As David Vine demonstrates, the overseas bases raise geopolitical tensions and provoke widespread antipathy towards the United States. They also undermine American democratic ideals, pushing the U.S. into partnerships with dictators and perpetuating a system of second-class citizenship in territories like Guam. They breed sexual violence, destroy the environment, and damage local economies. And their financial cost is staggering: though the Pentagon underplays the numbers, Vine's accounting proves that the bill approaches $100 billion per year. For many decades, the need for overseas bases has been a quasi-religious dictum of U.S. foreign policy. But in recent years, a bipartisan coalition has finally started to question this conventional wisdom. With the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan and ending thirteen years of war, there is no better time to re-examine the tenets of our military strategy. Base Nation is an essential contribution to that debate.

eric (yes, lowercase e) is politically conservative, morally liberal, and - by his own admission - completely off kilter. These quirks have allowed him to pursue his goal of being the world's preeminent Republican Jewish blogger (www.tygrrrrexpress.com).

eric has dedicated his life to fighting ideological bigotry - what he defines as a pervasive disdain for conservatives merely because they exist. With this book, eric presents his best columns as a cohesive discussion, ranging from serious to senseless, of why questioning issues such as the legality of gay marriage does not make one a homophobe; wanting to privatize social security does not mean one wishes to see seniors bleeding to death on the streets; and examining whether affirmative action succeeds does not make one a racist. With engaging and often amusing insight, eric illustrates how people can disagree without impugning their humanity.

With Ideological Bigotry and his ongoing blog, eric's ultimate goal is to make the world a better place. Within these pages, he illuminates that until liberals see conservatives as a noble opposition, they will continue to live in the intellectual, ethical, and political wilderness reserved for those who prefer rage, hatred, and anger to rolling up their sleeves and creating solutions.

This book provides evaluations of American presidents over the course of 66 years of U.S. economic history, using quantitative data to provide credible, defensible answers to controversial questions like "Whose economic policies were more effective, Ronald Reagan's or Bill Clinton's?" The President as Economist: Scoring Economic Performance from Harry Truman to Barack Obama provides eye-opening insights about matters of critical importance for the future of the United States. Author Richard J. Carroll tackles a topic that he has researched and been focused on for more than 20 years, providing impartial assessments and rankings of each presidential administration according to numerous key performance indicators-quantitative data, not subjective opinions. The final chapter combines all of the data to present a numeric score (Presidential Performance Index-PPI) for each administration that allows an overall ranking of the 11 presidents. The analysis covers 66 years of U.S. economic history, ranging from 1946 through 2011. The earlier administrations of Harry S. Truman through Jimmy Carter set the context against which more recent presidencies are judged. This title will be an invaluable resource for everyone from general readers to students at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels, as well as journalists, lobbyists, and anyone directly or indirectly involved in the political process. An appendix provides the official data upon which the rankings are based

During the 24-year Indonesian occupation of East Timor, thousands of people died, or were killed, in circumstances that did not allow the required death rituals to be performed. Since the nation's independence, families and communities have invested considerable time, effort and resources in fulfilling their obligations to the dead. These obligations are imbued with urgency because the dead are ascribed agency and can play a benevolent or malevolent role in the lives of the living. These grassroots initiatives run, sometimes critically, in parallel with official programs that seek to transform particular dead bodies into public symbols of heroism, sacrifice and nationhood. The Dead as Ancestors, Martyrs, and Heroes in Timor-Leste focuses on the dynamic interplay between the potent presence of the dead in everyday life and their symbolic usefulness to the state. It underlines how the dead shape relationships amongst families, communities and the nation-state, and open an important window into - are in fact pivotal to - processes of state and nation formation.

