Download or read book Neutrality as a Policy Choice for Small Weak Democracies written by Michael F. Palo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Michael F. Palo explains how a historical and theoretical examination of Belgian neutrality, 1839-1940, can help readers understand the behaviour of small/weak democracies in the international system.
Download or read book A Liberal Chronicle in Peace and War written by Cameron Hazlehurst and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jack Pease was at the heart of the British Liberal government from 1908 to 1915, holding the position of Chief Whip through two general elections, and a member of the Cabinet confronting domestic tumult, international tensions, and war. Pease was an unassuming participant in the deliberations of a unique gathering of political talent. His journals as President of the Board of Education from 1911 to the formation of the coalition ministry in 1915 are a closely observed, unvarnished record of what he saw and heard in Downing St and Westminster: constitutional and Home Rule crises, industrial conflict, electoral reform, women's suffrage controversies, struggles over budgets, naval estimates, and foreign policy. Despite his Quaker beliefs, Pease committed to supporting war against Germany, and his troubled conscience is laid bare in letters to his wife and friends. Replete with intimate portraits of his revered chief H. H. Asquith and the Prime Minister's social circle, the journals also provide evocative observations of the contest of ideas, arguments, and moods of prominent contemporaries, especially David Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill as Home Secretary then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Kitchener as Secretary of State for War. Pease's candid accounts, augmented by the diaries and letters of others privy to Cabinet policy secrets and personal rivalries, reveal the stories not told in the Prime Minister's reports to the King. Together with the editors' biographical introduction, extensive explanatory commentaries, and bibliographical guidance, Pease's text provides a uniquely comprehensive understanding of Asquith's Liberal government in peace and war.
Download or read book Dutch Military Thought 1919 1939 written by Wim Klinkert and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the interwar period potential future military conflict seemed particularly devastating for military and civilian society alike, thanks to developments in chemical, air and armoured warfare. This study analyses how a small state, the Netherlands, approached this conundrum and aimed to survive a future war.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Swedish Politics written by Jon Pierre and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook provides a broad introduction to Swedish politics, and how Sweden's political system and policies have evolved over the past few decades.
Download or read book A Concise History of Belgium written by Guy Vanthemsche and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The small and densely populated nation of Belgium has played an important role in the history of Europe and other continents, especially Africa. It was a pioneering force in industry, trade, and finance during the Middle Ages, through early modern times and into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It introduced innovative political regimes and played a leading role in the creative arts. Yet this rich past is not widely known. This introductory history offers an accessible and rigorous overview of this small but important West-European country, synthesizing Belgium's main economic, social, political, and cultural developments from pre-Roman times until today. Today, this nation-state, born in 1830, is well-known for the rivalries between its two main language communities, and as a result is often considered a fragile or even an artificial political construct. This systematic chronological analysis of both present-day Belgium and the polities that preceded it throws fresh light on this controversial issue and demonstrates Belgium's enduring importance and influence.
Download or read book Neutrality and Vulnerable States written by Nasir Ahmad Andisha and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a timely and concise academic and historical background to the concept and practice of neutrality, a relatively new phenomenon in foreign and security policy. It approaches two key questions: under what circumstances can permanent neutrality be applied, and what are the main ingredients of success and the causes of failure in applying permanent neutrality? By evaluating, comparing, and contrasting the two successful European case studies of Austria and Switzerland and the two challenging Asian case studies of Afghanistan and Laos, the author creates a new framework of analysis to explore the feasibility of reframing, adopting, and applying a policy of neutrality and jump start debates on the feasibility of the idea of “new neutrality”. He opens the debate by asking whether, as neutrality successfully functioned as a conflict resolution tool during the Cold War, a reframed and adopted version of neutrality could also serve the needs of the twenty-first-century world order. This is an insightful book for all scholars, students, and policymakers workingin international relations, security studies, the history of neutrality, and Afghanistan studies.
