This book offers an empirical and theoretical account of the mode of governance that characterizes the Bologna Process. In addition, it shows how the reform materializes and is translated in everyday working life among professors and managers in higher education. It examines the so-called Open Method of Coordination as a powerful actor that uses "soft governance" to advance transnational standards in higher education. The book shows how these standards no longer serve as tools for what were once human organizational, national or international, regulators. Instead, the standards have become regulators themselves - the faceless masters of higher education. By exploring this, the book reveals the close connections between the Bologna Process and the EU regarding regulative and monitoring techniques such as standardizations and comparisons, which are carried out through the Open Method of Coordination. It suggests that the Bologna Process works as a subtle means to circumvent the EU's subsidiarity principle, making it possible to accomplish a European governance of higher education despite the fact that education falls outside EU's legislative reach. The book's research interest in translation processes, agency and power relations among policy actors positions it in studies on policy transfer, policy borrowing and globalization. However, different from conventional approaches, this study draws on additional interpretive frameworks such as new materialism.

Does it really matter if a voter decides to vote-or, as a significant number of Americans do each election, not vote? Ron Hirschbein explores this issue and shows why enfranchisement cannot be understood unless it is placed in context and history. Clearly, the meaning of a vote depends upon the situation: a vote cast among the 400 of Athens or in the College of Cardinals has one significance; this is considerably different from pulling a lever every four years in a mass society of spectacles and commodities. Hirschbein also examines how voting was transformed from an expression of the political will of the Athenian polity into a sacred natural right-only to be turned to a ritual of mass society.

First, Hirschbein looks at the right to vote as the centerpiece of American civic religion. He contrasts civic myths about enfranchisement with anthropological realities. Specifically he argues that, given the intractable mathematics of mass society, the chances that a single vote will determine the outcome of an election approach the infinitesimal. However, he suggests that voting plays a neglected ritual function by constructing, legitimizing, and celebrating political reality for players and spectators alike. Hirschbein then explicates the origins and evanescent meanings of enfranchisement by examining the theory and practice of voting among the citizenry of ancient Athens, medieval ecclesiastical bureaucrats, Enlightenment natural law thinkers, and the founders of the Virtuous Republic. He concludes with speculation about possible futures. A controversial and important analysis, this will be of interest to the general public as well as scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with election issues and theories of democracy.

This collection provides scholars and students with a wide-ranging overview of the issues, events and personalities of the two turbulent decades before the 1917 revolution in Russia. In particular, it analyzes the motivations and activities of the various political parties operating during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, nicknamed by his opponents "Nicholas the Last."

The factions examined range from the most radical foes of the tsarist regime, including the anarchists, the Socialists Revolutionaries, and the Social Democrats, such as the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, to conservative and monarchist groups loyal to the imperial system.

The book also considers the response to intense political activity and the revolutionary upheaval from state institutions such as the police and the church. The volume brings together the most recent scholarship and a variety of perspectives, including those based on new discoveries in the Russian archives after the fall of Communism.

This thoroughly annotated document collection gives students and researchers an authoritative source for understanding the evolving political and legal relationship between church and state from colonial times to the present day. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Establishment Clause, meanwhile, declares a position of neutrality not only between differing religions, but between religious and nonreligious beliefs. The terms of the Free Exercise Clause, however, provide special protections to religious belief and practice. Thus the provisions of the two clauses can clash. In fact, differing political and legal interpretations of these clauses have resulted in some of the most hard-fought and contentious philosophical battles in American history. This book provides readers with convenient access to pertinent documents and court cases that enables a deeper understanding of the past and current balance between church and state and its political implications in the 21st century. The expert commentary that accompanies these key documents serves to elucidate how interpretation of the U.S. Constitution affects issues such as whether public funds or other public support should go to religious-based schools or hospitals; how to safeguard individuals' rights to religious expression while also considering how individuals should not be forced to participate in mandatory religious expressions in public institutions; and how the language regarding "separation of church and state" came about, when this phrase does not appear anywhere in the Constitution.

At a time when many regions of the world, Europe included, see a resurgence of authoritarianism, several countries in Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, are struggling to counter this trend by developing European-style democracies. In this second edition, three years after the first, the story of Eastern Europe's dramatic struggles to achieve properly functioning democracies and the rule of law rages on, warranting deeper analysis and substantial updating. Highlights during this period include the spectacular ascent but questionable achievements of Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine, the rise and fall of the pro-Russian presidency of Igor Dodon in Moldova, the deterioration of Georgia's democracy under oligarchic state capture, and the advent to power of Nikol Pashinyan in Armenia, now threatened by defeat in the second war over Nagorno Karabakh.

