Leonid Brezhnev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1964-1982, a longer period than any other Soviet leader apart from Stalin. During Brezhnev's time Soviet power seemed at its height and increasing. Living standards were rising, the Soviet Union was a nuclear power and successful in its space missions, and the Soviet Union's influence reached into all part of the world. Yet, as this book, which provides a comprehensive overview and reassessment of Brezhnev's life, early political career and career as leader, shows, the seeds of decline were sown in Brezhnev's time. There was a huge over-commitment of resources to the Soviet industrial-military complex and to massively expensive foreign policy overstretch. At the same time there was a failure to deliver on citizens' rising expectations, and an overconfident ignoring of dissidents and their demands. The book will be of great interest to Russian specialists, and also to scholars of international relations and world history.

This invaluable student resource provides an historical overview on the most controversial issues of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, allowing the presidents and their opponents to speak for themselves through primary documents. Also included are a timeline, bibliographies, and an index.

When Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, the United States was mired in Vietnam. In 1981, as Jimmy Carter was preparing to leave office, American citizens were hostages in Iran. The intervening years were no less turbulent. Nixon was forced to resign, the United States boycotted the Olympic games, an energy crisis struck the country, and skyrocketing rates of inflation and stagnating growth hampered the economy. The nation was torn over the forced desegregation of schools, Ford's pardon of Nixon, the relinquishment of the Panama Canal to Panama, and a host of environmental issues.

The post-Soviet country of Georgia has generated surprise upon surprise. Its Rose Revolution in 2003 marked the first time an existing leadership of a post-Soviet state was forced to surrender power peacefully. The new leadership of Western-educated Mikheil Saakashvili initiated wide-ranging domestic reforms, including a large-scale, unprecedented anti-corruption drive. It also intensified relations with the West and sought membership of the EU and NATO. The Georgian leadership's expressed aim of re-integrating territories lost in wars in the early 1990s resulted in a devastating conflict with Russia in 2008. All these developments, and their wider implications, receive careful yet readable attention in this collection by a truly international and specialist group of authors and practitioners. The book offers a spectrum of opinion and compelling insight into the events and decisions that have recently shaped this fascinating yet understudied country, and placed it at the forefront of interest in the changes transforming post-Soviet Eurasia. This book is based on a special issue of European Security.

To understand the challenges of political leadership and how top executives succeed in accomplishing an Administration s objectives, business-in-government experts Paul R. Lawrence and Mark A. Abramson present the findings of a four-year study of top political appointees in the Obama Administration. The 42 participants Deputy Secretaries and agency heads provide case studies of how each approaches the management challenges and achieves the mission of their organization. Full of behind-the-scenes insights and practical advice from government political executives on how they face management challenges in real time, What Government Does: How Political Executives Manage offers indispensable insights to current and prospective political appointees and everyone interested in understanding how leaders make government agencies more effective. The new book, a follow-up to their previous book, Paths to Making a Difference: Leading in Government, presents an insightful framework of what government does. Instead of thinking about government by policy area, the authors present an alternative approach in which government executives are categorized by the type of agency they are managing. The book includes chapters on Deputy Secretaries, producers, regulators, infrastructors, scientists, and collaborators."

Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, the former CIA operative known as "X," offers a history-shaking perspective on the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. His theories were the basis for Oliver Stone's controversial movie "JFK." Prouty believed that Kennedy's death was a coup d'etat, and he backs this belief up with his knowledge of the security arrangements at Dallas and other tidbits that only a CIA insider would know (for example, that every member of Kennedy's cabinet was abroad at the time of Kennedy's assassination). His discussion of the elite power base he believes controlled the U.S. government will scare and enlighten anyone who wants to know who was really behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

