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Reviews the gender-sensitive & mainstream literatures to shed light on the issue of men & state social provision & reconstructs them to generate a gendered welfare regime analytic framework. This framework is then brought to bear on the gendered positioning of men in the US welfare state, comparing this regime to European models to show how US markets have played a key role in the regime's development. Important to note is the absence of state welfare benefits & services that drives state involvement with working men; ie, it is generally in an enforcement role, after men have failed to find employment & turned to the black market or criminal activities, that the state intervenes, & not as a welfare provider. The gendered nature of early US welfare policy & politics is discussed. Assumptions about breadwinning men & caregiving wives underpinned programs & regulatory legislation of the Progressive Era; however, material support for these men was not a dimension of the regime, a distinction from European & Australian models. While the market was expected to provide for male workers, some state protections for them were institutionalized during the Great Depression, eg, Social Security. However, such social welfare programs reinforced the gendered division of labor, while income security operated within a work-family dualism. Failure of the welfare state to support breadwinners during the 1960s & 1970s is discussed, noting that most working-age people were not incorporated into the welfare state, whereas in Europe, the market was pushed out of the social provision arena via program expansion. In the 1980s, amid a backlash to the War on Poverty, the welfare state was attacked with some success, targeting not only poor women but poor men as well. The politics of concomitant welfare reform are considered in terms of the "fragile families" & pro-marriage wings of the fatherhood movement. Current conditions of the gendered welfare regime are considered in conclusion, pondering the state of men's gender identities & status as fathers along with women's circumstances. J. Zendejas

Reviews the gender-sensitive & mainstream literatures to shed light on the issue of men & state social provision & reconstructs them to generate a gendered welfare regime analytic framework. This framework is then brought to bear on the gendered positioning of men in the US welfare state, comparing this regime to European models to show how US markets have played a key role in the regime's development. Important to note is the absence of state welfare benefits & services that drives state involvement with working men; ie, it is generally in an enforcement role, after men have failed to find employment & turned to the black market or criminal activities, that the state intervenes, & not as a welfare provider. The gendered nature of early US welfare policy & politics is discussed. Assumptions about breadwinning men & caregiving wives underpinned programs & regulatory legislation of the Progressive Era; however, material support for these men was not a dimension of the regime, a distinction from European & Australian models. While the market was expected to provide for male workers, some state protections for them were institutionalized during the Great Depression, eg, Social Security. However, such social welfare programs reinforced the gendered division of labor, while income security operated within a work-family dualism. Failure of the welfare state to support breadwinners during the 1960s & 1970s is discussed, noting that most working-age people were not incorporated into the welfare state, whereas in Europe, the market was pushed out of the social provision arena via program expansion. In the 1980s, amid a backlash to the War on Poverty, the welfare state was attacked with some success, targeting not only poor women but poor men as well. The politics of concomitant welfare reform are considered in terms of the "fragile families" & pro-marriage wings of the fatherhood movement. Current conditions of the gendered welfare regime are considered in conclusion, pondering the state of men's gender identities & status as fathers along with women's circumstances. J. Zendejas

ABSTRACTThis paper makes an effort to evaluate the present state of comparative research on the determinants of the welfare state. The major thesis is that both theories and comparative results diverge to an extent that is not warranted by reality. Conflicting findings are in many cases explained by methodological features of the studies, a brief summary of which is given in the paper, and theories of the determinants of the welfare state are often presented in contradictory forms. In fact, their major claims may be integrated. The paper outlines a model of the determinants of the welfare state, which attempts to integrate the major findings of comparative research, and which also allows an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of major theories.

"Unnatural States is a radical critique of international theory, in particular, of the assumption of state agency--that states act in the world in their own right. Peter Lomas argues that since the universal states system is inequitable and rigid, and not all states are democracies anyway, this assumption is unreal, and to adopt it means reinforcing an unjust status quo. Looking at the concepts of state, nation, and agency, Lomas sees populations struggling to find an agreed model of the state, owing to inherited material differences; and unsurprisingly, among theorists of the nation, only controversy and a great confusion of terms. Meanwhile, the functional incarnations of the state agent are caricatures: the mandarin state, the lawyer state, the landlord state, the heir-to-history state, and the patriot state. Yet recent developments in international theory (constructivism, scientific realism, postmodernism) sacrifice state agency only at the price of an unhelpful abstraction. The states system is dysfunctional and obsolete, Lomas contends, and international theory must be recast, with morality as central, to inspire and to guide historic change. He focuses in his conclusion on prescriptions for change, led by four moral concerns: human rights, weapons of mass destruction, relations between rich and poor societies, and the environment."I begin this book," writes Lomas, "with the commonest commonplace of international theory, to expose it as a meaningless cliche. In the masterly hands of Hobbes, it was elaborated into a shock formula for organized society, a reading of history as civilization's failure. Kant sought to rescue morality from Hobbes and create the structures of modernity, but Kant's influence is coming to an end. In the Cold War, politicians disagreeing over another philosopher almost brought the world to an end. Hence the challenges of our time. These are primary and profound. Philosophers have done much to define the modern world. The point of international theory is to change it.""--Provided by publisher.

On June 30,2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rescinded die United States designation of Libya as a state sponsor of terrorism. Her action ended nearly twenty-seven years of Libya's pariah status in American law and rhetoric.The road to the rehabilitation of Libya was a long one in more than a temporal sense. During the 1980s, the country was widely perceived as the world's strongest supporter of terrorism.The United States in particular saw Libya under the leadership of Muammar el-Qaddafi as a "rogue state" posing a serious threat to U.S. national security interests.This fear was confirmed by Libya's destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. A bomb placed by Libyan agents on board the aircraft en route to New York detonated over Lockerbie, Scodand, resulting in the deaths of 270 civilians, including 189 Americans. It was perhaps the single worst act of terrorism against the United States until the carnage of September 11, 2001.