The "sequel" to his best-selling Classes and Cultures, Ross McKibbin's latest book is a powerful reinterpretation of British politics in the first decades of universal suffrage. What did it mean to be a "democratic society?" To what extent did voters make up their own minds on politics or allow elites to do it for them?
Exploring the political culture of these extraordinary years, Parties and People shows that class became one of the principal determinants of political behaviour, although its influence was often surprisingly weak.
McKibbin argues that the kind of democracy that emerged in Britain was far from inevitable-as much historical accident as design-and was in many ways highly flawed.

Since the Constitution's ratification, members of Congress, following Article V, have proposed approximately twelve thousand amendments, and states have filed several hundred petitions with Congress for the convening of a constitutional convention. Only twenty-seven amendments have been approved in 225 years. Why do members of Congress continue to introduce amendments at a pace of almost two hundred a year? This book is a demonstration of how social reformers and politicians have used the amendment process to achieve favorable political results even as their proposed amendments have failed to be adopted. For example, the ERA ""failed"" in the sense that it was never ratified, but the mobilization to ratify the ERA helped build the feminist movement (and also sparked a countermobilization). Similarly, the Supreme Court's ban on compulsory school prayer led to a barrage of proposed amendments to reverse the Court. They failed to achieve the requisite two-thirds support from Congress, but nevertheless had an impact on the political landscape. The definition of the relationship between Congress and the President in the conduct of foreign policy can also be traced directly to failed efforts to amend the Constitution during the Cold War. Roger Hartley examines familiar examples like the ERA, balanced budget amendment proposals, and pro-life attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade, but also takes the reader on a three-century tour of lesser-known amendments. He explains how often the mere threat of calling a constitutional convention (at which anything could happen) effected political change.

Winner of the 2007 SANA Book Award

Complete List of Authors:
Dorothy Holland, Donald M. Nonini, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick-McGlathery, Thaddeus C. Guldbrandsen, and Enrique G. Murillo, Jr.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface.

aLocal Democracy Under Siege argues persuasively that American democracy is at a pivotal moment where the forces of exclusion and the ideology of market rule contest with new forms of political activism and engaged citizenship. Readers will see many of the same issues that North Carolina faces in their own communities and will take away new perspectives on power, race, class, and activism from this cogent and timely analysis.a
--Louise Lamphere, Past President of the American Anthropological Association

aProduces new insights into the amakeovera of local governmenta--"Choice"

aDebates about democracy often get stuck at the national scale. But the capacity for ordinary people to shape the conditions of their lives through politics and public speech is often greatest at the local level. This important book opens up anthropological perspectives on how this happens. It situates the challenges of local politics amid the constraints of neoliberalism, but also reports on the creative solutions different communities have developed to the distinctive problems they face.a
--Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council

aThis book opens up the crucial questions of what democracy means in the U.S. today and the ways in which everyday Americans struggle to make themselves heard. Conceptually, methodologically, and theoretically this book realizes the potential for anthropological analysis as a way tounderstand the dangers of increasing inequality in the contemporary U.S. It is a major contribution.a
--Ida Susser, author of "Norman Street: Poverty and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood"

"A luminous work about everyday citizens that should free up local democratic energies across the land!"
--Aihwa Ong, author of "Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty"

"This unique study provides a vital enquiry into the troubled times of local democracy and poses critical questions about its future in the USA."
--John Clarke, author of "Changing Welfare, Changing States"

aNicely illustrate the problems that plaue local democracya
--"Political Science Quaterly"

What is the state of democracy at the turn of the 21st century? To answer this question, seven scholars lived for a year in five North Carolina communities. They observed public meetings of all sorts, had informal and formal interviews with people, and listened as people conversed with each other at bus stops and barber shops, soccer games and workplaces. Their collaborative ethnography allows us to understand how diverse members of a community-not just the elite-think about and experience "politics" in ways that include much more than merely voting.

This book illustrates how the social and economic changes of the last three decades have made some new routes to active democratic participation possible while making others more difficult. Local Democracy Under Siege suggests how we can account for the current limitations of U.S. democracy and how remedies can be created that ensure more meaningful participation by a greater range of people.

