Title: State capitalism and working-class radicalism in the French aircraft industry 
Author: Chapman, Herrick
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | European History | Politics | Technology and Society | French Studies
Publisher's Description: In the 1950s and 1960s France experienced an economic miracle. As the state's role expanded with efforts to create a more modern economy, however, labor relations remained more volatile and workers more radical than elsewhere in western Europe. Herrick Chapman argues in this important new book that state capitalism and working-class radicalism went hand-in-hand and that both have antecedents in the tumultuous events of the 1930s and 1940s.The author focuses on a key industry - aviation - which held center stage in France from the Great Depression to the Cold War. While manufacturers and state officials struggled to modernize, the aviation industry became a bastion of the Communist Party and an arena of combat where workers, employers, and officials promoted competing visions of industrial reform. This gave rise to a new environment where state intervention and working-class radicalism became mutually reinforcing, and by the postwar era a peculiarly contentious form of industrial politics had become firmly entrenched.Using local and national archives, the author analyzes not only how an industry transformed but also how people reacted to the Popular Front, the defeat of 1940, the Nazi Occupation, and the onset of the Cold War. He also sheds light on such central themes in modern French history as the style of entrepreneurship, the sources of state interventionism, the response of workers to technological change and the nature of the Communist movement.   [brief]
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Title: Technopolis: high-technology industry and regional development in southern California 
Author: Scott, Allen John
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Urban Studies | Geography | Politics
Publisher's Description: Technopolis is a timely theoretical and empirical investigation of the world's largest high-technology industrial complex - Southern California. Allen Scott provides a new conceptual framework for understanding urban and regional growth processes based on a combination of inter-industrial, labor market, and geographical factors. He presents case studies and original data on three major industries that have become synonymous with Southern California: aircraft and parts, missiles and space equipment, and electronics. The business community will be particularly interested in Scott's diagnosis of post-Cold War economic ills and his suggestions for possible remedies.In good times or bad, knowledge of how Southern California's high-tech industry and regional development have interacted in the past and might interact in the future will be invaluable for regional and economic planners everywhere.   [brief]
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Title: Thucydides and the ancient simplicity: the limits of political realism 
Author: Crane, Gregory 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Classics | Politics | Political Theory | History | Intellectual History
Publisher's Description: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.   [brief]
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Title: To craft democracies: an essay on democratic transitions 
Author: Di Palma, Giuseppe
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Politics | Russian and Eastern European Studies | History
Publisher's Description: Is democracy a hot-house plant? Is it difficult to transplant it into new soil? The fall of so many dictatorships in the last few years - first in Southern Europe, then in Latin America, now in Eastern Europe - opens new, more optimistic perspectives on democratic development. The crises of dictatorships and the search for a new political order offer fertile ground for an examination of how best to effect democratic transitions.By focusing on the objective conditions that make democracy probable, sociological and historical theories of democracy often lose sight of what is possible. Here Giuseppe Di Palma instead explores those conciliatory political undertakings that political actors on all sides now engage in to make the improbable possible. His emphasis is on political crafting: in regard to constitutional choices, to alliances and convergences between contestants, to trade-offs, to the pacing of the transitions. Di Palma also examines the reasons - stalemate, the high cost of repression, a loss of goals, international constraints and inducements - that may motivate incumbents and nondemocratic political actors to accept democracy, even in those cases, as in Central America and Eastern Europe, where acceptance would seem least likely.An original and imaginative work that, in the light of recent transitions, challenges our assumptions about fledgling democracies and breaks new theoretical ground, To Craft Democracies will appeal to anyone interested in the way we forge our political communities today.   [brief]
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Title: To have and have not: southeast Asian raw materials and the origins of the Pacific War 
Author: Marshall, Jonathan
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: History | Public Policy | Asian History | Southeast Asia | Economics and Business | Politics
Publisher's Description: Jonathan Marshall makes a provocative statement: it was not ideological or national security considerations that led the United States into war with Japan in 1941. Instead, he argues, it was a struggle for access to Southeast Asia's vast storehouse of commodities - rubber, oil, and tin - that drew the U.S. into the conflict. Boldly departing from conventional wisdom, Marshall reexamines the political landscape of the time and recreates the mounting tension and fear that gripped U.S. officials in the months before the war.Unusual in its extensive use of previously ignored documents and studies, this work records the dilemmas of the Roosevelt administration: it initially hoped to avoid conflict with Japan and, after many diplomatic overtures, it came to see war as inevitable. Marshall also explores the ways that international conflicts often stem from rivalries over land, food, energy, and industry. His insights into "resource war," the competition for essential commodities, will shed new light on U.S. involvement in other conflicts - notably in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.   [brief]
