Zinn addresses America's current political/ethical crisis using lessons learned from our nation’s history. Zinn brings a profoundly human, yet uniquely American perspective to each subject he writes about, whether it’s the abolition of war, terrorism, the Founding Fathers, the Holocaust, defending the rights of immigrants, or personal liberties. Written in an accessible, personal tone, Zinn approaches the telling of U.S. history from an active, engaged point of view. "America's future is linked to how we understand our past,” writes Zinn; "For this reason, writing about history, for me, is never a neutral act."Zinn frames the book with an opening essay titled "If History is to be Creative," a reflection on the role and responsibility of the historian. "To think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past," writes Zinn, "is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat." "If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."Buzzing with stories and ideas, Zinn draws upon fascinating, little-known historical anecdotes spanning from the Declaration of Independence to the USA PATRIOT Act to comment on the most controversial issues facing us today: government dishonesty, how to respond to terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the loss of our liberties, immigration, and the responsibility of the citizen to confront power for the common good.Considered a "modern-day Thoreau" by Jonathon Kozol, Zinn's inspired writings address the reader as an active participant in history making. "We live in a beautiful country,” writes Zinn, in the book’s opening chapter. “But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back."Featuring essays penned over an eight-year period, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s first writerly work in several years, an invaluable post-9/11-era addition to the themes that run through his bestselling classic, A People’s History Of the United States.Howard Zinn is a veteran of World War II and author of many books and plays, including the million-selling classic, A People’s History of the United States. "Thank you, Howard Zinn. Thank you for telling us what none of our leaders are willing to: The truth. And you tell it with such brilliance, such humanity. It is a personal honor to be able to say I am a better citizen because of you."--Michael Moore, director of the film Fahrenheit 9/11, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!"Find here the voice of the well-educated and honorable and capable and human United States of America, which might have existed if only absolute power had not corrupted its third-rate leaders so absolutely."-- Kurt Vonnegut, author of A Man Without a Country

    Bob Altemeyer—author of Atheists and The Authoritarian Specter —gives a readable analysis of the nature of authoritarianism and its current impact on American politics.Full text available at theauthoritarians.org.

    Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn--the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world--shows to devastating effect. The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope. Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny--but it will also change the way you look at the world.

    Jonathan Wolff looks at the works of Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, and Rawls (among others), examining how the debates between philosophers have developed, and searching for possible answers to these provocative questions. His final chapter looks at more recent issues, particularly feminist political theory.

    But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In "Democracy Incorporated," Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"?Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level."Democracy Incorporated" is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come."

    We can't go back in time and attend his New York seminar, or follow him to his speaking engagements that he held in the 50s and 60s. But thanks to this second volume in a thrilling series (here is volume one), we do have access to what he said. He is warm, funny, passionate, and learned. This book provides a candid look at the man and his teaching style. It demonstrates his dazzling command over the material, and teaches in a breezier way than his treatises. This volume contains nine lectures delivered over one week, from June 23, to July 3, 1952, at the San Francisco Public Library. Mises was at his prime as a teacher and lecturer. He shares a lifetime of learning on topics that were (and remain) central to American public life. As the title indicates, his main focus is on Marxism. He discusses Marx and his place in the history of ideas, the destruction wrought by his dangerous ideology, the manner in which his followers have covered up his errors, and how the Marxists themselves have worked for so long to save Marxism from itself. He discusses Marxist claims about history and refutes the smear of the industrial revolution.

    In the process, the book generates an astonishing wealth of original and fascinating insights on all major aspects of humankind's remarkable journey through the ages, engaging a wide range of disciplines.

    All aspects of human life related to Islam in Indonesia; collected articles of Abdurrahman Wahid, former Indonesian President.

    Its institutions and values are under daily assault. But the principal culprits are not foreign terrorists. They are influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party.Radical infiltrators have been quietly transforming America's societal, cultural, and political institutions for more than a generation. Now, backed by George Soros, they are ready to make their move. These "progressive" extremists have gained control over a once-respectable but now desperate and dangerous political party. From their perches in the Democratic hierarchy, they seek to undermine the war on terror, destabilize the nation, and effect radical "regime change" in America.With startling new evidence, New York Times best-selling authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe shine the light on the Shadow Party, exposing its methods, tactics, and ultimate agenda.

    Young argues that addressing these structural injustices requires a new model of responsibility, which she calls the social connection model. She develops this idea by clarifying the nature of structural injustice; developing the notion ofpolitical responsibility for injustice and how it differs from older ideas of blame and guilt; and finally how we can then use this model to describe our responsibilities to others no matter who we are and where we live.With a foreward by Martha C. Nussbaum, this last statement by a revered and highly influential thinker will be of great interest to political theorists and philosophers, ethicists, and feminist and political philosophers.

    In articles and columns published in such journals as the Nation, New York Review of Books, Monthly Review, and newspapers in Pakistan and Cairo, Ahmad inspired new ways of thinking about global issues. Whether writing on the rise of militant Islam, the conflict in Kashmir, U.S. involvement in Vietnam, or the cynical logic of Cold War geopolitics, Ahmad offered incisive, passionate, and often prophetic analyses of the major political events and movements of the second half of the twentieth century.This work is the first to collect Ahmad's writings in a single volume. It reflects his distinct understanding of world politics as well as his profound sense of empathy for those living in poverty and oppression. He was a fierce opponent of imperialism and corruption and advocated democratic transformations in postcolonial and third-world societies. A uniquely perceptive critic of colonialism and U.S. foreign policy, Ahmad was equally vigilant in his criticisms of third-world dictatorships.Like few other writers, Ahmad's life experiences shaped his political views. He grew up amidst the turmoil of postcolonial India, worked alongside the Algerian FLN in their fight against the French occupation, and later became a prominent spokesperson for peace between Israel and Palestine.

    But as this collection demonstrates, Kirk was perhaps at his best as an essayist. This volume also confirms that Kirk’s was principally a literary and historical conservatism that refused to fit the irreducible complexity of human experience to the requirements of any ideological straitjacket.With The Essential Russell Kirk, literary critic George A. Panichas captures the breadth and depth of Kirk’s intellectual project by gathering together forty-four of the most masterful of Kirk’s essays, along with a unique chronology told in Kirk’s own words and a substantial introduction that articulates the deep humanism that animated Kirk’s philosophy. The result is a carefully assembled volume that gives us a fuller picture of an extraordinary man and writer, one whose labors had, and continue to have, remarkable repercussions on the American literary and political landscape.

