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We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non‐Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country‐ and institution‐specific.

The suspected weaponization of nuclear power in North Korea and Iran underscores the potential dangers of arms proliferationâ€"and the pressing need for arms control. Indeed, one of the rationales behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a military foray into arms control, designed to destroy Saddam Hussein's ""weapons of mass destruction

National audience ; Rural support for political parties in eastern Europe. – Quite different rationales shape the relations between political parties and farmer voters in Bulgaria and Romania. To describe them, both the macro- and microinstitutional levels must enter into account. At the macro level, the way farm programs have been drawn up and implemented must be examined. Reforms in agriculture depend very much on the "agrarian relations" established under Communism. Depending on whether farmers had tense or harmonious relations with the powers-that-used-to-be, decollectivization on the micro level has followed quite different rationales, which have conditioned the diffusion of political slogans among farmers. Farm programs have been recuperated by local middlemen and then adapted to local structures in various ways. ; En Bulgarie et en Roumanie, les relations entre les partis politiques et l'électorat paysan participent de logiques distinctes. Pour caractériser ces logiques, un rapprochement doit être opéré entre les niveaux macroinstitutionnel et microinstitutionnel. Au niveau macroinstitutionnel, il convient d'examiner les modalités selon lesquelles les programmes agraires sont définis et mis en œuvre. Les réformes introduites dans l'agriculture sont largement tributaires des relations agraires instaurées sous le régime communiste : selon que les paysans ont entretenu un rapport harmonieux ou tendu avec le pouvoir, la décollectivisation obéit à des logiques diversifiées. Les variations ainsi relevées s'emboîtent dans le niveau microinstitutionnel. La logique de la décollectivisation conditionne la diffusion des mots d'ordre politiques auprès des paysans. Les programmes agraires sont récupérés par des intermédiaires locaux puis adaptés aux structures locales selon différentes modalités.

Many students experience difficulty with the tensions and disjunctures between their vernacular ways of communication and standardized college English. The history of linguistic standardization in European imperialism, however, provides a pedagogically helpful critical heuristic for examining with students the power relations inherent in college writing instruction. By historicizing the entanglements of language and power, students are empowered to choose how and what they want to learn based on an awareness of their educational situatedness and with the support of a open and reflexive instructor.

Almost all theories of nationalism show one common deficit: they ignore the basic difference in the process of modern nation formation between those cases where it took off within an old, established state nation and the other where it started within a non-dominant ethnic group (or ethnic community). This difference concerns also the writing of national histories. In this article, the author tries to qualify this difference by asking how far writing the history of a small nation differs from the same for state nations.

With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict arguably no closer to being resolved than it was a decade ago, one has to wonder: Has the much-vaunted "peace process," hailed by U.S. presidents from both parties, become a charade? The phrase's long history suggests that there's been a lot more process than peace. Now, as Arab uprisings transform the Middle East and Israelis and Palestinians go their separate ways, it may be time to pick a new buzzword: stalemate. Adapted from the source document.

Fathers have been a central part of Norwegian gender equality policy for the last two decades. But what about fathers in Norwegian history? This article is a study on the discourse of fatherhood found within conduct books, letters, autobiographies, journals, and to a certain degree novels and argues that fatherhood was seen as almost as important to the family and the home as the mother in the period 1850—1920 and that the father was split between a role for the family and a role in the family.

"A North Caucasian ethnic group that has been largely obscured in world history as a result of their expulsion from their homeland by Tsarist Russia in the 1860s, Circassians now comprise significant communities not only in the Northwest Caucasus but also in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Europe and the US. The Circassian Diaspora investigates how a community of impoverished migrants has evolved into a well-connected and politically active diaspora. This book explores the prominent role Circassians played during the Turco-Greek War or the 'Turkish National Liberation War of 1919-1922,' and examines the changing nature of Circassians' relations with the Turkish and Russian states, as well as the new actors of Caucasian politics such as the US, the EU, and Georgia. Suggesting that the Circassian case should be studied alongside those of the Jews, Armenians and other diasporas whose formation is fundamentally tied up to a violent detachment from their homeland, and arguing that Circassian diaspora politics is not a post-Soviet phenomenon but has a history dating back to early 20th century, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Diaspora Studies, History, and Politics"--

First published in 1985, Uneven Development in Southern Europe is an essential reference in the analysis of the significant changes that have taken place within southern Europe. The shifts within the region's economic, political and social structures raise important questions about the nature of uneven development, the meaning of dependency and the political consequences of social change. These underlying processes are reflected in debates on issues such as the protracted process of the Mediterranean enlargement of the European Community, the plight of guest workers' in northern Europe and the competition presented by goods and produce from southern Europe. Within the broad framework of tendencies in the movements of labour and capital that are outlined in the introduction, successive chapters examine the regional and national impact of labour migration and return, evaluate the social consequences of new forms of agricultural production or industrial investment and demonstrate the relationships between uneven development and the growing crisis of legitimacy of southern European states. The emphasis on detailed case studies ensures that the key theoretical questions are addressed with unusual precision, while individual chapters also provide useful insights for those interested in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain or Turkey in their own right. The book will be of interest to students of development, economy, history and migration

Introduction : energy poverty and its drivers in post-communist Europe : the visible, the measurable and the hidden / Ute Dubois -- Energy poverty in Hungary : trapped in politics / Anna Zsófia Bajomi, Nóra Feldmár, and Lea Kőszeghy -- Inconsistencies in policy-making as drivers of energy poverty in Bulgaria / Maria Jeliazkova, Veneta Krasteva, and Douhomir Minev -- The role of NGOs in the emergence of energy poverty as a policy issue in Slovenia / Lidija Živčič and Tomislav Tkalec -- Energy poverty in a subsistence-like economy : the case of north Macedonia / Ana Stojilovska -- Energy poverty as heating poverty in Lithuania / Lina Murauskaite -- Energy poverty between energy paradigms in Poland / Jakub Sokołowski, Damian Zelewski, Joanna Stępień, and Piotr Lewandowski -- On how to fix a sturdy energy poverty system in Romania / Anca Sinea -- Hidden energy poverty : the case of the Czech Republic / Hedvika Koďousková and Lukáš Lehotský -- Energy poverty in East and West Germany : divided we (still) stand? / Philipp Biermann -- Regional disparities as roots of energy poverty in Slovakia / Dusana Dokupilova and Richard Filcak -- Conclusions : energy poverty as a threat to democracy in post-communist countries / George Jiglău.