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The US welfare system is a disaster. The federal government alone spends well more than $600 billion each year on more than 120 different antipoverty programs. Add in another $284 billion of welfare spending at the state and local levels, and you have almost $1 trillion of government spending on welfare -- more than $20,000 for every poor person in America (Tanner 2012). That's a lot of money and a lot of bureaucracy. All of which might be excusable if the welfare state were effective at doing what it was supposed to do -- helping the poor escape poverty. But it isn't. In this essay, the author wants to defend a more ambitious claim. Though he still believe that libertarians should regard the basic-income guarantee (BIG) as a sound political compromise, he does not think that they should regard it merely as a compromise. Instead, they should see the BIG as an essential part of an ideally just libertarian system. Adapted from the source document.

This article illustrates that trust in state government varies considerably across states. Using newly available public opinion data, the authors investigate the effects of political polarization, corruption, income inequality, unemployment, state fiscal conditions, median income, ideology, state size, tax rates, and social capital on differences in trust in state government. A number of these variables have statistically significant effects on trust in state government, including state fiscal conditions, unemployment, state ideology, and corruption. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for policy makers and elected officials.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). In doing so, Iran has appeared to be unfazed by the prospect of allying with Russia and China, two countries which have systematically suppressed their Muslim minorities for decades. Similarly, the SCO's Central Asian member states are led by individual leaders who are generally believed to rule in spite of their populations. As a result, Iran's eagerness to join the SCO may appear to contradict its self-promoted image as the champion of Muslim interests, but in reality it sits nicely within its overarching enmity for the USA. Indeed, the SCO is seen as a geopolitical counterweight to the USA. For Iran, this geopolitical opportunity overrides ideological imperatives, with the gap between ideology and geopolitics most evident under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines the changing nature of the connection between citizens, party members and elites in the creation of party policy through the theoretical prism of individualisation. Using qualitative case studies of recent policy-making initiatives in the Australian Labor Party and the UK Labour Party, the article develops a new model of policy transferal that is not built upon the mass-party model of parliamentary politics, but rather upon organisational evolutions such as community consultations, online participation and supporters' networks. These evolutions, or reforms, typically emphasise the individuality of policy-making and accountability, promote new technologies for facilitating decision-making, and attempt to engage with a new style of politically active citizen. Each of these developments carries implications for how political parties facilitate participation, accountability and responsiveness in modern forms of representative democracy. Adapted from the source document.

This paper examines the 15-point agreement on normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Two mainstream discourses have prevailed since the agreement was ratified by both countries: on one hand, the Government of Kosovo has branded this agreement as historic, given the fact that in the last century no agreement has ever been reached between Kosovo and Serbia. On the other hand, Kosovo's political opposition has critiqued this agreement stressing that the 15-point agreement devastates Kosovo's statehood. Beyond both extreme stances, we argue that an enhanced autonomy for four northern Serb municipalities ought to be seen as a tool for integration, rather than disintegration of Kosovo statehood. This paper concludes that the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia as a top-down arrangement lacks transparency, and this might jeopardize the achievements reached through this process. Moreover, the EU position should be clearly articulated that redrawing and rearranging the borders of Kosovo and Serbia might overturn the EU's and USA's immense investments in stability, peace, and prosperity in the Western Balkans.

The framework agreement reached in early April between the UN '5 plus 1' group and Iran has won general approval internationally, except in Israel and among Binyamin Netanyahu's Republican Party claque in Washington, where such was never expected. What this agreement also does is point the way toward an isolated and disempowered US, depending on the choices it makes. In the author's view, the importance of the Iran nuclear issue has always been vastly exaggerated. Even if Tehran possessed nuclear weapons, these would be of no strategic value other than that which Israel has attributed to them, in the hope that the US would do to Iran what it did in 2003 to Iraq, invade and destroy it. That would leave Israel the only significant military power in the Middle East. Hence it is perfectly possible that a Security Council would agree to the outcome of the present negotiations and lift the sanctions now imposed upon Iran, leaving the US to its national peculiarities and solitary solidarity with Israel. Adapted from the source document.