This resource uses primary documents and contextualizing essays to illuminate how America's presidents have responded to major tests of their leadership and approached their role and responsibilities in times of national crisis. Presidents hold the attention of the public like no other political actor. In addition, because of their unique role in the constitutional system, presidents often take immediate, unilateral action in the face of national emergencies. Exploring key events, crises, and disasters through the lens of presidential responsiveness, this text reveals not only the larger historical context but also the authority of presidents in meeting the "felt necessities of the time," deepening readers' understanding of those touchstone events. Comprehensive in temporal and topical scope, the book covers crises and disasters from the presidency of George Washington through Donald Trump's first two years in office. Important events covered include natural disasters, wars, assassinations, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, economic crises, riots, tragedies, and political scandals. Each event is explored through a primary document that reveals key dimensions of the presidential response to the crisis or disaster in question and contextual headnotes and essays that provide additional insights into the political, economic, and cultural contexts in which that event occurred and to which the president responded. Provides readers with an understanding of the dynamics that shaped presidential responses to crises and disasters in American history Allows readers to hear directly from presidents during times of national crisis, uncertainty, and mourning through primary documents Provides important information about the circumstances and settings in which the presidents made their statements to the American people (and the wider world) in contextual headnotes for each primary source Contextualizes the extent and limits of presidential authority and influence in times of national crisis, scandal, disaster, or tragedy in introductory essays from the author

Cherokee women wielded significant power, and history demonstrates that in what is now America, indigenous women often bore the greater workload, both inside and outside the home. During the French and Indian War, Cherokee women resisted a chief's authority, owned family households, were skilled artisans, produced plentiful crops, mastered trade negotiations, and prepared chiefs' feasts. Cherokee culture was lost when the Cherokee Nation began imitating the American form of governance to gain political favor, and white colonists reduced indigenous women's power. This book recounts long-standing Cherokee traditions and their rich histories. It demonstrates Cherokee and indigenous women as independent and strong individuals through feminist and historical perspectives. Readers will find that these women were far ahead of their time and held their own in many remarkable ways.

Each volume in the new American Presidents Reference Series is organized around an individual presidency and gathers a host of biographical, analytical, and primary source historical material that will analyze the presidency and bring the president, his administration, and his times to life. The series focuses on key moments in U.S. political history as seen through the eyes of the most influential presidents to take the oath of office. Unique headnotes provide the context to data, tables and excerpted primary source documents. George Washington, born in 1732, was the first president under the Constitution of the United States. In 1753 he began his military career as a major in the Virginia militia. In 1755 he was appointed aide-de-camp to Major General Edward Braddock, under whom he fought in the French and Indian War. Three years later Washington resigned his post to seek election to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he served for nine years. He was also a Virginia delegate to the First Continental Convention. On June 16, 1775, Washington accepted a commission as the commanding general of the Continental army. His skills as a multifaceted leader military, political, inspirational eventually led to the British defeat, the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September 1783, and Washington's retirement. However, in 1787 he agreed to serve as a delegate to the constitutional convention. Presidential electors unanimously elected Washington president in 1789. Key events during his two terms of office were the enactment of the Bill of Rights, Washington's commitment to neutrality in his foreign policies, and the ongoing debate about the role of the national government as championed by ardent opponents in Washington's administration: the Democratic-Republican Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and the Federalist Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Washington established the tradition of the two-term presidency when he retired. George Washington died on December 14, 1799. This new volume of the presidency of George Washington will cover: His military exploits before, during, and after the American Revolution, His inspirational role during the constitutional convention, The Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian political perspectives, Foreign affairs, American neutrality, and the Jay Treaty of 1795, Washington's legacy on American democracy.

This book is a long overdue in-depth study of the Italian Social Republic. Set up in 1943 by Hitler in the town of Salo on Lake Garda and ruled by Mussolini, this makeshift government was a last-ditch effort to ensure the survival of Fascism, ending with the murder of Mussolini by partisans in 1945. The RSI was a loosely organized regime made up of professed patriots, apostles of law and order, and rogue militias who committed atrocities against presumed and real enemies. H. James Burgwyn narrates the history of the RSI, with vivid portraits of key figures and thoughtful analysis of how radical fascists managed to take the Salo regime from a dictatorship in Italy to a Continental nazifascismo, hand in hand with the Third Reich. This book stands as an essential bookend to the life of Mussolini, with new insights into the man who duped the Italian people and provoked a war that ended in catastrophic defeat.

This new two volume set of Dick Leonard's British Premiers trilogy, surveys the lives and careers of all the fifty-five Prime Ministers between Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42) and Boris Johnson (2019- ), bringing to life the political achievements and also the personal idiosyncrasies of Britain's rulers over nearly three centuries. Volume One surveys the lives and careers of all the 32 Prime Ministers from Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42) to Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1894-95) in 32 succinct, informative and entertaining chapters. Volume Two continues this survey on the remaining 23 Prime Ministers from Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (1902-05) to Boris Johnson (2019-). This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and readers of British political history, the Executive, Government, and British Politics.

