The arrival of the welfare state in Western Europe brought with it a vast expansion in the role of government. That expansion led to fears that the increased expectations of citizens would lead to government overload and `ungovernability'. This book sheds new and surprisingly light on the whole idea of a crisis of ungovernability. It begins by examining the expanding scope of government in the post-War period. Drawing on a vast data set stretching back over the last two decades and right across Europe, the book reveals public attitudes towards the range and extent of government activity. Changes in the public's political agenda are identified, along with attitudes towards the size of government, taxation, and the equality and security goals of the welfare state. Attitudes towards government intervention in the economy, the environment, and the media are also examined. The final chapters assess the significance for governments of beliefs about the scope of government. Series description This set of five volumes is an exhaustive study of beliefs in government in post-war Europe. Based upon an extensive collection of survey evidence, the results challenge widely argued theories of mass opinion, and much scholarly writing about citizen attitudes towards government and politics. The series arises from a research project sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Reviews of the series: `The quality of the empirical analysis is consistently high...[an] important collection of empirical studies addressing the debate about the "crisis of representation" in Europe.' Journal of Public Policy `These volumes contain the work of many of the most important scholars in the field of public opinion in Europe today...These five volumes represent a major contribution to comparative politics, especially the study of mass politics. The chapters provide a wealth of information about public opinion in contemporary Europe and the relationship between state and society...The volumes clearly will be read by all students of European politics...' Times Educational Supplement `The Beliefs in Government series is a monumental achievement. It tells us at least everything we want to know about the structure of European public opinion'. The Good Society

Through the new use of new empirical evidence derived from analysing employment services, gender equality policies and flexicurity in Greece and Portugal, this book provides compelling new insights into how European Employment Strategy (EES) can influence the domestic employment policy of European Union member states.

A Historical Guide to U.S. Government chronicles the growth of the federal branch of the American government from its modest beginnings to its current status as the largest institution in the world. Consisting of 183 alphabetically arranged entries ranging from brief descriptions of commissions and committees to 5,000-word interpretive essays covering such issues as accountability and the impact of new technologies, A Historical Guide to U.S. Government is an outstanding source of information for all students of one of the world's most complex institutions.

A magnificently researched, dramatically told work of narrative nonfiction about the history, evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of what was known in the 1930s and 1940s as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Black Cabinet. In 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans lived in poverty, denied citizenship rights and terrorized by white violence. As the New Deal began, a "black Brain Trust" joined the administration and began documenting and addressing the economic hardship and systemic inequalities African Americans faced. They became known as the Black Cabinet, but the environment they faced was reluctant, often hostile, to change. "Will the New Deal be a square deal for the Negro?" The black press wondered. The Black Cabinet set out to devise solutions to the widespread exclusion of black people from its programs, whether by inventing tools to measure discrimination or by calling attention to the administration's failures. Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, they were instrumental to Roosevelt's continued success with black voters. Operating mostly behind the scenes, they helped push Roosevelt to sign an executive order that outlawed discrimination in the defense industry. They saw victories--jobs and collective agriculture programs that lifted many from poverty--and defeats--the bulldozing of black neighborhoods to build public housing reserved only for whites; Roosevelt's refusal to get behind federal anti-lynching legislation. The Black Cabinet never won official recognition from the president, and with his death, it disappeared from view. But it had changed history. Eventually, one of its members would go on to be the first African American Cabinet secretary; another, the first African American federal judge and mentor to Thurgood Marshall. Masterfully researched and dramatically told, The Black Cabinet brings to life a forgotten generation of leaders who fought post-Reconstruction racial apartheid and whose work served as a bridge that Civil Rights activists traveled to achieve the victories of the 1950s and '60s.