    In these engrossing, essay-length interviews, which address the topics of war, religion, the global economy, and social change, Amy Goodman, host of the popular radio program Democracy Now, speaks about the role of the independent media as gatekeeper and witness; Lani Guinier, author of Tyranny of the Majority, reveals that students' SAT scores more accurately describe the kind of car their parents drive than the grades they will earn in college and shows the way to a more equitable college admissions system; Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, explores the American Dream and exposes the myth of the "good war"; economist Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy and The Overspent American, explains why Americans are willing to sacrifice quality of life to attain financial success; former "mall rat" Naomi Klein, author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, urges readers to go global while fighting global conglomerates; and Katha Pollitt, author of Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism, employs her incisive wit to explore what it really means to be a feminist in the Twenty First century. For anyone who has been moved by idealism and longed to become a more proactive citizen, this collection offers a range of stories on how progressive ethics can inform, inspire, and ultimately transform lives.

    Berman looks at the history of social democracy from its origins in the late nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, Fascism and National Socialism by solving the central challenge of modern politics - reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy. Bursting on to the scene in the interwar years, the social democratic model spread across Europe after the Second World War and formed the basis of the postwar settlement. This is a study of European social democracy that rewrites the intellectual and political history of the modern era while putting contemporary debates about globalization in their proper intellectual and historical context.

    Just War is based on a lecture given in Rome, where, as Zinn addressed an Italian audience, a public known for its negative opinions of recent American foreign policy, he could be direct about his own feelings. "I come from a country which is at war, as it has been almost continuously: and for that I feel shame." His rousing call to the only "just war," the "war against war," which concludes that "perhaps it will take a combination of factors to end war: but we must all play a part," is a must-read for those who know and trust his work, and, for those concerned about current events and looking for strong and morally driven persepctives, it is an excellent introduction to a great thinker.

    Watching this debate unfold, William Stacy Johnson found that he could be silent no longer. The result is this finely honed book.In A Time to Embrace Johnson presents a brilliant analysis of the religious, legal, and political stakes in the debates over gay marriage, civil unions, and the place of committed gay couples in a democratic society. Carefully weighing the pros and cons from across th emoral and religious spectrum, Johnson here offers a fresh, thought-provoking examination of one of the most controversial issues in the West today.

    Blending history, memoir, digressive literariness, and polemic, Kauffman provides fresh portaiture of such American originals as Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, regionalist painter Grant Wood, farmer-writer Wendell Berry, publisher Henry Regnery, maverick U.S. senators Eugene McCarthy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and other Americans who can’t—or shouldn’t—be filed away in the usual boxes labeled �liberal” and �conservative.” Ranging from Millard Fillmore to Easy Rider, from Robert Frost to Mother Jones, Kauffman limns an alternative America that draws its breath from local cultures, traditional liberties, small-scale institutions, and neighborliness. There is an America left that is worth saving: these are its paragons, its poets, its pantheon.

    history, presiding over American foreign policy during a pivotal era--the decade after World War II when the American Century slipped into high gear. During his vastly influential career, Acheson spearheaded the greatest foreign policy achievements in modern times, ranging from the Marshall Plan to the establishment of NATO.In this acclaimed biography, Robert L. Beisner paints an indelible portrait of one of the key figures of the last half-century. In a book filled with insight based on research in government archives, memoirs, letters, and diaries, Beisner illuminates Acheson's major triumphs, including the highly underrated achievement of converting West Germany and Japan from mortal enemies to prized allies, and does not shy away from examining his missteps. But underlying all his actions, Beisner shows, was a tough-minded determination to outmatch the strength of the Soviet bloc--indeed, to defeat the Soviet Union at every turn. The book also sheds light on Acheson's friendship with Truman--one, a bourbon-drinking mid-Westerner with a homespun disposition, the other, a mustachioed Connecticut dandy who preferred perfect martinis.Over six foot tall, with steel blue, merry, searching eyes and a wolfish grin, Dean Acheson was an unforgettable character--intellectually brilliant, always debonair, and tough as tempered steel. This lustrous portrait of an immensely accomplished and colorful life is the epitome of the biographer's art.

    This volume, The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, provides comprehensive and critical coverage of the lively and contested field of political theory, and will help set the agenda for the field for years to come. Long recognized as one of the main branches of political science, political theory has in recent years burgeoned in many different directions. Forty-five chapters by distinguished political theorists look at the state of the field, where it has been in the recent past, and where it is likely to go in future. They examine political theory's edges as well as its core, the globalizing context of the field, and the challenges presented by social, economic, and technological changes.

    Having grown up in rural Ireland and watched her friends join the Irish Republican Army, Richardson knows from firsthand experience how terrorism can both unite and destroy a community. As a professor at Harvard, she has devoted her career to explaining terrorist movements throughout history and around the globe. From the biblical Zealots to the medieval Islamic Assassins to the anarchists who infiltrated the cities of Europe and North America at the turn of the last century, terrorists have struck at enemies far more powerful than themselves with targeted acts of violence. Yet Richardson understands that terrorists are neither insane nor immoral. Rather, they are rational political actors who often deploy carefully calibrated tactics in a measured and reasoned way. What is more, they invariably go to great lengths to justify their actions to themselves, their followers, and, often, the world.Richardson shows that the nature of terrorism did not change after the attacks of September 11, 2001; what changed was our response. She argues that the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” was doomed to fail because of an ignorance of history, a refusal to learn from the experience of other governments, and a fundamental misconception about how and why terrorists act. As an alternative, Richardson offers a feasible strategy for containing the terrorist threat and cutting off its grassroots support. The most comprehensive and intellectually rigorous account of terrorism yet, What Terrorists Want is a daring intellectual tour de force that allows us, at last, to reckon fully with this major threat to today’s global order.

