New Mexico and the Central Great Plains in the Civil War

This chapter investigates campaigns of the American Civil War in New Mexico Territory and the Great Plains. It contends that the U.S. federal government fought a multifront war during the 1860s that spanned the Confederate South and the American states and territories of the Far West. The war in the Far West aimed to establish U.S. territorial sovereignty and political authority over the nation’s vast North American empire. Across the 1860s, federal officials sought to defend the West against Confederate invaders, compel Native Americans to submit to U.S. rule, force Spanish Mexican citizens to give up systems of Indian slavery and peonage, and rein in rogue White Americans living in federal territories. Federal officials, however, often lacked the political clout or military force to achieve these goals. The Civil War in the Far West reveals the unevenness and weakness of the American state in the mid-nineteenth century.

Making a Case

Outside of the Bible, all of the known Near Eastern law collections were produced in the third to second millennia BCE, in cuneiform on clay tablets, and in major cities in Mesopotamia and in the Hittite Empire. None of the five major sites in Syria to have yielded cuneiform tablets has borne even a fragment of a law collection, despite the fact that several have yielded ample legal documentation. Excavations at Nuzi have turned up numerous legal documents, but again, no law collection. Even Egypt has not yielded a collection of laws. As such, the biblical blocks that scholars regularly identify as law collections would represent the only “western,” non-cuneiform expressions of the genre in the ancient Near East, produced by societies not known for their political clout, and separated in time from the “other” collections by centuries. Making a Case challenges the long-held notion that Israelite and Judahite scribes either made use of older law collections or set out to produce law collections in the Near Eastern sense of the genre. Rather, Milstein suggests that what we call “biblical law” is closer in form and function to a different and oft-neglected Mesopotamian genre: legal-pedagogical texts. In the course of their education, Mesopotamian scribes copied a variety of legal-oriented school texts: sample contracts, fictional cases, sequences of non-canonical law, and legal phrasebooks. When “biblical law” is viewed in the context of these legal-pedagogical texts, its practical roots in legal exercises begin to emerge.

International Organization as Technocratic Utopia

As climate change and a pandemic pose enormous challenges to humankind, the concept of expert governance gains new traction. This book revisits the idea that scientists, bureaucrats, and lawyers, rather than politicians or diplomats, should manage international relations. It shows that this technocratic approach has been a persistent theme in writings about international relations, both academic and policy-oriented, since the 19th century. The technocratic tradition of international thought unfolded in four phases which were closely related to domestic processes of modernization and rationalization. The pioneering phase lasted from the Congress of Vienna to the First World War. In these years, philosophers, law scholars, and early social scientists began to combine internationalism and ideals of expert governance. Between the two world wars, a utopian period followed that was marked by visions of technocratic international organizations that would have overcome the principle of territoriality. In the third phase, from the 1940s to the 1960s, technocracy became the dominant paradigm of international institution-building. That paradigm began to disintegrate from the 1970s onwards, but important elements remain until the present day. The specific promise of technocratic internationalism is its ability to transform violent and unpredictable international politics into orderly and competent public administration. Such ideas also had political clout. This book shows how they left their mark on the League of Nations, the functional branches of the United Nations system, and the European integration project.

Integrated ageing : an architectural strategy for the ageing baby boomers

The Baby Boomer generation has exerted significant influence within Canadian society. This power will continue to strengthen as Baby Boomers will redefine their lives in their golden years. The sheer volume of this generation has continuously affected economic and political clout, which constantly alters society. The current model of traditional institutional care, which keeps the elderly apart from their community to receive additional healthcare, will no longer be a suitable option for the Baby Boomers. As such, an investigation into an alternative solution for senior living is needed in order to provide an adequate environment to support this powerful and diverse elderly Baby boomer generation. This thesis establishes architectural strategies that address the fundamental theory that encourages ageing in a place within the community, allowing for a "society for all ages." This thesis also identifies how architecture can reduce the reliance of formal care through providing social connectivity within an intergenerational setting, which promotes independence and community support. The result is an architectural exploration reinterpreting the way we design for the ageing Baby Boomer population by creating unique spatial relationships that provide the opportunity for the community to engage in social activities.