Download or read book Organizing Democratic Choice written by Ian Budge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizing Democratic Choice offers a new, invigorating theory of how democracy actually works. It also presents a challenge to democratic pessimists who would have everyone believe that neither political parties nor mass publics are up to the tasks that democracy assigns them.
Download or read book Warfare and Welfare written by Herbert Obinger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the first half of the 20th century was characterized by total war, the second half witnessed, at least in the Western world, a massive expansion of the modern welfare state. A growing share of the population was covered by ever more generous systems of social protection that dramatically reduced poverty and economic inequality in the post-war decades. With it also came a growth in social spending, taxation and regulation that changed the nature of the modern state and the functioning of market economies. Whether and in which ways warfare and the rise of the welfare state are related, is subject of this volume. Distinguishing between three different phases (war preparation, wartime mobilization, and the post-war period), the volume provides the first systematic comparative analysis of the impact of war on welfare state development in the western world. The chapters written by leading scholars in this field examine both short-term responses to and long-term effects of war in fourteen belligerent, occupied, and neutral countries in the age of mass warfare stretching over the period from ca. 1860 to 1960. The volume shows that both world wars are essential for understanding several aspects of welfare state development in the western world.
Download or read book Foreign Policy Formulation and Implementation of Small States written by Faies Jafar and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book analyzed the decision patterns leading to the foreign policy formulation and implementation of the small island Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobago. Several models of decision-making were extracted together with those objective and subjective factors influencing the formulation and implementation process and the key actors involved.
Download or read book Democracy and Deep rooted Conflict written by Peter Harris and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does one build democracy in the aftermath of a violent, deep-rooted conflict? This handbook shows how to structure negotiations and design democratic institutions which address the real needs and interests of conflicting parties. It provides practical advice for policy-makers and political leaders in post-conflict societies and presents a wealth of options that can be drawn upon to build a sustainable peace. Aimed at those negotiating a peace settlement, this book provides a thorough overview of democratic levers - such as power-sharing formulas, questions of federalism and autonomy, options for electoral reform, when to use truth commissions, transitional justice mechanisms, methods of preserving minority rights, constitutional safeguards and many others. It also analyses actual negotiated settlements from various countries and illustrates the many, often unrecognized, options that negotiators can draw upon when attempting to build or rebuild democracy.
Download or read book Creating Social Democracy written by Klaus Misgeld and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book War and Democracy written by Elizabeth Kier and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the conventional wisdom that mass mobilization warfare fosters democratic reform and expands economic, social, and political rights, War and Democracy reexamines the effects of war on domestic politics by focusing on how wartime states either negotiate with or coerce organized labor, policies that profoundly affect labor's beliefs and aspirations. Because labor unions frequently play a central role in advancing democracy and narrowing inequalities, their wartime interactions with the state can have significant consequences for postwar politics. Comparing Britain and Italy during and after World War I, Elizabeth Kier examines the different strategies each government used to mobilize labor for war and finds that total war did little to promote political, civil, or social rights in either country. Italian unions anticipated greater worker management and a "land to the peasants" program as a result of their wartime service; British labor believed its wartime sacrifices would be repaid with "homes for heroes" and the extension of social rights. But Italy's unjust and coercive policies radicalized Italian workers (prompting a fascist backlash) and Britain's just and conciliatory policies paradoxically undermined broader democratization in Britain. In critiquing the mainstream view that total war advances democracy, War and Democracy reveals how politics during war transforms societal actors who become crucial to postwar political settlements and the prospects for democratic reform.
