How Exceptional?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Woodcock Tentler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Observance ◽  
American Life ◽  
Western European ◽  
Developed Nations

For roughly two decades after 1945, Catholicism in the United States did indeed look exceptional when compared with most of Western Europe. Rates of mass attendance were high and an increasingly well-educated Catholic population gave strong voluntary support to institutional separatism. But by 1965, signs of what soon became an inexorable decline in religious observance and communal loyalty were evident. If American Catholics can no longer be regarded as ‘exceptional’ when compared with their Western European counterparts, however, they live in a national culture where religion still functions in ways not found in other developed nations. Why Catholic decline occurred in the United States and why, despite that decline, the religious contours of American life are still markedly distinctive are the twin subjects of this chapter.

Immigrant Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Socioeconomic Profile ◽  
Western European ◽  
Social Divide ◽  
Immigrant Religion

This chapter describes how immigrant religion generally has become a more significant social divide, a greater challenge to integration, and a more common source of conflict with mainstream institutions and practices in Western Europe than in the United States. There are three main reasons for this. Of paramount importance are basic demographic facts. The religious backgrounds of immigrants in Western Europe and the United States are different, mostly Christian in the United States as compared to Western Europe, where a large proportion is Muslim. Muslims of immigrant origin in Western Europe also have a lower socioeconomic profile than those in the United States. Moreover, Western European native majorities have more trouble recognizing claims based on religion because they are more secular than religiously involved Americans.

scholarly journals Les politiques ouest-européennes et le dollar : Dépendance nationale ou autonomie régionale

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Story
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
State Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Western European

The lack of autonomy of Western European states, that is, the limitations which they confront in terms of translating their policy preferences into authoritative actions, cannot be considered solely in terms of idiosyncratic domestic political institutions and cultures, or as the result of greater sensibility and vulnerability to interdependence through the flow of goods, capital and technology. The argument develops around the generalisation that during the period of "détente" from 1965 to 1979, the United States, as the world central bank, inflated the world political economy ; thereafter, the questioning of détente accompanied a United States-led policy of world deflation. European politics, in a variety of intricate ways, followed the rythm set by the United States, with a period of state policy activism in the late 1960s to mid-1970s followed by more sceptical attitudes by public officials, supported by conservative or liberal parties, on the limitations of state action. But while it could be argued that the autonomy of OECD European states was strictly limited in economic policy by the integration of national into European and world markets, it is also demonstratable that the most sensitive of these markets - the world financial markets - are most susceptible to state policy, particularly that of the United States. In turn, the influence exerted on government preferences by world financial markets has grown to such an extent that by 1983, Western European governments are all aligning priorities on what are taken to be market criteria. If fact, they are aligning their priorities on the preferences of the great powers in a period of heightened international tension. Thus, the lack of autonomy of Western European states is of political origin: their subordination through lack of continued regional autonomy in defense and finance. Implicitly, this article suggests a move in Western Europe to a confederal armed force and a European Reserve Bank, as the precondition for a revitalised Atlantic alliance.

New Trends and Patterns in Western European Immigration to the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 669 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elyakim Kislev
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Population ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Large Databases ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Western European ◽  
European Immigration ◽  
Number Of Individuals

This study explores the latest changes in Western European immigration to the United States by integrating several large databases: the U.S. census, the American Community Surveys, the European Social Survey, as well as the Human Development Index and Gini index. Findings show that the number of individuals born in Western Europe but with family origins elsewhere who have been immigrating to and settling in the United States is increasing. I divide the Western European population that immigrates to the United States into seven different subpopulations by their ancestries and explore the characteristics of these populations before and after immigrating to the United States. I also examine their relative success in terms of economic and labor outcomes in America, finding, for example, that some of the least advantaged immigrant groups have some of the best economic outcomes in the United States. The different self-selection and assimilation patterns among these immigrants have implications for U.S. public policy, which we identify and begin to explore.

Other Administrative Traditions

2021 ◽  
pp. 154-177
Author(s):  
B. Guy Peters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Central Question ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Western European

The four traditions constituting the bulk of this book are from Western Europe. This chapter expands the analysis to look at four other administrative traditions. One is Central and Eastern Europe. Some countries in this region have been heavily influenced by Western European traditions, especially those of the former Hapsburg Empire, but they also display a number of distinctive features. A second tradition is Islamic administration, which has been influenced both by religion and by national cultures. Third, there is Asian public administration, and the question of the importance of the Confucian model is a central question when dealing with this tradition. Finally, there is administration in Latin America, still influenced by its Iberian past but which has been influenced also by the Napoleonic tradition and to a lesser extent by the United States. The same elements of administrative traditions used in reference to Western European countries are applied to these four traditions.

