In this groundbreaking study, Zimmerman explores the town meeting form of government in all New England states. This comprehensive work relies heavily upon surveys of town officers and citizens, interviews, and mastery of the scattered writing on the subject. Zimmerman finds that the stereotypes of the New England open town meeting advanced by its critics are a serious distortion of reality. He shows that voter superintendence of town affairs has proven to be effective, and there is no empirical evidence that thousands of small towns and cities with elected councils are governed better. Whereas the relatively small voter attendance suggests that interest groups can control town meetings, their influence has been offset effectively by the development of town advisory committees, particularly the finance committee and the planning board, which are effective counterbalances to pressure groups.

Zimmerman provides a new conception of town meeting democracy, positing that the meeting is a de facto representative legislative body with two safety valves--open access to all voters and the initiative to add articles to the warrant, and the calling of special meetings to reconsider decisions made at the preceding town meeting. And, as Zimmerman points out, a third safety valve--the protest referendum--can be adopted by a town meeting.

Fear has always been present in cities. However, recent events and political and social trends have intensified these insecurities and refocused very diverse anxieties on civic space. The changing role of the state through globalization, and the growth of inequalities and power conflicts over public space call for a renewed analysis of global-local conflicts, and for a theorization of the relationship between issues of space and social marginalization.
The events of 9/11 have served to galvanise the precautionary principle, increasing repression and the number of gated communities worldwide. This book analyses the diverse responses of New York, Paris, London and Mumbai to terrorism, Johannesburg and Sao Paolo to cartels of gangs and British and French cities to persistent civic unrest. These responses can be perceived as a sign of hope; despite various constraints, cities' immense capacity for adaptation and resilience can allow very diverse people to live together with their differences.

We are here to remember what happened and to declare solemnly that ‘they’ must never do it again. But who are ‘they’?

HOW TO SPOT A FASCIST is a selection of three thought-provoking essays on freedom and fascism, censorship and tolerance – including Eco’s iconic essay ‘Ur-Fascism’, which lists the fourteen essential characteristics of fascism, and draws on his own personal experiences growing up in the shadow of Mussolini.

Umberto Eco remains one of the greatest writers and cultural commentators of the last century. In these pertinent pieces, he warns against prejudice and abuses of power and proves a wise and insightful guide for our times.

If we strive to learn from our collective history and come together in challenging times, we can hope for a peaceful and tolerant future.

Freedom and liberation are never-ending tasks. Let this be our motto: ‘Do not forget.’

Psychologist, H. John Lyke, and author of "What Would Our Founding Fathers Say?," asks the question:

"At the end of this century, will the United States still be a world leader or will we continue to be an inferior caricature of what we once were or, even worse, will we have become another fallen empire? Put another way, will the dreams and promises of Americans for their country continue to become unattainable?"

This book offers political straight talk about today's issues between the right and the left by looking through the eyes of the patriots who wrote the plans for our fledging nation. Are we following that plan? What was between the lines that our representatives seem to have forgotten? What was expected of the citizenry that the rest of us are neglecting to do? Lyke provides a clear and impassioned plea to get back to basics. And he shows us, in this treatise of some substance, why the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were written, and why those superb documents continue to stand the test of time.

Lyke believes he has provided the bipartisan political formula necessary for his children and grandchildren, as well as his fellow Americans living in this country, to be able to live their lives with dignity, respect and a sense of purpose and pride of accomplishment - in a way not possible in the world of politics today.

'Witty, rigorous, and as urgent as a fire alarm' Dorian Lynskey 'Cooly prosecutorial' Guardian Nobody meant for this to happen. Facebook didn't mean to facilitate a genocide. Twitter didn't want to be used to harass women. YouTube never planned to radicalise young men. But with billions of users, these platforms need only tweak their algorithms to generate more 'engagement'. In so doing, they bring unrest to previously settled communities and erode our relationships. Social warming has happened gradually - as a by-product of our preposterously convenient digital existence. But the gradual deterioration of our attitudes and behaviour on- and offline - this vicious cycle of anger and outrage - is real. And it can be corrected. Here's how.

Despite explicit commitments to gender equality, women experience complex modes of disadvantage and discrimination in all nations of the world. Offering sophisticated insights into the persistence of gendered differences in opportunities, roles, power, and rights in societies across the globe, this volume investigates factors that both enable and constrain women's advancement. From intimate relations within families, to social norms, relations, ideologies, and structures of power, to political institutions, electoral systems, and public policies, the chapters analyze possibilities for and obstacles to inclusive democratic practices and identify interventions essential to enable democratic values to take root. Contributors from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the USA provide detailed assessments of the social, economic, and political condition of women, their mobilizations to produce transform gendered power and authority in diverse nations, and their efforts to enhance the quality of their lives, their communities, and democratic governance.