Party-States and their Legacies in Post-Communist Transformation is a unique investigation into the construction, operation, self-destruction and transition of Hungarian politics from the 1960s to the mid- 1990s. It presents a rich picture which draws upon an extraordinary body of data and provides not just simply a retrospective theoretical analysis of the system, but details of everyday life within the state apparatus. This remarkable book includes extensive interviews with over four hundred key individuals in the party, state and the economy from 1975 onwards. In addition, Dr Csanadi draws upon other unique empirical research including internal memos and secret state documents as well as a full range of studies by East and West European scholars to reveal the realities of the system as observed by those closest to it. She not only considers the workings of the system during the communist era, but also analyses the legacy it continues to exert on the period of the transformation. As such the book contributes to our understanding of the Hungarian transformation and sheds new light on how party states worked throughout Eastern and Central Europe during the communist era and what the consequences of their self-similar features on the transformation are. In addition the book offers comparisons with other formerly centrally planned systems to reveal the structural differences in the distribution of power in party states and the very different legacies they leave for post-communist transformation. This comprehensive book will be welcomed by researchers, academics and postgraduates interested in the politics, economics, history and political science of Hungary and other East and Central European countries in transition.

India is undergoing a great transition, as the post-reform generation strikes out into the world. The thinking, attitudes, culture, political preferences, consumption patterns and ambitions of the post-reform generations differ greatly from that of the earlier generations. As a consequence, the country is also witnessing rapid changes not only on the socio-political and economic fronts but also on the humanities front. This book seeks to explore great transition in India through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences. In doing so, it lays foundation not only for understanding India but also in initiating a new chapter for Indian and South Asian studies. With contributions by leading scholars, the book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and for anyone wishing to explore India in the fields of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Since 2015, Poland's populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been dismantling the major checks and balances of the Polish state and subordinating the courts, the civil service, and the media to the will of the executive. Political rights have been radically restricted, and the Party has captured the entire state apparatus. The speed and depth of these antidemocratic movements took many observers by surprise: until now, Poland was widely regarded as an example of a successful transitional democracy. Poland's anti-constitutional breakdown poses three questions that this book sets out to answer: What, exactly, has happened since 2015? Why did it happen? And what are the prospects for a return to liberal democracy? These answers are formulated against a backdrop of current worldwide trends towards populism, authoritarianism, and what is sometimes called 'illiberal democracy'. As this book argues, the Polish variant of 'illiberal democracy' is an oxymoron. By undermining the separation of powers, the PiS concentrates all power in its own hands, rendering any democratic accountability illusory. There is, however, no inevitability in these anti-democratic trends: this book considers a number of possible remedies and sources of hope, including intervention by the European Union.

Representative democracy has long been problematic and subject to erosion through the introduction of components of direct democracy (referenda, voter initiatives and systems of recall). Following the increase of direct action across the world, through the Occupy movement and the rise of new populist parties championing greater citizen inclusion in decision making, many are considering whether the hierarchical system of political control might have had its day. But what might be the alternative, next democracy? This book considers the viability of a populist conception of democratic organization, which puts power into the hands of ordinary citizens. Examining contemporary and classic theory to contextualize the critique of existing systems, the book goes on to explore alternative arrangements tested out by activists, eco-protestors and anti-capitalists - from the recent Occupy agenda to Gandhi's experiments in alternative living. Milligan confronts the practical challenges posed by these systems of direct democracy and discusses the considerable difficulties of scaling up and sustaining them in state-level contexts. Whilst the book concedes that such concerns are genuine, it argues that a theory of generalized direct democracy can shake off its utopian aspirations and become a legitimate alternative for the future.

Greece in the 1960s produced one of Europe's arguably most controversial politicians of the post-war era. The contrarian politics of Andreas Papandreou grew out of his conflict laden re-engagement with Greece in the 1960s. Returning to Athens after 20 years in the US where he had been a rising member of the American liberal establishment, Papandreou forged a social reform-oriented, nationalist politics in Greece that ultimately put him at odds with the US foreign policy establishment and made him the primary target of a pro-American military coup in 1967. Venerated by his admirers and despised by his detractors with equal passion, the Harvard-educated Papandreou left in his wake no clear-cut answer to the question of who he was and what he stood for. Andreas Papandreou chronicles the events, struggles and ideas that defined the man's dramatic, intrigue-filled transformation from Kennedy-era modernizer to Cold War maverick. In the process the book examines the explosive interplay of character and circumstance that generated Papandreou's contentious, but powerfully consequential politics.

