Why Reagan was not impeached

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Ling
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
Independent Counsel ◽  
Arms Export ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Congressional Investigations

In the aftermath of Watergate and Vietnam, Congressional investigations uncovered the largely unknown activities of the CIA and other agencies, which included arming and interfering in the domestic politics of regimes in both Central America and Iran. These programmes had also involved supporting reactionary regimes in ways that some saw as drawing the United States into conflicts, like Vietnam, without public knowledge or consent. In 1987, it was revealed that the Reagan administration had operated a clandestine policy in Nicaragua that evaded the restrictions placed upon the executive by the Boland Amendment in terms of aid given to the Nicaraguan Contras and that National Security Council (NSC) staff had lied to Congress and concealed these illegal actions. They had solicited funds from foreign allies and smuggled arms to the Contra insurgents in support of their efforts to topple the Sandinista regime. Contrary to the Arms Export Control Act and to its own publicly stated policy, the administration had also sold arms, particularly missiles, to Iran, which had been branded a sponsor of international terrorism since the Iranian revolution, and which was currently at war with its neighbour, Iraq. Such deals had formed part of ‘arms for hostages’ negotiations that were also contrary to official policy. Finally, it was disclosed that profits from the arms sales had been diverted to fund the Contras and hence to evade Congressional restrictions on funding. This article explores why these illegal actions did not result in President Reagan’s impeachment. It considers the merits of the administration’s claims that this was a ‘rogue operation’ by zealots within the NSC, and the success of its efforts to present Reagan as eager to cooperate with efforts to discover the truth of what had happened. It reviews the interactions between the Tower Commission, Congressional investigations and Office of Independent Counsel probe (Lawrence Walsh) and shows how these contributed to Reagan’s ‘escape’ from impeachment. It reviews the argument that Reagan’s underlying health problems contributed to his lax management of NSC operations and it considers the importance of televised testimony, particularly that of Oliver North, in shaping public opinion in the administration’s favour. Finally, it considers how this significant episode in 1980s politics foreshadowed major trends in US politics that can be seen as culminating in the present, acute partisan divide, Donald Trump’s double impeachment, and a manifest decline in public trust and respect for American political institutions.

scholarly journals De Carter à Reagan : La politique salvadorienne des États-Unis

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-513
Author(s):  
Marie-France Toinet
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Terrorism ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
The Public

Ever since Monroe's doctrine and up to President Carter, the American foreign policy in Latin America has been remarkably continuous both from the point of view of objectives - the maintenance and extension of American influence and domination - and that of the pressures required to attain them - from direct military intervention to economic sanctions, including clandestine activities of destabilization. Carter came to power and from then on that policy rested on different principles which became expressed, particularly in the case of El Salvador, in pressures for the respect of human rights, a temporary suspension of aid from the Interamerican Development Bank and in the immediate recognition of the regime which followed the coup d'État of october 1979 and which made possible a third option between a reactionary dictatorship and a takeover by the Marxists. The principles were once again altered under President Reagan for whom the fight against communism and international terrorism is a priority. Latin America acquired a new strategic importance and El Salvador became the scene of the East-West conflict, the symbol of American determination to contain Soviet expansionism. But Reagan's policy in El Salvador had to be restrained confronted as it was by opposition both internal, from the public, and external through the stand taken by the Allies. In spite of starting doctrinal differences, Carter's and Reagan's policies in El Salvador are very similar, both showing incoherence and inefficiency. They are heirs to a situation and an intellectual tradition which they perpetuate, one clumsily, the other cheerfully. But the failure of the Reagan administration is even more patent than that of its predecessor. The United States have only one alternative left, military intervention or negotiations with the guerilla, and furthermore they risk "losing" El Salvador the Vietnam or the Nicaragua way.

Open-Economy Politics: The Political Economy of the World Coffee Trade. By Robert H. Bates. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. 221p. $59.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-251
Author(s):  
John S. Odell
Keyword(s):  
Open Economy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The World

For three decades political scientists have attempted to show that markets reflect the political institutions and politics within which they function. Also, many scholars have traced states' foreign economic policies to their domestic politics. Open-Economy Politics pushes both these projects forward with an extended case study of the world coffee market. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Robert Bates takes us chronologically through key shifts in policies of the chief coffee trading countries-Brazil, Colombia, and the United States-especially the formation, operation, and collapse of the International Coffee Organization from 1962 through 1982.

The United States and the Iranian Nuclear Programme

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Hurst
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nixon Administration ◽  
Comprehensive Plan ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nuclear Issue ◽  
The Relationship

The United States, Iran and the Bomb provides the first comprehensive analysis of the US-Iranian nuclear relationship from its origins through to the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. Starting with the Nixon administration in the 1970s, it analyses the policies of successive US administrations toward the Iranian nuclear programme. Emphasizing the centrality of domestic politics to decision-making on both sides, it offers both an explanation of the evolution of the relationship and a critique of successive US administrations' efforts to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, with neither coercive measures nor inducements effectively applied. The book further argues that factional politics inside Iran played a crucial role in Iranian nuclear decision-making and that American policy tended to reinforce the position of Iranian hardliners and undermine that of those who were prepared to compromise on the nuclear issue. In the final chapter it demonstrates how President Obama's alterations to American strategy, accompanied by shifts in Iranian domestic politics, finally brought about the signing of the JCPOA in 2015.

