One by one, America’s most corrupt public servants are dying violent deaths. It seems the Morals and Ethics Behavior Establishment – MAEBE – is cleaning up the political menu so that their own candidate, Orville Flicker, will succeed in his manipulative campaign to win the Oval Office. Can Remo and Chiun stop the bad guys from getting whacked? Breathlessly action-packed and boasting a winning combination of thrills, humour and mysticism, the Destroyer is one of the bestselling series of all time.

Philipp Maier offers an examination of the extent to which governments and various interest groups have exerted pressure on central banks. The book looks in particular at the Deutsche Bundesbank - which acted as the blueprint for the European Central Bank (ECB) - and utilizes an original set of indicators to measure external pressure and support from the government and other institutions.

Get an in-depth look at the workings of political parties and pressure groups in the United States with this comprehensive collection of essays and writings. A must-read for anyone interested in American politics or government. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Americans regularly rail against so-called “special interests.” Yet, many members of society are themselves represented in one form or another by organized groups trying to affect government decisions. Interest Groups in American Politics, Third Edition, is grounded by the role of information in interest group activity, a theme that runs through the book. This concise, thorough text demonstrates that interest groups are involved in the political system at all levels of government—federal, state, and local—and in all aspects of political activity, from election campaigns to agenda setting to lawmaking and policy implementation. Rather than an anomaly or distortion of the political system, interest group activity is a normal and healthy function of a pluralist society and democratic governance. Nonetheless, Nownes warns of the dangers of unwatched interest group activity, especially in the realms of the electoral process and issue advocacy. This much-anticipated third edition of Nownes’s text retains a student-friendly tone. It thoroughly updates the references to interest group research, social media activity, new foreign actors in American politics, and political action committee (PAC) and party connections. Numerous figures and tables throughout the book help students visualize significant trends and information. New to the Third Edition A new section in Chapter 1 (Interest Groups in the United States) on social movements in the US. A new section in Chapter 4 (The Non-Lobbying Activities of Interest Groups) on how interest groups use social media to recruit members and burnish their image. A new section in Chapter 5 (Direct Lobbying) about lobbying regulation, how it affects group behavior, and "shadow interests." New data in Chapter 6 (Electoral Lobbying) on how and how much groups spend on PACs, super PACs, and other vehicles for election spending. A new section in Chapter 7 (Indirect Lobbying) on how interest groups use social media and new technology to affect political outcomes. A new section in Chapter 8 (Interest Groups and Political Parties) on interest groups, the Republican Party, and President Donald Trump. New information in Chapter 9 (The Influence of Interest Groups) on the latest research on interest group power and influence. The new section will cite the latest literature on the growing power of business.

This little volume of eight case studies in American foreign policy grew out of the author's course on that subject in a Leisure Learning offering at the University of West Florida during the Presidential campaign in 2008. It is, therefore, designed to appeal to the causal and well as the serious, scholarly student of how foreign policy is made. The thesis of the work is that major mistakes in the past have been made precisely because foreign policy, used as a wedge issue in Presidential campaigns, has been made without long-term analysis of the implications of policy so hastily made, and for the most base of political purposes. The conclusion is a plea for reducing the frequency of making such mistakes under such pressure, relieving the nation of the necessity to rue the resulting mistakes. That begs the question, "How do the citizens of a democracy, such as the American, have input into the creation of foreign policy, surely a vital function of political debate, without falling into the trap illustrated by these eight case studies?" Both general and specific recommendations are made, reflecting the author's academic and real-world foreign policy experience.