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Title: To the Right: the transformation of American conservatism 
Author: Himmelstein, Jerome L
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Sociology | Politics | Public Policy | American Studies
Publisher's Description: In this timely book, Jerome Himmelstein offers a new interpretation of the growth of conservatism in American politics. Tracing the New Right of the 1970s and 1980s back to the Old Right of the 1950s, Himmelstein provides an interpretive map of the political landscape over the past decades, showing . . . [more]
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Title: Tobacco war: inside the California battles 
Author: Glantz, Stanton A
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: American Studies | California and the West | Public Policy | Politics | Social Problems | Economics and Business | Medicine | Environmental Studies | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Tobacco War charts the dramatic and complex history of tobacco politics in California over the past quarter century. Beginning with the activities of a small band of activists who, in the 1970s, put forward the radical notion that people should not have to breathe second-hand tobacco smoke, Stanton Glantz and Edith Balbach follow the movement through the 1980s, when activists created hundreds of city and county ordinances by working through their local officials, to the present--when tobacco is a highly visible issue in American politics and smoke-free restaurants and bars are a reality throughout the state. The authors show how these accomplishments rest on the groundwork laid over the past two decades by tobacco control activists who have worked across the U.S. to change how people view the tobacco industry and its behavior. Tobacco War is accessibly written, balanced, and meticulously researched. The California experience provides a graphic demonstration of the successes and failures of both the tobacco industry and public health forces. It shows how public health advocates slowly learned to control the terms of the debate and how they discovered that simply establishing tobacco control programs was not enough, that constant vigilance was necessary to protect programs from a hostile legislature and governor. In the end, the California experience proves that it is possible to dramatically change how people think about tobacco and the tobacco industry and to rapidly reduce tobacco consumption. But California's experience also demonstrates that it is possible to run such programs successfully only as long as the public health community exerts power effectively. With legal settlements bringing big dollars to tobacco control programs in every state, this book is must reading for anyone interested in battling and beating the tobacco industry.   [brief]
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Title: Tortured confessions: prisons and public recantations in modern Iran 
Author: Abrahamian, Ervand 1940-
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Politics | Middle Eastern Studies
Publisher's Description: The role of torture in recent Iranian politics is the subject of Ervand Abrahamian's important and disturbing book. Although Iran officially banned torture in the early twentieth century, Abrahamian provides documentation of its use under the Shahs and of the widespread utilization of torture and public confession under the Islamic Republican governments. His study is based on an extensive body of material, including Amnesty International reports, prison literature, and victims' accounts that together give the book a chilling immediacy.According to human rights organizations, Iran has been at the forefront of countries using systematic physical torture in recent years, especially for political prisoners. Is the government's goal to ensure social discipline? To obtain information? Neither seem likely, because torture is kept secret and victims are brutalized until something other than information is obtained: a public confession and ideological recantation. For the victim, whose honor, reputation, and self-respect are destroyed, the act is a form of suicide.In Iran a subject's "voluntary confession" reaches a huge audience via television. The accessibility of television and use of videotape have made such confessions a primary propaganda tool, says Abrahamian, and because torture is hidden from the public, the victim's confession appears to be self-motivated, increasing its value to the authorities.Abrahamian compares Iran's public recantations to campaigns in Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, and the religious inquisitions of early modern Europe, citing the eerie resemblance in format, language, and imagery. Designed to win the hearts and minds of the masses, such public confessions - now enhanced by technology - continue as a means to legitimize those in power and to demonize "the enemy."   [brief]
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Title: Transforming free speech: the ambiguous legacy of civil libertarianism 
Author: Graber, Mark A
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Law | Social and Political Thought | Politics
