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Few issues have proven more contentious in American politics during recent decades than immigration. Although there is wide agreement that the existing immigration system is "broken," major policy reform poses enormous political perils for presidents and congressional leaders. The internal conflicts within the Republican and Democratic Parties are at least as great as those between rival partisans. The obstacles to reform are especially daunting when focused on illegal immigration and the status of unauthorized immigrants. This article explains why immigration policymaking is so politically divisive, and how illegal immigration in particular makes even basic problem definition difficult, focusing on the role of rival ideas and interests, elusive coalition-building, widespread cynicism over past implementation failures, an expanded scope of conflict, and flawed policy alternatives. It also illuminates how the Clinton and Bush administrations formulated strategic responses to pressures for immigration reform. The implications of recent immigration reform politics are striking: Whereas Clinton translated its lethargy and defensive opportunism on immigration policy into consequential electoral gains for the Democrats among Latinos and Asians, Bush's vigorous advocacy produced a rebellious and unmanageable party base and further eroded support for the Republican Party among new immigrant voters and kindred ethnics. Significantly, the Obama administration is almost certain to have far fewer degrees of freedom on immigration than its recent predecessors.

Globalisation and the political process of European integration opened the European Union member states to one another. As different EU member states have different languages, participation in globalisation and the process of European integration is dependent on Europeans' ability to speak the languages of others. Those who speak multiple languages can more easily come into contact with citizens of other countries, conduct business and diplomacy, cooperate academically, organise protests across national boundaries, or enter into romantic relations with them. In short, they can socialise transnationally in a number of different dimensions. Those who only speak their native language are, in contrast, tied to their home country and can only take slight advantage of the perks of a united Europe and a globalised world. Possessing transnational linguistic capital is a deciding factor in whether or not someone can participate in an emerging European society; it becomes a new measure of social inequality, a resource that can either lead to societal inclusion or exclusion. The question central to our study is to what degree citizens in the twentyseven EU member states possess transnational linguistic capital and how to explain the differences in multilingualism both between and within the member states. We present a general explanatory model for foreign language proficiency, create hypotheses from this model and test them empirically. Drawing on a survey conducted in twenty‐seven European countries it can be shown that the peoples' ability to speak different languages can be very well predicted with the help of the different explanatory factors. We find that country size, the prevalence of a respondent's native language, the linguistic difference between one's mother tongue and the foreign language, and age affect language acquisition negatively, whereas a country's level of education has a positive influence. Using Bourdieu's theory of social class, we show that besides other factors a respondent's social class position and the level of education are important micro‐level factors that help to increase a person's transnational linguistic capital. One must put these results in the context of the state of the art. The analysis of multilingualism is a major topic in linguistics, psychology, and education. The societal conditions in which language learners are embedded are hardly taken into account in these studies. This would not be worth discussing any further if sociology was not relevant to multilingualism; but the contrary seems to be true. Our analysis shows that the neglected societal conditions are actually of central importance in determining transnational linguistic capital.

So much attention has recently been focused on social mobility that one could be forgiven for thinking that it is a key measure of a good society. The reality is somewhat different, as this article explores. Certainly the mainstream political parties in the UK are all for social mobility. They express concern at the evidence that mobility between social classes in Britain has levelled off; and some of them are also troubled by the more contested evidence that there is now less mobility up and down the income ladder than there used to be. But what exactly do politicians and academics mean when they talk about social mobility? And is a more socially mobile society as achievable - or even as desirable - as many seem to think? Adapted from the source document.

"The largest and most important country in Latin America, Brazil was the first to succumb to the military coups that struck that region in the 1960s and the early 1970s. In this authoritative study, Thomas E. Skidmore, one of America's leading experts on Latin America and, in particular, on Brazil, offers the first analysis of more than two decades of military rule, from the overthrow of Joco Goulart in 1964, to the return of democratic civilian government in 1985 with the presidency of Josi Sarney. A sequel to Skidmore's highly acclaimed Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964, this volume explores the military rule in depth ... Skidmore's study provides insight into the nature of this transition in Brazil and what it may tell about the fate of democracy in the Third World."--Publisher description

The prospect of a united Muslim world has long inspired both dreams and fears. Many Muslims regard the pan-Islamic community, the umma, as the embodiment of the spiritual kinship of the faith, but it has also often been assumed to be inherently antagonistic to adherents of other faiths. Questions over relations with the Other are mirrored by debates over what constitutes the acceptable contours of Islamic doctrine itself. Indeed, the umma has had variant and contested meanings over time, and divergent perspectives on its inclusiveness or exclusiveness and whether it must have concrete or institutional form have become acute. The rise of jihadist movements has especially brought these related issues to the fore, with the targeting of external and internal 'enemies' presented as part of a purifying and defensive mission to rescue the umma from its current degradation. The anthem of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), 'My Umma, Dawn Has Appeared', extols Muslims to give up this life in order to revive the umma and assure victory for Islam. The idea of the umma, so central and yet so elusive, has taken on a talismanic quality

AbstractIrrespective of the level of government, public officials increasingly face the challenge of evaluating and making choices between more instruments. Agencies are intended to be a new and different type of governance instrument offering prospects for stronger input from experts, greater transparency and depoliticised decisions. Using 'legitimacy' as the framework, this study compares an agency (European Aviation Safety Agency) to comitology and its predecessor (a sui generis intergovernmental regulatory network). Although EASA is often heralded as a major change, the conclusions here are that its predecessor was quite effective and that comitology has been greatly improved and could have been explored as alternative instrument. Therefore, the agency solution was neither unavoidable nor necessarily better.

Three sets of problems are outlined involving the demand for acknowledgment of Islamic symbolism & practices in Europe: the relationship of religion & state, Islam & liberal democracy; & religious & cultural pluralism. It seems that it is one of the great political challenges to reconcile the basic principles of democracy, such as individual freedom of religion & gender equality, without hierarchical organization. The contributions to this journal define the broad field of political & social preoccupation with the public-political role of Islam -- the question of representation of Islam in western European print media, the problem of regulating Islamic headscarves, the construction of religious identities within the context of integration policies, as well as the formation of Islamic religious education at public schools. References. E. Sanchez