Conflict to peace

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Sarah S. Stroup

"In Borders among Activists, Sarah S. Stroup challenges the notion that political activism has gone beyond borders and created a global or transnational civil society. Instead, at the most globally active, purportedly cosmopolitan groups in the world--international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs)--organizational practices are deeply tied to national environments, creating great diversity in the way these groups organize themselves, engage in advocacy, and deliver services. Stroup offers detailed profiles of these "varieties of activism" in the United States, Britain, and France. These three countries are the most popular bases for INGOs, but each provides a very different environment for charitable organizations due to differences in legal regulations, political opportunities, resources, and patterns of social networks. Stroup's comparisons of leading American, British, and French INGOs--Care, Oxfam, Médecins sans Frontières, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and FIDH--reveal strong national patterns in INGO practices, including advocacy, fund-raising, and professionalization. These differences are quite pronounced among INGOs in the humanitarian relief sector, and are observable, though less marked, among human rights INGOs. Stroup finds that national origin helps account for variation in the "transnational advocacy networks" that have received so much attention in international relations. For practitioners, national origin offers an alternative explanation for the frequently lamented failures of INGOs in the field: INGOs are not inherently dysfunctional, but instead remain disconnected because of their strong roots in very different national environments." -- Publisher's description

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Giovanni Sartori

The second edition of this pathbreaking, highly innovative comparative study in state-building by a major political scientist is a fully updated examination of the problems of making democratic government work. He concludes with a detailed proposal for a new type of government: alternating presidentialism. This meets the need for strong parliamentary control and efficient government, with safeguards against both parliamentary obstructionism and government by decree, and so could help to avoid political paralysis in Latin America, in the post-communist countries of Europe and in countries with dysfunctional parliamentary systems such as Italy and Israel.

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Stephen George

The role of individual states within the European Community is one of the most important and least studied areas of European politics. The contributors to this collection apply a 'domestic politics' approach to European affairs in an attempt to shed light on the bases of British policy in the European Community. They identify and pursue three major themes: the attempts of central government to act as a gatekeeper between the British political system and the EC to protect British sovereignty; the emergence of varying speeds of adaptation to membership in different sections of government and politics; and Britain's apparent 'semi-detachment' from the mainstream of European integration. Within this framework they examine the ways in which central departments of state, local government, parliament, interest groups, political parties, and public opinion all have influence on policy.

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Andrew Marr

"Andrew Marr analyses the real sources of power in Britain and the threats to our democracy. He argues that the political traditions of which we are rightly so proud need to be restored, and that our institutions are in urgent need of repair." "Looking beyond the traditional centres of influence - the Monarchy, the Lords, the St. James's Street clubs, the judiciary - Andrew Marr focuses on the less established but in his view more potent sources of power, such as the market, the organized lobbies, the media and the quangos. Beginning in the domain of the ordinary voter, he tramps through the ever-widening realms of the local parties, councils and quangos; to the Commons, the State, the lobbyists and pressure groupies; and to the wider world of European and global power beyond. In each case he asks: who really has power, and should a democrat be worried?"--BOOK JACKET.