Suchergebnisse

The separation of power and the branch of the judicial power are analyzed in the US and in the European countries (first of all in Italy and in Hungary). The effects of litigation on the constitutional rights in the USA and in Hungary are outlined and the new trends of political battles in the USA and in Italy which mean the moving the political combats into the courtrooms.

The power of media is outlined and the effects of mass media on the public opinion and on the parliamentary election. In the book the role of the political intellectuals is analyzed in detail and the battles of intellectuals of the opposite political camps on the field of the language of politics.

Discusses the use of coercion in democracies, focusing on the tension between a majoritarian decision to employ coercion to achieve a particular end, & the decision to contest coercion. Using power synonymously with coercion, it is contended that in a large, interconnected polity, democracy requires coercion, & that majority rule is one standard mechanism for achieving a relatively just form of democratic coercion. Against the deliberative tradition, it is argued that approximation to procedurally fair coercion figures prominently in effecting democratic change. A set of procedures for theoretically ensuring that coercion is deployed fairly are presented along with the caveat that in practice, all forms of democratic coercion are unfair. W. Howard

Explores the reasons behind parents' food purchases for their children, relating this to the part that advertising is alleged to play in the purchase of unhealthy food, and in particular the issue of "pester power" or the nag factor. Reports a study of 1530 families in the UK sponsored by the Food Advertising Unit, which explored the questions of whether parents know enough about healthy diets, how they react to pestering, what they think about advertising to children, and the relation of income level to attitudes. Finds that parents do have reservations about advertising to children, with most of them feeling that advertisers manipulate children; but at the same time parents accept this as a fact of life in a consumer society and still feel that they have more influence on their children than do the advertisers.

R. J. Johnston produces two striking and counter-intuitive results on bargaining power in a European Union Council of Ministers expanded by the addition of the four states applying for entry in 1994. One is that the 'big four' member states, including the United Kingdom, have more power if the minority with power to block a proposal is set at 27 rather than 23. UK Prime Minister John Major damaged himself politically by first insisting that he would veto a proposal to increase the blocking threshold from 23 to 27 and then being forced to climb down from this position. As Johnston notes, this episode 'led to several calls for his resignation from among his own party's MPs, including one in the House itself'. If British interests, as seen by the Euro-sceptics whom Mr Major was vainly trying to appease, were actually better served by a threshold of 27 than of 23, his actions appear doubly futile. This is apparent by reading across Johnston's Table 1, using either of the indices he proposes.