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This new study of senates in small powers across the North Atlantic shows that the establishment and the reform of these upper legislative houses have followed remarkably parallel trajectories. Senate reforms emerged in the wake of deep political crises within the North Atlantic world and were influenced by the comparatively weak positions of small powers. Reformers responded to crises and constantly looked beyond borders and oceans for inspiration to keep their senates relevant.

AbstractThis paper aims to conceptualize a framework for better understanding the challenges, actions and rationales of the African and Asian small powers in the post-1989 global order. The paper will be divided into three parts. First, it will review the literature on small power/state studies. Second, following a critique of the major approaches in small power studies, we will argue for the need for a critical realist perspective to better capture the relationships between domestic politics and foreign relations of the small power in Africa and Asia. Third, against the comparative trajectories in which theu.s.has attained global hegemony after 1991 and China has gradually become a great power after 2000, in light of the recentu.s.containment policy shift towards China which has stirred up versatile dynamics of East Asian small power politics, in favor of a global multi-polarity, we will highlight the foundation of our approach for building the strong small powers in terms of two main aspects of economic nationalism: resource-focused and sovereignty-asserting.

In this book, Feliciano de S Guimares offers an original application of Role Theory. He proposes a theory of master role transitions to explain how small powers can change regional powers' master roles without changing the regional material power distribution.Master role transition is the replacement of an active dominant master role by a dormant or inactive role located within one's role repertoire. Guimares argues that only a combination of four necessary conditions can produce a full master role transition: asymmetrical material interdependence, altercasting, domestic contestation and regional contestation. In each one of these conditions, a small power uses material and ideational tools to promote a master role transition within the regional power role repertoire. To test his model, Guimares turns to five case studies in Latin America, Southern Africa and South Asia: the 2006-2007 Bolivia-Brazil gas crisis, the 2008-2009 Paraguay-Brazil Itaip Dam crisis, the 2008-2009 Ecuador-Brazil Odebrecht crisis, the 1998 South Africa-Lesotho military intervention crisis and the 1996India-Bangladesh Ganges water crisis.A Theory of Master Role Transition is an excellent resource for those studying both theory and method in International Relations and foreign policy analysis.

Preface / Karel Davids -- Reforming senates in the post-revolutionary North-Atlantic world : an introduction / Nikolaj Bijleveld and WybrenVerstegen -- Senates and bicameralism in revolutionary Europe (c.1795-1800) / Joris Oddens -- The rise and fall of the quasi-bicameral system of Norway (1814-2007) / Eivind Smith -- Members of the senate in the southern Netherlands (Belgium) between restoration and revolution (1815-1831) / Els Witte -- A liberal senate : the Danish Landsting of 1849 / Flemming Juul Christiansen -- The Senate of Canada : renewed life to an original intent / David E. Smith -- Constitutional conservatism, anti-democratic ideology, and the elective principle in British North America's upper legislative houses, 1848-1867 / Colin Grittner -- Aristocratic populism : the Belgian Senate and the language of democracy,1848-1893 / Marnix Beyen -- Rejecting the upper chamber : national unity, democratisation and imperial rule in the Grand Duchy of Finland,1860-1906 / Onni Pekonen -- The Swedish Senate1867-1970 : from elitist moderniser to democratic subordinate / Torbjörn Nilsson -- The senate and the 'social majority' : JoannesTheodorus Buijs (1826-1893) about a "meritocracy" in the Netherlands (1848-1887) / Wybren Verstegen -- The Irish Senate, 1920-1936 / John Dorney -- The vitality of the Dutch senate : two ccenturies of reforms and staying in power / Bertvanden Braak -- Marginalising the upper house : Canada's Liberal Party, the Senate and democratic reform in 1920s Canada / Adam Coombs -- Vocational voices or puppets of the lower house? : Irish senators,1938-1948 / Martin O'Donoghue -- The rise and fall of bicameralism in Sweden,1866-1970 / Joakim Nergelius -- Unicameralism in Denmark : abolition of the senate, current functioning and debates / Asbjørn Skjaevel -- Precarious bicameralism? : senates in Ireland from the late Middle Ages to the oresent / Muiris MacCarthaigh and Shane Martin -- Founding principles, constitutional conventions, and the representation of Francophones living outside of Quebec in the Canadian Senate since 1867 / LindaCardinal.

How do young married women fare in an urban slum in Bangladesh? This article is based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among 153 married girls aged 15-19, in a Dhaka slum, carried out during December 2001-January 2003. The author finds a shift away from the traditional arranged marriage practice, with 81 of the 153 young women having 'love' marriages. Young women now have greater mobility and freedom to choose their own partners, but at the same time, face greater instability in marital relations. The lived experiences of engaging in sexual relations with their spouses are fraught with contradictions. Without economic independence and social autonomy, many young women tolerate bad marriages, and unsafe and painful sex as a survival strategy. Some however have more leeway to set the terms of engagement, using their sexuality as a resource to attract their husbands and secure his material support, and may even enjoy doing so. (IDS Bull/GIGA)

AbstractThe subject of international relations and its theories are based primarily on what the great powers do. Majorirtheories including realism and neorealism have put small states and powers at the very margins of their respective theories arguing that since they do not display any form of power at the national and systemic levels they could as easily be discarded from theoretical and empirical debate and analysis. The present article challenges this theoretical construct and seeks to investigate whether the small powers are innate non-players in the international system and hence 'vulnerable' entities or display forms of power vis-à-vis the great powers in which their 'maneuverability', influence and independence may be manifest. This is attempted with respect to a comparative analysis of Pakistan and Singapore in which both an endogenously driven explanation taking into account both states' domestic constitutive features are brought into focus alongside a behaviorally-oriented exogenous explanation bordering on power and security.

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the investigation is to explore, by using data on trade structures and multinational corporations, the extent to which the relatively homogeneous group of West European countries is characterized by the existence of dominance relations. The analysis indicates that smaller and not‐so‐rich West European nations tend to be systematically worse‐off, judged on the basis of the premises of the investigation, in the network of trade and investment relations. Furthermore the size dimensions, viz. Gross National Product, tend to have more explanatory power in relation to the position of smaller and not‐so‐rich nations than the level of development variable, viz. GNP/capita. The consequences of this state of affairs are for from clear because of the complexify and the multidimensionality of the dependent variable. In any case it appears to be important to make a distinction between mere growth of national economies ‐ which may be of parasitic nature as the case of Portugal illustrates – and development which implies a given degree of equality and autonomy in the economy concerned. Traditional theories concerning the position and external policy of small powers is of little help in describing and explaining these kinds of phenomena and consequently a reorientation in these theories is needed, if they are to be useful.