In this witty and contemporaneous essay, Arnold J. Meltsner, as a modern-day Machiavelli, offers advice to government and corporate leaders on the human pitfalls of seeking, evaluating, and using advice. Drawing examples mainly from the Oval Office and recent history, he examines the factors that affect decision making and proposes rules to help rulers maintain vigilance over their advisers and remain sensitive to the politics of personal influence and persuasion. Meltsner sees the advisory situation as dramatic, so he uses the metaphor of a play with four key scenes to describe the psychological and social context. Presenting numerous situations that arise during these scenes, Meltsner extrapolates about a half-dozen rules from each scene in this play. Specific, practical advice shapes his commentary: for example, "Keep the inner circle small ... Be careful about revealing your own preferences ... Recognize partial views including your own ... Avoid public protest resignations." In addition to the ruler-adviser relationship, the author discusses secrecy and leaks, the structure within which rulers make decisions, and the various ways of calibrating advice. Using sometimes humorous and sometimes painful examples, Meltsner demonstrates that rulers' reactions to advice are often based on such factors as expertise, trust, prior performance, predilections, and consensus. "Rulers should temper their notion of the loyal adviser as an extension of themselves and not assume that they and their advisers are one." Local and national leaders, military generals, industrial managers, and CEOs rulers of all kinds can surely benefit from this advice. Author note: Arnold J. Meltsner is Professor of Public Policy Emeritus at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.

The election of populist politicians in recent years seems to challenge the commitment to democracy, if not its ideal. This book argues that majority rule is not the problem; rather, the institutions that stabilize majorities are responsible for the suppression of minority interests. Despite the popular notion that social choice instability (or “cycling”) makes it impossible for majorities to make sound legislation, Yuhui Li argues that the best part of democracy is not the large number of people on the winning side; it is that the winners can be easily divided and realigned with the losers in the cycling process. He shows that minorities’ bargaining power depends on their ability to exploit division within the winning coalition and induce its members to defect, an institutionalized uncertainty that is missing in one-party authoritarian systems. Dividing the Rulers theorizes why such division within the majority is important and what kind of institutional features can help a democratic system maintain such division, which is crucial in preventing the “tyranny of the majority.” These institutional solutions point to a direction of institutional reform that academics, politicians, and voters should collectively pursue.

You won't believe how easy these quilts can be with the help of a ruler The perfect book for the busy quilter looking for ways to cut time and simplify construction of quilts, this book uses four basic rulers to make beautiful quilts with ease. It provides the support patterns for four of the most popular rulers being used today, and the quick piecing and cutting techniques will help save time and frustration. The book includes 15 projects, features online tutorials for each ruler, and contains sidebars for special techniques, including stitching a set-in or Y-seam, spinning centers to reduce bulk, binding inside corners, matching angled seams, and determining border lengths.

It was the beginning of my downfall. My rise as king was also my demise. Love has no place in my life, but there was something about her. An itch I scratched was a gateway to a need for her. When an ultimatum is thrown at me, my rule is in jeopardy. I need a wife. And I'm going to make her my queen.

Madness and Power. Can the insane rule? Can insanity be a leadership quality? Scott Rank says yes (well, sometimes) in this fascinating look at nine of history’s most notorious rulers, from the Roman emperor Caligula to the North Korean Communist dictator Kim Jong-il. Rank paints intimate portraits of these deeply flawed but powerful men, examining the role that madness played in their lives, the repercussions of their madness on history, and what their madness can tell us about the times in which they lived. In History’s 9 Most Insane Rulers, you will meet: • King Charles VI of France, who thought he was made of glass • Sultan Ibrahim I, who was driven mad by the sadistic succession battles of the Ottoman Empire • Caligula, who built temples to himself and whose reign highlighted the lethal tensions between the power of the new Imperial Rome and the prerogatives of the old Roman Republic • The Russian tsar who became known as Ivan “the Terrible” • King George III of Britain, who not only lost his American colonies, but lost his mind as well • Bavaria’s “Mad” King Ludwig II, who left the world richer for his fabulous fairy tale castles and his patronage of the composer Richard Wagner Insane rulers did not die off with the last of the mad monarchs who inherited their power. Rank also examines the rise to power of crazed modern rulers, such as Idi Amin, who began as a lowly army cook and rose to the presidency of Uganda, and Saparmurat Niyazov, who ruled Turkmenistan and promoted a bizarre cult of personality around himself. Both entertaining and illuminating, History’s 9 Most Insane Rulers is a must-read for anyone interested in the role insanity has played in history.

This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

This book illuminates several timeless principles of political philosophy that have come down to us through the ages in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the authors of the Federalist Papers, Madison, Hamilton, and Jay. Among these principles are the following: that a good society is based on law; that a good constitution balances social classes against each other; that a mixed constitution is best for this purpose; that popular sovereignty is the best foundation for a just and stable constitution; and that representative government is best for a large, complex society. In this valuable and accessibly written guide to the fundamentals of political thought, Irving Zeitlin shows that certain thinkers have given us insights that rise above historical context - 'trans-historical principles' that can provide the political scientist with an element of foresight, an ability not to predict events but to anticipate a certain range of possibilities. While the historian studies unique and unrepeatable circumstances such as those, for example, that gave rise to Julius Caesar, the political theorist, using these trans-historical principles, recognizes the conditions that can lead to Caesarism. Zeitlin draws on an unusual depth of knowledge, offering a lucid, interesting, and memorable summation of his chosen classic texts, in a work that will appeal strongly to his intended audience at the undergraduate level.

Global private regulations—who wins, who loses, and why Over the past two decades, governments have delegated extensive regulatory authority to international private-sector organizations. This internationalization and privatization of rule making has been motivated not only by the economic benefits of common rules for global markets, but also by the realization that government regulators often lack the expertise and resources to deal with increasingly complex and urgent regulatory tasks. The New Global Rulers examines who writes the rules in international private organizations, as well as who wins, who loses--and why. Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli examine three powerful global private regulators: the International Accounting Standards Board, which develops financial reporting rules used by corporations in more than a hundred countries; and the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission, which account for 85 percent of all international product standards. Büthe and Mattli offer both a new framework for understanding global private regulation and detailed empirical analyses of such regulation based on multi-country, multi-industry business surveys. They find that global rule making by technical experts is highly political, and that even though rule making has shifted to the international level, domestic institutions remain crucial. Influence in this form of global private governance is not a function of the economic power of states, but of the ability of domestic standard-setters to provide timely information and speak with a single voice. Büthe and Mattli show how domestic institutions' abilities differ, particularly between the two main standardization players, the United States and Europe.

Presents an introduction to the origins and principles of geometry, describing geometric constructions that can be achieved through the use of rulers and compasses.