roman Empire is the only sourcebook to concentrate on the administration of the empire, using the evidence of contemporary writers and historians.
Specifically designed for students, with extensive cross-referencing, bibliographies and introductions and explanations for each item, this new edition brings the book right up-to-date, and makes it the ideal resource for students of the subject.

From the author of "First in His Class," the definitive biography of Bill Clinton, this "New York Times" bestseller was hailed by critics as a groundbreaking multigenerational biography, a richly textured account of President Obama and the forces that shaped him and sustain him.
In "Barack Obama: The Story," David Maraniss has written a deeply reported generational biography teeming with fresh insights and revealing information, a masterly narrative drawn from hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama in the Oval Office, and a trove of letters, journals, diaries, and other documents.
The book unfolds in the small towns of Kansas and the remote villages of western Kenya, following the personal struggles of Obama's white and black ancestors through the swirl of the twentieth century. It is a roots story on a global scale, a saga of constant movement, frustration and accomplishment, strong women and weak men, hopes lost and deferred, people leaving and being left. Disparate family threads converge in the climactic chapters as Obama reaches adulthood and travels from Honolulu to Los Angeles to New York to Chicago, trying to make sense of his past, establish his own identity, and prepare for his political future.
"Barack Obama: The Story" chronicles as never before the forces that shaped the first black president of the United States and explains why he thinks and acts as he does. Much like the author's classic study of Bill Clinton, "First in His Class," this promises to become a seminal book that will redefine a president.

In the Post-Cold War era, US nuclear foreign policies towards India witnessed a major turnaround as a demand for 'cap, reduce, eliminate' under the Clinton administration was replaced by the implementation of the historic 'civil nuclear deal' in 2008 by Bush, a policy which continued under Obama's administration. This book addresses the change in US nuclear foreign policy by focusing on three core categories of identity, inequality, and great power narratives. Building upon the theoretical paradigm of critical constructivism, the concept of the 'state' is problematised by focusing on identity-related questions arguing that the 'state' becomes a constructed entity standing as valid only within relations of identity and difference. Focusing on postcolonial principles, Pate argues that imperialism as an organising principle of identity/difference enables us to understand how difference was maintained in unequal terms through US nuclear foreign policy. This manifested in five great power narratives constructed around peace and justice; India-Pakistan deterrence; democracy; economic progress; and scientific development. Identities of 'race', 'political economy', and 'gender', in terms of 'radical otherness' and 'otherness' were recurrently utilised through these narratives to maintain a difference enabling the respective administrations to maintain 'US' identity as a progressive and developed western nation, intrinsically justifying the US role as an arbiter of the global nuclear order. A useful work for scholars researching identity construction and US foreign and security policies, US-India bilateral nuclear relations, South Asian nuclear politics, critical security, and postcolonial studies.