Constituents Before Assembly: Participation, Deliberation, and Representation in the Crafting of New Constitutions
Author: Todd A. Eisenstadt File Type: pdf Under what circumstances do new constitutions improve a nations level of democracy? Between 1974 and 2014, democracy increased in 77 countries following the adoption of a new constitution, but it decreased or stayed the same in 47 others. This book demonstrates that increased participation in the forming of constitutions positively impacts levels of democracy. It is discovered that the degree of citizen participation at the convening stage of constitution-making has a strong effect on levels of democracy. This finding defies the common theory that levels of democracy result from the content of constitutions, and instead lends support to deliberative theories of democracy. Patterns of constitutions are then compared, differentiating imposed and popular constitution-making processes, using case studies from Chile, Nigeria, Gambia, and Venezuela to illustrate the dynamics specific to imposed constitution-making, and case studies from Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, and Tunisia to illustrate the specific dynamics of popular constitution-making.
Author: Gary Browning
File Type: pdf
Global theory represents an influential and popular means of understanding contemporary social and political phenomena. Human identity and social responsibilities are considered in a global context and in the light of a global human condition. A global perspective is assumed to be new and to supersede preceding social theory. However, if contemporary global theory is influential, its identity, assumptions and novelty are controversial. Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri scrutinises global theory by examining how contemporary global theorists simultaneously draw upon and critique preceding modern theories. It re-thinks contemporary global ideas by relating them to the social thought of Kant, Hegel and Marx, and in so doing highlights divergent ambiguous aspects of contemporary global theories, as well as the continuing impact of the ideas of Kant, Hegel and Marx.
Author: Hamit Bozarslan
File Type: pdf
Europe has been the chief arena of revolutionary passions since the end of the eighteenth century. During this same period, and right up to the beginning of the twenty-first century, the non-European world, too, has resonated with coup attempts and revolutionary turmoil. How does one begin to understand these revolutionary passions? To what extent are they influenced by European matrices? Have these revolutions also themselves resulted in exportable models? Three French writers look at three continentsLatin America, the Middle East and India and interrogate the revolution, with reference to and dialogue with the definitive work of Francois Furet, who wrote The Passing of an Illusion The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century. Interestingly, the original French book Passions revolutionnaires was written in 1995, just after the fall of the Berlin wall. Whether nationalist, religious, proletarian, international, anti-colonial or simply liberty and equality, whether violent or fought passively, the Revolution as a concept and a fact, whether past, present or future, remains a critical reference point for our societies. **
Author: Michael Rosen
File Type: epub
The incredible story of Emile Zolas escape to London in the aftermath of the scandalous Dreyfus Affair. It is the evening of July 18, 1898 and the world-renowned novelist Emile Zola is on the run. His crime? Taking on the highest powers in the land with his open letter Jaccuseand losing. Forced to leave Paris with nothing but the clothes he is standing in and a nightshirt wrapped in newspaper, Zola flees to England with no idea when he will return. This is the little-known story of Zolas time in exile. Rosen has traced Zolas footsteps from the Gare du Nord to London, examining the significance of this year. The Disappearance of Emile Zola offers an intriguing insight into the mind, the loves, and the politics of the great writer during this tumultuous era in his life.
Author: Ken Gormley
File Type: epub
Shines new light on Americas brilliant constitutional and presidential history, from George Washington to Barack Obama. In this sweepingly ambitious volume, the nations foremost experts on the American presidency and the U.S. Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how each American president has confronted and shaped the Constitution. Each occupant of the officethe first president to the forty-fourthhas contributed to the story of the Constitution through the decisions he made and the actions he took as the nations chief executive. By examining presidential history through the lens of constitutional conflicts and challenges, The Presidents and the Constitution offers a fresh perspective on how the Constitution has evolved in the hands of individual presidents. It delves into key moments in American history, from Washingtons early battles with Congress to the advent of the national security presidency under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, to reveal the dramatic historical forces that drove these presidents to action. Historians and legal experts, including Richard Ellis, Gary Hart, Stanley Kutler and Kenneth Starr, bring the Constitution to life, and show how the awesome powers of the American presidency have been shapes by the men who were granted them. The book brings to the fore the overarching constitutional themes that span this countrys history and ties together presidencies in a way never before accomplished.
