When Mary Tudor became queen of England, the succession of a woman to the throne horrified many, including the Protestant reformer John Knox. His blistering condemnation of female rule, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, was followed in print by a series of pamphlets that echoed and expanded his argument that female rule was unnatural, unlawful, and contrary to scripture. In her own variation on this "monstrous regiment," Sharon Jansen contributes to the debate about female rulers. She explores the relationships among the many women whose lives occupy a place in and perpetuate a continuing, though largely unrecognized, tradition of political rule. The "story" of early modern European political history looks very different if we focus on successive generations of powerful women and view the shifting political alliances of the period from their perspective.

"Small States and EU Governance" shows that the EU's rotating Council presidency and small states' capacity to make use of it have been underestimated. It examines the political objectives the presidency serves and presents a systematic and comparative assessment of its nature and influence in internal market and foreign policy issues.

The years Li Xinfeng spent as a Chinese correspondent in South Africa are evident in the insights he shares in China in Africa: Following Zheng He's Footsteps – the narrative of his research into the traces left by the famed navigator during his travels in and around Africa. Beginning on Kenya's Pate Island, Li's research led him to travel around much of the southern part of the African continent, searching for signs that Zheng He's fleet had been there some six centuries earlier. China in Africa: Following Zheng He's Footsteps is more than just one person's quest to retrace the journey of an alluring historical figure, shrouded in legend: Zheng He has become an important symbol for the Chinese people and the world of peace-loving cultural exchange in general. Li's comprehensive research into the African travels of this iconic figure presents a challenge to the postcolonial world, highlighting the stark contrast between colonising and fair exchange for mutual benefit. A consistent thread in the narrative is how best to respond to the challenge of overturning the exploitation of colonial relationships with friendly collaboration in modern times.

Defying the general belief that American citizenship is in decline, Sanford claims that Generation X is actually taking positions of civic leadership and authority as Baby Boomers retire. By exploring the traditional instrument of social capital, civic culture and political science, she attempts to make us understand more appropriately this maligned generation.

Although he left office nearly 20 years ago, Ronald Reagan remains a potent symbol for the conservative movement. The Bush administration frequently invokes Reagan's legacy as it formulates and promotes its fiscal, domestic, and foreign policies. His name is a watchword for campus conservatives who regard him in a way that borders on hero worship. Conservative media pundits often equate the term Reagan-esque with personal honor, fiscal rectitude, and unqualified success in dealing with foreign threats. But how much of the Reagan legacy is based on fact, how much on idealized myth? And what are the reasons - political and otherwise - behind the mythmaking? Deconstructing Reagan is a fascinating study of the interplay of politics and memory concerning our fortieth president. While giving credit where credit is due, the authors scrutinize key aspects of the Reagan legacy and the conservative mythology that surrounds it.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Theresa May, and Donald Trump: each had different motivations, methods, and paths, but they all sought the highest office. And yet when they reached their goal, they often found that the power they had imagined was illusory. Their sweeping visions of reform faltered. They faced bureaucratic obstructions, but often the biggest obstruction was their own character. However, their personalities could help them as much as hurt them. Arguably the most successful of them, LBJ showed little indication that he supported what he is best known for - the Civil Rights Act - but his grit, resolve, and brute political skill saw him bend Congress to his will. David Runciman tackles the limitations of high office and how the personal histories of those who achieved the very pinnacles of power helped to define their successes and failures in office. These portraits show what characters are most effective in these offices. Could this be a blueprint for good and effective leadership in an age lacking good leaders?

Drawing on material from many sources, including official and semi-official records, contemporary historical writing and reliable journals, this volume illustrates why John F. Kennedy's Presidency was one of the most eventful and significant in American history. Through this volume the student can learn how to read and asess historical documents and learn to discriminate among a number of sources and weigh evidence.

Neville Chamberlain, the Conservative Prime Minister who pursued the doomed policy of appeasing Hitler, is one of the most reinterpreted of modern British Prime Ministers.

Infamous on account of his declaration of having achieved ?peace for our time?, Neville Chamberlain has often been portrayed as a social reformer out of sync with the times in which he lived. In this new biography, Nick Smart offers a picture conditioned more by the opinions of contemporaries than by hindsight, examining Chamberlain's life, career, achievements and failures. Stressing that the system in which Chamberlain found himself operating had more impact on the historical developments than anything he did personally, Smart describes a man who was hardworking but ultimately out of his depth, destined to be remembered in history as the fall-guy to Winston Churchill's hero.