Complete List of Authors (pictured)
FromLeft to Right, bottom row: Enrique Murillo, Jr., Thaddeus Guldbrandsen, Marla Frederick-McGlathery.
Top row: Dorothy Holland, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, and Don Nonini.

Smeared by cheap innuendo and false accusations alleging he is responsible for having allowed a bomb aboard Pan Am 103, Micheal T. Hurley, career law enforcement veteran, faces a dilemma as real as his lifetime savings: bet everything that truth would win out in a court of law or just surrender to that which he knows to be wrong. Succumb or fight? Capitulate or resist?

"I Solemnly Swear" captures his answer to that dilemma and presents a diverse group of heroes and traitors, lawmen and outlaws, the innocent and the guilty who bounce between Seattle, Larnaca, London, Washington, DC, Frankfurt, and Fort Lauderdale.

In an international game of cat and mouse, Hurley spends his last three years as a DEA Supervisory Special Agent being jerked around by a media that is all too willing to criticize the US Government and to mar Hurley's reputation as a competent international narcotics agent. This is his story.

Winner, 2019 Isis Duarte Book Prize, given by the Haiti/Dominican Republic Section of the Latin American Studies Association Winner, 2019 Barbara Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association Highlights the histories and cultural expressions of the Dominican people Using a blend of historical and literary analysis, Colonial Phantoms reveals how Western discourses have ghosted-miscategorized or erased-the Dominican Republic since the nineteenth century despite its central place in the architecture of the Americas. Through a variety of Dominican cultural texts, from literature to public monuments to musical performance, it illuminates the Dominican quest for legibility and resistance. Dixa Ramirez places the Dominican people and Dominican expressive culture and history at the forefront of an insightful investigation of colonial modernity across the Americas and the African diaspora. In the process, she untangles the forms of free black subjectivity that developed on the island. From the nineteenth century national Dominican poet Salome Urena to the diasporic writings of Julia Alvarez, Chiqui Vicioso, and Junot Diaz, Ramirez considers the roles that migration, knowledge production, and international divisions of labor have played in the changing cultural expression of Dominican identity. In doing so, Colonial Phantoms demonstrates how the centrality of gender, race, and class in the nationalisms and imperialisms of the West have profoundly impacted the lives of Dominicans. Ultimately, Ramirez considers how the Dominican people negotiate being left out of Western imaginaries and the new modes of resistance they have carefully crafted in response.

Hong Kong society is often regarded as politically apathetic. Yet throughout its history, Hong Kong experienced periodic waves of social movement activity. In part, the perception of an apathetic populace stems from the colonial government's laissez-faire policies, the society's concentration on economic development, the maintenance of traditional Chinese culture, and a consensus that Hong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty. Since Hong Kong was a colony, instead of evolving into a democratic government, Great Britain instituted a system of elite consultation and absorption of the masses' political problems through indirect participation. Butenhoff addresses the question of why social movements emerged and how they influenced the process of political reform. Her study presents and analyzes the activities of social movements so that a clearer picture of civil society and political change from below emerges.

Butenhoff integrates the literature on Hong Kong, civil society, and social movements into an integrated approach to analyze social movement influence in Hong Kong politics. Her three case studies: the independent labor movement, the nontraditional Christian movement, and the democracy movement are analyzed using a social movement framework. She evaluates the forces that drive and sustain social movements and argues that while the Chinese and British governments debated the fate of democratic Hong Kong, the Hong Kong people have been overlooked throughout the process. And, as a result, Hong Kong social movements play an essential role in raising the awareness of the people and bringing to light the voices from below.

Bringing to light a long-neglected aspect of Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy - the "ward republic" - Gary Hart here offers a wholly original blueprint for republican restoration in which every citizen can participate democratically in the governing of his or her own life. Of crucial relevance for contemporary society, including its startlingly prescient plan for homeland security, Restoration of the Republic provides original insights into issues of national urgency as well as the timeless questions that bedevil the American democratic experiment.

