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Modern America owes the Roman Empire for more than gladiator movies and the architecture of the nation's Capitol. It can also thank the ancient republic for some helpful lessons in globalization. So argues economic historian Harold James in this masterful work of intellectual history. The book addresses what James terms "the Roman dilemma"--The paradoxical notion that while global society depends on a system of rules for building peace and prosperity, this system inevitably leads to domestic clashes, international rivalry, and even wars. As it did in ancient Rome, James argues, a rule-based world order eventually subverts and destroys itself, creating the need for imperial action. The result is a continuous fluctuation between pacification and the breakdown of domestic order. James summons this argument, first put forth more than two centuries ago in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to put current events into perspective. The world now finds itself staggering between a set of internationally negotiated trading rules and exchange--rate regimes, and the enforcement practiced by a sometimes-imperial America. These two forces--liberal international order and empire--will one day feed on each other to create a shakeup in global relations, James predicts. To reinforce his point, he invokes the familiar bon mot once applied to the British Empire: "When Britain could not rule the waves, it waived the rules." Despite the pessimistic prognostications of Smith and Gibbon, who saw no way out of this dilemma, James ends his book on a less depressing note. He includes a chapter on one possible way in which the world could resolve the Roman Predicament--by opting for a global system based on values as opposed to rules

Since its publication in 1962, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring has often been celebrated as the catalyst that sparked an American environmental movement. Yet environmental consciousness and environmental protest in some regions of the United States date back to the nineteenth century, with the advent of industrial manufacturing and the consequent growth of cities. As these changes transformed people's lives, ordinary Americans came to recognize the connections between economic exploitation, social inequality, and environmental problems. As the modern age dawned, they turned to labor unions, sportsmen's clubs, racial and ethnic organizations, and community groups to respond to such threats accordingly. The Myth of Silent Spring tells this story. By challenging the canonical "songbirds and suburbs" interpretation associated with Carson and her work, the book gives readers a more accurate sense of the past and better prepares them for thinking and acting in the present

The thorough examination of the influence of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen on constitutions has long awaited proper implementation. The importance of the French act has never been questioned but its multi-sided impact has not been satisfactorily evaluated. With respect to the American Constitution, this problem merits a specially comprehensive study. Although the American and French politics at the end of the eighteenth century were carefully examined, the links between the constitutional developments of both countries has never been researched exhaustively. The reasons seem to be threefold. First, with exception of the American Constitution, the French Declaration preceded all other written constitutions in the world and the influence of the French act on the European constitutions seemed to be the primary subject of attention. Second, the sequence in which the American Constitution and the French Declaration were adopted naturally favored the claim of American parentage of the French act. This conclusion seemed to undermine the originality of the French Declaration and irritate the historians who believed that the key ideas of the Declaration were rooted in the philosophy of the French Enlightenment. Moreover, the American draftsmen emphasized the continuity of their constitutional works and eventually looked for roots in the British rather than in the French constitutional ideas and traditions. For these reasons, the American contribution to the process of drafting the French Declaration and the subsequent influence of the French act on the American constitutional development, particularly the formation of the American Bill of Rights, has never received desired attention.

Tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever encountered. The objective of this study was to identify the prevalence of nicotine dependence among university students in Jordan and assess factors associated with this dependence. A cross-sectional study using simple random sampling was conducted among university students from 3 public and 3 private universities selected for their convenience from central, middle, and east Jordan via administering a questionnaire between October 2016 and January 2017. The total number of participants was 892. The overall nicotine dependence was 51.2%. Correlates to nicotine dependence were studying at an undergraduate level (OR=3.6; 95% CI: 1.4-8.1); studying humanities (OR=1.73; 95% CI: 1.2-2.1); existing of a smoking family member (OR=1.63; 95% CI: 1.5-1.9); starting smoking before age of 15 years (OR=1.60; 95% CI: 1.2-2.1); water pipe smoking (OR=1.48; 95% CI: 1.1-2.0); and studying at governmental universities (OR=1.36; 95% CI: 1.0-1.8). Several socio-demographic characteristics had an impact on nicotine dependence. Future research is necessary to further improve our understanding of motives for smoking and dependence.

THE ROLE OF EXPERTISE IN EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY HAS BECOME THE OBJECT OF A PASSIONATE DEBATE. THIS ARTICLE TACKLES THE DEBATE BY SUGGESTING A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK. CASE STUDIES SUGGEST THAT THE POWER OF EXPERTISE IS BEING COUNTERBALANCED BY POLITICIZATION. THE CONCLUSION IS THAT THE MAIN CHALLENGE IS TO MAKE EXPERTISE MORE ACCOUNTABLE IN AN INCREASINGLY POLITICIZED ENVIRONMENT.