Presenting Chamberlain's life and politics in a nuanced way, Nick Smart's biography is a must read for anyone interested in British politics and its impact on the international stage.

This is the first global study of the single most important intellectual and artistic movement in Brazilian cultural history before Modernism. The Indianist movement, under the direct patronage of the Emperor Pedro II, was a major pillar of the Empire's project of state-building, involving historians, poets, playwrights and novelists in the production of a large body of work extending over most of the nineteenth century. Tracing the parallel history of official indigenist policy and Indianist writing, Treece reveals the central role of the Indian in constructing the self-image of state and society under Empire. He aims to historicize the movement, examining it as a literary phenomenon, both with its own invented traditions and myths, and standing at the interfaces between culture and politics, between the Indian as imaginary and real. As this book demonstrates, the Indianist tradition was not merely an example of Romantic exoticism or escapism, recycling infinite variations on a single model of the Noble Savage imported from the European imaginary. Instead, it was a complex, evolving tradition, inextricably enmeshed with the contemporary political debates on the status of the indigenous communities and their future within the post-colonial state. These debates raised much wider questions about the legacy of colonial rule-the persistence of authoritarian models of government, the social and political marginalization of large numbers of free but landless Brazilians, and above all the maintenance of slavery. The Indianist "stage" offered the Indian alternately as tragic victim and exile, as rebel and outlaw, as alien to the social pact, as mother or protector of the post-colonial Brazilianfamily, or as self-sacrificing ally and "voluntary slave."

Using leadership to generate greater innovation, connectivity, and organizational transformation is crucial for success in this challenging era. The authors present here a new approach to leadership based on findings from complexity science. Integrating real case studies with rigorous research results, they explore the biggest challenges being faced in fast-paced organizations, and provide a host of concrete tools for leading during critical periods, catalyzing novelty, expanding networks, and generating transformative change throughout an organization.

Scholars from China, Singapore, and the U.S. use the opportunity of the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to explore the issue of leadership change in China and its impact on institution building and Beijing's foreign policy.

What makes a man put politics and ambition before family? Ed Miliband is perhaps the least understood political leader of modern times. This book reveals where he has come from and where he is going. It charts his unique upbringing, against the backdrop of tragedy and with a prominent Marxist thinker for a father. But Ed's story cannot be fully understood outside the context of his struggle to emerge from the shadow of his elder brother, David. Ed followed David to the same college at Oxford, into Parliament and into the Cabinet before, at the eleventh hour, snatching away David's dream of the leadership.

Laham argues that Ronald Reagan demonstrated gross ineptitude in his conduct of immigration policy. He failed to press for much-needed reforms in legal immigration while he supported the establishment of a fraud-ridden employer sanctions regime, which had no discernible effect in achieving its goal of stemming the flow of illegal immigration. He failed to take the first step toward the establishment of a fraud-resistant worker verification system, which would enable the employer sanctions provisions of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) to be effectively enforced. Additionally, he supported the amnesty provisions of IRCA, which granted permanent legal residence to 2.7 million often poorly educated, unskilled, and low-wage illegal aliens.

According to Laham, Reagan's failure to develop a sound and effective immigration policy was not due to the president's urge to satisfy the desires of special interests. Rather, the Reagan administration was crippled in its ability to design a sound and effective immigration policy by the lack of accurate and reliable information on this issue and by the president's own ideological hostility toward big government. These factors impeded the ability of Congress to design an effective employer sanctions regime capable of stemming the flow of illegal immigration to the United States. This thorough and controversial analysis will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with American immigration studies, the presidency, and contemporary public policy.

Many of Ronald Reagan's ways were not only unusual, but seem to contradict his others. Some authors are so perplexed by his nature they are reluctant to even assign intelligence to his mentality. They suspect he operated on everything from instinct to hunches to gut feelings and guesses.

Lawrence Nesbitt's six years of extensive research has revealed a single psychological key that makes sense of the anomalies and contradictions. He has uncovered a powerful and nearly unique mindset that directed almost all of Reagan's conduct then and causes the confusion now. This unusual belief also explains how a man so old and riddled with flaws could accomplish so much and leave the presidency with an approval rating of nearly 70%, the highest of any two-term president in United States history.

Nesbitt shows the controlling role this mindset played in Reagan's youth, in his years as a Hollywood actor, during his tenure as California governor, through his two terms as president, and even later.

