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IN THIS INTRODUCTORY ARTICLE, THE AUTHOR EXPLORES THE BACKGROUND TO THE EVER INCREASING PHENOMENON OF STATE GOVERNMENTS TAKING ON RESPONSIBILITY FOR PROVIDING EQUITY AND SERVICES FOR "DISTRESSED" PEOPLE. THE DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE GROWING "UNDERCLASS" ARE EXPLORED AS ARE THE DIFFERENT METHODS STATES UTILIZE TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEMO.

Slavery is one of the darkest, most complicated parts of American History. This volume presents the facts of the "abominable trade" from its beginnings in the West Indies to its expansion across the British North American colonies, and eventually, the United States. Readers will learn about the horrors of the Middle Passage and life on a plantation, as well as slavery's effect on the economy and politics of the United States. This book also covers the abolitionist and civil rights movements along the road to racial equality. Primary sources are used to give readers a sense of life in colonial America and the United States, and connect them to the issues that existed

Preface The United States provides a classic example of a bottom-up system of federalism. It was created in 1787 when representatives of the then 13 colonies convened to ratify a constitution under which both the central government and the states would be sovereign entities. Within certain constitutional and statutory constraints, state governments thus (1) develop and execute their budgets without review and modification by the federal government, (2) determine their own revenue structures and levels and types of expenditures, and (3) borrow and manage debt. The U.S. system stands in contrast with nearly all other top-down nation-states in which the established central government constitutionally or legislatively assigns expenditure responsibilities and revenue raising authority to subnational units of government.* State fiscal decisions have a significant impact on this nation's economy. Together, with their more than 90,000 local governments, states account for almost 12 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 60 percent of all government expenditures.

This essay compares the logic of states and the logic of markets in the management of cultural diversity. On the one hand, the economic logic of markets leads to an encouragement of a "soft" cultural diversity associated with the marketing of exoticism in music, the arts and cuisine, for example. On the other hand, the liberal states are trapped between their willingness to recognize some form of diversity and their fear of seeing social cohesion harmed by this recognition. In other words, the essay applies Hollified's hypothesis about the liberal paradox in immigration policy to the sphere of cultural diversity in post-immigration situations. (Original abstract)