This fascinating account, by a Czech-speaking American diplomat who lived in Czechoslovakia from 1967-1969, describes the collapse of a repressive Communist regime, the subsequent unprecedented explosion of popular freedom, the surprise Soviet occupation, and the spirited passive resistance of the population until the gradual strangulation of the Prague Spring. Drawing on his own journal, recent memoirs, and documentary materials in the National Archives, the author shows how American diplomats and senior U.S. officials analyzed and reacted to ongoing events. He explains how reform leader Alexander Dubcek became wedged between enthusiastic popular support and the objections of ultra-orthodox Soviet leaders. Skoug's economic and commercial responsibilities gave him considerable access to Czechoslovak officials even in the Novotny period, and he was an eyewitness to the invasion and many other crucial events of the period, including the great patriotic demonstration of March 1969 which the Soviet Union exploited to force Dubcek's resignation.

Despite overt Soviet pressure, neither Prague nor Washington anticipated intervention. The Johnson Administration, courting Moscow for help on Vietnam, displayed calculated indifference to the dispute and reacted tepidly to developments. Left alone, the Czechoslovak population met the invader with militant, if passive, resistance, but the Dubcek leadership capitulated to Soviet demands and acquiesced in an occupation that gradually betrayed all of the gains achieved. Subsequent reluctance by Washington to criticize Moscow helped the Soviet Union cut its diplomatic losses. On the other hand, the Czechoslavak crisis may have helped to persuade Gorbachev to allow Eastern Europe to resolve its own affairs in 1989.

A truly international, authoritative A–Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history. This fascinating survey provides a comprehensive introduction to propaganda, its changing nature, its practitioners, and its impact on the past five centuries of world history. Written by leading experts, it covers the masters of the art from Joseph Goebbels to Mohandas Gandhi and examines enormously influential works of persuasion such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, techniques such as films and posters, and key concepts like black propaganda and brainwashing. Case studies reveal the role of mass persuasion during the Reformation, and wars throughout history. Regional studies cover propaganda superpowers, such as Russia, China, and the United States, as well as little-known propaganda campaigns in Southeast Asia, Ireland, and Scandinavia. The book traces the evolution of propaganda from the era of printed handbills to computer fakery, and profiles such brilliant practitioners of the art as Third Reich film director Leni Riefenstahl and 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose works helped to bring the notorious Boss Tweed to justice.

Politics today is inextricably bound to the media, indeed it is now a routine assumption that the media can determine election outcomes. Consequently, over the last 20 years, the conduct of politics has become increasingly driven by what might "play well" on televison or in the press. Not just election campaigning, but other major political platforms including by-elections, budgets, party conferences and set piece speeches have become dominated by media considerations. This is a book about how that relationship works in practice. What sort of deals are done between politicians and journalists? What tactics do politicians use to try and manipulate the media? What are journalists' techniques of resistance? What determines how a campaign is put together? Have policy issues and the national good really been surrendered to image-making and sound-bite tactics? This book examines the modern process of political communication through the eyes of the many different actors who are now involved. Through their own experience, and through personal interviews conducted with many of the key media and political figures, the authors construct a vivid picture of how political communication is managed today and the direction in which it is going.

The field of female literacy in Morocco is devoid of any academic research that is centred on how non-literate women need and acquire literacy. The goal of this text is to fill that gap. Its aim is to contribute to gender research efforts for a better integration of non-literate women in sustainable development. One of the distinctive features of this book is that it does contend itself with revealing the traditional definition of literacy that has not been adopted for more than forty years after the launching of the first literacy campaigns, but it also suggests ways of designing emancipatory and empowering gender based-literacy programs.

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall many East German writers were praised in the Western world as dissident voices of truth, bravely struggling with the draconian constraints of living under the GDR's communist regime. However, since unification, Germany has been rocked by scandals showing the level to which the Stasi, the East German Secret Police, controlled these same writers. This is the first study in English to systematically explore how the writers have responded to the challenge of dealing with the Stasi from the 1950s to the present day. MICHAEL BUTLER Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Birmingham, UK CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING Associate Professor of German, Southwest Missouri Satte Univesrity, USA MIKE DENNIS Professor of Modern German History, University of Wolverhampton, UK OWEN EVANS Lecturer in German, University of Wales, Bangor, UK STEPHEN J. EVANS University of Wales, Swansea, UK KRISTIE FOELL Associate Professor of German, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA ALISON LEWIS Lecturer, Department of German and Swedish Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia GEORGINA PAUL Lecturer in German Studies, University of Warwick, UK JULIAN PREECE Uni