"What Reagan Couldn't Tell Us" offers a previously untold analysis of Reagan, one that will encourage discussion for years to come.

I found Lawrence Nesbitt s explanation of what made Ronald Reagan tick very plausible, fascinating, and enlightening. His revolutionary conclusions about the former president seem well-founded on solid evidence. He gives us a new Reagan to appreciate.
James D. Mallory, MD, author, former psychiatric director of Atlanta Counseling Center, and medical director of RAPHA

The larger-than-life image Abraham Lincoln projects across the screen of American history owes much to his role as the Great Emancipator during the Civil War. Yet this noble aspect of Lincoln's identity is precisely the dimension that some historians have cast into doubt. In a vigorous defense of America's sixteenth president, award-winning historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo refutes accusations of Lincoln's racism and political opportunism, while candidly probing the follies of contemporary cynicism and the constraints of today's unexamined faith in the liberating powers of individual autonomy. Redeeming the Great Emancipator enumerates Lincoln's anti-slavery credentials, showing that a deeply held belief in the God-given rights of all people steeled the president in his commitment to emancipation and his hope for racial reconciliation. Emancipation did not achieve complete freedom for American slaves, nor was Lincoln entirely above some of the racial prejudices of his time. Nevertheless, his conscience and moral convictions far outweighed political calculations in ultimately securing freedom for black Americans. Guelzo clarifies the historical record concerning what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not accomplish. As a policy it was imperfect, but it was far from ineffectual, as some accounts of African American self-emancipation imply. To achieve liberation required interdependence across barriers of race and status. If we fail to recognize our debt to the sacrifices and ingenuity of all the brave men and women of the past, Guelzo says, then we deny a precious part of the American and, indeed, the human community.

This volume brings together French and British scholars of France to analyse one of French politics' most intellectually compelling phenomena, the presidency of the republic. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of that leadership as well as the way that executive power has been established in the Fifth Republic; how presidential power and the subsequent full scale development of "personality politics" developed within an essentially party-driven, democratic and, most importantly, republican system. Hence the authors in this volume examine the phenomenon of a strong presidency in the French republican framework. The individual chapters focus on the presidency and upon the individual presidents and the way in which they have addressed their own relation to the presidencies they presided over on top of a range of other factors informing their terms of office. A conclusion sums up and appraises the contemporary role of the French presidency within the party system and the republic. The project has generated a great deal of interest in the French political studies community.

Written by experienced leaders in gifted education, this book is a foundational guide for supervisors, administrators, and districts seeking to create culturally responsive and equity-focused gifted policies and programs. Engaging chapters supported by real-world vignettes and interactive contemplation corners outline key elements of culturally responsive leadership and the administrative actions necessary for disrupting systems of oppression within gifted programs. Topics covered include culturally responsive gifted education, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, authentic family engagement, using data to inform systemic change, and more. Featuring authentic applications of culturally responsive gifted leadership practices and an innovative tool to evaluate gifted program inclusivity, this book is essential reading for all current and future leaders in gifted education.

The monarchical presidential regimes that prevailed in the Arab world for so long looked as though they would last indefinitely until events in Tunisia and Egypt made clear their time was up. "The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life" exposes for the first time the origins and dynamics of a governmental system that largely defined the Arab Middle East in the twentieth century.

Presidents who rule for life have been a feature of the Arab world since independence. In the 1980s their regimes increasingly resembled monarchies as presidents took up residence in palaces and made every effort to ensure their sons would succeed them. Roger Owen explores the main features of the prototypical Arab monarchical regime: its household; its inner circle of corrupt cronies; and its attempts to create a popular legitimacy based on economic success, a manipulated constitution, managed elections, and information suppression.

Why has the Arab world suffered such a concentration of permanent presidential government? Though post-Soviet Central Asia has also known monarchical presidencies, Owen argues that a significant reason is the Arab demonstration effect, whereby close ties across the Arab world have enabled ruling families to share management strategies and assistance. But this effect also explains why these presidencies all came under the same pressure to reform or go. Owen discusses the huge popular opposition the presidential systems engendered during the Arab Spring, and the political change that ensued, while also delineating the challenges the Arab revolutions face across the Middle East and North Africa."