    It is due, in large part, to wishful thinking. Good Christian conservatives are often a beleaguered, minority within a democratic society, and rarely gain the ability to effectively control the powers of government. Thus, when "one of our own." claiming to be true to the faith, gains political power, Christian conservatives almost always tend to place unconditional trust and approval in such a leader, even in he face of near constant betrayal. They never ask the crucial question: Why, if none of the true believers in constitutional limits can get elected, does their establishment suddenly back someone who was a "sudden convert" to the constitutional and limited government ideology? It is, as the old saying goes, "too good to be true." ...For example, almost all establishment sources, including educational institutions, attack mercilessly any person who believes in conspiracy, and this despite the evidence that conspiracies have always been present in the world since its creation.... Unfortunately, members of the LDS faith are particularly prone to this kind of denial and refusal to address the core political controversies of our time.... What this book gives you is a glimpse into the bowels of evil operating just below the surface of the "freest country on earth." The author feels, correctly, that it's time to take a serious look at the consequence of continued blindness to this growing and prophesied menace.... If after reading this comprehensive work you cannot sense that something is wrong, you will have to await the grand announcement of the Second Coming - when the secret acts of men throughout all the history of the earth will all be revealed. --- excerpts from book's Foreword

    More than a decade in the makingand more than half a million words in length?this informative and entertaining encyclopedia contains substantive entries of up to two thousand words on those persons, events, organizations, and concepts of major importance to postwar American conservatism. Its contributors include iconic patriarchs of the conservative and libertarian movements, including Russell Kirk, M. E. Bradford, Gerhart Niemeyer, Stephen J. Tonsor, Peter Stanlis, and Murray Rothbard; celebrated scholars such as George H. Nash, Peter Augustine Lawler, Allan Carlson, Daniel J. Mahoney, Wilfred McClay, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, George W. Carey, and Paul Gottfried; well-known authors, including George Weigel, Lee Edwards, Richard Brookhiser, and Gregory Wolfe; and influential movement activists and leaders such as M. Stanton Evans, Morton Blackwell, Leonard Liggio, and Llewellyn Rockwell. Ranging from abortion to Zoll, Donald Atwell, and written from viewpoints as various as those which have informed the postwar conservative movement itself, the encyclopedia's more than 600 entries will orient readers of all kinds to the people and ideas that have given shape to contemporary American conservatism. This long-awaited volume is not to be missed.

    Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and cultural history, Jan-Werner Müller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the movements and institutions they inspired.Müller pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960s and neoliberalism, ending with a critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age.

    nation-state that privileges the propertied individual. However, African American, Asian American, and Chicano people experience the same stretch of city sidewalk with varying degrees of safety, visibility, and surveillance.The Ruptures of American Capital examines two key social formations—women of color feminism and racialized immigrant women’s culture—in order to argue that race and gender are contradictions within the history of U.S. capital that should be understood not as monolithic but as marked by its crises. Hong shows how women of color feminism identified ways in which nationalist forms of capital, such as the right to own property, were repressive. The Ruptures of American Capital demonstrates that racialized immigrant women’s culture has brought to light contested modes of incorporation into consumer culture.Interweaving discussion of U.S. political economy with literary analyses (including readings from Booker T. Washington to Jessica Hagedorn) Hong challenges the individualism of the United States and the fetishization of difference that is one of the markers of globalization.Grace Kyungwon Hong is assistant professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

    The second copy, reassembled painfully by scientists working under impossible conditions of repression, was sent via a courier to the Vatican. Its receipt was never acknowledged, no word was ever heard from the courier - the manuscript and all the valuable data was lost. The third copy was produced after one of the scientists working on the project escaped to America in the 1980s. Zbigniew Brzezinski suppressed it. Political Ponerology was forged in the crucible of the very subject it studies. Scientists living under an oppressive regime decide to study it clinically, to study the founders and supporters of an evil regime to determine what common factor is at play in the rise and propagation of man's inhumanity to man. Shocking in its clinically spare descriptions of the true nature of evil, poignant in the more literary passages where the author reveals the suffering experienced by the researchers who were contaminated or destroyed by the disease they were studying, this is a book that should be required reading by every citizen of every country that claims a moral or humanistic foundation. For it is a certainty that morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of Evil. Knowledge of its nature, how it creates its networks and spreads, how insidious is its guileful approach, is the only antidote.

    The work in the volume has a common aim in being sensitive to thethoughts of contextual nuances that disappear from large-scale quantitative modeling or explanations based on abstract, general, universal laws of human behavior. It shows that 'context matters' in a great many ways: philosophical context matters; psychological context matters; cultural andhistorical contexts matter; place, population, and technology all matter. By showcasing scholars who specialize in the analysis of all these contexts side-by-side, The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis shows how political scientists can take those crucial contextual factorssystematically into account.

    This Handbook views political economy as a grand (if imperfect) synthesis of these various strands, treating political economy as the methodology of economics applied to the analysis of political behavior and institutions.This Handbook surveys the field of political economy, with fifty-eight chapters ranging from micro to macro, national to international, institutional to behavioral, methodological to substantive. Chapters on social choice, constitutional theory, and public economics are set alongside ones on voters, parties and pressure groups, macroeconomics and politics, capitalism and democracy, and international political economy and international conflict.

    This volume presents a selection of his classic essays on ethics and politics collected together for the first time, focussing particularly on the themes of moral disagreement, moral dilemmas, and truthfulness and its importance. The essays range widely in scope, from Aristotle and Aquinas and what we need to learn from them, to our contemporary economic and social structures and the threat which they pose to the realization of the forms of ethical life. They will appeal to a wide range of readers across philosophy and especially in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and theology.

    Kidnapping. Bogus wars. Illegal wiretapping. Propaganda. Spies in the newsrooms. Oil profiteers. Soldiers who won't fight. Mothers of fallen soldiers Who will. In Static, the bestselling brother-sister team of Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and investigative journalist David Goodman takes on government liars, corporate profiteers, and the media that have acted as their cheerleaders. The authors cut through the official static to show the truth about war, torture, and government control of the media. Static breaks the sound barrier to present the voices of dissidents, activists, and others who are often frozen out of official debate. Read Static. Become informed. Fight back. Defend democracy.

    Today that parchment has been shred to ribbons, explains Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, as the federal government trounces state and individual rights and expands its reach far beyond what the Framers intended.An important follow-up to Judge Napolitano's best-selling Constitutional Chaos, this book shows with no-nonsense clarity how Congress has "purchased" regulations by bribing states and explains how the Supreme Court has devised historically inaccurate, logically inconsistent, and even laughable justifications to approve what Congress has done.It's an exciting excursion into the dark corners of the law, showing how do-gooders, busybodies, and control freaks in government disregard the limitations imposed upon Congress by the Constitution and enact laws, illegal and unnatural, in virtually every area of human endeavor.Praise for The Constitution in Exile from Left, Right, and Center"Does anyone understand the vision of America's founding fathers? The courts and Congress apparently don't have a clue. But Judge Andrew P. Napolitano does, and so will you, if you read The Constitution in Exile."-BILL O'REILLY"Whatever happened to states rights, limited government, and natural law? Judge Napolitano, in his own inimitable style, takes us on a fascinating tour of the destruction of constitutional government. If you want to know how the federal government got so big and fat, read this book. Agree or disagree, this book will make you think."-SEAN HANNITY"In all of the American media, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is the most persistent, uncompromising guardian of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, very much including the Bill of Rights. Increasingly, our Constitution is in clear and present danger. Judge Napolitano--in The Constitution in Exile--has challenged all Americans across party lines to learn the extent of this constitutional crisis." -NAT HENTOFF"Judge Napolitano engages here in what I do every day on my program-make you think. There's no question that potential Supreme Court nominees and what our Constitution says and doesn't say played a major role for many voters in our last couple of elections. What the judge does here is detail why the federal government claims it can regulate as well as tax everything in sight as it grows and grows. Agree or disagree with him-you need to read his latest book, think, and begin to arm yourself as you enter this important debate." -RUSH LIMBAUGH"At a time when we are, in Benjamin Franklin's words, sacrificing essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, here comes the judge with what should be mandatory reading for the executive branch cronies who are busy stealing power while they think we're not watching. Thank goodness the judge is watching and speaking truth to power. More than a book, this is an emergency call to philosophical arms, one we must heed before it's too late." -ALAN COLMES