This book seeks to trace the main dimensions of recent conflicts between central departments of governments and local authorities and to reveal something of their significance. It does so by focusing on the role of law in shaping the central-local government relations which is neglected in many contemporary studies and yet is of vital importance in identifying the character of that relationship. Precisely why they should be so is not self-evident. The main objective of this introduction therefore is to highlight the importance of this dimension to the study of central-local relations and then to explain the way in which the key themes of the study are to be addressed.
One highly significant aspect of the study is the identification of a process of juridfication which is only gradually becoming clear. This has not only been a major undertaking, it has also been a highly complex, ambiguous, confusing, and frustrating activity. This has caused problems for government and for the judiciary and not surprisingly there have been expressions of discomfort on all sides. This book helps to explain where the process may have gone wrong and why ultimately it may be an objective which cannot be realised.
Ultimately what the book seeks to demonstrate is that the issues raised by the government of central-local relations transcend the institution of local government and are directly linked to our system of parliamentary democracy. Furthermore the author argues that the system of central-local government relations has evolved in such a way that it reveals a great deal about our tradition of public law. An examination of these issues through an explication of the themes of legality and locality therefore requires the reader to address basic questions about the nature of contemporary British government.

The book evaluates the importance of constitutional rules and property rights for the German economy in 1990-2015. It is an economic historical study embedded in institutional economics with main references to positive constitutional economics and the property rights theory. This interdisciplinary work adopts a theoretical-empirical dimension and a qualitative-quantitative approach. Formal institutions played a fundamental role in Germany's post-reunification economic changes. They set the legal and institutional framework for the transition process of Eastern Germany and the unification, integration and convergence between the two parts of the country. Although the latter process was not completed, the effects of these formal rules were positive, especially for the former GDR.

Instant New York Times Bestseller Washington Post Bestseller USA Today Bestseller Indie Bound Bestseller Authors Round the South Bestseller Midwest Indie Bestseller New York Times bestselling author Sarah Kendzior documents the truth about the calculated rise to power of Donald Trump since the 1980s and how the erosion of our liberties made an American dema-gogue possible. The story of Donald Trump's rise to power is the story of a buried American history - buried because people in power liked it that way. It was visible without being seen, influential without being named, ubiquitous without being overt. Sarah Kendzior's Hiding in Plain Sight pulls back the veil on a history spanning decades, a history of an American autocrat in the making. In doing so, she reveals the inherent fragility of American democracy - how our continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States have been hiding in plain sight for decades. In Kendzior's signature and celebrated style, she expertly outlines Trump's meteoric rise from the 1980s until today, interlinking key moments of his life with the degradation of the American political system and the continual erosion of our civil liberties by foreign powers. Kendzior also offers a never-before-seen look at her lifelong tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - living in New York through 9/11 and in St. Louis during the Ferguson uprising, and researching media and authoritarianism when Trump emerged using the same tactics as the post-Soviet dictatorships she had long studied. It is a terrible feeling to sense a threat coming, but it is worse when we let apathy, doubt, and fear prevent us from preparing ourselves. Hiding in Plain Sight confronts the injustice we have too long ignored because the truth is the only way forward.

This book examines how China's decentralization process has affected and will affect the country's macroeconomic performance and the functioning of the market. With an innovative application of game theory, the author develops an analytical framework that can explain the behaviour of the central and local governments under alternative institutional environments. The study also suggests how to establish desirable rules of games in China's political and economic institutions through appropriate reforms.

Although much has been written about Richard Nixon the man and the politician, comparatively little attention has been paid to Nixon the public speaker. This is unfortunate because it was through public speaking that Nixon, an introverted, private man, first captured public attention, won a seat in the House of Representatives, advanced to the Senate, held on to his vice presidential nomination, lost and won the presidency, and eventually molded a constituency that carried him to one of the most overwhelming presidential election victories in American history. It was also through public speaking that President Nixon attempted to defend himself against charges related to the Watergate incident and sought to save himself from impeachment. When his rhetorical efforts failed to rouse popular support, he had no choice but to resign. This volume examines the combination of personal characteristics and artistic choices that made Richard M. Nixon a successful, albeit extremely controversial, public speaker from 1946 to the present. Based on Nixon's own writings, primary materials found in special collections, a number of rhetorical studies by communication scholars, and historical case studies, the most complete picture yet of Nixon as a rhetorical strategist emerges. The study of Nixon's rhetoric is the study of many important issues, from the alleged threat of subversive communism to Vietnam to Watergate, confronting America from 1946 to 1974. It is also the study of the man himself because Nixon took an active role in the composition of all his important addresses. That both the highs and lows of Richard Nixon's career were marked by public address makes the rhetoric of Richard Nixon aworthy subject for anyone interested in political science, history, or communication and persuasion.