This new two volume set of Dick Leonard's British Premiers trilogy, surveys the lives and careers of all the fifty-five Prime Ministers between Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42) and Boris Johnson (2019- ), bringing to life the political achievements and also the personal idiosyncrasies of Britain's rulers over nearly three centuries. Volume One surveys the lives and careers of all the 32 Prime Ministers from Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42) to Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1894-95) in 32 succinct, informative and entertaining chapters. Volume Two continues this survey on the remaining 23 Prime Ministers from Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (1902-05) to Boris Johnson (2019-). This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and readers of British political history, the Executive, Government, and British Politics.

Over the past several years, the fields of Leadership Studies and of Women's Studies have grown tremendously. This book, which is a series of case studies of women who have headed governments across the globe, will discuss the conditions and situations under which women rose to power and give a brief biography of each woman . A special chapter on why no U.S. woman has risen to the top, and a review of the political campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Michele Bachmann and others will be included. This book will be of interest for courses in women and leadership, global politics and gender studies.

Social structure may historically have been of primary importance in accounting for the attitudes and behaviour of many citizens, but now changes in social structure have diminished the role played by class and religious affiliation, whilst the significance of personality in political leadership has increased. This volume explores, both theoretically and empirically, the increasingly important role played by the personalisation of leadership. Acknowledging the part played by social cleavages, it focuses on the personal relationships and psychological dimension between citizens and political leaders. It begins by examining the changes which have taken place in the relationship among citizens, the parties which they support and the leaders of these parties in a European context. The authors then assess how far the phenomena of 'personalised leadership' differ from country to country, and the forms which these differences take. The book includes comparative case studies on Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Poland, Japan and Thailand; it concentrates on eleven prominent leaders epitomising personalised political leadership: Thatcher, Blair, Mitterand, Chirac, Le Pen, Berlusconi, Bossi, Walesa, Lepper, Koizumi and Thaksin. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics and political leadership.

This book examines the development of party politics in the region of Western Balkans, describing party politics and analyzing inter-ethnic or inter-party cooperation and competition. Beginning with a thematic overview of the electoral systems and their link to the party systems, the authors consider the legacy of socialist/communist parties; compare the nationalist parties in the region; and explore opportunities for the national minorities. The book then provides detailed country case studies on Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania that: Provide an overview of the development of the respective political system since 1990, presenting key changes over time Depict important political issues in each of these countries and explains parties particular policies in relation to these issues Discuss the level of democracy as well as ethnic minorities in the given states Explore the extent to which nationalism has dominated party organization, the stability of the parties, important changes in the party policies, and their electoral performance and personalisation of the parties Bringing together a range of specialist experts on the Balkans, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of party politics, comparative European politics, post-communist politics, nationalism, Southern European and Western Balkan politics.

Brennan's book surveys the history of the Roman praetorship, which was one of the most enduring Roman political institutions, occupying the practical center of Roman Republican administrative life for over three centuries. The study addresses political, social, military and legal history, as well as Roman religion. Volume I begins with a survey of Roman (and modern) views on the development of legitimate power--from the kings, through the early chief magistrates, and down through the creation and early years of the praetorship. Volume II discusses how the introduction in 122 of C. Gracchus' provincia repetundarum pushed the old city-state system to its functional limits.

Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor is an edited anthology that explores the persona and speech-making of the country's first African American first lady. The result of these thought-provoking essays is an interdisciplinary text that explores the First Lady from a rhetorical and cultural point of view. Authors analyze her Democratic National Convention speeches, her brand as First Lady, her communication from her latest trip to Africa, her agenda rhetoric in Let's Move! and Reach Higher, and her coming out as a Black feminist intellectual when she spoke at Maya Angelou's memorial service. Readers will recognize Michelle Obama as a rhetor of our times-a woman who influences America at the intersections of gender, race, and class and who is representative of what women are today.

The origins of the post of Prime Minister can be traced back to the eighteenth century when Sir Robert Walpole became the monarch s principal minister. From the dawn of the twentieth century to the early years of the twenty-first, however, both the power and the significance of the role have been transformed.