Integrated ageing : an architectural strategy for the ageing baby boomers

The Baby Boomer generation has exerted significant influence within Canadian society. This power will continue to strengthen as Baby Boomers will redefine their lives in their golden years. The sheer volume of this generation has continuously affected economic and political clout, which constantly alters society. The current model of traditional institutional care, which keeps the elderly apart from their community to receive additional healthcare, will no longer be a suitable option for the Baby Boomers. As such, an investigation into an alternative solution for senior living is needed in order to provide an adequate environment to support this powerful and diverse elderly Baby boomer generation. This thesis establishes architectural strategies that address the fundamental theory that encourages ageing in a place within the community, allowing for a "society for all ages." This thesis also identifies how architecture can reduce the reliance of formal care through providing social connectivity within an intergenerational setting, which promotes independence and community support. The result is an architectural exploration reinterpreting the way we design for the ageing Baby Boomer population by creating unique spatial relationships that provide the opportunity for the community to engage in social activities.

Zimbabwean gold mining faces more elite manipulation

Significance However, sectoral mismanagement and elite-level corruption has meant that this resource is allegedly enriching a handful of politically connected individuals, while impoverishing many and destabilising swathes of the country. The government has recently begun dismantling the sole trader of gold in the country, Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR), seemingly offering a boost to the local gold market. Impacts Most gold will continue to be smuggled out of the country, depriving citizens and the state of crucial revenues. Zimbabwe will not reach the 40-tonne-per-year production target set by the government by 2023. Gold militias controlled by political elites will be an increasingly important source of political clout in moments of crisis.

The Political Dynamics of Corporate Tax Avoidance: The Chinese Experience

In China's political selection system, officials capable of growing local economies are reward-ed with promotions. Eager to demonstrate economic achievements, newly appointed local lead-ers may raise tax revenues to expand fiscal expenditures on infrastructure projects. Against this backdrop, we study how political appointments influence local firms' tax planning. Based on a sample of locally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs), we find firms decrease their tax avoidance after new leaders take office. The political-turnover effect on these firms' tax positions is more evident when the incoming leaders have more political clout over SOE managers, the incentives to divert resources are stronger, or politician-manager networks are present, and subsides following the launch of the anticorruption campaign. Furthermore, firms with higher post-turnover tax payments subsequently receive more government contracts or subsidies. Overall, our findings suggest political incentives shape the tax-planning activities of SOE managers in a "two-way favor exchange" manner.

Social penumbras predict political attitudes

To explain the political clout of different social groups, traditional accounts typically focus on the group’s size, resources, or commonality and intensity of its members’ interests. We contend that a group’s penumbra—the set of individuals who are personally familiar with people in that group—is another important explanatory factor that merits systematic analysis. To this end, we designed a panel study that allows us to learn about the characteristics of the penumbras of politically relevant groups such as gay people, the unemployed, or recent immigrants. Our study reveals major and systematic differences in the penumbras of various social groups, even ones of similar size. Moreover, we find evidence that entering a group’s penumbra is associated with a change in attitude on group-related policy questions. Taken together, our findings suggest that penumbras are pertinent for understanding variation in the political standing of different groups in society.

The Wind from the North

No Western European country experienced liberation at such a slow pace as Italy. The Allied landing on Sicily occurred twenty months before the final liberation of Northern Italy in late April 1945. As a result, the evolution of antifascist resistance activism underwent a contradictory development unique in Western Europe. The official Roman government administering liberated Italy and Rome-based coordinating bodies of the resistance operating in the North performed the role of a break on the radical dynamic of antifascist activism in Italy’s North. In parts of Central and Northern Italy, the social power and political clout of Liberation Committees became all-important counterpowers to traditional political authorities, far exceeding the radical dynamics which had propelled French Liberation Committees into the limelight of their day. Virtually all of Northern Italy was liberated by antifascist activists in advance of the arrival of Allied troops moving north.

Comparing Isaac Butt and John Redmond

Redmond is traditionally associated with Charles Stewart Parnell, whom he replaced at the head of the small Parnellite faction following the split of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1890. More recently Redmond has been compared to Edward Carson in an attempt to highlight that, despite being political opponents, both men also shared much in common. Redmond might have succeeded Parnell as one of the senior figures of the Irish Home Rule movement and yet historians concur that he ‘did not resemble his erstwhile hero and mentor […] either in his power or in his style of leadership’. Beyond the question of leadership and political clout, it may also be suggested that Parnell was not the only figure that played an influence in shaping Redmond’s ideas and discourse. In a 2014 paper, Colin Reid contended that ‘[w]hile the Parnellite strand of John Redmond’s political leanings has received considerable attention in recent years, his Buttite inheritance remains to be explored by historians, shaping as it did his conciliatory rhetoric, imperial sensibilities and openness to a federalist solution’. Our proposed paper intends to further explore this suggestion and compare Isaac Butt and John Redmond. Personal lives, historiography and the questions of Home Rule, federalism and empire will be focused upon.