    It also gave rise to a chorus of pleas for more:* What is the progressive vision of America; * Why progressive values are America's values; * How frames are necessary to serve the truth; * Why sloganeering alone doesn't work; * How progressives trap themselves and how they can escape those traps; and * How political arguments and narratives can be put together to counter the Right.Thinking Points satisfies that call with a bold, concise, and systematic explanation of how conservatives think and use language--and how progressives can fight back . Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute offer a new understanding of the so-called political center and explain why the most effective way to appeal to those who identify themselves as moderates or conservatives is to remain true to progressive values.This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to participate in shaping an America that serves the common good.

    political economy from the early-1930s to the end of the Cold War, this resource refutes many popular myths about the Great Depression and New Deal, the World War II economy, and the postwar national-security state that is still so pervasive today. What accounts for the extraordinary duration of the Great Depression? How did the war alter relations between government and leaders of big business? What is Congress’s role in the military-industrial-congressional complex? This book answers these and other crucial questions by presenting new insights and analyses along with statistical evidence that defies mainstream interpretation of economic history.

    Each document is introduced by placing it in its historical context, and thought-provoking questions are provided to focus the student when they read the text. Instructors are at liberty to choose the documents that best highlight a theme they wish to emphasize.

    He was one of the most outspoken of literary figures, the Conscience of Germany, if not the West, in speaking upon the hypocrisies of both denazification and the wonder of German economic recovery during the 1950s. A wounded soldier himself, Böll was a champion of individual rights over the authority of the State. The year he won the Nobel Prize, there were also calls to revoke the award following Böll's article in Der Spiegel in defense of the constitutional rights or a terrorist group.

    The Zapatista movement and the Women’s Revolutionary Law, a charter that came to have tremendous symbolic importance for thousands of indigenous women, created the potential for renegotiating gender roles in Zapatista communities. Drawing on the original research of scholars with long-term field experience in a range of Mayan communities in Chiapas and featuring several key documents written by indigenous women articulating their vision, Dissident Women brings fresh insight to the revolutionary crossroads at which Chiapas stands—and to the worldwide implications of this economic and political microcosm.

    Western Terror is a book of essays and political commentaries by Andre Vltchek that revisits many complex regional conflicts on our planet, including in the United States, Iraq, India, East Timor, Indonesia, and Latin America.

    Since 1977, he has been the general editor for Research in Political Economy, and has authored Toward a Theory of Economic Development, edited Frontiers in Econometrics, and co-edited Essays in Modern Capital Theory.

    Filling in the lacuna, this book presents cutting-edge research on the internal dynamics of electoral authoritarian regimes.

    Outstanding contributors include Pierre Macherey, Charles Wolfe, Alex Callinicos and Judith Revel

    It provides a poststructuralist theory of the relationship between identity and foreign policy and an in-depth discussion of the methodology of discourse analysis.Part I offers a detailed discussion of the concept of identity, the intertextual relationship between official foreign policy discourse and oppositional and media discourses and of the importance of genres for authors' ability to establish themselves as having authority and knowledge. Lene Hansen devotes particular attention to methodology and provides explicit directions for how to build discourse analytical research designs Part II applies discourse analytical theory and methodology in a detailed analysis of the Western debate on the Bosnian war. This analysis includes a historical genealogy of the Western construction of the Balkans as well as readings of the official British and American policies, the debate in the House of Commons and the US Senate, Western media representations, academic debates and travel writing and autobiography. Providing an introduction to discourse analysis and critical perspectives on international relations, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of international relations, discourse analysis and research methodology.

    In his role as Chief Security Officer, hes helped to discover and counter virtually every conceivable type of malicious threat that has been targeted at computers and networks around the world. In this new book, Amoroso brings his wealth of experience and expertise chasing computer hackers to the lay reader and he leaves no stone untouched! Some of his themes may be uncomfortable, but they simply must be examined in order to gain a proper perspective on our growing risk. Software Amoroso explains that we should be ashamed of how weve allowed bad software to pervade every aspect of our lives, leaving gaping vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure systems in our society. System Administration Virtually every one of us has now become an amateur system administrator of some sort of computer and the result is an unforeseen security nightmare that leaves us vulnerable to botnets, worms, and viruses. Complexity Computer scientists know that reducing complexity is the most important task in the design of software and systems. But what has happened instead is that systems abound with complex features that hackers control with ease. In this book, readers will find themselves absorbed into Amorosos endless anecdotes with real people, governments, and businesses. Youll laugh as Amoroso relates his time wandering around the office of a political party, finding their router unprotected. Youll wince as he explains the Cyber Security ignorance hes witnessed among so many corporate IT chiefs. Some of the stories are shocking, others a bit amusing. But in all cases, the underlying message is clear: Cyber Security plays a fundamental role in the way we live our lives. And understanding its basics is critical for citizens, lawmakers, and business people around the world.

    In "Welfare Discipline," Schram argues that it is time to take stock of the new forms of welfare and to develop even better methods to understand them. He argues for a more contextualized approach to examining welfare policy, from the use of the idea of globalization to justify cutbacks, to the increasing employment of U.S. policy discourse overseas, to the development of asset-based approaches to helping the poor. Stressing the importance of understanding the ways we talk about welfare, how we study it, and, critically, what we do "not "discuss and why, Schram offers recommendations for making welfare policy both just and effective.