A rethinking of American democracy that puts caring responsibilities at the center Americans now face a caring deficit: there are simply too many demands on people's time for us to care adequately for our children, elderly people, and ourselves.At the same time, political involvement in the United States is at an all-time low, and although political life should help us to care better, people see caring as unsupported by public life and deem the concerns of politics as remote from their lives. Caring Democracy argues that we need to rethink American democracy, as well as our fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. What it means to be a citizen is to be someone who takes up the challenge: how should we best allocate care responsibilities in society? Joan Tronto argues that we need to look again at how gender, race, class, and market forces misallocate caring responsibilities and think about freedom and equality from the standpoint of making caring more just. The idea that production and economic life are the most important political and human concerns ignores the reality that caring, for ourselves and others, should be the highest value that shapes how we view the economy, politics, and institutions such as schools and the family. Care is at the center of our human lives, but Tronto argues it is currently too far removed from the concerns of politics. Caring Democracy traces the reasons for this disconnection and argues for the need to make care, not economics, the central concern of democratic political life.

The revolutionary year of 1958 epitomizes the height of the social uprisings, military coups, and civil wars that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa in the mid-twentieth century. Amidst waning Anglo-French influence, growing US-USSR rivalry, and competition and alignments between Arab and non-Arab regimes and domestic struggles, this year was a turning point in the modern history of the Middle East. This multi and interdisciplinary book explores this pivotal year in its global, regional and local contexts and from a wide range of linguistic, geographic, academic specialties. The contributors draw on declassified and multilingual archives, reports, memoirs, and newspapers in thirteen country-specific chapters, shedding new light on topics such as the extent of Anglo-American competition after the Suez War, Turkey's efforts to stand as a key pillar in the regional Cold War, the internationalization of the Algerian War of Independence, and Iran and Saudi Arabia's abilities to weather the revolutionary storm that swept across the region. The book includes a foreword from Salim Yaqub which highlights the importance of Jeffrey G. Karam's collection to the scholarship on this vital moment in the political history of the modern middle east.

The Congressional Deskbook, now in its Sixth Edition, explains the legislative and congressional budget processes along with all aspects of Congress.

Many of the sections are expanded online at CongressProfile.com And an expanded legislative and budget glossary is available online at TCNLG.com

This comprehensive guide to Congress is ideal for anyone who wants to know how Congress really works, including federal executives, attorneys, lobbyists, media and public affairs staff, government affairs, policy and budget analysts, congressional office staff and students.

Complete Table of Contents with links to other material at CongressionalDeskbook.com

Ethnic Diasporas and the Canada-United States Security Community focuses on three diasporas and their impact on North American security relations, the Irish and Germans, which were mainly in the US, and the Muslim diaspora, which is based in both countries. The book begins by examining the evolution of North America from a zone of war to a zone of peace (i.e., a security community), starting with the debate over the nature and meaning of the Canada-US border. It then assesses the role of ethnic diasporas in North American security, looking as to whether ethnic interest groups have been gaining influence over the shaping of the US foreign policy. This debate is also valid in Canada, especially given the practice of federal political parties of catering to blocs of ethnic voters. The second section of the book focuses on three case studies. The first examines the impact of the Irish Americans on the quality of security relations between the US and the UK, and therefore between the former and Canada. The second looks at an even larger diaspora, the German Americans, whose political agenda by the start of twentieth century attempted to discourage Anglo-American entente and eventual alliance. The final case concentrates on the debates around the North American Muslim diaspora in the past two decades, a time when policy attention turned toward the greater Middle East, which in many ways constitute the "kin community" of this politically active diaspora. This comparative assessment of the three cases provides contextualization for today's discussion of homegrown terrorism and its implication for bilateral security cooperation in North America.

With the ubiquitous nature of modern technologies, they have been inevitably integrated into various facets of society. The connectivity presented by digital platforms has transformed such innovations into tools for political and social agendas. Politics, Protest, and Empowerment in Digital Spaces is a comprehensive reference source for emerging scholarly perspectives on the use of new media technology to engage people in socially- and politically-oriented conversations and examines communication trends in these virtual environments. Highlighting relevant coverage across topics such as online free expression, political campaigning, and online blogging, this book is ideally designed for government officials, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in how new media is revolutionizing political and social communications.