Suchergebnisse

The Vatican is the head of the largest & most centralized religious organization in the world. It is also a sovereign state with diplomatic representatives across the globe. The Vatican, as a religious authority, often challenges secular authorities in areas of international economics, human rights, & security. Consistent with neosecularization theory, the Vatican has greater influence when its efforts resonate with secular justifications for particular policies. The Vatican's efforts in international debt relief, international religious freedom, & against the recent wars in Iraq demonstrate this finding. This has important implications in that we can expect religion to continue to play a significant role in international issues. The Vatican, in particular, provides an intellectually interesting & practically important interlocutor with global Islam. Adapted from the source document.

Laws that regulate the financing of campaigns are one attempt to attenuate the role of money in politics and promote more egalitarian policy outcomes. Do states with stricter campaign finance regulations represent citizens' interests more equally? Using data on state spending priorities from 1977 to 2008, this article finds that states with stricter campaign finance laws devote a larger proportion of their annual budget to public welfare spending in general and to cash assistance programs in particular. In contrast, there is no relationship between the strictness of campaign finance laws and spending decisions for non-redistributive policy areas. I also investigate possible causal mechanisms and uncover evidence that stricter campaign finance laws alter incentives for candidates to respond to wealthy constituents by lessening the proportion of contributions that originate from business interests. These results suggest that laws that regulate the financing of political campaigns can play an important role in promoting the interests of disadvantaged citizens and enhancing political equality.

This publication is based on papers presented at an academic conference that followed the British Museum's exhibition Hadrian: Empire and Conflict. It offers new research by sixteen international experts on one of the most important Roman emperors. Their essays cover a wide range of aspects of Hadrian's reign, which continues to attract considerable academic interest and vivid debate. Drawing from the fields of architecture, ancient history, art history, archaeology and science, the authors present critical new insights, both on familiar monuments and new discoveries, spanning the breadth of the Roman Empire and regions far beyond, from the Caucasus to the Indian Ocean.