Author: Michael Punke
File Type: epub
AN UNFORGETTABLE NOVEL OF REVENGE, SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING LEONARDO DICAPRIOThe year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Trapping beaver, they contend daily with the threat of Indian tribes turned warlike over the white mens encroachment on their land, and other prairie foes--like the unforgiving landscape and its creatures. Hugh Glass is among the Companys finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive.The Companys captain dispatches two of his men to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies, and to give him the respect of a proper burial. When the two men abandon him instead, taking his only means of protecting himself--including his precious gun and hatchet-- with them, Glass is driven to survive by one desire revenge.With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out crawling inch by inch across more than three thousand miles of uncharted American frontier, negotiating predators both human and not, the threat of starvation, and the agony of his horrific wounds. In Michael Punkes hauntingly spare and gripping prose, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.**
Author: Gavin Kennedy
File Type: pdf
A first-rate organizational business plan demands an understanding of the dynamics behind remuneration, joint ventures, partnerships, alliances, major contracts in fact, all of the commercial imperatives that will define success or failure over a five-year (or longer) period. And realizing this plan will involve complex and often multi-level or multi-party negotiations. The scale and context of these negotiations requires a level of strategic awareness because the interests of the parties are more complex, the options more numerous, and the outcomes more critical than at a tactical level. Strategic Negotiation is written for senior executives who provide input to or assessment of their organizations medium or long-term planning process, and who are engaged in implementing any aspects of their organizations plans. Part One focuses on the foundations of strategic negotiation the commercial imperatives - what the organization must do to restructure and resource its operations to achieve commercial success - and the negotiation strategies associated with each. It also explains the logistics of managing complex public and private sector negotiations. Part Two includes the tools for successful negotiation bid strategies techniques for analyzing your position before you start and reassessing it during the negotiation and the negotiation agenda and how to design and compile it. If you are operating at a senior level where negotiations are, by their nature, high value, complex, multi-level and often multi-party, what better guide than Gavin Kennedy, a long-standing world expert on negotiation, and his book Strategic Negotiation? **Review ...an advanced text for people who already have negotiating skills but who need advice on applying those skills...Kennedy does very well at tailoring the content of this text to the needs of his target audience by giving them ample opportunities to apply the information to their individual organizations. - Legal Information ALERT The book is for the senior who provides input to or assessment of their organisations medium or long-term planning processes, and who are engaged in implementing any aspect of their organizations plans. - Educational Book Review India From the Back Cover A first-rate organizational business plan demands an understanding of the dynamics behind remuneration, joint ventures, partnerships, alliances, major contracts in fact, all of the commercial imperatives that will define success or failure over a five-year (or longer) period. And realizing this plan will involve complex and often multi-level or multi-party negotiations. The scale and context of these negotiations requires a level of strategic awareness because the interests of the parties are more complex, the options more numerous, and the outcomes more critical than at a tactical level. Strategic Negotiation is written for senior executives who provide input to or assessment of their organizations medium or long-term planning process, and who are engaged in implementing any aspects of their organizations plans. Part One focuses on the foundations of strategic negotiation the commercial imperatives - what the organization must do to restructure and resource its operations to achieve commercial success - and the negotiation strategies associated with each. It also explains the logistics of managing complex public and private sector negotiations. Part Two includes the tools for successful negotiation bid strategies techniques for analyzing your position before you start and reassessing it during the negotiation and the negotiation agenda and how to design and compile it. If you are operating at a senior level where negotiations are, by their nature, high value, complex, multi-level and often multi-party, what better guide than Gavin Kennedy, a long-standing world expert on negotiation, and his book Strategic Negotiation?
Author: Shafique N. Virani
File Type: pdf
None of that people should be spared, not even the babe in its cradle. With these chilling words, the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan declared his intention to destroy the Ismailis, one of the most intellectually and politically significant Muslim communities of medieval Islamdom. The massacres that followed convinced observers that this powerful voice of Shii Islam had been forever silenced. Little was heard of these people for centuries, until their recent and dramatic emergence from obscurity. Today they exist as a dynamic and thriving community established in over twenty-five countries. Yet the interval between what appeared to have been their total annihilation, and their modern, seemingly phoenix-like renaissance, has remained shrouded in mystery. Drawing on an astonishing array of sources gathered from many countries around the globe, The Ismailis in the Middle Ages A History of Survival, A Search for Salvation is a richly nuanced and compelling study of the murkiest portion of this era. In probing the period from the dark days when the Ismaili fortresses in Iran fell before the marauding Mongol hordes, to the emergence at Anjudan of the Ismaili Imams who provided a spiritual centre to a scattered community, this work explores the motivations, passions and presumptions of historical actors. With penetrating insight, Shafique N. Virani examines the rich esoteric thought that animated the Ismailis and enabled them to persevere. A work of remarkable erudition, this landmark book is essential reading for scholars of Islamic history and spirituality, Shiism and Iran. Both specialists and informed lay readers will take pleasure not only in its scholarly perception, but in its lively anecdotes, quotations of delightful poetry, and gripping narrative style. This is an extraordinary book of historical beauty and spiritual vision.ReviewThe book offers a discerning and sensitive portrayal of the struggle for survival and the spiritual life of a religious community that endured severe persecution and extreme defamation during much of its history. The author in particular succeeds in bringing to light the esoteric spirituality and profound devotion to the living Imam prevalent in the centuries of concealment following the catastrophic Mongol attempt to annihilate Nizari Ismailism, relying on the evidence of fragmentary source material that has only recently been recovered. -- Wilferd Madelung, author of The Succession to MuhammadDrawing on an exhaustive array of Arabic, Persian and South Asian sources as well as the scattered results of modern scholarship on the Ismailis, Virani has produced a comprehensive and readable account of the complex, and often obscure, medieval history of the Nizari Ismailis. This book represents a major contribution to modern Ismaili studies. --Farhad Daftary, author of The Ismailis Their History and DoctrinesIn order to show how the Ismaili Shiis survived the Mongol onslaught of the thirteenth century, Shafique Virani employs a wide variety of sources in many different South-and South west-Asian languages. Some of these sources provide historically useful information only in the most oblique ways, and Viranis great achievement is to tease out meaning from what appear to be intractable materials. The resulting reconstruction of medieval Ismaili history is both scholarly and tender, subtle as well as moving. --Robert Wisnovsky, Director, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill UniversityThis is a masterful reconstruction of the history of the Ismailis of Iran, a minority Shii community that was forced underground in the thirteenth century by intense persecution. Reliable data on the Ismailis has been hard to come by-their libraries were destroyed and their reputations besmirched by hostile propaganda. Through painstaking archival research and careful readings of previously unknown sources, Shafique Virani has significantly revised the traditional accounts of this communitys history. --Ali Asani, author of Ecstasy and Enlightenment The Ismaili Devotional Literatures of South AsiaAbout the AuthorDr. Shafique N. Virani is an Assistant Professor of Historical Studies and the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto.