Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This paper explores the foreign policy of US President George H. W. Bush and his administration towards the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Warsaw Pact. The article also focuses on two historically significant American foreign policy strategies that were implemented during the earlier years of the Cold War: containment and détente. The rapidly changing international environment and Bush's Beyond Containment policy which, aimed to respond to these changes, became the basis for the following research questions: 1) How did American conception of foreign policy approach to Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary or Poland change under the Bush administration in 1989 in comparison to the period of implementation of the containment or détente? 2) How did the American perception of the retreating Soviet power within the bipolar international structure affect American diplomatic relations with the Eastern European governments? The aim of the paper is to put Bush's foreign policy in his first year in office in the American 'Cold War' foreign policy context and to compare the classical American political strategies with Bush's foreign policy in 1989.

The paper examines the range of currency and exchange rate regimes choices facing small countries living next to large currency blocs, such as the euro area and the United States. It draws on Canada's successful experience in the 1990s with a flexible exchange rate and explicit inflation targets to argue that such a monetary rule may be the appropriate policy alternative for small countries in this situation such as the United Kingdom or Norway, that are unwilling to surrender their national currency or their monetary independence for economic or political reasons. Because the Canadian economy is more dependent on the production of natural resource products than the economy of its major trading partner, the United States, Canada's flexible exchange rate plays a valuable role in helping to stabilise the Canadian economy in the face of global shocks to natural resource prices.

Examines the range of currency and exchange rate regimes choices facing small countries living next to large currency blocs, and if they can maintain separate national currencies and independent monetary policies; drawing on Canada's successful flexible exchange rate and explicit inflation targets.

The results of a Rice-Beyle cluster bloc analysis of votes in the International Court of Justice reveal several two- and three-judge blocs, but these blocs do not conform closely to the blocs which would be expected on the basis of the political alignments or common cultural patterns of the judges' countries. These results are reinforced by the analysis of predetermined blocs based upon the political alignments and common legal systems of the judges' countries, although the Soviet and Polish judges do show distinctive voting patterns from the rest of the Court. A conceptual framework of the judicial decision making process is then introduced to help explain the results, leading to the conclusions that while social background and personal and policy attitudes do not seem to be major factors in explaining judicial behavior of the judges, the factor of judicial role perceptions, stemming primarily from professional traming and associations, may be of great significance.

On 21 August 1968, when Soviet tanks were entering Prague liquidating the 'Prague Spring', Romanian party leader Nicolae Ceausescu publicly condemned the intervention as a violation of national sovereignty. Such aggressive attitude lasted only a few days, after which he tried to appease Moscow. This article retraces Ceausescu's decisions and motivations in the years 1968-1970, which were aimed at eliminating what he perceived as the risk of a similar intervention in Romania. Also, it answers a fundamental question: did the Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia determine an abandonment of Romania's policy of autonomy in the Communist bloc? Adapted from the source document.

A most comprehensive empirical analysis of the economic transformation of the former Soviet bloc during the first decade after communism. It debunks many myths, seeing transition as a struggle between radical reformers and those thriving on rent seeking. People have gained from fast and comprehensive reforms, but several countries have gotten stuck in corruption. Economic decline and social hazards have been greatly exaggerated, since people have forgotten how awful communism was. Swift liberalization of prices and foreign trade, as well as rapid and profound fiscal adjustment, have been vital for growth, institutional reforms, legality and greater equity. Privatization has been beneficial, and its effects will grow over time. The main problem has been the continuation of unregulated and ubiquitous state apparatuses living on corruption, while no country has suffered from too radical reforms. Where malpractices of the elite can be checked, market reforms and democracy have proceeded together

"Traversing more than a century of American history, this book advances a new theory of congressional organization to explain why and how party dissidents rely on institutions of their own making, arguing that these intraparty organizations can radically shift the balance of power between party leaders and rank-and-file members. Intraparty organizations empower legislators of varying ideological stripes to achieve collective and coordinated action by providing selective incentives to cooperative members, transforming public-good policies into excludable accomplishments, and helping members to institute rules and procedures to promote group decision making. Drawing on rich archival evidence and interview data, the book details the challenges dissident lawmakers encounter when they face off against party leaders and their efforts to organize in response. Eight case studies complicate our understanding of landmark fights over rules reform, early twentieth-century economic struggles, mid-century battles over civil rights legislation, and contemporary debates over national health care and fiscal policy"--