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This book brings together twenty-plus contributors from the fields of law, economics, and international relations to look at whether the U.S. legal system is contributing to the country's long postwar decline. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the interactions between economics and the law in such areas as corruption, business regulation, and federalism. It explains how the U.S. legal system works differently to those in most countries, with contradictory and hard-to-understand business regulations, tort laws that vary from state to state, and surprising judicial interpretations of clearly written contracts. This imposes far heavier litigation costs on American companies and hampers economic growth.

Despite the centrality of separation of church and state in American government, religion has played an important role in the nation's politics from colonial times through the present day. This essential anthology provides a fascinating history of religion in American politics and public life through a wide range of primary documents. It explores contentious debates over freedom, tolerance, and justice, in matters ranging from slavery to the nineteenth-century controversy over Mormon polygamy to the recent discussions concerning same-sex marriage and terrorism. Bringing together a diverse range of voices from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and secular traditions and the words of historic personages, from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Frances Willard to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., this collection is an invaluable introduction to one of the most important conversations in America's history.

A key figure in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, Benjamin V. Cohen (1894–1983) was a major architect of public policy from the first days of FDR's presidency through the early days of the Cold War. Although he kept a low public profile, Cohen's influence extended across a wide range of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. This biography offers an account of Ben Cohen's life and career, and an assessment of his contribution to the origin and development of modern American liberalism. Cohen's life provides an extraordinary lens through which to view the development of the evolving political philosophy of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies. A brilliant lawyer noted for his good judgment and experience, Cohen was a leading member of FDR's “Brain Trust,” developing ideas, drafting legislation, lobbying within the administration and in Congress, and defending the New Deal in court. The book traces his contributions to domestic financial policy, his activities during the war years in London and Washington, his service as counselor to the State Department and member of the American delegation to the United Nations after the war, and his role in the American Zionist movement. From Cohen's life and work, the book draws important insights into the development of the New Deal and the evolution of postwar liberalism.

Over the coming years the question on every Russia scholar’s, policymaker’s, and military strategist’s mind will be whether a resurgent Russia will seek additional territorial expansion in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet states. Since Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 and waged a shadow war in eastern Ukraine on the pretext of protecting Russian compatriots, a reassessment of the Kremlin’s strategic and territorial objectives is due. What other countries and borders are at risk? What military and soft power tools will Russia utilize? Where is Russia likely to succeed in achieving its aims? Where will the Kremlin likely fail? Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire will address these questions head on. For more than two decades and particularly since the early 2000s Russia has led a consistent policy seeking to regain influence and at times territory in the post-Soviet space through leveraging Russian compatriots that reside in foreign territories bordering Russia. This book demonstrates how this policy has been implemented in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. It will also demonstrate how Russia has been pursuing similar policies in the Baltic States, Central Asia, Belarus, Armenia, and the post-Soviet space more broadly. The book enriches the ongoing public debate on Russia’s foreign policy by providing policy and case studies analysis as well as a deeper look into the nature and the roots of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy. Through extensive interviews, the reader is also offered a unique vantage point of the often voiceless and politicized Russian compatriots, scattered across the post-Soviet space.

The inviolability of national borders is an unquestioned pillar of the post-World War II international order. Fixed borders are believed to encourage stability, promote pluralism, and discourage nationalism and intolerance. But do they? What if fixed borders create more problems than they solve, and what if permitting borders to change would create more stability and produce more just societies? This book examines this possibility, showing how we arrived at a system of rigidly bordered states and how the real danger to peace is not the desire of people to form new states but the capacity of existing states to resist that desire, even with violence. The book proposes a practical, democratically legitimate alternative: a right of secession. With crises ongoing in the United Kingdom, Spain, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and many other regions, this reassessment of the foundations of our international order is more relevant than ever.

It was believed that the Supreme Court's intervention in the 2000 election would shape American law and democracy long after George W. Bush has left the White House. This book brings together a broad range of preeminent legal scholars who address the larger questions raised by the Supreme Court's actions. Did the Court's decision violate the rule of law? Did it inaugurate an era of super-politicized jurisprudence? How should Bush v. Gore change the terms of debate over the next round of Supreme Court appointments?

