Europe, the United States and the Middle East: a Case Study in Comparative Policy Making

1983 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Allen ◽  
Michael Smith
1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-62
Author(s):  
Laurie Mailloux

Arriving at the Kathmandu airport in May of 1979 for my first overseas assignment at an AID Mission, I repeated a question that I had been asking myself since I learned of my Nepal assignment. How is an anthropologist who is trained as an Arabist, who has done major field work in the Middle East and Arabic speaking communities in the United States, going to function effectively in Nepal? Prior to my arrival, I had made fleeting rationalizations that my consultancy for the Ford Foundation in India in 1976 had given me a preliminary introduction to "Asian culture." But most of all I clung to the belief that anthropology, as the study of humankind, transcends the interests of any particular village, nation or culture, and that by virtue of its comparative/universalist perspective, teaches us how to evaluate facts about human nature in all societies.


Author(s):  
Peter Sluglett

This chapter examines how the Cold War affected the states of the Middle East. More specifically, it considers the evidence of which factors drove regional developments and how it has been contested by both international relations and regional scholars. After providing an overview of the immediate origins of the Cold War, the chapter discusses the role played by oil during the Cold War. It then analyses early manifestations of the rivalry between the Soviets and the United States in Greece, Turkey, and Iran at the beginning of the Cold War, and uses Iraq as a case study of the changing nature of the relations between a Middle Eastern state and both superpowers from the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Finally, it evaluates the overall impact of the Cold War on the Middle East as a whole.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Elizabeth Graue ◽  
Bethany Wilinski ◽  
Amato Nocera

The opposing principles of local control and increased standardization are a prominent tension in the United States’ education system. Since at least the early 1990s, this tension has taken shape around the accountability movement, defined by educational reforms that hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for performance on new standards, assessments, and curricula. While many scholars have examined the manifestations of the current accountability movement, few have looked at this phenomenon within the growing public preK movement. Drawing from interviews with state policymakers and district-level actors, this paper describes how the seemingly contradictory principles of local control and increased state and national standards (what we refer to simply as standardization) are shaping the policy and practice of Wisconsin’s preK system, known as 4K. We argue that rational models of policy making fail to explain the coexistence and blending of the strands of local control and standardization we found in our data, and suggest that Deborah Stone’s (2001) policy paradox provides a better theoretical framework for our findings.


Author(s):  
Rachel Grob ◽  
Mark Schlesinger

Individuals experience illness and healthcare in diverse ways. Advocates striving to create system change, however, typically simplify representations of patient experience. These ‘crafted’ public narratives better accord with journalists’ ideals of compelling, coherent, attention-grabbing stories. But condensing diverse experiences into univocal narratives has costs: some patients’ voices are silenced, and vital ethical issues are overlooked. This chapter uses a case study of advocacy around newborn screening (NBS) to explore the origins and implications of crafted public narratives. It traces the emergence of a single ‘urgency narrative’ used by advocates to promote expanded screening and compares its impact on media coverage and policy-making across the United States and among five English-speaking nations. It shows that crafted narratives are most influential in countries where NBS policies are set subnationally, since geographic variation both fosters advocates’ search for compelling narratives and makes those narratives more evocative, enhancing their impact on policy-making.


2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami E. Baroudi

This article considers how Arab intellectuals represent the United States and American foreign policy in their editorial contributions to Arabic newspapers. As a case study, it examines Arab intellectuals' reactions to the George W. Bush Administration's campaign to effect democratic change in the Middle East, as articulated in the Administration's 2004 Greater Middle East Initiative (hereafter GMEI or Initiative). I argue that the predominantly hostile reactions to the GMEI stemmed mainly from a closed and negative image of the United States permeating Arab intellectual circles. This negative image is the product of the history of American policy towards the region and, equally important, of the beliefs, values, and formative experiences of Arab intellectuals. The article concludes by addressing ways to ameliorate this image.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omran Ali

This research seeks to critically analyze the international efforts, particularly the United States of America, in transforming authoritarian and non-democratic states into democratic ones, and clarify to what extent the US seeks to achieve real democratic change in non-democratic countries, especially Iraq, and whether their main goal is to achieve stability and their vital interests or democratic change and reform. It argues that although spreading democracy and human rights in the Middle East has become, especially after the end of the Cold War, one of the main goals of the US, but, in reality, the US is not ready to sacrifice its vital interests in the region at the expense of spreading democratic values, as well as reducing its strong security and economic relations with its non-democratic allies, or even applying the required pressure on them. Consequently, this increases doubts about the credibility and seriousness of the US in achieving its goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.


2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document