THE SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SOCIO-POLITICAL DOCTRINE OF LIBERALISM IN THE WESTERN EUROPEAN, AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN TRADITIONS IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES: COMMON AND SPECIAL

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
VADIM ZUBOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Synthetic Methods ◽  
European American ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Right

The article strives to conceptualize the basic ideas of liberalism, free from political sensitivities, emotional judgments and naive simplifications based on different methods and techniques of political and historical science, as well as general scientific approaches - a comparative historical method, a normative approach, an institutional approach, and analytical and synthetic methods. Defects of the interpretation of liberalism in Russia - opposition of “liberals” and “patriots”, domestic perceptions of liberalism as freedom in family, sexual and gender life, reduction of liberalism to the specific historical direction of post-Soviet liberalism are revealed in the paper. Furthermore, the author draws attention to the misunderstanding of liberalism in the United States: one of them refers liberalism to the social democracy, the other equates liberalism with the totalitarian teachings. In the light of the incorrect perception of liberalism in the world, the author formulates the purpose of the work as overcoming the misjudgement of liberalism by overcoming the false appreciation of liberalism by forming a concentrated view of the fundamentals of liberal socio-political teachings based on the views of leading thinkers in Western Europe, the United States of America and Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Which contributed significantly to the development of the fundamentals of liberalism. Predicated on the analysis of the ideas of Western European, American, and Russian liberal thinkers of the past, the author identifies common and special features of the interpretation of liberalism in different parts of the world over two centuries. Finally, the author concludes that the main features of the original liberalism are the basic points of the classical liberalism of the past centuries are the following points: 1) intelligent people should have unconditional personal, political and economic rights independent of the state; 2) there must be a system in the state that promotes justice and limits the state itself; 3) all people have the right to form a state and influences it.

The United States and United Europe

Worldview ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 2-5
Author(s):  
Edwin H. Fedder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Market ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Western European

The current debate concerning the role to be played by the United States with respect to the expanding Common Market is in many ways as unreal as the proverbial angels and pinheads. The unreality stems from the fact that the United States has no choice—we are irrevocably committed to our identification with Western Europe.Despite the level of integration already achieved by the Western European nations, it can still be fashionable in informed circles to minimize the developments which have been leading toward the creation of a United Europe, to say that current plans for unification will come to naught. While it is true that earlier plans failed, there are sound reasons to say that those on the boards now will not.

Anne O. Krueger, Constantine Michalopoulos and Vernon W. Ruttan. Aid and Development. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1989. xiv + 386 pp.Price: U.S. $ 52.00

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-217
Author(s):  
Mir Annice Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
International Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Development Assistance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Low Literacy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

Foreign aid has been the subject of much examination and research ever since it entered the economic armamentarium approximately 45 years ago. This was the time when the Second World War had successfully ended for the Allies in the defeat of Germany and Japan. However, a new enemy, the Soviet Union, had materialized at the end of the conflict. To counter the threat from the East, the United States undertook the implementation of the Marshal Plan, which was extremely successful in rebuilding and revitalizing a shattered Western Europe. Aid had made its impact. The book under review is by three well-known economists and is the outcome of a study sponsored by the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development. The major objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of assistance, i.e., aid, on economic development. This evaluation however, was to be based on the existing literature on the subject. The book has five major parts: Part One deals with development thought and development assistance; Part Two looks at the relationship between donors and recipients; Part Three evaluates the use of aid by sector; Part Four presents country case-studies; and Part Five synthesizes the lessons from development assistance. Part One of the book is very informative in that it summarises very concisely the theoretical underpinnings of the aid process. In the beginning, aid was thought to be the answer to underdevelopment which could be achieved by a transfer of capital from the rich to the poor. This approach, however, did not succeed as it was simplistic. Capital transfers were not sufficient in themselves to bring about development, as research in this area came to reveal. The development process is a complicated one, with inputs from all sectors of the economy. Thus, it came to be recognized that factors such as low literacy rates, poor health facilities, and lack of social infrastructure are also responsible for economic backwardness. Part One of the book, therefore, sums up appropriately the various trends in development thought. This is important because the book deals primarily with the issue of the effectiveness of aid as a catalyst to further economic development.

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

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