In the quarter century that has passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, fanciful establishment intellectuals have advanced the idea that an "end of history" has somehow arrived. The model of "democratic capitalism" is said to be the final stage in the development of political economy. It is often suggested that it is simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up, and at that point the Western model will have achieved a final and eternal triumph. In this work, the anarchist philosopher Keith Preston expresses skepticism of these presumptions. Expounding upon the critique of modernity advanced by Friedrich Nietzsche well over a century ago, Preston argues that the historical cycle associated with the rise of modernity is winding down. The forces of globalism, liberalism, capitalism, democracy, and Americanization are closer to achieving universal hegemony than ever before. Yet Preston subjects all of these to relentless criticism, and challenges virtually every presumption of the present era's dominant ideological model. Drawing upon a wide range of ideological currents and intellectual influences, Preston observes how the hegemony of what he calls the "Anglo-American-Zionist-Wahhabist" axis is being challenged within the realm of international relations by both emerging blocks of rival states and insurgent non-state actors. Citing thinkers as diverse as Ernst Junger and Emma Goldman, Max Stirner and Alain de Benoist, Hans Hermann Hoppe and Kevin Carson, Preston offers an alternative vision of what the future of postmodern civilization might bring.

Colonial Women is the first comprehensive study to explore the interpenetrating discourses of gender and race in Stuart drama. Hutner argues that in drama, as in historical accounts, the symbol of the native woman is used to justify and promote the success of the English appropriation, commodification, and expoitaion of the New World and its native inhabitants, Hutner analyzes the figure of the native woman in the plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Davenant, Dryden, Behn and other playwrights, Furthermore, Hutner suggests that representation of native women function as a means of self-definition for the English, and the seduction of the native woman is, in this respect, a symbolic strategy to stabilize the turbulent sociopolitical and religious conflicts in Restoration England under the inclusive ideology of expansion and profit.

Drawing on scholarly research and media critiques, The Third Agenda in Presidential Debates examines the most recent U.S. presidential debates from the perspective of television viewers who watched the encounters first hand. Through a national program--DebateWatch--tens of thousands of viewers had an opportunity to provide feedback to the debate sponsors, the campaigns, and the media following the 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential debates. As a result, thousands of groups met to discuss what they liked and didn't like about a particular candidate, what they learned, and what they still needed to know about the issues presented before them. These focus groups, along with various surveys and emails, allowed viewers to lay out a concise "third agenda" for the debates: the public's, one in which comparisons could be drawn between their own interests and that of the media and the candidates themselves. This book breaks down the fundamental aspects that made DebateWatch such a powerful tool for citizens. From analyzing and interpreting the public's reaction to developing recommendations for further improvements, there have been many significant changes in debate practices since the program first burst on the scene during the 1992 presidential election. Besides clearly mapping out the important aspects the public looks for when watching a debate, the authors demonstrate how citizen participation challenges candidates and their issues. In addition, the authors offer predictions for future debates and how new generations will choose to participate. Along with 14 analytical chapters, this work contains four detailed appendices, several tables, and an index.

"An outstanding biography of the most unusual and controversial king of the 20th century. Highly recommended."--"CHOICE"

"Vivid and atmospheric, but based on solid and scrupulous research, this is an outstanding account of one of the most intriguing figures in twentieth-century Balkan history. Non-specialists will read it with pleasure and fascination, and even specialists in Albanian history will find much to learn here from Jason Tomes's marvelously lucid analysis of the politics and diplomacy of the period."
--Noel Malcolm, author of Bosnia: A Short History" and Kosovo: A Short History"

"Very well researched, critical yet balanced, this is the best book about Zog to have appeared in any language."
--Bejtullah Destani, Director of the Centre for Albanian Studies

Shortly before 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 1, 1928, Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslim king: 32-year-old Zog I of the Albanians. Few foreign journalists were present in the Parliament House in Tirana to hear him swear his oath on the Koran and the Bible, yet the birth of the Kingdom of Albania--a native monarchy, not an alien imposition--did not go unnoticed abroad.

King Zog (1895-1961) was a curiosity, and so he has remained: the most atypical European monarch of the twentieth century, a man entirely without royal connections who created his own kingdom. By contemporaries, he was variously labeled "the last ruler of romance," "an appalling gangster," "the modern Napoleon," "the finest patriot," and "frankly a cad." Even today his reputation is disputed, but Zog is undeniably one of the foremost figures in Albanian history. Though notorious for cut-throat political intrigue, he promised tobring order and progress to a land that had long known little of either. "It was I who made Albania," he claimed.

Zog's reign ended in 1939; Italian Fascists forced him into exile and post-war Stalinists kept him there despite his best efforts to return. In this first full biography, Jason Tomes explores the reality behind the man described in "The Times" as "the bizarre King Zog" and shows him to have been the product of a unique time and place. Tomes invites readers to set aside their assumptions about modern European monarchy and meet a king who fired back at assassins and paid his bills with gold bullion.