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This book analyses British news media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It describes the analytical framework that serves as the basis for theoretically informed and systematic analysis of wartime media performance. The book synthesises a range of models, hypotheses and explanatory variables to set out a framework composed of three models of news media performance: the elite-driven model, the independent model and the oppositional model. It provides three case studies which, in different ways, illuminate each model of news media performance in wartime. The three case studies include the case of Jessica Lynch, the case of Ali Abbas and the case of the anti-war movement. The book then presents an account of how the relationship between foreign policy, news media and war might be expected to operate, based on current theoretical understanding. In order to place British coverage of the invasion in context, the book offers brief summaries of the structure and character of Britain's television news services and its press. The book provides an analysis of the ways in which the news media's visual depictions of the war reinforced supportive coverage. It is devoted to documenting and analysing evidence for negotiated and oppositional coverage. The book also examines the representation of civilian casualties, military casualties and humanitarian operations across both television and press, three subject areas that generated a good deal of media criticism.
When Karl Polanyi, in a letter of 1934, gave an account of 'the inner development' of his thought, he divided it into two periods. The first was his early life in Hungary, until 1919, the second was the fifteen years that followed, in Viennese exile. This book begins with a survey of Karl Polanyi's early life, and a summary overview of his engagement in emigre politics during his spells in Austria, Britain and North America. He became a central figure in its radical counter-culture, the members of which were to exert an influence upon twentieth-century thought. Polanyi's practical activities initially focused upon the Galilei Circle, a freemason-funded organisation of students and young intellectuals. The first part of the book talks about how ritual and superstition encompassed his everyday life. It discusses Mach's examination of the ideas concerning the so-called 'bodily' and 'spiritual' worlds; explaining why they are as they are, and elaborating useful concepts and rules. The next part explains history: the capitalist system will turn socialism into a state religion, just as the Roman Empire took over Christianity. Karl Kautsky's latest work presents a poignant picture of the disorderly retreat of Marxist socialism. The book looks at the Crossman intervention that is expected to weaken Winston Churchill's intellectual influence upon British foreign policy, and thereby hopefully open the way towards a better understanding, around the world, of the new, socialist Britain. Representative samples of his correspondence from these three periods are included in the final part of this book.
The Chinese political system is the subject of much media and popular comment in part because China supports an economy with an apparently inexorable dynamic and impressive record of achievement. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to China's political system, outlining the major features of the Chinese model and highlighting its claims and challenges. It explores the central role of the Communist Party in the country's politics and the way in which the Party controls most elements of the political system. The collapse of the imperial system in 1911, the subsequent decades of turmoil and war and the coming to power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 constitutes a truly revolutionary period in Chinese political history. The People's Republic of China (PRC) represents an unanticipated challenge to the logic of history. The key organising principle of the political system of the PRC is the leadership of the CCP. China remains a Leninist party-state. The book also examines the role of the National People's Representatives Congress (NPC) and then the State Council and the associated structures of central government departments. Greater democracy is facilitated, as are other reforms, by the recasting of China's foreign policy to encourage a calmer international environment. China's re-emergence as a major power is the single most important geo-political trend of the early twenty-first century.
Foundation on behalf of the Dalai Lama.3 A number of reasons were alluded to for such an action. Perhaps the Prime Minister wished to assuage the concerns of the Indian communist parties, then part of the ruling coalition, that the Indian foreign policy was tilting toward Washington in order to send the message that India desired to preserve the upward trajectory in Sino-Indian ties. Yet outside observers remained perplexed about the goals of the Indian government, since it contravened India’s long-held position that the Dalai Lama is a not a mere political dissident 2
This book addresses the special relationship from the perspective of post-Second World War British governments. It argues that Britain's foreign policy challenges the dominant idea that its power has been waning and that it sees itself as the junior partner to the hegemonic US. The book also shows how at moments of international crisis successive British governments have attempted to re-play the same foreign policy role within the special relationship. It discusses the power of a profoundly antagonistic relationship between Mark Twain and Walter Scott. The book demonstrates Stowe's mis-reading and mis-representation of the Highland Clearances. It explains how Our Nig, the work of a Northern free black, also provides a working-class portrait of New England farm life, removed from the frontier that dominates accounts of American agrarian life. Telegraphy - which transformed transatlantic relations in the middle of the century- was used by spiritualists as a metaphor for the ways in which communications from the other world could be understood. The story of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship is discussed. Beside Sarah Orne Jewett's desk was a small copy of the well-known Raeburn portrait of Sir Walter Scott. Henry James and George Eliot shared a transatlantic literary network which embodied an easy flow of mutual interest and appreciation between their two milieux. In her autobiography, Gertrude Stein assigns to her lifelong companion the repeated comment that she has met three geniuses in her life: Stein, Picasso, and Alfred North Whitehead.