Download or read book Ontological Security Seeking written by Regina Karp and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses a central puzzle in ontological security theory, namely the relationship between identity continuity and change, and the role anxiety plays in fostering and inhibiting change. The work argues for a more nuanced perspective on how change and threats to national identity relate, thus advancing our understanding of the role anxiety plays in shaping state choices. The case studies of Sweden and Germany show that national identity can experience highly disruptive challenges when the external security environment changes. According to extant ontological security theory, these structural challenges should lead to heightened anxiety and identity crises as national narratives become unstable and fragile. Instead, empirical evidence shows that states turn ontological anxiety into strategies of anxiety abatement, management, and ontological innovation. The evidence also reveals that states go to extraordinary lengths to maintain existing narratives, discursively maneuvring between the twin needs of biographical continuity and responsiveness to change. In their efforts to adapt and preserve identity, states embrace ontological ambiguity; they neither fully respond to change, nor do they ignore it. Rather, they strive for discursive innovation where new interpretations of how to be are balanced with new interpretations of the meaning of necessary change. In the process, ontological ambiguity becomes the new normal. These findings suggest that Sweden and Germany may not be outliers, and that being and becoming is an inherent feature of social life all state actors must engage with. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, European politics, foreign policy, and international relations.
Download or read book Political Questions Judicial Answers written by Thomas M. Franck and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost since the beginning of the republic, America's rigorous separation of powers among Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches has been umpired by the federal judiciary. It may seem surprising, then, that many otherwise ordinary cases are not decided in court even when they include allegations that the President, or Congress, has violated a law or the Constitution itself. Most of these orphan cases are shunned by the judiciary simply because they have foreign policy aspects. In refusing to address the issues involved, judges indicate that judicial review, like politics, should stop at the water's edge--and foreign policy managers find it convenient to agree! Thomas Franck, however, maintains that when courts invoke the "political question" doctrine to justify such reticence, they evade a constitutional duty. In his view, whether the government has acted constitutionally in sending men and women to die in foreign battles is just as appropriate an issue for a court to decide as whether property has been taken without due process. In this revisionist work, Franck proposes ways to subject the conduct of foreign policy to the rule of law without compromising either judicial integrity or the national interest. By examining the historical origins of the separation of powers in the American constitutional tradition, with comparative reference to the practices of judiciaries in other federal systems, he broadens and enriches discussions of an important national issue that has particular significance for critical debate about the "imperial presidency."
Download or read book Margins for Manoeuvre in Cold War Europe written by Laurien Crump and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cold War is conventionally regarded as a superpower conflict that dominated the shape of international relations between World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Smaller powers had to adapt to a role as pawns in a strategic game of the superpowers, its course beyond their control. This edited volume offers a fresh interpretation of twentieth-century smaller European powers – East–West, neutral and non-aligned – and argues that their position vis-à-vis the superpowers often provided them with an opportunity rather than merely representing a constraint. Analysing the margins for manoeuvre of these smaller powers, the volume covers a wide array of themes, ranging from cultural to economic issues, energy to diplomacy and Bulgaria to Belgium. Given its holistic and nuanced intervention in studies of the Cold War, this book will be instrumental for students of history, international relations and political science.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy written by Thierry Balzacq and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clearly articulated, well-defined, and relatively stable grand strategy is supposed to allow the ship of state to steer a steady course through the roiling seas of global politics. However, the obstacles to formulating and implementing grand strategy are, by all accounts, imposing. The Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy addresses the conceptual and historical foundations, production, evolution, and future of grand strategy from a wide range of standpoints. The seven constituent sections present and critically examine the history of grand strategy, including beyond the West; six distinct theoretical approaches to the subject; the sources of grand strategy, ranging from geography and technology to domestic politics to individual psychology and culture; the instruments of grand strategy's implementation, from military to economic to covert action; political actors', including non-state actors', grand strategic choices; the debatable merits of grand strategy, relative to alternatives; and the future of grand strategy, in light of challenges ranging from political polarization to technological change to aging populations. The result is a field-defining, interdisciplinary, and comparative text that will be a key resource for years to come.
Download or read book Democracy and International Trade written by Daniel Verdier and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this ambitious exploration of how foreign trade policy is made in democratic regimes, Daniel Verdier shows that special interests, party ideologues, and state officials and diplomats act as agents of the voters. Constructing a general theory in which existing theories (rent-seeking, median voting, state autonomy) function as partial explanations, he shows that trade institutions are not fixed entities but products of political competition.