Global politics has been completely transformed by the rise of digitalisation and the politicised use of everyday digital communication tools by ordinary people in citizen engagement and mass protest. And yet, digital politics as a field is rarely explored holistically and interdisciplinary beyond a narrow focus on digital activism, digital warfare or Internet governance. Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures addresses this gap. Bringing together contributions from junior and experienced scholars, the book examines digital politics theoretically, methodologically, and ethically, offering interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative pedagogies. The first part of the book presents research chapters that look at misinformation and reactionary online activism, digital imperialism and capitalism, future internet governance, digital memory, digital waste, and environmental imagination. The second part showcases several creative and experimental tools for studying digital politics historically, and for analysing and creating future imaginaries of digital politics. By sharing these tools and reflecting on the process of their creation, the book aims to simultaneously push the boundaries of, and inspire new teaching and research in, the field of digital politics.

Thriving in the context of political vacuums created by state weakness, the armed non-state actors in the Middle East, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Kurds increasingly demonstrate features of both state and non-state actors and act autonomously in their foreign policy. Rethinking State-Non-State Alliances: Change and Continuity in the U.S.-Kurdish Relationship investigates the growing influence of Middle Eastern non-state actors as agents of foreign policy through an analysis of the U.S.-Kurdish relationship. Ozum Yesiltas analyzes the underlying causes of increased U.S.-Kurdish cooperation since the early 1990s and addresses the extent to which existing approaches in international relations are adequate in explaining the changing political landscape in the Middle East that brought the U.S. and Kurds together in new ways. Yesiltas draws attention to the ways in which U.S-Kurdish interactions contributed to the escalation of Kurdish nationalism as a transnational phenomenon, and how the growing saliency of Kurdish transnational politics reshapes U.S. foreign policy and broader regional order.

This study explores modern Scotland and examines how Scottish politics, culture and identities have interacted within the national and international contexts in the last thirty years. It considers which voices and opinions have proven influential and defining and charts the boundaries of public conversation to and beyond the independence referendum

Throughout history and across cultures, the spy chief has been a leader of the state security apparatus and an essential adviser to heads of state. In democracies, the spy chief has become a public figure, and intelligence activities have been brought under the rule of law. In authoritarian regimes, however, the spy chief was and remains a frightening and opaque figure who exercises secret influence abroad and engages in repression at home. This second volume of Spy Chiefs goes beyond the commonly studied spy chiefs of the United States and the United Kingdom to examine leaders from Renaissance Venice to the Soviet Union, Germany, India, Egypt, and Lebanon in the twentieth century. It provides a close-up look at intelligence leaders, good and bad, in the different political contexts of the regimes they served. The contributors to the volume try to answer the following questions: how do intelligence leaders operate in these different national, institutional and historical contexts? What role have they played in the conduct of domestic affairs and international relations? How much power have they possessed? How have they led their agencies and what qualities make an effective intelligence leader? How has their role differed according to the political character of the regime they have served? The profiles in this book range from some of the most notorious figures in modern history, such as Feliks Dzerzhinsky and Erich Mielke, to spy chiefs in democratic West Germany and India.

How can European societies more effectively promote the active engagement of immigrants and their children in the political and civic life of the countries where they live? This book examines the effect of migrants' individual attributes and resources, their social capital and the political opportunities on their political integration.

This innovative volume explores the essential similarity of imperialist ideologies in Britain and France from 1890 to 1940. These nations attempted to sell the concept of empire to their respective peoples as a means of overcoming pressing internal problems. The author documents the development of imperialist ideology in both countries, analyzes its methods of propagation, and assesses its popular appeal. Beginning with the 1890s, when factions in both countries espoused a remarkably similar vision of empire, August traces the numerous manifestations of official ideology through the First World War and into the ensuing period of promised recovery and national regeneration.

Russian politics have been dominated over the last decade by the relationship between the oligarchs and the state. The existing literature is damning of the oligarchs, on two major grounds: they won their wealth and power corruptly, and rapaciously stripped the assets they had so dubiously obtained. This book contains a critical analysis of each of the claims made against them. In doing so it presents a detailed analysis of the place of the oligarchs in the Russian political economy.

This book argues that although labor market needs have been an important element in the development of immigration policy, they have been filtered through a political process: the politics of immigration. It is this process that drives immigration policy in each country. By exploring the relation between policy and politics in France, the UK, and the US, three countries that have both welcomed and severely restricted immigrant entry during different periods, this book helps to show how this goes far beyond labor market needs. Cross-nationally, these policies have been influenced by considerations of race, domestic ideas of what constitutes national identity, citizenship, naturalization, urban policy, housing, and education.