Politics and the Past offers an original, multidisciplinary exploration of the growing public controversy over reparations for historical injustices. Demonstrating that 'reparations politics' has become one of the most important features of international politics in recent years, the authors analyze why this is the case and show that reparations politics can be expected to be a major aspect of international affairs in coming years. In addition to broad theoretical and philosophical reflection, the book includes discussions of the politics of reparations in specific countries and regions, including the United States, France, Latin America, Japan, Canada, and Rwanda. The volume presents a nuanced, historically grounded, and critical perspective on the many campaigns for reparations currently afoot in a variety of contexts around the world. All readers working or teaching in the fields of transitional justice, the politics of memory, and social movements will find this book a rich and provocative contribution to this complex debate.

A study of museums, and their representation of history, in post-Mao China.

Thirteen essays by scholars from seven countries discuss the political use and abuse of history in the recent decades with particular focus on Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia as case studies), but also includes articles on Germany, Japan and Turkey, which provide a much needed comparative dimension. The main focus is on new conditions of political utilization of history in post-communist context, which is characterized by lack of censorship and political pluralism. The phenomenon of history politics became extremely visible in Central and Eastern Europe in the past decade, and remains central for political agenda in many countries of the regions. Each essay is a case study contributing to the knowledge about collective memory and political use of history, offering a new theoretical twist. The studies look at actors (from political parties to individual historians), institutions (museums, Institutes of National remembrance, special political commissions), methods, political rationale and motivations behind this phenomenon.

Exhorting people to volunteer is part of the everyday vocabulary of American politics. Routinely, members of both major parties call for partnerships between government and nonprofit organizations. These entreaties increase dramatically during times of crisis, and the voluntary efforts of ordinary citizens are now seen as a necessary supplement to government intervention. But despite the ubiquity of the idea of volunteerism in public policy debates, analysis of its role in American governance has been fragmented. Bringing together a diverse set of disciplinary approaches, Politics and Partnerships is a thorough examination of the place of voluntary associations in political history and an astute investigation into contemporary experiments in reshaping that role. The essays here reveal the key role nonprofits have played in the evolution of both the workplace and welfare and illuminate the way that government’s retreat from welfare has radically altered the relationship between nonprofits and corporations.

Analyzes the growing divide between the incomes of the wealthy class and those of middle-income Americans, exonerating popular suspects to argue that the nation's political system promotes greed and under-representation.

The ensuing debates and disagreements over the recent past, examined by the author, open up a window into the wider development of German memory, identity, and politics after the end of the Cold War."--BOOK JACKET.

div A central story of contemporary southern politics is the emergence of Republican majorities in the region’s congressional delegation. Acknowledging the significance and scope of the political change, James M. Glaser argues that, nevertheless, strands of continuity affect the practice of campaign politics in important ways. Strong southern tradition underlies the strategies pursued by the candidates, their presentational styles, and the psychology of their campaigns. The author offers eyewitness accounts of recent congressional campaigns in Texas, Mississippi, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In the tradition of his award-winning book Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South, Glaser captures the “stuff” of politics—the characters, the images, the rhetoric, and the scenery. Painting a full and fascinating picture of what it is like on the campaign trail, Glaser provides wide-ranging insights into the ways that the “hand of the past” reaches into the southern present. /DIV

Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivan the Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself-a history that is drenched in liquor. Scrutinizing (rather than dismissing) the role of alcohol in Russian politics yields a more nuanced understanding of Russian history itself: from palace intrigues under the tsars to the drunken antics of Soviet and post-Soviet leadership, vodka is there in abundance. Beyond vivid anecdotes, Schrad scours original documents and archival evidence to answer provocative historical questions. How have Russia's rulers used alcohol to solidify their autocratic rule? What role did alcohol play in tsarist coups? Was Nicholas II's ill-fated prohibition a catalyst for the Bolshevik Revolution? Could the Soviet Union have become a world power without liquor? How did vodka politics contribute to the collapse of both communism and public health in the 1990s? How can the Kremlin overcome vodka's hurdles to produce greater social well-being, prosperity, and democracy into the future? Viewing Russian history through the bottom of the vodka bottle helps us to understand why the "liquor question" remains important to Russian high politics even today-almost a century after the issue had been put to bed in most every other modern state. Indeed, recognizing and confronting vodka's devastating political legacies may be the greatest political challenge for this generation of Russia's leadership, as well as the next.

This study examines the most beloved and controversial of Mohammed's wives as a rich symbol for medieval and modern Islamic society. It explores the debates surrounding A'isha's depiction in historical literature, describing how she has been praised and condemned by generations of Muslim writers.

Combining statistical analysis with well-written narrative history, this re-evaluation of the 1928 presidential election gives a vivid portrait of the candidates and the campaign. Lichtman has based his study primarily on a statistical analysis of data from that election and the presidential elections from 1916 to 1940 for all the 2,058 counties outside the former Confederate South. Not relying exclusively on the results of his quantitative analysis, however, Lichtman has also made an exhaustive survey of previous scholarship and contemporary accounts of the 1928 election. He discusses and challenges previous interpretations, especially the ethnocultural and pluralist interpretations and the application of critical election theory to the election. In disputing this theory, which claims that 1928 was a realigning election in which the coalitions were formed that dominated future elections, Lichtman determines that 1928 was an aberration with little impact on later political patterns.