Publisher's Description: Contemporary civil libertarians claim that their works preserve a worthy American tradition of defending free-speech rights dating back to the framing of the First Amendment. Transforming Free Speech challenges the worthiness, and indeed the very existence of one uninterrupted libertarian tradition.Mark A. Graber asserts that in the past, broader political visions inspired libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. In reexamining the philosophical and jurisprudential foundations of the defense of expression rights from the Civil War to the present, he exposes the monolithic free-speech tradition as a myth. Instead of one conception of the system of free expression, two emerge: the conservative libertarian tradition that dominated discourse from the Civil War until World War I, and the civil libertarian tradition that dominates later twentieth-century argument.The essence of the current perception of the American free-speech tradition derives from the writings of Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (1885-1957), the progressive jurist most responsible for the modern interpretation of the First Amendment. His interpretation, however, deliberately obscured earlier libertarian arguments linking liberty of speech with liberty of property. Moreover, Chafee stunted the development of a more radical interpretation of expression rights that would give citizens the resources and independence necessary for the effective exercise of free speech. Instead, Chafee maintained that the right to political and social commentary could be protected independent of material inequalities that might restrict access to the marketplace of ideas. His influence enfeebled expression rights in a world where their exercise depends increasingly on economic power.Untangling the libertarian legacy, Graber points out the disjunction in the libertarian tradition to show that free-speech rights, having once been transformed, can be transformed again. Well-conceived and original in perspective, Transforming Free Speech will interest political theorists, students of government, and anyone interested in the origins of the free-speech tradition in the United States.   [brief]
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Title: Transforming settler states: communal conflict and internal security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe 
Author: Weitzer, Ronald John
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: European Studies | Politics | Sociology | African Studies | European History
Publisher's Description: In the past two decades, several settler regimes have collapsed and others seem increasingly vulnerable. This study examines the rise and demise of two settler states with particular emphasis on the role of repressive institutions of law and order. Drawing on field research in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe, Ronald Weitzer traces developments in internal security structures before and after major political transitions. He concludes that thoroughgoing transformation of a repressive security apparatus seems to be an essential, but often overlooked, precondition for genuine democracy.In an instructive comparative analysis, Weitzer points out the divergent development of initially similar governmental systems. For instance, since independence in 1980, the government of Zimbabwe has retained and fortified basic features of the legal and organizational machinery of control inherited from the white Rhodesian state, and has used this apparatus to neutralize obstacles to the installation of a one-party state. In contrast, though liberalization is far from complete. The British government has succeeded in reforming important features of the old security system since the abrupt termination of Protestant, Unionist rule in Northern Ireland in 1972. The study makes a novel contribution to the scholarly literature on transitions from authoritarianism to democracy in its fresh emphasis on the pivotal role of police, military, and intelligence agencies in shaping political developments.   [brief]
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Title: The unchanging American voter 
Author: Smith, Eric R. A. N
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Politics | United States History | American Studies
Publisher's Description: Have the American people grown more politically sophisticated in the past three decades, or do they remain relatively ignorant of the political world? Did a "great leap forward" take place during the 1960s in which our citizenry became involved and adept voters? In this important book, Eric Smith addresses these and other provocative questions that have long befuddled political scientists and policymakers.Much of the current wisdom about American voters derives from an argument advanced in a volume entitled The Changing American Voter , written by Nie, Verba, and Petrocik. In this work, the authors contend that the electorate made a "great leap forward" in political sophistication and ideological thinking between the 1960 and 1964 elections. They argue that people changed in response to a shifting environment, and that, in particular, the surge of protest and ideological rhetoric between 1960 and 1964 engendered a new political savvy and sophistication. In their view, people learned to understand politics better, to relate the issues to the candidates more accurately, and to cast more informed, intelligent votes.In The Unchanging American Voter , Smith takes issue with this portrait of an engaged American citizenry and replaces it with a quite different picture of the voters of this nation. He posits a more bleak political l andscape in which the typical voter knows little about politics, is not interested in the political arena and consequently does not participate in it, and is even unable to organize his or her attitudes in a coherent manner. To support this view, Smith demonstrates how the indices by which Nie, Verba, and Petrocik measured levels of sophistication during the 1960s were methodologically flawed and how a closer examination of supposed changes reveals only superficial and unimportant shifts in the ways voters have approached the ballot box since the 1950s. The Unchanging American Voter is an intelligent and original work that provides a new perspective of the American citizenry. It is sure to engender discussion and debate about the dynamics of voting in postwar America.   [brief]
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Title: Unequal alliance: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Philippines 
Author: Broad, Robin
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Politics | Southeast Asia | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: In this seminal work, U.S. development specialist Robin Broad chronicles the Philippine experiment with the structural adjustment model of development espoused by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
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Title: The vanguard of the Islamic revolution: the Jamaʿat-i Islami of Pakistan 