How are congressional party leaders chosen? In the first comprehensive study since Robert Peabody's classic Leadership in Congress, this book draws on newly collected data about U.S. House members who have sought leadership positions from the 1960s to the present—data including whip tallies, public and private vote commitments, interviews, and media accounts—to provide new insights into how the selection process truly works. Elections for congressional party leaders are conventionally seen as a function of either legislators' ideological preferences or factors too idiosyncratic to permit systematic analysis. Analyzing six decades' worth of information, the book finds evidence for a new comprehensive model of vote choice in House leadership elections that incorporates both legislators' goals and their connections with leadership candidates.

The distribution of incomes in South Africa in 2004, ten years after the transition to democracy, was probably more unequal than it had been under apartheid. The authors of this book explain why this is so, offering a detailed and comprehensive analysis of inequality in South Africa from the mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. They show that the basis of inequality shifted in the last decades of the twentieth century from race to class. Formal deracialization of public policy did not reduce the actual disadvantages experienced by the poor nor the advantages of the rich. The fundamental continuity in patterns of advantage and disadvantage resulted from underlying continuities in public policy, or what the authors call the “distributional regime.” The post-apartheid distributional regime continues to divide South Africans into insiders and outsiders. The insiders, now increasingly multiracial, enjoy good access to well-paid, skilled jobs; the outsiders lack skills and employment.

Although the science of climate change is clear, policy decisions about how to respond to its effects remain contentious. Even when such decisions claim to be guided by objective knowledge, they are made and implemented through political institutions and relationships—and all the competing interests and power struggles that this implies. Michael Méndez tells a timely story of people, place, and power in the context of climate change and inequality. He explores the perspectives and influence low-income people of color bring to their advocacy work on climate change. In California, activist groups have galvanized behind issues such as air pollution, poverty alleviation, and green jobs to advance equitable climate solutions at the local, state, and global levels. Arguing that environmental protection and improving public health are inextricably linked, Mendez contends that we must incorporate local knowledge, culture, and history into policymaking to fully address the global complexities of climate change and the real threats facing our local communities.

This book offers a timely account of health reform struggles in developed democracies. The editors, leading experts in the field, have brought together a group of distinguished scholars to explore the ambitions and realities of health care regulation, financing, and delivery across countries. These wide-ranging essays cover policy debates and reforms in Canada, Germany, Holland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as separate treatments of some of the most prominent issues confronting policy makers. These include primary care, hospital care, long-term care, pharmaceutical policy, and private health insurance. The authors are attentive throughout to the ways in which cross-national, comparative research may inform national policy debates not only under the Obama administration, but also across the world.

This accessible overview of the US Congress's past and present, introduces students to the country's most democratic institution. The book surveys Congressional elections, the internal structure of Congress, the legislative process, Congress and the president, and Congress and the courts. It offers a fresh approach to the First Branch grounded in a historical, positive frame. The book argues that many of the characteristics of Congress with which Americans are so impatient stem directly from the institution's democratic nature. It is slow to act, cumbersome in its procedures, and contentious in its discussions precisely because it is a democratic decision-making body. But complaints are also that it is seen as polarized and corrupt, serving lobbyists, special interests, and campaign contributors rather than the American people. The book concludes by considering whether these charges amount to a serious indictment of Congress, its members, and its procedures.

The process of making a new constitution often begins in conditions that are not optimal for careful consideration of the process of constitution making and its objectives. Emphasizing the need for a process that maximizes chances for a democratic outcome, this book makes a case for processes that are inclusive, deliberative, and oriented toward achieving consensus rather than merely negotiated outcomes. The book focuses attention on politicians who participate in creating new constitutions. It discusses methods for selecting them, modes of organizing the deliberating and drafting bodies, their standards of decision making, their ways of connecting to the public, and their use of outside advice—all with a view to enhancing the commitment of the participants after the process concludes. Beginning with an enumeration of unpropitious conditions and ways of mitigating them, the chapters provide illustrations of processes that have been relatively successful and others that have gone astray, drawing on an array of country-focused accounts. The volume also identifies characteristic problems, tradeoffs, and pitfalls that can arise in the course of constitution making. The book aims to provide arguments, evidence, and descriptions that will appeal to a wide audience, ranging from curious non-specialist readers to students, experts, and constitution makers and advisors alike.

Recent decades have witnessed the rise of social and environmental certification programs that are intended to promote responsible business practices. Consumers now encounter organic or fairtrade labels on a variety of products, implying such desirable benefits as improved environmental conditions or more equitable market transactions. But what do we know about the origins and development of the organizations behind these labels? This book examines forest, coffee, and fishery certification programs to reveal how the early decisions of programs on governance and standards affect the path along which individual programs evolve and the variety and number of programs across sectors.