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British Prime Ministers from Balfour to Brown "explores the personalities and achievements of those twenty individuals who have held the highest political office between 1902 and 2010. It includes studies of the dominant premiers who helped shape Britain in peace and war Lloyd George, Churchill, Thatcher and Blair as well as portraits of the less familiar, from Asquith and Baldwin to Wilson and Heath. Each chapter gives a concise account of its subject s rise to power, ideas and motivations, and governing style, as well as examining his or her contribution to policy-making and handling of the major issues of the time. Robert Pearce and Graham Goodlad explore each Prime Minister s interaction with colleagues and political parties, as well as with Cabinet, Parliament and other key institutions of government. Furthermore they assess the significance, and current reputation, of each of the premiers.

This book charts both the evolving importance of the office of Prime Minister and the continuing restraints on the exercise of power by Britain s leaders. These concise, accessible and stimulating biographies provide an essential resource for students of political history and general readers alike.

Over the past several years, the fields of Leadership Studies and of Women's Studies have grown tremendously. This book, which is a series of case studies of women who have headed governments across the globe, will discuss the conditions and situations under which women rose to power and give a brief biography of each woman . A special chapter on why no U.S. woman has risen to the top, and a review of the political campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Michele Bachmann and others will be included. This book will be of interest for courses in women and leadership, global politics and gender studies.

Dick Leonard's Modern British Prime Ministers from Balfour to Johnson surveys the lives and careers of all the 24 Prime Ministers from Arthur Balfour to Boris Johnson in succinct, informative and entertaining chapters. Bringing to life the political achievements and personal idiosyncrasies of Britain's rulers over the 20th and 21st centuries, the author recounts the circumstances which took them to the pinnacle of British political life, probes their political and personal strengths and weaknesses, assesses their performance in office and asks what lasting influence they have had. Along the way Leonard entertains and informs, revealing little-known facts about the private lives of each of the Prime Ministers, for example, which two Premiers, one Tory, one Labour were taught by the same governess as a child? Who was thrashed at his public school for writing pornography and later donated one-fifth of his wealth to the nation? Who was awarded a fourth-class degree at Oxford and went on to father eight children? Who was described by his son as 'probably the greatest natural Don Juan in the history of British politics'? This book can also form part of a two-volume set published by Routledge including the companion volume British Prime Ministers from Walpole to Salisbury: The 18th and 19th Centuries. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and readers of British political history, the Executive, government, and British politics.

Barack Obama was the breath of fresh air the Democrats didn't even realise they needed. Running on a platform of hope, change and progress, he won his first term with a decisive landslide, completely rewriting the rules of politics. So how did we go from Obama to Trump - and how can the Democrats turn the tide? Once his communications director, and now co-host of Pod Save America, Dan Pfeiffer was at Obama's side through two presidential elections and six years in the White House. Offering up surreal stories from behind the scenes, Pfeiffer explains how Obama navigated the forces that propelled Trump to power, and metes out critical wisdom on how the Democrats can reverse the country's fate. A funny, thoughtful and humble account of Pfeiffer's time on the front line of politics, Yes We (Still) Can is not just a memoir but an action plan for those who still dare to hope for change - and for the end of the Trump era.

Historians have long viewed President John Tyler as one of the nation's least effective heads of state. In President without a Party- the first fullA -scale biography of Tyler in more than fifty years and the first new academic study of him in eight decades- Christopher J. Leahy explores the life of the tenth chief executive of the United States. Born in the Virginia Tidewater into an elite family sympathetic to the ideals of the American Revolution, Tyler, like his father, worked as an attorney before entering politics. Leahy uses a wealth of primary source materials to chart Tyler's early political path, from his election to the Virginia legislature in 1811, through his stints as a congressman and senator, to his viceA -presidential nomination on the Whig ticket for the campaign of 1840. When William Henry Harrison died unexpectedly a mere month after assuming the presidency, Tyler became the first vice president to become president because of the death of the incumbent. Leahy traces Tyler's ascent to the highest office in the land and unpacks the fraught dynamics between Tyler and his fellow Whigs, who ultimately banished the beleaguered president from their ranks and stymied his election bid three years later. Leahy also examines the president's personal life, especially his relationships with his wives and children. In the end, Leahy suggests, politics fulfilled Tyler the most, often to the detriment of his family. Such was true even after his presidency, when Virginians elected him to the Confederate Congress in 1861, and northerners and Unionists branded him a ""traitor president."" The most complete accounting of Tyler's life and career, Leahy's biography makes an original contribution to the fields of politics, family life, and slavery in the antebellum South. Moving beyond the standard, often shortsighted studies that describe Tyler as simply a defender of the Old South's dominant ideology of states' rights and strict construction of the Constitution, Leahy offers a nuanced portrayal of a president who favored a middle-A of-A theA -road, bipartisan approach to the nation's problems. This strategy did not make Tyler popular with either the Whigs or the opposition Democrats while he was in office, or with historians and biographers ever since. Moreover, his most significant achievement as president- the annexation of Texas- exacerbated sectional tensions and put the United States on the road to civil war.