This book is an examination of minority government performance in conjunction with the territorial distribution of state power and the territorial interests of political parties. It examines political institutions, and the reconcilability of party goals and the contingent bargaining circumstances, in multilevel and territorial perspectives.

The Politics of Evidence Based Policymaking identifies how to work with policymakers to maximize the use of scientific evidence. Policymakers cannot consider all evidence relevant to policy problems. They use two shortcuts: 'rational' ways to gather enough evidence, and 'irrational' decision-making, drawing on emotions, beliefs, and habits. Most scientific studies focus on the former. They identify uncertainty when policymakers have incomplete evidence, and try to solve it by improving the supply of information. They do not respond to ambiguity, or the potential for policymakers to understand problems in very different ways. A good strategy requires advocates to be persuasive: forming coalitions with like-minded actors, and accompanying evidence with simple stories to exploit the emotional or ideological biases of policymakers.

When David Cameron and Nick Clegg stepped out into the rose garden at No. 10 to launch the first coalition government since the Second World War, some doubted whether the coalition could survive a full term - or even a full year. Five years later, this bold departure for British politics had weathered storms, spending cuts and military strikes, rows, referendums and riots.In this compelling insider account, David Laws lays bare the inner workings of the coalition government from its birth in 2010 to its demise in 2015. As a key figure at the heart of government, he witnessed first-hand the triumphs, the tantrums and the tactical manoeuvrings.Now, he brings this experience to bear, revealing how crucial decisions were made and uncovering the often explosive divisions between and within the coalition parties. Honest, insightful and at times shocking, Coalition shines a powerful light on perhaps the most fascinating political partnership of modern times.

In early 2010 Russia once again entered a turbulent period. From the system of property distribution, to structure of the political elites and relations between the Center and the regions - various spheres of Russian life are in a state of flux. Two major factors are driving this change: oil prices which are unlikely to grow the way they did in the 2000s and the rapidly deteriorating efficiency of governance. Relations between federal and regional elites, as well as public activism, are derived from these two factors and play an important role of their own. Will change take an evolutionary path or is Russia facing another revolution? The book offers a view of the Russian future until 2025 based on thematic scenarios created by an international team of Russia scholars whose expertise range from politics and economics to demographics and foreign policy.

Preponderance in U.S. Foreign Policy: Monster in the Closet identifies and explains the factors contributing to the presence and severity of blunders, or gross errors in strategic judgment resulting in significant harm to the national interest, in U.S. foreign policy since 1945. It contends that when U.S. policymakers overestimate the capacity of American power to transform the politics of other states, the likelihood of a foreign policy resulting in a blunder increases. It concomitantly contends that the prevailing grand strategy of American preponderance since the Second World War precipitates the frequency and severity of foreign-policy blunders. The dissertation pursues four original lines of research: (1) the presentation of a sui generis framework for foreign-policy evaluation; (2) the new delineation of the concept and classification of the foreign-policy blunder; (3) the gathering of empirical data with regard to the decision-making of policymakers and the results of two corresponding foreign-policy blunders, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War; and (4) the demonstration of the two contentions within the overarching research question of what factors contribute to the presence and severity of blunders in modern U.S. foreign policy. The book presents a theoretical model examining and explaining the cultural and ideational connections between the pursuit of the grand strategy of American preponderance, decision-making in U.S. foreign policy, and blunders in modern U.S. foreign policy.

Political parties can make or break women's attempts to stand for political office, yet there have been surprisingly few systematic studies into the 'secret garden' of political recruitment. This book investigates this under-researched area, bringing together insights from feminist and new institutional theory to explore and understand the gendered dynamics of institutional innovation and change in candidate selection and recruitment. Drawing on an original empirical case study of candidate selection in post-devolution Scotland, Gender and Political Recruitment highlights the complex and gendered dynamics of institutional design, continuity and change in the political recruitment process and illustrates the difficulties of reforming recruitment in the face of powerful institutional and gendered legacies.