Author: Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza 1960-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Politics | Asian History | South Asia | Islam
Publisher's Description: In this groundbreaking study, Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr examines the origins, historical development, and political strategies of one of the oldest and most influential Islamic revival movements, the Jama'at-i Islami of Pakistan. He focuses on the inherent tension between the movement's idealized vision of the nation as a holy community based in Islamic law and its political agenda of socioeconomic change for Pakistani society.Nasr's work goes beyond the exploration of a single party to examine the diverse sociopolitical roots of contemporary Islamic revivalism, challenging many of the standard interpretations about political expressions of Islam.   [brief]
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Title: Voting at the political fault line: California's experiment with the blanket primary 
Author: Cain, Bruce E
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Politics | California and the West
Publisher's Description: California's adoption of the blanket primary in 1996 presented a unique natural experiment on the impact that election rules have on politics. Billed as a measure that would increase voter participation and end ideological polarization, Proposition 198 placed California voters once again on the frontier of political reform. Employing a variety of data sources and methodologies, the contributors to Voting at the Political Fault Line apply their wide-ranging expertise to understand how this change in political institutions affected electoral behavior and outcomes. This authoritative study analyzes the consequences of California's experiment with the blanket primary, including the incidence of, motivations behind, and persistence of crossover voting; the behavior of candidates and donors; the effects on candidate positions and party platforms; and the consequences for women, minorities, and minor-party candidates. Published in association with the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley   [brief]
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Title: The waning of the communist state: economic origins of political decline in China and Hungary 
Author: Walder, Andrew George
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Politics | Sociology | European History | Asian History | China | European Studies | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: This collection of essays offers a compelling explanation for the decline of communism in the two countries that went the furthest with economic reforms - China and Hungary. Articulating a vision of change that serves as a counterpoint to the prevailing emphasis on citizen resistance and protest, the contributors focus instead on the declining organizational integrity of the centralized party-state. The essays illuminate a "quiet revolution from within" that beset the two regimes after they chose to reform their economies and make concessions to the private sector.The nine contributors, three each from the disciplines of sociology, political science, and anthropology, examine key trends that appeared in both countries. The chapters trace political consequences of economic reform that range from the decline of the central state's fiscal dominance to the revitalization of long-suppressed ethnic loyalties.   [brief]
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Title: War, institutions, and social change in the Middle East 
Author: Heydemann, Steven
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Politics | Middle Eastern Studies | Middle Eastern History | Postcolonial Studies | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Few areas of the world have been as profoundly shaped by war as the Middle East in the twentieth century. Despite the prominence of war-making in this region, there has been surprisingly little research investigating the effects of war as a social and political process in the Middle East. To fill this gap, War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who explore the role of war preparation and war-making on the formation and transformation of states and societies in the contemporary Middle East. Their findings pose significant challenges to widely accepted assumptions and present new theoretical starting points for the study of war and the state in the contemporary developing world. Heydemann's collaborators include political scientists, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Their essays are both theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, covering topics such as the effects of World War II on state-market relations in Syria and Egypt, the role of war in the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the political economy of Lebanese militias, and the effects of the 1967 war on state and social institutions in Israel. The volume originated as a research planning project of the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council.   [brief]
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Title: Wars of the third kind: conflict in underdeveloped countries 
Author: Rice, Edward E. (Edward Earl) 1909-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Politics | Asian History
Publisher's Description: Most of the armed conflicts since World War II have been neither conventional nor nuclear, but wars of a third kind, usually fought in the Third World and relying heavily, although not exclusively, on guerrilla warfare. Edward E. Rice examines a number of conflicts of this sort, starting with the American Revolution, but concentrating on the Chinese Civil War, the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, the wars in Algeria and in Vietnam, and the repeated conflicts in Latin America. He explores the origin, organization, and motivation of wars of the third kind, their rural and popular nature, the conversion of guerrilla armies to regular armies, and conceptual approaches to counterinsurgency. Rice concludes with an analysis of the perils of these wars for the great powers.   [brief]
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Title: What's the matter with liberalism? 
