"This absolutely splendid book is a triumph on every level. A first-rate history of the United States, it is beautifully written, deeply researched, and filled with entertaining stories. For anyone who wants to see our democracy flourish, this is the book to read."-Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals To all who say our democracy is broken riven by partisanship, undermined by extremism, corrupted by wealth history offers hope. In nearly every generation since the nation's founding, critics have lodged similar complaints, and yet the nation is still standing. In Democracy: A Case Study, Harvard Business School professor David Moss reveals that the United States has often thrived on conflict. Democracy's nineteen case studies take us from James Madison and Alexander Hamilton's debates in the run up to the Constitutional Convention to Citizens United. They were honed in Moss's popular and highly influential course at the Harvard Business School and are now being taught in high schools across the country. Each one presents readers with a pivotal moment in U.S. history and raises questions facing key decision makers at the time: Should the delegates support Madison's proposal for a congressional veto over state laws? Should President Lincoln resupply Fort Sumter? Should Florida lawmakers approve or reject the Equal Rights Amendment? Readers are asked to weigh the choices and consequences, wrestle with momentous decisions, and come to their own conclusions. Moss invites us to consider what distinguishes a constructive from a destructive conflict, to engage in the passionate debates that are crucial to a healthy society, and to experience American history anew. You will come away from this engaging and thought-provoking book with a deeper understanding of American democracy's greatest strengths and weaknesses-and a new appreciation of its extraordinary resilience.

This book provides unique insights into the practice of democratic constitutionalism in one of the world's most legally and politically significant regions. It combines contributions from leading Latin American and global scholars to provide 'bottom up' and 'top down' insights about the lessons to be drawn from the distinctive constitutional experiences of countries in Latin America. In doing so, it also draws on a rich array of legal and interdisciplinary perspectives. Ultimately, it shows both the promise of democratic constitutions as a vehicle for social, economic and political change, and the variation in the actual constitutional experiences of different countries on the ground - or the limits to constitutions as a locus for broader social change. This book presents new perspectives on recurrent topics and debates that enrich comparative constitutional law in other regions of the world, both in the Global South and the Global North. The fine-tuned, in-depth approach of the contributors brings rigorous scholarship to this institutionally diverse and significant region, illuminating the under-explored relationship between constitutionalism, politics, ideology and leadership. This unique and challenging study will prove to be an indispensable tool, not only for academics interested in Latin America but for comparative constitutional law scholars across the globe. Contributors include: C. Bernal, J.l. Colon-Rios, J. Couso, R. Dixon, Z. Elkins, H.A. Garcia, R. Gargarella, T. Ginsburg, A. Huneeus, D. Landau, J. Lemaitre, L. Lixinski, G.L. Negretto, R.A. Sanchez-Urribarri, M. Tushnet, O. Vilhena Vieira

This major new text provides an original and comprehensive assessment of key contemporary trends in democratic politics and governance across major established democracies of the world.

Waris Dirie leads a double life -- by day, she is an international supermodel and human rights ambassador for the United Nations; by night, she dreams of the simplicity of life in her native Somalia and the family she was forced to leave behind. Desert Flower, her intimate and inspiring memoir, is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the beauty of African life, the chaotic existence of a supermodel, or the joys of new motherhood.

Waris was born into a traditional Somali family, desert nomads who engaged in such ancient and antiquated customs as genital mutilation and arranged marriage. At twelve, she fled an arranged marriage to an old man and traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu -- the first leg of an emotional journey that would take her to London as a house servant, around the world as a fashion model, and eventually to America, where she would find peace in motherhood and humanitarian work for the U.N.

Today, as Special Ambassador for the U.N., she travels the world speaking out against the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, promoting women's reproductive rights, and educating people about the Africa she fled -- but still deeply loves.

Desert Flower will be published simultaneously in eleven languages throughout the world and is currently being produced as a feature film by Rocket Pictures UK.

How did the British Government and Civil Service shape the Northern Ireland peace process? What kind of tensions and debates were being played out between the two governments and the various parties in Northern Ireland? Addressing texts, negotiations, dialogues, space, leverage, strategy, ambiguity, interpersonal relations and convergence, this is the first volume to examine how senior British officials and civil servants worked to bring about power-sharing in Northern Ireland. With a unique format featuring self-authored inside accounts and interview testimonies, it considers a spectrum of areas and issues that came into play during the dialogues and negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and political accommodation in Northern Ireland. This book provides a compelling insight into what actually happened inside the negotiating room and how the British tried to shape the course of negotiations.

This open access book presents a topical, comprehensive and differentiated analysis of Germany's public administration and reforms. It provides an overview on key elements of German public administration at the federal, Lander and local levels of government as well as on current reform activities of the public sector. It examines the key institutional features of German public administration; the changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector; the administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system and numerous sectors; and new challenges and modernization approaches like digitalization, Open Government and Better Regulation. Each chapter offers a combination of descriptive information and problem-oriented analysis, presenting key topical issues in Germany which are relevant to an international readership.