    By the 1990s, it was among the most commonly investigated occupational health problems in the United States. Afflicted by headaches, rashes, and immune system disorders, office workers—mostly women—protested that their workplaces were filled with toxic hazards; yet federal investigators could detect no chemical cause. This richly detailed history tells the story of how sick building syndrome came into being: how indoor exposures to chemicals wafting from synthetic carpet, ink, adhesive, solvents, and so on became something that relatively privileged Americans worried over, felt, and ultimately sought to do something about. As Michelle Murphy shows, sick building syndrome provides a window into how environmental politics moved indoors.Sick building syndrome embodied a politics of uncertainty that continues to characterize contemporary American environmental debates. Michelle Murphy explores the production of uncertainty by juxtaposing multiple histories, each of which explains how an expert or lay tradition made chemical exposures perceptible or imperceptible, existent or nonexistent. She shows how uncertainty emerged from a complex confluence of feminist activism, office worker protests, ventilation engineering, toxicology, popular epidemiology, corporate science, and ecology. In an illuminating case study, she reflects on EPA scientists’ efforts to have their headquarters recognized as a sick building. Murphy brings all of these histories together in what is not only a thorough account of an environmental health problem but also a much deeper exploration of the relationship between history, materiality, and uncertainty.

    This new collection offers exceptional value and ease-of-use in the convenient, single-volume Norton Anthology format.

    The book's innovative approach, coupled with a stimulating and accessible writing style, allows the student to engage fully with the material. The book charts the development of the European Union from its inception to the present day by exploring in detail the EU's institutions, its law-making, its administrative processes and its substantive law. Crucially, it incorporates recent key developments, such as the crisis over the Constitutional Treaty and the consequences of its apparent 'failure', as well as issues arising from an enlarged Europe. With cases and materials integrated throughout the text and recommended reading sections accompanying each chapter, this is essential reading for all European law students at undergraduate or postgraduate level.

    Through his words, the experience of one Indian child becomes a metaphor for the experience of many Indian children, who were literally ripped from their tribal roots and torn from their families for nine months of the year in order to be molded to better fit into mainstream America. They were not allowed to speak their own languages or follow their traditional customs. As a result of this traumatic and divisive policy, the Mission school experience for most young Indians resulted in isolation, confusion, and intense psychological pain, as they were forced to reject their own culture and spirituality. This has contributed to problems including alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence and general alienation in an entire generation of Native Americans. Dramatic and in

    The strategies pursued by these actors in these political exchanges are influenced by existing wage bargaining institutions, the character of monetary policy and by the level and composition of social policy transfers.

    Plato's Fable provides refreshing insight into what, in Plato's view, is the central problem of life: the mortal propensity to adopt defective ways of answering the question of how to live well.How, in light of these tendencies, can humankind be saved? Joshua Mitchell discusses the question in unprecedented depth by examining one of the great books of Western civilization.He draws us beyond the ancients/moderns debate, and beyond the notion that Plato's Republic is best understood as shedding light on the promise of discursive democracy. Instead, Mitchell argues, the question that ought to preoccupy us today is neither "reason" nor "discourse," but rather "imitation." To what extent is man first and foremost an "imitative" being? This, Mitchell asserts, is the subtext of the great political and foreign policy debates of our times. Plato's Fable is not simply a work of textual exegesis. It is an attempt to move debates within political theory beyond their current location. Mitchell recovers insights about the depth of the problem of mortal imitation from Plato's magnificent work, and seeks to explicate the meaning of Plato's central claim--that "only philosophy can save us."

    Through a combination of country, regional, and topical studies, the book assesses trade and investment dynamics in the region, the rise of new powers, the ongoing processes of globalization, and the impact of economic interdependence on security, and evaluates how these trends are altering AsiaÂ's strategic environment.

    Prior to European colonial rule, these Akan villages had very similar political and cultural institutions. By the late 1990s, however, Lauren M. MacLean found puzzling differences in the informal institutions of reciprocity and indigenous notions of citizenship. Drawing on extensive village-based fieldwork and archival research, MacLean argues that divergent histories of state formation not only shape how villagers help each other but also influence how local groups and communities define citizenship and then choose to engage with the state on an everyday basis. She examines the historical construction of the state role in mediating risk at the local level across three policy areas: political administration, social service delivery, and agriculture, highlighting the importance of the colonial and post-colonial state in transforming informal institutions.

    Political leaders and opinion-makers throughout the world claim that the sovereign state is a barrier to efficient global governance and the protection of human rights.Two central claims are advanced in this book. First, that the sovereign state is being undermined not by the pressures of globalization but by a diminished sense of political possibility. Second, it demonstrates that those who deny the relevance of sovereignty have failed to offer superior alternatives to the sovereign state. Sovereignty remains the best institution to establish clear lines of political authority and accountability, preserving the idea that people shape collectively their own destiny. The authors claim that this positive idea of sovereignty as self-determination remains integral to politics both at the domestic and international levels.Politics Without Sovereignty will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, international relations, security studies, international law, development and European studies.

    Others - Bentham, Marx, cultural relativists and some feminists amongst them - dismiss the concept of human rights as practically and conceptually inadequate. This book reviews these classical critiques and shows how their insights are reflected in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. At one level an original, accessible and insightful legal commentary on the European Convention, this book is also a groundbreaking work of theory which challenges human rights orthodoxy. Its novel identification of four human rights schools proposes that we alternatively conceive of these rights as given (natural school), agreed upon (deliberative school), fought for (protest school) and talked about (discourse school). Which of these concepts we adopt is determined by particular ways in which we believe, or do not believe, in human rights.

    Now extensivley revised, this widely-acclaimed work challenges the field of public administration to redirect its attention away from narrow, technique-oriented scientism, and toward democratic openess and ethics.

    This book presents an approach to human rights which goes beyond the traditional focus on states and outlines the human rights obligations of non-state actors. It finishes with examples of how non-state actors can be held legally accountable for their actions in various jurisdictions and suggests a framework for understanding the limits of human rights in this context.

    While savage excess occasionally prevails, we still struggle to reflect God's image and order in our societies.Using law and religion as a pair of lenses, John Witte expertly surveys the stormy yet lush landscape of the western tradition. After a concise history of rights in the west, he then focuses on a diverse yet coherent series of landmarks, from Luther's "Freedom of a Christian" to contemporary Russian religious freedom, from battles over the First Amendment to the ongoing importance of marriage. Throughout, Witte's reflections center on the constant tension between religion and law, between church and state. God's Joust, God's Justice" provides a clear vista of the debates over law and religion in the west, enabling readers to competently proceed towards a more integrated understanding of these foundational elements of western democracy.

