The Causes and Consequences of Divided Government
Essay - 6 pages - Political science
Divided party control of government occurs when at least one House of Congress is controlled by a party to which the President does not belong. Much of the most popular research on divided government was done prior to the 1994 elections, when the Republicans took control of the House of...
The construction of the modern State
Essay - 11 pages - Political science
'Man is by nature a political animal', arguing on that Aristolte induced the existence of political communities. Men lived in communities for decades. However, man's living condition has changed with the passage of time. One landmark change was in his environment. Each evolution was a...
The influence of oil on the politics and the stability of the states in the Middle East
Essay - 6 pages - Political science
As it is argued by Raymond Hinnenbush, "The core periphery struggle over oil has been a dominant theme in the region's politics from the overthrow of Iran's Mossadeq to the formation of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to the second Gulf war." The discovery of oil...
An in-depth analysis of the role of the Brazilian state in its economic development
Essay - 12 pages - Political science
The third world is a subject which has caused much ink. Several features can be found as economic problems, political instability, authoritarian regimes. However, some countries as the tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong-Kong) succeed in dealing with their economic and political...
The impact of globalization of French politics
Essay - 6 pages - Political science
According to Manuel Castells, the pre-globalization state used to shape society, and identities, but this is no longer true because the state has lost power over space and time. The equilibrium has been upset by the sudden growth of the flows of goods, capital, information, services and...
How can rising levels of abstention in national elections be explained?
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
With 66.5% participation at the first round of the French municipal elections last month, we notice that the number of voters has slightly diminished since the last municipal elections that took place in 2001 (67.4%) and that those figures come within the scope of the continuous diminution of...
The Politics of Privacy
Essay - 3 pages - Political science
Eastern European Communist regimes deemed it necessary to cultivate a high degree of state discipline in their societies. Much of the public life and social engagement of the populace operated through mechanisms of surveillance and control. Authors and scholars have argued that the regimes...
Dreams and reality: the Kurdish issue
Essay - 3 pages - Political science
The current Turkish incursion into Northern Iraq, within the framework of the struggle against the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK and its activities, is reflective of the strength of the tensions at the border between Iraq and Turkey, as well as the stakes underlying the Kurdish issue. The...
It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way around
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
This essay will argue the case in favour of the statement that “it is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way around.” Ironically, the difficulties in doing so are also encountered by those who disagree with the statement. In the first place, there has yet to be any...
The Neo-Conservative emphasis on the need for order -and for the clear demarcation of the 'enemy'- is the only realistic option for liberal societies in the era of fundamentalism'. Discuss.
Essay - 7 pages - Political science
It is time to step out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman and have to shape global environment. I think we have to shape the world better in our own image, and be more aggressive. Boot (2002) refers here to Americans, or America as a nation. As a...
The Status of Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
Essay - 7 pages - Political science
As Ilan Pelec warned in the Preface of his book, Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza, Legacy and Politics (p.12), the question of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remains a controversial one, and a balanced analysis is hard to conduct. The two camps, Pro-Israeli and...
Are the Nordic countries as egalitarian as is often claimed regarding the positions of men and women?
Essay - 9 pages - Political science
In matters of gender equality, the Nordic countries are often regarded as pioneers in promoting the same. They enjoy the reputation of having achieved gender equality much more closely than most of the other countries in the world, and they are often seen as path breakers regarding the promotion...
The construction of a national identity: the case of France
Essay - 7 pages - Political science
According to Ernest Renan, in Qu'est ce qu'une nation, "Nations are not eternal. They had a beginning and they will have an end". While the opposite assumption is widespread, nations are in fact recent in the human history. They are younger than their official histories that the...
Russian rule, Nationalism and Independence, 1860 - 1930: Latvia, Poland and Finland
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
In 1860, the Latvians, the Poles and the Finns had witnessed different developments. Latvia belonged to the Russian Empire since the end of the 18th century, but the Baltic Germans continued to hold power locally and enjoyed a great economical and social hegemony over the country. In Poland, the...
Interest groups in the EU's social policy
Essay - 7 pages - Political science
In order to create appropriate and legitimate policies, the European Union's institutions maintain relationships with the civil society, which take different forms. Interest groups are one of these intermediary organizations that link European institutions and the citizens of the EU. Indeed,...
Church and State in Franco´s Spain
Essay - 14 pages - Political science
“In the last sixty years the mutation of the Spanish Catholic Church has been extraordinary. It is as though we had been watching a play of several act, complete with changes of scenery, of the plot and of the personality of the characters and even the emotional tone: furious in the...