Author: Beiner, Ronald 1953-
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Politics | Sociology | Political Theory | Social and Political Thought
Publisher's Description: In the wake of the revolutions of 1989, the ongoing political turmoil in the Soviet Union, and the democratization of most of Latin America, what is the task of political theorists?Ronald Beiner's invigorating critique of liberal theory and liberal practices takes on the shibboleths of modern Western discourse. He confronts the aridity of liberal societies that possess incommensurable "values" and "rights," but no principles. To Beiner, this neutralist view is both a false description of liberal society and an incoherent political ideal. Rather, he encourages the theorist to remain faithful to the important task of questioning and criticism, instead of serving as a source of ideological reassurance about our own superiority.Beiner looks to the Socratic tradition for guidance. Permitting ethos to replace values, and discourse about "the good" to replace talk about "rights," the theorist is able to reorder social priorities. Considered in this light, the liberal political philosophy of the 1970s and 1980s appears insufficiently Socratic, as does a liberal way of life that presents itself as a model of imitation.Polemical, impassioned, and brilliantly argued, What's the Matter with Liberalism? is essential reading for everyone who cares about contemporary theory and the future of liberal society.   [brief]
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Title: When capitalists collide: business conflict and the end of empire in Egypt 
Author: Vitalis, Robert 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Politics | Ancient History | Middle Eastern Studies | Middle Eastern History
Publisher's Description: Robert Vitalis's empirically rich study challenges the left-nationalist paradigm through which twentieth-century Egyptian history and politics has generally been interpreted. He argues with those who explain Egyptian economic development primarily in terms of class and of power struggles between British and Egyptian entrepreneurs and politicians.Vitalis offers a rare, detailed view of the objectives and political strategies of both international firms and Egypt's own big business rivals. He highlights the career of Muhammad Ahmad 'Abbud, modern Egypt's most successful businessman. Vitalis's argument can be effectively applied to many other Third World countries and his book makes a major contribution to ongoing debates regarding class, underdevelopment, and nationalism.   [brief]
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Title: When knowledge is power: three models of change in international organizations 
Author: Haas, Ernst B
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Politics | Political Theory | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: Do governments seeking to collaborate in such international organizations as the United Nations and the World Bank ever learn to improve the performance of those organizations? Can international organizations be improved by a deliberate institutional design that reflects lessons learned in peacekeeping, the protection of human rights, and environmentally sound economic development? In this incisive work, Ernst Haas examines these and other issues to delineate the conditions under which organizations change their methods for defining problems. Haas contends that international organizations change most effectively when they are able to redefine the causes underlying the problems to be addressed. He shows that such self-reflection is possible when the expert-generated knowledge about the problems can be made to mesh with the interests of hegemonic coalitions of member governments. But usually efforts to change organizations begin as adaptive practices that owe little to a systematic questioning of past behavior. Often organizations adapt and survive without fully satisfying most of their members, as has been the case with the United Nations since 1970. When Knowledge Is Power is a wide-ranging work that will elicit interest from political scientists, organization theorists, bureaucrats, and students of management and international administration.   [brief]
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