Civil sphere and democracy in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
The Everyday

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.

Why Adjudicate?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina L. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Policy Process ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Chinese Intellectual ◽  
Trade War

The World Trade Organization (WTO) oversees the negotiation and enforcement of formal rules governing international trade. Why do countries choose to adjudicate their trade disputes in the WTO rather than settling their differences on their own? This book investigates the domestic politics behind the filing of WTO complaints and reveals why formal dispute settlement creates better outcomes for governments and their citizens. It demonstrates that industry lobbying, legislative demands, and international politics influence which countries and cases appear before the WTO. Democratic checks and balances bias the trade policy process toward public lawsuits and away from informal settlements. Trade officials use legal complaints to manage domestic politics and defend trade interests. WTO dispute settlement enables states and domestic groups to signal resolve more effectively, thereby enhancing the information available to policymakers and reducing the risk of a trade war. The book establishes this argument with data on trade disputes and landmark cases, including the Boeing-Airbus controversy over aircraft subsidies, disagreement over Chinese intellectual property rights, and Japan's repeated challenges of U.S. steel industry protection. The book explains why the United States gains better outcomes for cases taken to formal dispute settlement than for those negotiated. Case studies of Peru and Vietnam show that legal action can also benefit developing countries.

Counterterrorism Between the Wars

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary S. Barton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Independence Movements ◽  
Second World ◽  
The U.S

This is a book about terrorism, weapons, and diplomacy in the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars. It charts the convergence of the manufacture and trade of arms; diplomacy among the Great Powers and the domestic politics within them; the rise of national liberation and independence movements; and the burgeoning concept and early institutions of international counterterrorism. Key themes include: a transformation in meaning and practice of terrorism; the inability of Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, the United States, France—to harmonize perceptions of interest and the pursuit of common interests; the establishment of the tools and infrastructure of modern intelligence—including the U.S.-U.K. cooperation that would evolve into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance; and the nature of peacetime in the absence of major wars. Particular emphasis is given to British attempts to quell revolutionary nationalist movements in India and elsewhere in its empire, and to the Great Powers’ combined efforts to counter the activities of the Communist International. The facilitating roles of the Paris Peace Conference and League of Nations are explored here, in the context of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1919, the Arms Traffic Conference of 1925, and the 1937 Terrorism Convention.

scholarly journals Sports, Transgender Rights and the Bodily Politics of Cisgender Supremacy

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Sharrow
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Legislative Proposals ◽  
Gendered Bodies ◽  
Political Right

Between 2020 and 2021, one hundred and ten bills in state legislatures across the United States suggested banning the participation of transgender athletes on sports teams for girls and women. As of July 2021, ten such bills have become state law. This paper tracks the political shift towards targeting transgender athletes. Conservative political interests now seek laws that suture biological determinist arguments to civil rights of bodies. Although narrow binary definitions of sex have long operated in the background as a means for policy implementation under Title IX, Republican lawmakers now aim to reframe sex non-discrimination policies as means of gendered exclusion. The content of proposals reveal the centrality of ideas about bodily immutability, and body politics more generally, in shaping the future of American gender politics. My analysis of bills from 2021 argues that legislative proposals advance a logic of “cisgender supremacy” inhering in political claims about normatively gendered bodies. Political institutions are another site for advancing, enshrining, and normalizing cis-supremacist gender orders, explicitly joining cause with medical authorities as arbiters of gender normativity. Characteristics of bodies and their alleged role in evidencing sex itself have fueled the tactics of anti-transgender activists on the political Right. However, the target of their aims is not mere policy change but a state-sanctioned return to a narrowly cis- and heteropatriarchal gender order.

Domestic Politics, China's Rise, and the Future of the Liberal International Order

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Jessica Chen Weiss ◽  
Jeremy L. Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Internet Governance ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trade And Exchange ◽  
International Behavior

Abstract With the future of liberal internationalism in question, how will China's growing power and influence reshape world politics? We argue that views of the Liberal International Order (LIO) as integrative and resilient have been too optimistic for two reasons. First, China's ability to profit from within the system has shaken the domestic consensus in the United States on preserving the existing LIO. Second, features of Chinese Communist Party rule chafe against many of the fundamental principles of the LIO, but could coexist with a return to Westphalian principles and markets that are embedded in domestic systems of control. How, then, do authoritarian states like China pick and choose how to engage with key institutions and norms within the LIO? We propose a framework that highlights two domestic variables—centrality and heterogeneity—and their implications for China's international behavior. We illustrate the framework with examples from China's approach to climate change, trade and exchange rates, Internet governance, territorial sovereignty, arms control, and humanitarian intervention. Finally, we conclude by considering what alternative versions of international order might emerge as China's influence grows.

Innovation in Mental Health Policy; Community Mental Health in the United States of America, 1965–1980

1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
C J Smith
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Community Mental Health ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Mental Health Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Centers

The Community Méntal Health Centers (CMHC) legislation in the early 1960s was the first real attempt at a national mental health policy in the United States of America. Federal funding was made available for the establishment of 1500 centers across the country. The goal was to provide access to quality mental health care for all US citizens by 1980. As a result of prolonged criticisms, the legislation was repealed by the incoming Reagan Administration in the early 1980s, In this paper, the twenty-year lifespan of this ‘innovation’ in mental health policy is reviewed and an evaluation of some of its most pervasive criticisms are presented.

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