Race relations (in UK and in France)
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
The racial relations in a country are often problematic. The United Kingdom and France are not exceptions about it, even if for a long time Great Britain was considered as a model to reconcile races in a state. That perhaps explains why this subject is very interesting. This article will make a...
What is the role of the Equal Rights Amendment?
Essay - 4 pages - Political science
The Equal Rights Amendment, better known as the ERA, is an amendment requiring that both sexes be treated equally under the law. It has been a matter of heated debate and battle for the last 83 years. The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923; three years after the 19th Amendment had...
What is the role of IO's - IGO's and NGO's - regarding hostage takings and kidnappings in the world?
Essay - 7 pages - Political science
Today hostage taking is considered as a crime or as a terrorist act. Indeed, hostage taking is one of the many ways of action of the terrorists because, by this way, they can put pressure on States and thus obtain an important media coverage. The hostage taking is one of the favourite ways of...
How useful are Marxist theories of Capitalist world hegemony?
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
Even if the word "hegemony? linguistically comes from the Greek "egemon? meaning leader or ruler, one can find the roots of this word in Marxist thought as it was first used by Russian Social-Democrats from the late 1890's through the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Nevertheless, since the...
Present first the background for the present security arrangements in the Nordic countries. Discuss then whether the tendency is towards greater similarities or differences between the Nordic countries
Essay - 9 pages - Political science
“Since 1720, all the Nordic countries have remained minor powers on the international stage. As such, the Nordic states have had to adapt to the constraints that are usually beyond their control.” This statement could summarize the geopolitical situation which has shaped the security...
Case study: To what extent did the democratization process cause Côte d'Ivoire to collapse?
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
Between 1960 and 1990, Côte d'Ivoire was regarded as a model of state stability and state efficiency. But in 2002 the Ivorian State completely collapsed. At the same time the level of democracy in Côte d'Ivoire went up between 1990 and 2002, leading the country from a paternalistic...
Did the Catholic Church play a leading part during World War II?
Essay - 13 pages - Political science
The question of the part played by the Catholic Church during World War II is highly controversial. Historiography maintained its silence about this subject for quite a number of years. However, during the years 1964-1965, the Pope Pius XII had been the subject of numerous campaigns of...
The impact of the American values on the population's humanitarian involvement
Essay - 2 pages - Political science
When I think of American culture and civilization, the first observation that strikes me is the power of the American values. I used to think that the Americans and the French shared exactly the same views on most of things but after having spent a semester studying with students and teachers...
Cosmopolitanism according to Kant, Negri, and Hardt
Essay - 4 pages - Political science
What is cosmopolitanism? The etymology of the word goes back to Ancient Greek, and is composed of the words kosmos, world, and polites, citizen. Cosmopolitanism should therefore be a theory of world politics, of a world in which a single shared political order would rule and of which every...
Calhoun, Tocqueville, and Lincoln on the tyranny of the majority
Essay - 7 pages - Political science
As the virtues and advantages of democracy were rediscovered at the end of the eighteenth century, so were its defects and drawbacks. Most authors, including Tocqueville, were faced with an empirical and theoretical vacuum in describing this new regime which began to rise in America and in France...
Saint-Malo and the birth of common european security and defense policy
Essay - 9 pages - Political science
The European defense department has a long history, and has been through many ups and downs. The Western European Union's (WEU) the first attempt at a common European alliance was superseded by NATO. The EDC (European defense Community) was another attempt at a unified European Defense which...
"Almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all their obligations almost all of the time": Discuss
Essay - 5 pages - Political science
"Almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all their obligations almost all of the time". This is the statement made by Louis Henkin, a prominent international lawyer and an influential scholar in the field of the international law, in his book entitled How...
How do different Marxists understand the issues of social cohesion and consent?
Essay - 8 pages - Political science
Although highly criticized, and sometimes even demonized, the Marxist thought represented one of the most serious challenges to the cultural hegemony of capitalism and parliamentary democracy. Marx and his followers attempted to understand and deconstruct this complex system of economic...
What is state terrorism? How would it be possible to differ it from authoritarian policies of states to enforce law and order?
Essay - 6 pages - Political science
The term state terrorism is of topical interest since the 1970s. Originally, it was used by the USSR during the Cold War era to describe the Operation Condor in South America. This strategy of massive repression of left-winged insurrectionary movements, led by the most authoritarian regimes of...