Between the wars, Latvia had a well developed agricultural sector and was an important exporter of agricultural products. At the moment, the agricultural sector in Latvia is in a difficult position. The large collective farms, which characterised agriculture for 50 years, are being disbanded in the transition from planned to market economy. The livestock has been reduced considerably and the areas used for agriculture have been made smaller. The farmers are in a difficult financial position, left without cheap loans to buy grain, fertilisers or machinery. This obstructs the competitiveness of the Latvian agriculture. It is above all the rural regions, far from the cities, which suffer under the lack of employment outside of agriculture. This leads to a high level of migration among young people in these regions. Using the example of the Vecpiebalga village, this study focuses on the current level of privatisation of land and property and how the community is attempting to secure its future development.

AbstractCanada has not escaped trends in most liberal democracies with the rapid growth of agencies created by government to deliver public goods, often justified on elements of their mandate—service delivery, adjudication of disputes, regulatory oversight, among others—benefiting from an arm's-length relationship to the government of the day. Yet Canadian studies of this phenomenon remain mostly absent from the robust comparative literature theorizing and documenting the emergence of widespread "agencification" and its relationship to performance. This article draws on the Government of Canada's Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) microdata from 2017 to test key hypotheses advanced by proponents of agencification, specifically that agencies are more innovative, autonomous and efficient public organizations. We discover that those working in agencies generally report less climate of innovation and less work autonomy than those working in departments, though some types of agencies—namely regulatory and parliamentary ones—defy these trends.

The twentieth-century theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr frequently employed a formulation confounding to his readers, simultaneously appealing to the loftiest altruism as summed up in his identification of the "law of love" and compelling attention to the grittiest realism as encapsulated in his recognition of a universal struggle for power. This sharp contrast was no careless error on Niebuhr's part, but rather an insistence on describing in the most sharply contrasting tones the paradoxical character of human nature. In his Christian Realist view fear and a consequent desire for power over others to protect oneself are inescapable components of human existence within history. The human need for community and refusal to be satisfied with anything less than devotion to the wellbeing of others unsullied by self-love are nevertheless also implanted in the human heart, which recognizes that reality extends beyond human history. Niebuhr demanded attention to both.

According to the author, the essence of one of the most important forms of legal protection of the constitution is constitutional supervision, in the activities of checking, identifying, ascertaining and eliminating inconsistencies with the constitution of other legal acts. The time frame of the chosen research period is due to the fact that it was then that interesting both in practical and theoretical terms in many ways search solutions in this area took place in our country. It was a period of intense competition between the Supreme Court of the USSR and the Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court of the USSR for a place and role in constitutional supervision. The end result is that the Union parliament has become dominant here at the level of the Center, in the subjects of the Federation – their parliaments. At the same time, the main functions of constitutional supervision are assigned ultimately to the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR. It should also be noted that the very fact of the revival of the prosecutor's office in Soviet times has become a real indicator of the resuscitation, adaptation, use in practice of old, pre-revolutionary, proven, in many ways specific, traditional institutions for Russia. It should be noted that such a parliamentary structure of constitutional supervision with the involvement of the prosecutor's office is very attractive and can be effective. It presupposes the adoption of measures to bring acts that do not comply with the Constitution into compliance with it even before their adoption, so in advance.

The article is devoted to the examination of the issue of Russian borrowing of military and technical as well as cultural experience of the West at the beginning of the Time of Troubles during the reign of Feodor I Ivanovich (1584-1598), Boris Godunov (1598-1605) and Dmitry the Pretender (1605-1606). One of the channels of the Russian contact with the west-European "powder revolution" and culture was foreigners on Moscow service. A lot of them were the military; doctors of the Tsar had a huge power; some merchants (for example, Jerome Horsey) carried out special orders of the Russian government. The article gives the description of western foreigners' position both, at the beginning of the Time of Troubles, when the Moscow government was interested in western innovation, and after 1606, when the situation changed. The author tries to find out in which areas and what kind of foreign experts were used in Russia; what were the reasons for the use of the Western European experts; what were the results of this phenomenon. While analyzing the "Notes" of foreigners, who were on the Russian service at the beginning of the Time of Troubles, the author examines the achievements of the "common revolution" at the beginning of XVII century.

The long-dominant view of Swedish neutrality policy during the Cold War holds that it aimed to reduce tension in peacetime and to keep the country out of a new major war. The main dissenting view is that the policy primarily served peacetime purposes, including domestic politics, and that it would not have worked in a war. Sweden would then either have been attacked by the USSR because it was a Western country in its path of attack, or it would have been drawn in on the allied side because of its cooperation with the West, including tolerating overflights by allied bombers. This article presents a third perspective, namely that Sweden's leaders in the 1950s understood that neutrality would probably fail in wartime, but that they aimed to stay out of the violent initial nuclear exchange. This conclusion is supported by evidence hitherto overlooked in the existing research. Adapted from the source document.