    Politicians and journalists across the ideological spectrum eagerly denounce “victimism.” Accusations of “playing the victim” have become a convenient way to ridicule or condemn. President George W. Bush even blamed an Islamic “culture of victimization” for 9/11. The Cult of True Victimhood shows how the panic about domestic and foreign victims has transformed American politics, warping the language we use to talk about suffering and collective responsibility.With forceful and lively prose, Alyson Cole investigates the ideological underpinnings, cultural manifestations, and political consequences of anti-victimism in an array of contexts, including race relations, the feminist movement, conservative punditry, and the U.S. legal system. Being a victim, she contends, is no longer a matter of injuries or injustices endured, but a stigmatizing judgment of individual character. Those who claim victim status are cast as shamefully passive or cynically manipulative. Even the brutalized Central Park jogger came forth to insist that she is not a victim, but a survivor.Offering a fresh perspective on major themes in American politics, Cole demonstrates how this new use of “victim” to derogate underlies seemingly disparate social and political debates from the welfare state, criminal justice, and abortion to the war on terror.

    Drawing from a wide range of examples—including the Mexican dedazo, clientelism in Brazil, legislative "ghost coalitions" in Ecuador, and elite power-sharing in Chile—the contributors examine how informal rules shape the performance of state and democratic institutions, offering fresh and timely insights into contemporary problems of governability, "unrule of law," and the absence of effective representation, participation, and accountability in Latin America.The editors present this analysis within a fourfold conceptual framework: complementary institutions, which fill gaps in formal rules or enhance their efficacy; accommodative informal institutions, which blunt the effects of dysfunctional formal institutions; competing informal institutions, which directly subvert the formal rules; and substitutive informal institutions, which replace ineffective formal institutions.

    This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. Cudd argues that oppression is an institutionally structuredharm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes thecentral feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears toabsolve society from responsibility. While on Cudd's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. Cudd examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. She discusses strategies that groupshave used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. In the concluding chapter Cudd proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual isonly possible when we achieve freedom for all others.

    What is Bush's "free trade?" It's an economic model that argues that by removing restrictions on multinational corporations, these companies will be freed to become engines of economic growth in countries around the world, but in fact bring vast wealth of a small number of global elites while entire populations suffer dislocation, poverty and violence, creating a perfect Petri dish for breeding terrorists. The instruments for this takeover include such corporations as Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, ChevronTexaco, Halliburton, and many others.This book addresses the history of U.S. economic relations throughout the world over the past 25 years, the key role of U.S. corporations, and the larger Bush economic agenda and what the potential impact of this agenda will be on the United States and the world. It concludes with specific alternatives to guide the U.S. on a more peaceful and sustainable course in the future. Using Naomi Klein's No Logo and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation as models, The Bush Agenda is based on hard analytic fact and presented so that it will not only be persuasive, but highly engaging and entertaining to a broad audience.

    Since the fall of communism, these struggles have been particularly intense in Cluj, Transylvania's cultural and political center. Yet heated nationalist rhetoric has evoked only muted popular response. The citizens of Cluj--the Romanian-speaking majority and the Hungarian-speaking minority--have been largely indifferent to the nationalist claims made in their names.Based on seven years of field research, this book examines not only the sharply polarized fields of nationalist politics--in Cluj, Transylvania, and the wider region--but also the more fluid terrain on which ethnicity and nationhood are experienced, enacted, and understood in everyday life. In doing so the book addresses fundamental questions about ethnicity: where it is, when it matters, and how it works. Bridging conventional divisions of academic labor, Rogers Brubaker and his collaborators employ perspectives seldom found together: historical and ethnographic, institutional and interactional, political and experiential. Further developing the argument of Brubaker's groundbreaking Ethnicity without Groups, the book demonstrates that it is ultimately in and through everyday experience--as much as in political contestation or cultural articulation--that ethnicity and nationhood are produced and reproduced as basic categories of social and political life.

    This book presents with nine of his speeches that reflect the development, variety, and drama of his political career. Among them are two speeches from his prosecution of Verres, a corrupt and cruel governor of Sicily; four speeches against the conspirator Catiline; and the Second Philippic, the famous denunciation of Mark Antony, which cost Cicero his life. Also included are On the Command of Gnaeus Pompeius, in which he praises the military successes of Pompey, and For Marcellus, a panegyric in praise of the dictator Julius Caesar. These new translations preserve Cicero's oratorical brilliance and achieve new standards of accuracy. A general introduction outlines Cicero's public career, and separate introductions explain the political significance of each of the speeches. This edition also provides an up-to-date scholarly bibliography, glossary and two maps. Together with the companion volume of Defense Speeches, this edition provides an unparalleled sampling of Cicero's achievements.

    David Armitage brings together an interdisciplinary and international team of authors to consider the impact of this scholarship on the study of early modern British history, English literature, and political theory. Leading historians survey the impact of the history of political thought on the 'new' histories of Britain and Ireland; eminent literary scholars offer novel critical methods attentive to literary form, genre, and language; and distinguished political theorists treat the relationship of history and theory in studies of rights and privacy. The outstanding examples of critical practice collected here will encourage the emergence of fresh research on the historical, critical, and theoretical study of the English-speaking world in the period around 1500-1800. This volume celebrates the contribution of the Folger Institute to British studies over many years.

    Sexism, racism, economic inequality, and other forms of oppression and exploitation exacerbated by the inequities of military service are addressed, and the final chapter outlines an action plan for organizing, challenging, and shutting down the recruiting machine in local schools. This book is essential reading for youth who may be approached by military recruiters as well as for parents who want their children to make informed choices about military service.

    This volume brings together leading authorities engaged in common debates to produce, for the first time, a major collection that clarifies, addresses, and lays bare the manifest connections and contentions within political and international theory surrounding the legacy of Antonio Gramsci.In Part I, scholars examine various approaches to Gramsci's thought, including his methodological principles, the specific conception of civil society he offers, his writings on war and cultural struggle, the spatial dimension of his thinking, and his philosophy of history. Part II focuses on very new developments in Gramsci scholarship concerning the questioning of contemporary world order. This includes reflections on his relevancy to issues of globalising capitalism, transformations in the state, revolutionary praxis, orientalism and empire, as well as European regionalism.This book was previously published as a special issue of the leading Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. (CRISPP)

    When dissensus occurs in a federal court, however, it raises the question of whether this difference of opinion maintains the integrity of the judiciary or undermines its legitimacy. In Judging on a Collegial Court: Influences on Federal Appellate Decision Making, Virginia Hettinger, Stefanie Lindquist, and Wendy Martinek examine the dynamic that gives rise to such dissensus in federal appeals courts, revealing how the appellate process shapes the content and the consistency of the law.The authors examine horizontal dissensus in the minority of cases in which there are dissenting or concurring--as opposed to unanimous--opinions. Primarily investigating why judges on the appeals courts agree or disagree with one another regarding the outcomes of the cases before them, the authors also examine vertical dissensus and ask why judges affirm or reverse lower court judges whose cases are decided on appeal. Focusing on the behavioral aspects of disagreement within a panel and between the levels of the federal judicial hierarchy, the authors reveal the impact of individual attitudes or preferences on judicial decision-making, and hence on political divisions in the broader society.