This book explores the role of religion in the transformation of Turkey under the reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP). It attempts to come to terms with the current political crisis in Turkey and the government's move toward authoritarianism. The chapters included in this book examine various ideological, political and social factors that have driven the transformation of the AKP. The book seeks to answer questions about how and in what direction have the AKP's objectives and strategies changed in the last two decades the party has been in power, and the divergence between professed ideals and practices. The book also focuses on the major repercussions that the 15 July 2016 coup d'etat attempt has had on key Turkish state institutions and policies, and how it has also affected Turkish foreign policy toward regional and international powers. The book addresses the many gaps and omissions in earlier studies of the AKP, and posits that there have been a more complex set of circumstances impacting Turkish politics since 2002 and that it makes little sense to continue to view Turkish politics as just a clash between Islam and secularism. Erdogan's Turkey is a significant new contribution to the study of Turkish politics and politics in general, and will be a great resource for academics, researchers and advanced students of Political Science, International Relations, History, Geography and Sociology. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Middle East Critique.

Why have multitudes of followers throughout history become attracted to leaders who demand sacrifice, campaigns of war or other adventures with unpredictable outcomes? Why do they command such powerful control over their followers? Madness and Leadership studies leaders and followers from social, cultural, and biological perspectives and explores aspects of their personalities that induce them to assume their respective roles.It proposes that leadership and followership are evolutionary adaptations, developed to enhance survival and group cohesion; that leaders possess certain biologically derived personality traits which set them apart and alert followers, consciously or unconsciously, of their status. Important factors that enhance leader emergence have been linked through evolution and are constituents of all societies, past and present. Within political theories and historical examples, this book carries the discussion on leadership into a new direction by suggesting that mild psychopathology is one of its central components. This pioneering multidisciplinary exploration of mental illness and leadership will give readers a better understanding of leadership phenomena, with a critical approach explaining why time and again followers choose leaders with psychological shortcomings. Papacostas's biopsychosocial perspective will appeal to social scientists, linguists, neuroscientists, historians, and scholars and academics of leadership studies.

This A–Z biographical sourcebook provides information about the life and times of Adolf Hitler, along with insight into the political movement and world conflict he created. The Hitler regime warns us of the destruction that ensues when a perverted ideology and a cult of leadership are combined with a polity where power is divorced from morality. This illustrated A–Z biographical companion provides easily accessible information about the key events in Hitler's life, his most important collaborators and opponents, his domestic and foreign policies, the use of propaganda and the forging of the Hitler cult, racial persecution and the Holocaust, and Hitler as a war leader. Adolf Hitler also includes an introduction, a chronology, maps, primary source documents, a general bibliography, and index.

The first serious biography of Francisco Solano Lopez in English for decades, this richly researched book tells the dramatic story of Paraguay's most notorious ruler. Despite the heroic stature he gained after his death, Lopez was a monumentally flawed leader who made the disastrous decisions in 1864 and 1865 to invade Paraguay's powerful neighbors, Brazil and Argentina, initiating the most devastating interstate conflict in South American history. Drawing on a trove of primary sources, James Schofield Saeger offers a critical analysis of Lopez's personality and often-irrational persecution of enemies, adherents, and siblings. He traces Lopez's preparation for high public office, work habits, control of his nation and army, propaganda, and execution. Concluding with an examination of Lopez's posthumous rehabilitation, Saeger shows how the tyrant who ruined his nation became its most highly honored hero, crowning a campaign by revisionist publicists from 1870 1936, and a useful symbol for later authoritarians. Still largely unchallenged in Paraguay today, this glorification of a martial president is definitively put to rest in Saeger's meticulous study."