This is a multi-generational political history of the Hatoyamas, a family that has participated at the highest levels of Japan's parliamentary government from its inception in the late 1800s. The Hatoyama family is one of the most prominent political families in modern Japanese government. It has produced six members of the Diet, Japan's parliament, many of whom have served as cabinet members and party leaders. Due to the family's political legacy, they have often been likened to the Kennedy family in American politics (though they have been spared the tragedy and scandal visited upon the Kennedys). Despite the significance of the Hatoyamas to modern Japanese politics, this is the first comprehensive study available in English. In tracing the rising political fortunes of this family, it is also possible to study the role of hereditary politicians in Japan, the growth and evolution of Japanese political parties, and, perhaps most importantly, the way political leadership functions in Japan, a society known more for consensus-building than for strong leaders.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was an enigmatic leader, a resolute and audacious politician who had an immense impact on 20th century world history. Lenin's life and career have been at the center of much ideological debate for decades. The post-Soviet era has seen a revived interest and re-evaluation of the Russian Revolution and Lenin's legacy.
This new biography gives a fresh and original account of Lenin's personal life and political career. Christopher Read draws on a broad range of primary and secondary sources, making use of archive material made available in the Glasnost and post-Soviet eras. Focal points of this study are Lenin's revolutionary ascetic personality; his exploitation of cultural, educational and propaganda means; his relationship to Marxism; his changing class analysis of Russia; and his "populist" instincts.
This biography is an excellent and reliable introduction to one of the key figures of the Russian Revolution and post-tsarist Russia.

The revised 2nd edition of this successful textbook explores Japanese politics in the postwar era from theoretical and comparative perspectives. After providing historical context, it offers an in-depth exploration of postwar political institutions, political reform in the 1990s, the policymaking process, and the politics of economic growth and stagnation. By delving into Japan's international relations, the book sheds light on Japan's security and foreign policies, and Japan's role in Asia. The textbook concludes by addressing what has changed since party alternation in 2009, the triple disaster in March 2011 and the global Covid pandemic. Themes and questions addressed throughout the text include: How and why did Japan modernize so successfully when so many other countries fell prey to colonialism and authoritarianism? What explains the Japanese economic miracle and its subsequent economic stagnation? What accounts for Japan's successful democratization? In the international realm, why has Japan achieved economic superpower status without achieving political superpower status? What is the future trajectory of Japanese politics? Connecting Japan to larger themes in comparative politics and linking Japan's history, institutions, policymaking process, and international relations to experiences and structures in other countries, this book is essential reading for students of Japanese or Asian Politics.

A study of prime ministerial leadership in Britain and Australia. Tony Blair and John Howard were election winning leaders in two similar countries. They succeeded in dominating politics for over 10 years, but both fell dramatically from office. This book asks how these prime ministers established such predominant positions.

Often portrayed as an inept and stubborn tyrant, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem has long been the subject of much derision but little understanding. Philip Catton's penetrating study provides a much more complex portrait of Diem as both a devout patriot and a failed architect of modernization. In doing so, it sheds new light on a controversial regime.

Catton treats the Diem government on its own terms rather than as an appendage of American policy. Focusing on the decade from Dien Bien Phu to Diem's assassination in 1963, he examines the Vietnamese leader's nation-building and reform efforts-particularly his Strategic Hamlet Program, which sought to separate guerrilla insurgents from the peasantry and build grassroots support for his regime. Catton's evaluation of the collapse of that program offers fresh insights into both Diem's limitations as a leader and the ideological and organizational weaknesses of his government, while his assessment of the evolution of Washington's relations with Saigon provides new insight into America's growing involvement in the Vietnamese civil war.

Focusing on the Strategic Hamlet Program in Binh Duong province as an exemplar of Diem's efforts, Catton paints the Vietnamese leader as a progressive thinker trying to simultaneously defeat the communists and modernize his nation. He draws on a wealth of Vietnamese language sources to argue that Diem possessed a firm vision of nation-building and sought to overcome the debilitating dependence that reliance on American support threatened to foster. As Catton shows, however, Diem's plans for South Vietnam clashed with those of the United States and proved no match for the Vietnamese communists.

Catton analyzes the mutually frustrating interactions between Diem and the administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy, highlighting personality and cultural clashes, as well as specific disagreements within the American government over how to deal with Diem's programs and his hostility toward American goals. Revealing patterns in this uneasy alliance that have eluded other observers, he also clarifies many of the problems, setbacks, and miscalculations experienced by the communist movement during that era.

Neither an American puppet, as communist propaganda claimed, nor a backward-looking mandarin, according to Western accounts, Catton's Diem is a tragic figure who finally ran out of time, just a few weeks before JFK's assassination and at a moment when it still seemed possible for America to avoid war.