    Justice was often remade from the margins by magistrates, judges and others at the local level. His book also focuses on four specific themes - gender, youth, violent crime and the attack on customary rights. In doing so it highlights a variety of important changes - the relatively lenient treatment meted out to women by the late eighteenth century, the early development of the juvenile reformatory in England before 1825, i.e. before similar changes on the continent or in America, and the growing intolerance of the courts towards everyday violence. This study is invaluable reading to anyone interested in British political and legal history.

    In this well-argued book, David Campbell finds support for this view, but also shows that homogenous communities often have very high levels of civic participation despite a lack of political conflict.Campbell maintains that this sense of civic duty springs not only from one's current social environment, but also from one's early influences. The degree to which people feel a sense of civic obligation stems, in part, from their adolescent experience. Being raised and thus socialized in a community with strong civic norms leads people to be civically engaged in adulthood. Campbell demonstrates how the civic norms within one's high school impact individuals' civic involvement--even a decade and a half after those individuals have graduated.Efforts within America's high schools to enhance young people's sense of civic responsibility could have a participatory payoff in years to come, the book concludes; thus schools would do well to focus more attention on building civic norms among their students.

    McGann brings together the often antagonistic literature on normative political philosophy, social choice, and the empirical study of political institutions to show that it is possible to provide answers for many outstanding problems prevalent in all three. “This ranks with Riker and Mackie as one of the most important works in democratic theory of the last thirty years. McGann slices through fashionable nonsense like a knife through hot butter.”--Iain McLean, Oxford University “McGann brings a variety of theoretical arguments together to provide a coherent logic of majoritarian democracy and a wholehearted and comprehensive defense of majority rule. Notably, he finds virtue in what is commonly viewed as majority rule's vice — namely cycling — and he also shows that proportional representation, not first-past-the-post, is required for true majoritarianism. The book should be read not just by formal theorists but by a broad range of political science scholars and students.”--Nicholas R. Miller, University of Maryland “In The Logic of Democracy Anthony McGann practices political science the way it should be done. He takes a difficult and important theoretical question, namely how we should interpret the possibility of majority-rule cycling, pursues it single-mindedly across the unhelpful barriers raised by established subspecialties and methodologies, and arrives at a set of non-obvious normative and empirical results. Will you agree with every argument he advances? Surely not. You will, however, benefit immensely from reading this exemplary book.”--Jim Johnson, University of Rochester Anthony McGann is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.

    A completely new introduction to political concepts that will grab students interest through it's use of real-life examples.

    Drawing on social movement theory, the book focuses on the dominant form of Islamist activism in Turkey by analyzing the increasing electoral strength of four successive Islamist political parties: the Welfare Party; its successor, the Virtue Party; and the successors of the Virtue Party: the Felicity Party and the Justice and Development Party. This book, which is based on extensive primary and secondary sources as well as in-depth interviews, provides the most comprehensive analysis currently available of the Islamist political mobilization in Turkey.

    What was it about this small country in North Africa that enabled it to play this exceptional role? This book is a deeply informed account of the exercise of power in Tunisia in the run-up to the revolt that forced its authoritarian ruler, Ben Ali, into exile. It analyses the practices of domination and repression that were pervasive features of everyday life in Tunisia, showing how the debt economy and the systems of social solidarity and welfare created forms of subjection and mutual dependence between rulers and ruled, enabling the reader to understand how a powerful protest movement could develop despite tight control by police and party. For those wishing to understand the extraordinary events unfolding across the Arab world, this rich, subtle and insightful book is the indispensable starting point.

    Erin K. Jenne finds that claims by ethnic minorities have become more frequent since 1945 even though nation-states have been on the whole more responsive to groups than in earlier periods. Minorities that perceive an increase in their bargaining power will tend to radicalize their demands, she argues, from affirmative action to regional autonomy to secession, in an effort to attract ever greater concessions from the central government.The language of self-determination and minority rights originally adopted by the Great Powers to redraw boundaries after World War I was later used to facilitate the process of decolonization. Jenne believes that in the 1960s various ethnic minorities began to use the same discourse to pressure national governments into transfer payments and power-sharing arrangements. Violence against minorities was actually in some cases fueled by this politicization of ethnic difference.Jenne uses a rationalist theory of bargaining to examine the dynamics of ethnic cleavage in the cases of the Sudeten Germans in interwar Czechoslovakia; Slovaks and Moravians in postcommunist Czechoslovakia; the Hungarians in Romania, Slovakia, and Vojvodina; and the Albanians in Kosovo. Throughout, she challenges the conventional wisdom that partisan intervention is an effective mechanism for protecting minorities and preventing or resolving internal conflict.

    The author engages with the main debates in the field, pointing out limitations in both modernist and primordialist approaches and showing how a clearer conceptualization of power and culture can help clarify our understanding of nationalism.

    It is packed with tools for analyzing texts and structuring critical reviews, and incorporating exercises and examples drawn from the social sciences.

    

    As a senior civil servant and "mandarin" from 1959 to 1999, Ngiam Tong Dow served with the founding generation of political leaders and contributed to the country's economic growth. In this book, he reflects on these experiences, sharing personal anecdotes and perceptive insights of Singapore's early decades. He also boldly questions some of the policies of government and emerging trends in the country to suggest how Singapore must change to survive and thrive in the future.

    With the rise of the 'new institutionalism', the study of institutions has returned to its place in the sun. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of where we are in the study of political institutions, covering both the traditional concerns of political science with constitutions, federalism and bureaucracy and more recent interest in theory and the constructed nature of institutions. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions draws together a galaxy of distinguished contributors drawn from leading universities across the world.

