In Lawmaking under Pressure, Giovanni Mantilla analyzes the origins and development of the international humanitarian treaty rules that now exist to regulate internal armed conflict. Until well into the twentieth century, states allowed atrocious violence as an acceptable product of internal conflict. Why have states created international laws to control internal armed conflict? Why did states compromise their national security by accepting these international humanitarian constraints? Why did they create these rules at improbable moments, as European empires cracked, freedom fighters emerged, and fears of communist rebellion spread? Mantilla explores the global politics and diplomatic dynamics that led to the creation of such laws in 1949 and in the 1970s. By the 1949 Diplomatic Conference that revised the Geneva Conventions, most countries supported legislation committing states and rebels to humane principles of wartime behavior and to the avoidance of abhorrent atrocities, including torture and the murder of non-combatants. However, for decades, states had long refused to codify similar regulations concerning violence within their own borders. Diplomatic conferences in Geneva twice channeled humanitarian attitudes alongside Cold War and decolonization politics, even compelling reluctant European empires Britain and France to accept them. Lawmaking under Pressure documents the tense politics behind the making of humanitarian laws that have become touchstones of the contemporary international normative order. Mantilla not only explains the pressures that resulted in constraints on national sovereignty but also uncovers the fascinating international politics of shame, status, and hypocrisy that helped to produce the humanitarian rules now governing internal conflict.

This volume is the first work to emerge from a major international comparative research project exploring the political economy of globalization. This inter-disciplinary team of scholars is focusing on the semi-periphery of world power. Whether defined in social, cultural, economic or simply spatial terms, 'semi-peripheral' countries share two qualities: they are conscious of their subordination to the hegemonic powers at the centre of the global system - the United States and the European Union; they are also strong enough to have some ability to resist their domination. The structural position of these middle powers in global capitalism is unlike those countries at the centre that do not experience domination, and different from those Third World countries on the periphery that have no means to achieve more cultural and political autonomy, more distinctive and diversified development, or greater social equity and better income redistribution. Four countries in North America, Central America, Europe and the Antipodes - namely Canada, Mexico, Norway and Australia - have been selected in order to explore the complexities of globalization from the perspective of the semi-periphery. Opening chapters examine the international institutions, including the North America Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization and the European Union, which now amount to a quasi-constitutional conditioning framework for middle powers under globalization. In the second part, contributors detail the pressures with which these countries have to cope and consider their ability to pursue policies appropriate to the needs and democratically defined goals of each. And in the concluding part, after discussing the new economic, political and social issues of 'governing under stress', they appraise the possibilities for middle powers to chart distinctive national courses in the face of globalization's constraining challenge.

"American Government: Constitutional Democracy Under Pressure highlights the necessary tension between our constitutional principles and institutions and the populist heat that sometimes roils our national politics, especially at the current political moment. Our constitutional democracy has been under pressure for some time, but few would deny that fears for its fate have deepened in just the past few years. We assume that our political institutions will limit and contain contemporary populism, just as the Founders intended and as they have in the past, but will they? An increasingly polarized electorate, urging their representatives to fight and never to compromise, may be stressing Constitutional limits. This new edition offers to help American government teachers lead their students to a nuanced theoretical and practical understanding of what is happening in the politics of their Constitutional democracy today"--

The underappreciated but surprisingly successful implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) helped rescue the economy during the Great Recession and represented one of the most important achievements of the Obama presidency. It tested all levels of government with urgent time frames and extensive accountability requirements. While ARRA passed most tests with comparatively little mismanagement or fraud, negative public and media perceptions of the initiative deprived the president of political credit. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews and nationwide field research, Governing under Stress examines a range of ARRA stimulus programs to analyze the fraught politics, complex implementation, and impact of the legislation. Essays from public administration scholars use ARRA to study how to implement large federal programs in our modern era of indirect, networked governance. Throughout, the contributors present potent insights into the most pressing challenges facing public policy and management, and they uncover important lessons about policy instruments and networks, the effects of transparency and accountability, and the successes and failures of different types of government intervention.

This book examines how efforts to exert accountability in crises affect public trust in governing institutions. Using Sweden as the case study, this book provides a framework to analyse accountability in crises and looks at how this affects trust in government. Crises test the fabric of governing institutions. Threatening core societal values, they force elected officials and public servants to make consequential decisions under pressure and uncertainty. Public trust in governing institutions is intrinsically linked to the ability to hold decision-makers accountable for the crucial decisions they make. The book presents empirical evidence from examination of the general bases for accountability in public administration, and at the accountability mechanisms of specific administrative systems, before focusing on longer term policy changes. The author finds that within the complex web of bureaucratic and political moves democratic processes have been undermined across time contributing to misplaced and declining trust in governing institutions. Accountability in Crises and Public Trust in Governing Institutions will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of public policy, political leadership and governance.

This book examines five rhetorical strategies used by the US coal industry to advance its interests in the face of growing economic and environmental pressures: industrial apocalyptic, corporate ventriloquism, technological shell game, hypocrite’s trap, and energy utopia. The authors argue that these strategies appeal to and reinforce neoliberalism, a discourse and set of practices that privilege market rationality and individual freedom and responsibility above all else. As the coal industry has become the leading target and leverage point for those seeking more aggressive action to mitigate climate change, their corporate advocacy may foreshadow rhetorical strategies available to other fossil fuel industries as they manage similar economic and cultural shifts. The authors’ analysis of coal’s corporate advocacy also identifies contradictions and points of vulnerability in the organized resistance to climate action as well as the larger ideological formation of neoliberalism.