This book compares the freedoms and protections of members of the United States Congress with those of Britain's Parliament. Placing legislative privilege in historical context, the book explores how and why legislators in Britain and America have been granted special privileges in five areas: jurisdictional conflicts between the courts and the legislative houses, freedom of speech, freedom from civil arrest, contested elections, and the disciplinary powers of the houses. Legislative privilege is a crucial component of the relationship between a representative body and the other participants in government, including the people. In recounting and analyzing the remarkable story of how parliamentary government emerged and evolved in Britain and how it crossed the Atlantic, the book illuminates a variety of important constitutional issues, including the separation of powers, the nature of representation, and the difference between written and unwritten constitutionalism.

Climate change, economic pressures, and shifting geopolitical balances promise unprecedented challenges to the preservation of polar environments and the sustainability of Arctic communities. This volume brings together experts in the Arctic and Antarctic to approach questions about polar governance, environmental protection, and human rights from new perspectives. The emphasis is on cooperation, not conflict, and the use of creative means of diplomacy to build sustainable and adaptive governance structures that will permit the polar regions to survive the challenges of climate change. The first section of the book addresses legal structures and governance; the second focuses on development, particularly of energy, and security; the third section tackles the complexity of community and human rights. Taken together, the contributions in this volume illustrate the multifaceted challenge facing policymakers and stakeholders who seek to ensure that the future of the polar regions is characterized by peace and stewardship.

This book explores the impact of Chinese growth on Latin America since the early 2000s. Some twenty years ago, Chinese entrepreneurs headed to the Western Hemisphere in search of profits and commodities, specifically those that China lacked and that some Latin American countries held in abundance—copper, iron ore, crude oil, fishmeal and soybeans. Focusing largely on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Peru, the book traces the evolution of political and economic ties between China and these countries back to the 1950s and explores how more recent and ongoing interaction with China has shaped the respective political economies of these country cases. Drawing on the development economics literature as an analytical roadmap, the book offers two sets of findings. First, the three small, open economies—Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru—outperformed Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico by a wide margin during the China 2003–2013 boom and thereafter. Second, success in dealing with China has varied by sector, project, and country. The author argues that while opportunities for closer economic integration with China are seemingly infinite, so are the risks. The best outcomes have stemmed from endeavours where the rule of law, regulatory oversight, and a clear strategy exist on the Latin American side.

How can the United States chart a path forward in the war on drugs? This book uncovers the full history of this war that has lasted more than a century. The book provides an essential view of the economic, political, and human impacts of U.S. drug policies. It takes readers from Afghanistan to Colombia, to Peru and Mexico, to Miami International Airport and the border crossing between El Paso and Juarez to trace the complex social networks that make up the drug trade and drug consumption. Through historically driven stories, the book reveals how the war on drugs has evolved to address mass incarceration, the opioid epidemic, the legalization and medical use of marijuana, and America's shifting foreign policy.

Western struggles — and failures — to create functioning states in countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan have inspired questions about whether statebuilding projects are at all viable, or whether they make the lives of their intended beneficiaries better or worse. This book asks why statebuilding has been so hard to achieve, and argues that a large part of the problem has been Westerners' failure to understand or engage with what local people actually want and need. It interrogates the liberal peacebuilding industry, asking what it assumes, what it is getting wrong, and how it could be more effective.

The Montreal Protocol has been cited as the most successful global agreement, responsible for phasing out the use of ozone-depleting substances. However, this book argues that the Montreal Protocol has failed—largely because of neoliberal ideals involving economic protectionism, but also due to the protection of the legitimacy of certain forms of scientific knowledge. The book traces the rise of a new form of disagreement between global powers, members of the scientific community, civil society, and agro-industry groups, leaving efforts to push for environmental protection relatively ineffective.

Catastrophic events such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Tohoku ‘Triple Disaster’ of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that hit the eastern seaboard of Japan in 2012 are seen as surprises that have a low probability of occurring but have a debilitating impact when they do. In this eye-opening journey through modern and ancient risk management practices, the author explains why we need to find a new way to navigate the deeply uncertain world that we live in. Examining how governments have responded to terrorist threats, climate change, and natural hazards, the book shows how and why these measures have proven inadequate and what should be done to make us more resilient. While conventional approaches have focused on planning and preparing for disruptions and enhanced our ability to ‘bounce back’, our focus should be on anticipating future challenges and enhancing our capacity to adapt to new threats.