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A MUST-BUY BOOK for everyone interested in history and the scandalous behaviour of politicians across the world. Andy Hughes' fascinating book guides us through centuries of political abuse - and just plain stupidity. The Profumo Affair is still shocking to modern voters, possibly because the MP actually stepped down after being caught out after sharing his mistress with a Russian spy. This Pocket Guide will expose the secret side of politics, including which politicians risked or ruined their own careers for personal gain. This gripping book includes stories include the MP who liked to party

In this book, Marco Palacios explores the history of Colombia as a coffee-producer, and the implications that coffee has had for its economy, society, and politics since the middle of the nineteenth century. He provides a history of the commercialization of the crop, and relates it to the general evolution of Colombian society, an evolution often determined by coffee even in areas remote from the crop itself. The book also covers the development of the specific institutions that have been set up to manage coffee affairs, and their role in the Colombian state. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century coffee has been the mainstay of the Colombian economy, and no historian, economist, or sociologist interested in the country can escape its importance; nor can anyone interested in the commodity ignore Colombia. This is the first work on the subject to appear in English

July 2005 saw 225,000 people march through Edinburgh in the city's largest ever demonstration. Their cause was the idealistic injunction to 'Make Poverty History' (MPH). This paper presents an analysis of the MPH march, focusing particularly on the interplay between protestors, the police and the media. Drawing on ongoing research, it interrogates the disjunction between projected and actual outcomes, paying particular scrutiny to media speculation about possible violence. It also asks how MPH differed from previous G8 protests and what occurred on the day itself. The paper considers three key aspects: the composition and objectives of the marchers (who was on the march, why they were there and what they did?), the constituency that the protestors were trying to reach, and the media coverage accorded to the campaign. The intent underlying this threefold focus is an attempt to understand the protestors and what motivated them, but also to raise the question of how 'successful' they were in communicating their message.

The purpose of this article is twofold. Our first goal is to make explicit an institutionalist theory of European integration. This theory is based on the concept of 'conditional agenda setting', which we argue has played an important role in European integration. According to this theory, the fact that Commission proposals are more easily accepted than modified by the Council has accelerated the pace of integration. This finding brings us to the second goal of this article which is to investigate, by studying the history of EU institutions, whether or not these institutions were the result of conscious planning. We demonstrate that while some of the founding fathers (Hallstein, Spaak) and opponents of the EU (de Gaulle) had an accurate understanding of the institutional structures created in Rome, later participants in the integration process did not. In particular, the arguments surrounding the Single European Act indicate a lack of understanding of the full implications of the institutions selected. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Abstract. The purpose of this article is twofold. Our first goal is to make explicit an institutionalist theory of European integration. This theory is based on the concept of 'conditional agenda setting', which we argue has played an important role in European integration. According to this theory, the fact that Commission proposals are more easily accepted than modified by the Council has accelerated the pace of integration. This finding brings us to the second goal of this article which is to investigate, by studying the history of EU institutions, whether or not these institutions were the result of conscious planning. We demonstrate that while some of the founding fathers (Hallstein, Spaak) and opponents of the EU (de Gaulle) had an accurate understanding of the institutional structures created in Rome, later participants in the integration process did not. In particular, the arguments surrounding the Single European Act indicate a lack of understanding of the full implications of the institutions selected.

The celebration of fifty years of the History of Economics Society (HES) is a wonderful achievement. It is a pity that the majority of the founding members are not alive to see this landmark. The initial seeds were planted in 1968, with a gathering run by Donald Winch at the University of Sussex, and watered the following year by A. W. "Bob" Coats at the University of Nottingham, who produced the first British History of Economic Thought newsletter. These meetings, and discussions at the annual meetings of the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA), prompted the formation of the journal History of Political Economy (HOPE), with the first issue appearing in the spring of 1969.1 The idea of forming the HES was seriously broached in Chicago in 1973, and the first official meeting was held in Chapel Hill (North Carolina) the following year, although HES had already mounted four sessions in New York City at the 1973 ASSA meetings.

Up to a generation ago, the Swiss citizen lived with a feeling of security in foreign relations which we can hardly credit today. Neutrality has come to be taken so much for granted as the fundamental principle of the Federal constitution, and had been so generally recognized in Europe, that it seemed unthreatened and even inviolable. It blended with the republican and democratic ideal to form a national myth of almost religious sanctity. As the axiom of Swiss foreign policy, it had certainly suffered attack both in theory and in fact, but since such crises had always been successfully overcome, Switzerland's faith in the inviolability of her neutrality had merely been confirmed. It was as if the country were girdled with high, protecting ramparts, behind which its people could go about their lawful occasions unmolested. It was in this period of calm in Switzerland's foreign relations that international law assiduously sought a formula for the theory of neutrality.

Natalie Davidson offers an alternative account of Alien Tort Statute litigation by revisiting the field's two seminal cases, Filártiga (filed 1979) and Marcos (filed 1986), lawsuits ostensibly concerned with torture in Paraguay and the Philippines, respectively. Combining legal analysis, archival research and ethnographic methods, this book reveals how these cases operated as transitional justice mechanisms, performing the transition of the United States and its allies out of the Cold War order. It shows that US courts produced a whitewashed history of US involvement in repression in the Western bloc, while in Paraguay and the Philippines the distance from US courts allowed for a more critical narration of the lawsuits and their underlying violence as symptomatic of structural injustice. By exposing the political meanings of these legal landmarks for three societies, Davidson sheds light on the blend of hegemonic and emancipatory implications of international human rights litigation in US courts.

At first sight, the debates on public debt that emerged from the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and the 2010–2012 European debt crisis focused mainly on drawing economic policy conclusions from the level of debt relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), without raising many questions about the definition and accounting of public debt. Economic and moral arguments, embedded in different political repertoires,3 were called upon to discuss what is "too much debt". This debate around numbers mostly took the quantity of debt as given. [First lines]

At first sight, the debates on public debt that emerged from the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and the 2010–2012 European debt crisis focused mainly on drawing economic policy conclusions from the level of debt relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), without raising many questions about the definition and accounting of public debt. Economic and moral arguments, embedded in different political repertoires,3 were called upon to discuss what is "too much debt". This debate around numbers mostly took the quantity of debt as given. [First lines]