The United States in Opposition

The United States in Opposition
Author: Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 31
Release: 1977
Genre: United States
ISBN: 9780896330030

A majority of the world's nations believe that there are claims which can be made on individual nation's wealth that are both considerable and threatening to countries such as the United States. This attitude was demonstrated in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1974. It may be argued that this attitude is a result of the British revolution which began in 1947 with the granting of independence to socialist India. The British revolution of the second quarter of the 20th century attracted little attention. While everyone recognized that new states were coming into existence from former European and mostly British colonies, it was not generally perceived that they came to independence with a preexisting stable ideological base which was British socialism. The spread of British socialism to the furthest reaches of the globe, with its ascent to dominance in the highest national councils everywhere, gives worldwide significance to the British revolution. Of the 87 states that have joined the United Nations since its founding, more than one-half (47) had been part of the British empire. Socialism, as it developed in Great Britain was anti-U.S. because the United States was viewed as capitalistic. The United States has not dealt with these new nations successfully because they did not recognize this ideology. At the level of world affairs, the United States has learned to deal with communism; the task is now to learn to deal with socialism. (SM)

The Idea of a Party System

The Idea of a Party System
Author: Richard Hofstadter
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1969
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780520013896

This volume traces the historical processes in thought by which American political leaders slowly edged away from their complete philosophical rejection of a party and hesitantly began to embrace a party system. The author's analysis of the idea of party and the development of legitimate opposition offers fresh insights into the political crisis of 1797-1801, on the thought of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren, and other leading figures, and on the beginnings of modern democratic politics.

Memory, History and Opposition

Memory, History and Opposition
Author: Rubie S. Watson
Publisher: James Currey Publishers
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780852559024

This collection of articles focuses on the contest and contrast between official versions of history and historical events as remembered by actual participants or witnesses. The articles cover socialist regimes in the 20th century.

Political Oppositions in Western Democracies

Political Oppositions in Western Democracies
Author: Robert A. Dahl
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 488
Release: 1966-03-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780300094787

The idea that the opposition has a right to organize and to appeal for votes against the government in elections and in parliament is one of the most important milestones in the development of democratic institutions. Mr. Dahl and nine collaborators analyze the role of the opposition in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. In introductory and concluding chapters, Dahl compares the patterns of opposition in these countries and makes predictions for the future. He carries forward on the basis of this evidence the theory of a pluralistic society he has explored in earlier books such as Who Governs? Mr. Dahl is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His collaborators are Samuel Barnes, Hans Daalder, Frederick Engelmann, Alfred Grosser, Otto Kirchheimer, Val R. Lorwin, Allen Potter, Stein Rokkan, and Nils Stjernquist. "This stately volume is distinguished by several unusual features. First, it straightforwardly focuses on a crucial issue of Comparative Politics without being vitiated by the familiar behaviorist semantics and jargon. Secondly, contrary to the ubiquitous trend in this country, flooded by discussion—more journalistic than scientific—on the emergent states, it centers on constitutional democracy in Western Europe, a region which for a decade and more had been badly neglected by the rampant computerizers. Thirdly, for the ten countries under discussion Professor Dahl was fortunate to enlist the services of genuine experts, the majority of whom are specialists in their field. . . . On the whole the volume is one of the major contributions to Comparative Politics that have appeared in this country for some time. The study of the issue as such as well as of the individual reviews is highly rewarding."—Karl Loewenstein, The Annals.

Governed by a Spirit of Opposition

Governed by a Spirit of Opposition
Author: Jessica Choppin Roney
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-12-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1421415275

"To what extent did the American Revolution involve ordinary people? Historians as notable as Carl Becker and Edmund Morgan famously have asked this question or versions of it, but here Roney approaches it afresh by examining local governance and civic associations in Philadelphia, the largest colonial American city. How did popular participation in charity, schools, the militia, and informal banks prepare people to adopt radical ideas and take to the streets protesting against tyranny in the 1760s and 70s? Roney's GOVERNED BY A SPIRIT OF OPPOSITION will both be an important addition to the current literature on public life in early America, and also to the wider literature on urban governance in the British Atlantic in the eighteenth century. She sheds light on the powerful roles played by men acting in the political and constitutional circumstances of early Philadelphia leading up to the Revolution"--

From Dictatorship to Democracy

From Dictatorship to Democracy
Author: Hamid al-Bayati
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2014-01-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812290380

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Today, Hamid al-Bayati serves as Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations. But for many years he lived in exile in London, where he worked with other opponents of Saddam Hussein's regime to make a democratic and pluralistic Iraq a reality. As former Western spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and as a member of the executive council of the Iraqi National Congress, two of the main groups opposing Saddam's regime, he led campaigns to alert the world to human rights violations in Iraq and win support from the international community for the removal of Saddam. An important Iraqi diplomat and member of Iraq's majority Shia community, he offers firsthand accounts of the meetings and discussions he and other Iraqi opponents to Saddam held with American and British diplomats from 1991 to 2004. Drawn from al-Bayati's personal archives of meeting minutes and correspondence, From Dictatorship to Democracy takes readers through the history of the opposition. We learn the views and actions of principal figures, such as SCIRI head Sayyid Mohammed Baqir Al-Hakeem and the other leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi and his Kurdish counterparts, Masound Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Al-Bayati vividly captures their struggle to unify in the face of not only Saddam's harsh and bloody repression but also an unresponsive and unmotivated international community. Al-Bayati's efforts in the months before and after the U.S. invasion also put him in direct contact with key U.S. figures such as Zalmay Khalilzad and L. Paul Bremer and at the center of the debates over returning Iraq to self-government quickly and creating the foundation for a secure and stable state. Al-Bayati was both eyewitness to and actor in the dramatic struggle to remove Saddam from power. In this unique historical document, he provides detailed recollections of his work on behalf of a democratic Iraq that reflect the hopes and frustrations of the Iraqi people.

Democracy Without Competition in Japan

Democracy Without Competition in Japan
Author: Ethan Scheiner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0521846927

This book explains why no opposition party has been able to offer itself as a sustained challenger in Japan.

It Didn't Happen Here

It Didn't Happen Here
Author: Seymour Martin Lipset
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2000
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780393322545

Why socialism has failed to play a significant role in the United States - the most developed capitalist industrial society and hence, ostensibly, fertile ground for socialism - has been a critical question of American history and political development. This study surveys the various explanations for this phenomenon of American political exceptionalism.