    Despite political authoritarianism, human rights violations, corruption, repression of labour unions, gender discrimination and mistreatment of ethnic minorities, the citizens of the East Asian economies have experienced improvements in income and general well-being unparalleled in human history. In this book, Ha-Joon Chang provides a fresh analysis of this spectacular growth. He considers East Asian economies’ unorthodox methods, and their rejection of ‘best practice’ and so-called Washington Consensus policies. East Asia, he claims, can teach us much about the whole process of economic development. Full of new facts and policy suggestions, this is a lively and unconventional introduction to a global phenomenon.

    All great civilizations have sought to unite, in the institution of marriage, the goods of sexual intimacy, childbearing and childrearing, and lifelong love between adults. But the last five decades have witnessed the erosion of marriage as a public institution in the developed world. The separation of the goods previously united in marriage has led thoughtful people to question why marriage should be denied to homosexuals. This volume brings together the best of contemporary scholarship on marriage from a variety of disciplines?history, ethics, economics, law and public policy, philosophy, sociol

    Each article presents valuable lessons, insights, and suggestions from the author’s firsthand experiences, allowing readers to make their own judgments and analysis in support of their unique requirements. The articles are presented without editing or commentary, providing unvarnished lessons fresh from the combat zones where they were learned. Military professionals and history buffs alike will find much interest in this unique official publication.

    Traditionally, these more or less determinate ideas of the good society were held to be independent of their specific sociocultural context and historical epoch. Today, such a concept of context-transcending validity is not easy to defend; the linguistic turn of Western philosophy signals the widespread acceptance of the view that ideas of knowledge and validity are always mediated linguistically and that language is conditioned by history and context. In Re-Presenting the Good Society, Maeve Cooke addresses the justificatory dilemma facing critical social theories: how to maintain an idea of context-transcending validity without violating anti-authoritarian impulses. In doing so she not only clarifies the issues and positions taken by other theorists--including Richard Rorty, J�rgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Judith Butler--but also offers her own original and thought-provoking analysis of context-transcending validity. Because the tension between an anti-authoritarian impulse and a guiding idea of context-transcending validity is today an integral part of critical social theory, Cooke argues that it should be negotiated rather than eliminated. Her proposal for a concept of context-transcending validity has as its central claim that we should conceive of the good society as re-presented in particular constitutively inadequate representations of it. These re-presentations are, Cooke argues provocatively, regulative ideas that have an imaginary, fictive character.

    Offering both a theoretical commentary and a range of empirical examples, it identifies the successes and failures of the regulation approach as an explanatory theory, and proposes new guidelines for its further development.Although closely identified with heterodox French economists, there are several schools of regulation theory and the approach has also been linked to many topics across the social sciences. Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum provide detailed criticisms of the various schools of the regulation approach and their empirical application, and have developed new ways of integrating it into a more general critical exploration of contemporary capitalism. The authors go on to describe how the regulation approach can be further developed as a progressive research paradigm in political economy. Also presented is a detailed philosophical as well as theoretical critique of the regulation approach and its implications for the philosophy of social sciences and questions of historical analysis (especially periodization).Addressing the implications of the regulation approach for both the capitalist economy and the changing role of the state and governance, this book will be of great interest to a wide-ranging audience, including institutional and evolutionary economists, economic and political sociologists and social and political theorists.

    And although the United Nations Security Council may have resembled the latter in many respects during the Cold War, when vetoes and disagreements among the permanent members often stymied the Council s work, the end of the Cold War made it possible for the Council to begin exercising the full range of its legal authority under the UN Charter and to begin expanding that authority to meet the new challenges of the post Cold War period. In this book, Michael Matheson examines the Security Council s new, expansive exercise of legal authority in this period and its devising of bold and innovative methods coercive and noncoercive to stop nascent wars and threats to the peace, including international terrorism. He also surveys the many roles assumed by the Council in postconflict environments, acting in a variety of ways to rebuild a war-torn country or territory and reintegrate it into the world community from prosecuting war criminals, to providing compensation for war victims, to exercising governmental authority in postconflict territories such as Cambodia, Bosnia, and, recently, Kosovo and East Timor. The author also examines the more recent controversies over Iraq, in which disagreements among the permanent members have made decisive UN action difficult, and the investigations into fraud and abuse in various UN programs."

    This can clearly be seen in Taiwan and Thailand, where the elites and attentive public now accept democracy as universally valid. But in China, the ruling communist party resists democratization, in part because its leaders believe it would lead to China's "permanent decentering" in world history. As China's power increases, the party could begin restructuring global culture by inspiring actors in other Asian countries to uphold or restore authoritarian rule.

    Coinciding with this upsurge in democratic transitions there also have been spectacular experiences of social disintegration. An alternative to discourses of the 'failed' and 'collapsed' state in Africa is an approach that takes seriously the complexity of historical processes, on which the political development of individual nation states was based. The chapters in this volume run in a continuum from discussions of 'warlord politics' to an understanding of the 'new wars' in Africa as outcomes of fundamental changes in social solidarity. Wars and violent conflicts in Africa can thus be understood as responses to economic emergencies and political problems which are real, have histories, and can be engaged with constructively through both intellectual and practical efforts. Preben Kaarsholm is Associate Professor of International Development Studies at Roskilde Contributors include: WILLIAM RENO on state insurgencies, KOEN VLASSENROOT on eastern Congo; NIGEL ELTRINGHAM on Rwanda; DOUGLAS H. JOHNSON on Darfur; JOCELYN ALEXANDER on Matabeleland; ALESSANDRO TRIULZI on Ethiopia; PREBEN KAARSHOLM on KwaZulu-Natal; MATS UTAS on Liberia and PAUL RICHARDS on Sierra Leone. North America: Ohio U Press

    It draws out the differences of how class struggle is understood as well as the common concern for understanding the historical specificity of capitalism and process of state formation, through a focus on the social relations of production and labour.

    The collection represents a shift in research on international institutions, from a preoccupation with showing that institutions mattered in world politics to a more recent exploration of the processes, mechanisms, and conditions under which they matter. The emphasis is resolutely eclectic. Rationalism is the social theory of choice for some contributors; others are more comfortable with social constructivism. Still others combine the two. Employing numerous theories, methods, and data sources, the essays in Part II offer fascinating, richly detailed, multi-causal stories of how NATO, the European Union, and other institutions may socialize states and individuals, thus building new senses of belonging.

    Patterson directly tackles the topics of power, representation, accountability, and leadership. She closely examines the impact of formal and informal institutions, transitions to democratic governance, and pressures from the international community. Her focus on the politics of state actions brings to the forefront the crucial need for a new, constructive, and sustainable politicization of the struggle against AIDS.