1 Introduction What is happening to Ireland and Ireland’s role in the world? Those who study and write on Irish foreign policy1 appear to be divided. Some argue that Ireland’s evolving place in the world has been a function of individual choices.Thus, they map the Republic of Ireland’s course through the choppy seas of international politics by reference to the personalities and preferences of its political leaders and senior officials. These detailed, empirical stories centre, for example, around the efforts of W.T. Cosgrave to redefine the British Empire
For over five decades, the Cold War security agenda was distinguished by the principal strategic balance, that of a structure of bipolarity, between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR). This book seeks to draw from current developments in critical security studies in order to establish a new framework of inquiry for security in the Middle East. It addresses the need to redefine security in the Middle East. The focus is squarely on the Arab-Israeli context in general, and the Palestinian-Israeli context in particular. The character of Arab-Israeli relations are measured by the Israeli foreign policy debate from the 1950s to the 1990s. A dialogue between Islam and Islamism as a means to broaden the terrain on which conflict resolution and post-bipolar security in the Middle East is to be understood is presented. The Middle East peace process (MEPP) was an additional factor in problematizing the military-strategic concept of security in the Middle East. The shift in analysis from national security to human security reflects the transformations of the post-Cold War era by combining military with non-military concerns such as environmental damage, social unrest, economic mismanagement, cultural conflict, gender inequity and radical fundamentalism. By way of contrast to realist international relations (IR) theory, developing-world theorists have proposed a different set of variables to explain the unique challenges facing developing states. Finally, the book examines the significance of ecopolitics in security agendas in the Middle East.
This book addresses a critical issue in global politics: how recognition and misrecognition fuel conflict or initiate reconciliation. The main objective of this book is to demonstrate how representations of one state by another influence foreign policymaking behaviour. The key argument is that representations are important because they shape both the identity of a state and how it is recognised by others. States respond to representations of themselves that do not fit with how they wish to be recognised. The book provides a thorough conceptual engagement with the issues at stake and a detailed empirical investigation of the fraught bilateral relations between the United States and Iran, which is perhaps one of the most significant flashpoints in global politics today. Despite Iran and the US finally reaching an agreement on the nuclear issue that allows Iran limited nuclear technological capacity in exchange for the lifting of certain sanctions, the US withdrew from the deal in May 2018. However, questions remain about how best to explain the initial success of this deal considering the decades of animosity between Iran and the US, which have previously scuppered any attempts on both sides to reach an amicable agreement. Increasing concerns about declining Iran–US relations under the Trump administration suggest even more so the power of recognition and misrecognition in world politics. Scholars and strategists alike have struggled to answer the question of how this deal was made possible, which this book addresses.
6 Policy actors and structures: the executive drama Introduction The objective of this chapter is to outline the central political and bureaucratic framework from which Irish foreign policy is constructed and to analyse the significance of its evolution. Traditionally, Irish foreign policy has been seen as a creature of government and thus of the ministers and the departmental officials directly concerned with the pursuit of foreign policy objectives.This chapter will argue that in so far as the executive remains at the centre of the foreign policy process in
This is the first monograph length study that charts the coercive diplomacy of the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as practiced against their British ally in order to persuade Edward Heath’s government to follow a more amenable course throughout the ‘Year of Europe’ and to convince Harold Wilson’s governments to lessen the severity of proposed defence cuts. Such diplomacy proved effective against Heath but rather less so against Wilson. It is argued that relations between the two sides were often strained, indeed, to the extent that the most ‘special’ elements of the relationship, that of intelligence and nuclear co-operation, were suspended. Yet, the relationship also witnessed considerable co-operation. This book offers new perspectives on US and UK policy towards British membership of the European Economic Community; demonstrates how US détente policies created strain in the ‘special relationship’; reveals the temporary shutdown of US-UK intelligence and nuclear co-operation; provides new insights in US-UK defence co-operation, and revaluates the US-UK relationship throughout the IMF Crisis.