As the power and scope of the European Union moves further, beyond traditional forms of international cooperation between sovereign states, it is important to analyse how these developments are impacting upon national institutions and processes of democratic representation and legitimacy in the member countries. The authors in this book identify four core processes of democratic governance present in any democratic political system that link societal and state processes of decision-making: opinion formation, interest intermediation, national executive decision-making and national parliamentary scrutiny. From a normative perspective they discuss what impacts this process of Europeanization has on democracy in the evolving system. They conclude that more changes are seen within the state-centric than in the societal-centred processes of democracy, thus the public seems to have been 'left behind' in the process of constructing Europe. The empirical research and normative discussion presented in this book are designed to further our knowledge concerning the Europeanization of social and state processes of democracy and to contribute to the continuing dialogue on democracy in the European Union. This book will be of great interest to academics and researchers of political science, public policy and international relations, as well as those interested in European studies and comparative politics.

With an in-depth exploration of rule by a single man and how this was seen as heroic activity, the title challenges orthodox views of ruling in the ancient world and breaks down traditional ideas about the relationship between so-called hereditary rule and tyranny. It looks at how a common heroic ideology among rulers was based upon excellence, or arete, and also surveys dynastic ruling, where rule was in some sense shared within the family or clan. Heroic Rulers examines reasons why both personal and clan-based rule was particularly unstable and its core tension with the competitive nature of Greek society, so that the question of who had the most arete was an issue of debate both from within the ruling family and from other heroic aspirants. Probing into ancient perspectives on the legitimacy and legality of rule, the title also explores the relationship between ruling and law. Law, personified as 'king' (nomos basileus), came to be seen as the ultimate source of sovereignty especially as expressed through the constitutional machinery of the city, and became an important balance and constraint for personal rule. Finally, Heroic Rulers demonstrates that monarchy, which is generally thought to have disappeared before the end of the archaic period, remained a valid political option from the Early Iron Age through to the Hellenistic period.

This book includes up-to-date contributions in the broadly defined area of probabilistic analysis of voting rules and decision mechanisms. Featuring papers from all fields of social choice and game theory, it presents probability arguments to allow readers to gain a better understanding of the properties of decision rules and of the functioning of modern democracies. In particular, it focuses on the legacy of William Gehrlein and Dominique Lepelley, two prominent scholars who have made important contributions to this field over the last fifty years. It covers a range of topics, including (but not limited to) computational and technical aspects of probability approaches, evaluation of the likelihood of voting paradoxes, power indices, empirical evaluations of voting rules, models of voters' behavior, and strategic voting. The book gathers articles written in honor of Gehrlein and Lepelley along with original works written by the two scholars themselves.

From Protest to Challenge Volume 4: Political Profiles, 1882–1990, in Jacana’s second edition of the six volumes of From Protest to Challenge, profiles over six hundred individual activists who played important political roles during the century before the abolition of apartheid in 1990. Among those included are John Dube, Clements Kadalie, Albert Luthuli, Steve Biko, Beyers Naude and Joe Slovo, as well as Ellen Kuzwayo, Jay Naidoo, Robert McBride, P.K. Leballo and Patricia de Lille. These books are a wonderful resource for future generations of scholars. The publication of the Vol. 4 completes the series.

Women are significantly underrepresented in politics in the Pacific Islands, given that only one in twenty Pacific parliamentarians are female, compared to one in five globally. A common, but controversial, method of increasing the number of women in politics is the use of gender quotas, or measures designed to ensure a minimum level of women's representation. In those cases where quotas have been effective, they have managed to change the face of power in previously male-dominated political spheres. How do political actors in the Pacific islands region make sense of the success (or failure) of parliamentary gender quota campaigns? To answer the question, Kerryn Baker explores the workings of four campaigns in the region. In Samoa, the campaign culminated in a "safety net" quota to guarantee a minimum level of representation, set at five female members of Parliament. In Papua New Guinea, between 2007 and 2012 there were successive campaigns for nominated and reserved seats in parliament, without success, although the constitution was amended in 2011 to allow for the possibility of reserved seats for women. In post-conflict Bougainville, women campaigned for reserved seats during the constitution-making process and eventually won three reserved seats in the House of Representatives, as well as one reserved ministerial position. Finally, in the French Pacific territories of New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna, Baker finds that there were campaigns both for and against the implementation of the so-called "parity laws." Baker argues that the meanings of success in quota campaigns, and related notions of gender and representation, are interpreted by actors through drawing on different traditions, and renegotiating and redefining them according to their goals, pressures, and dilemmas. Broadening the definition of success thus is a key to an understanding of realities of quota campaigns. Pacific Women in Politics is a pathbreaking work that offers an original contribution to gender relations within the Pacific and to contemporary Pacific politics.

Recent political science research into the American legal academy has been 'captured by conservatism'-this research has framed the institutional and ideological developments occurring within the law schools over the past forty years solely through the prism of modern conservatism. As a result, political scientists have ignored the political struggles of one of the most important legal reform movements of the 1980s and overlooked the hope for leftist reform that existed within American law schools during this period. Critical Legal Studies and the Campaign for American Law Schools tells the story of the critical legal studies movement. This formidable movement sought to fundamentally reconstruct law schools, train a new generation of leftist lawyers, and replace the dominant form of legal consciousness governing the American legal system. Instead of projecting a fatalism onto leftist reform, this book relies on extensive archival research and interviews to illuminate the radical potential that lived in the American legal academy of the 1980s. The critical legal studies movement was a towering presence in the law schools, and its legacy continues to hold out political possibilities and reform lessons for leftist legal scholars today.