This book studies the dynamics of political discourse in governance processes. It demonstrates the process in which political discourses become normative mechanisms, first marking socially constructed realities in politics, second playing a role in delineating the subsequent policy frames, and third influencing the public sphere.

This collection of original essays deals with aspects of the history of the House of Lords in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including the internal management of the Lords and its external influence.>

One of the most powerful and widespread ideal and political reasons underlying the birth and building of the Nation-state has been the concurrence of territory, culture and people. Lately, however, one can observe a complete overturning of the relation between territorial and social spaces. New forms of international migrations, new systems of communication, new financial flows, and new political entities constitute relations, which, by crossing over the old borders, take on a territorial multipolarity as the area of their sociocultural practices. Studying the new relations between culture and territory implies laying stress on the effects of processes of contemporary nomadisms at global, local, virtual, and everyday life levels. The volume contains a collection of essays that try to illustrate the trends of the ceaseless nomadisms spanning our world, the distinctive modalities by which they fuel yet are also subjected to the complexity of contemporariness, looking into an ethnography of the modern traffic of the incorporeal but also of identity experiences and of state and state-like practices enfolding them.

"Matilde Callari Galli" is full professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna, Department of Education (Italy).

While globalization and the European construction increasingly undermine the model of the nation-state in the Mediterranean world, conversions reveal the capacity of religion to disrupt, and unsettle previous understandings of political and social relations. Converts' claims and practice are often met with the hostility of the state and the public while converts can often be perceived either as traitors or as unconscious and weak tools of foreign manipulation. Based on first-hand ethnographical research from several countries throughout the Mediterranean region, this book is the first of its kind in studying and analyzing contemporary conversions and their impact on recasting ideas of nationalism and citizenship. In doing so, this interdisciplinary study confronts historical, anthropological, political science and sociological approaches which offers an insight into the national, legal and political challenges of legislating for religious minorities that arise from conversions. Moreover, the specific examination of contemporary religious conversion contributes more widely to debates about the delinking of religion and culture, globalization, and secularism.

THE ALL-NEW DIARIES; "Alastair Campbell's diaries have the quality of Pepys ...people will be looking for insights and finding them in 100 years' time." Lord Alex CarlileLaunched to a blaze of critical acclaim, Alastair Campbell's explosive diaries became an instant classic. Now, this eagerly anticipated new volume picks up where its predecessor left off, with Campbell standing down as Tony Blair's director of communications in 2003. Leaving Downing Street, however, isn't as easy as it seems, with Campbell persistently drawn back to the epicentre of power - often to the frustration of his partner, Fiona.As Lord Hutton prepares to publish his report, thus sparking a huge crisis for the BBC, any joy in No. 10 is dwarfed by continuing difficulties in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Blair/Brown relationship is fracturing almost beyond repair, and Campbell is tasked with devising a plan that will enable the two men to fight a united election campaign. At home, Campbell writes frankly of his continuing battles with mental health issues as he attempts to adapt to a new life beyond the confines of Westminster.Lifting the lid on the power battles at the heart of the Labour Party that sowed the seeds of today's turmoil, Outside, Inside is a vivid and compelling insight into modern political history, and a candid reflection on the personal impact of life in the corridors of power.

Party Influence in Congress challenges current arguments and evidence about the influence of political parties in the US Congress. Steven S. Smith argues that theory must reflect policy, electoral, and collective party goals. These goals call for flexible party organizations and leadership strategies. They demand that majority party leaders control the flow of legislation; package legislation and time action to build winning majorities and attract public support; work closely with a president of their party; and influence the vote choices for legislators. Smith observes that the circumstantial evidence of party influence is strong, multiple collective goals remain active ingredients after parties are created, party size is an important factor in party strategy, both negative and positive forms of influence are important to congressional parties, and the needle-in-the-haystack search for direct influence continues to prove frustrating.