Alberto Fujimori ascended to the presidency of Peru in 1990, boldly promising to remake the country. Ten years later, he hastily sent his resignation from exile in Japan, leaving behind a trail of lies, deceit, and corruption. While piecing together the shards of Fujimori’s presidency, prosecutors uncovered a vast criminal conspiracy fueled by political ambition and personal greed. The Fujimori regime managed to maintain a facade of democracy while systematically eviscerating democratic institutions and the rule of law through legal subterfuge, intimidation, and outright bribery. The architect of this strategy was Fujimori’s notorious intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos. With great skill, Fujimori and Montesinos created the appearance of a democratic public sphere but ensured it would work only to suit their personal motives. The press was allowed to operate, but information exchange was under strict control. The more government officials tampered with the free flow of ideas, the more they inadvertently exposed the ills they were trying to cover up. And that proved to be their downfall.Merging penetrating analysis and a journalist’s flair for narrative, Catherine Conaghan reveals the thin line between democracy and dictatorship, and shows how public institutions can both empower dictators and bring them down.

Critical Masses and Critical Choices examines American attitudes on issues of national and international security. Based on over 13,000 in-depth interviews conducted over a ten-year period, Kerry Herron and Hank Jenkins-Smith have created a unique and rich set of data providing insights into public opinion on nuclear deterrence, terrorism, and other security issues from the end of the Cold War to the present day. Their goal is to shed light not only on changes in public opinion about a range of security-related policy issues, but also to gauge the depth of the public’s actual understanding of these matters. Prior to this study, the predominant view held that the American people were incapable of articulate and consistent thought on complex political subjects. This book overturns that notion and demonstrates the sometimes surprisingly cogent positions held by ordinary members of the public on intricate national issues.The book’s solid data, based on long-term studies, combined with crisp writing and often startling conclusions, will appeal to a wide range of readers: scholars, journalists, and policy makers. Critical Masses and Critical Choices is the definitive account of the change in public perceptions on security threats and reactive strategies from the early 1990s to the post 9/11 period. This broad and highly original study will prove an indispensable tool for policy makers and scholars alike.

Newsrooms in Conflict examines the dramatic changes within Mexican society, politics, and journalism that transformed an authoritarian media institution into many conflicting styles of journalism with very different implications for deepening democracy in the country. Using extensive interviews with journalists and content analysis spanning more than two decades, Sallie Hughes identifies the patterns of newsroom transformation that explain how Mexican journalism was changed from a passive and even collusive institution into conflicting clusters of news organizations exhibiting citizen-oriented, market-driven, and adaptive authoritarian tendencies. Hughes explores the factors that brought about this transformation, including not only the democratic upheaval within Mexico and the role of the market, but also the diffusion of ideas, the transformation of professional identities and, most significantly, the profound changes made within the newsrooms themselves. From the Zapatista rebellion to the political bribery scandals that rocked the nation, Hughes's investigation presents a groundbreaking model of the sociopolitical transformation of a media institution within a new democracy, and the rise and subsequent stagnation of citizen-focused journalism after that democracy was established.

The United States Congress is often viewed as the world's most powerful national legislature. To what extent does it serve as a model for other legislative assemblies around the globe? In Exporting Congress? distinguished scholars of comparative legislatures analyze how Congress has influenced elected assemblies in both advanced and transitional democracies. They reveal the barriers to legislative diffusion, the conditions that favor Congress as a model, and the rival institutional influences on legislative development around the world. Exporting Congress? examines the conditions for the diffusion, selective imitation, and contingent utility of congressional institutions and practices in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the European Parliament, and the new democracies in Latin America and Eastern Europe. These scholars find that diffusion is highly sensitive to history, geography, and other contextual factors, especially the structure of political institutions and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. Editors Timothy Power and Nicol Rae place the volume's empirical findings in theoretical, comparative, and historical perspective, and establish a dialogue between the separate subfields of congressional studies and comparative legislatures through the concept of legislative diffusion.

State and Society in Conflict analyzes one of the most volatile regions in Latin America, the Andean states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. For the last twenty-five years, crises in these five Andean countries have endangered Latin America's democracies and strained their relations with the United States. As these nations struggle to cope with demands from Washington on security policies (emphasizing drugs and terrorism), neoliberal economics, and democratic politics, their resulting domestic travails can be seen in poor economic growth, unequal wealth distribution, mounting social unrest, and escalating political instability. The contributors to this volume examine the histories, politics, and cultures of the Andean nations, and argue that, due to their shared history and modern circumstances, these countries are suffering a shared crisis of deteriorating relations between state and society that is best understood in regional, not purely national, terms. The results, in some cases, have been semi-authoritarian hybrid regimes that lurch from crisis to crisis, often controlled through force, though clinging to a notion of democracy. The solution to these problems--whether through democratic, authoritarian, peaceful, or violent means--will have profound implications for the region and its future relations with the world.

For centuries, eyewitnesses around the world -- from America to Africa, Argentina to Scotland -- have reported sightings of dark, mysterious creatures in area lakes that surface briefly, only to quickly disappear. While the most famous lake monsters, those living in Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, have gained international notoriety, hundreds of lakes around the world are said to shelter these shadowy creatures. Lake Monster Mysteries is the first book to collectively approach these widespread mysteries from a scientific perspective. By using exhaustive research and results from firsthand investigations to help separate truth from myth, the authors foster our understanding of what really lurks in the cold, murky depths. Benjamin Radford and Joe Nickell are considered to be among the top lake monster authorities in the world. Here they share unique insights into many of the world's best-known lake monsters. They interview dozens of people and discuss the different types of lake monster sightings, delve into possible explanations for those sightings, and examine hoaxes, evidence claims, and legends surrounding the monsters. The authors have conducted groundbreaking fieldwork and experiments at lakes, examined photographic evidence, and analyzed the most current sonar readings. Incorporating newly-revealed information and up-to-date developments, the cases in Lake Monster Mysteries are in-depth, firsthand investigations that will inform and entertain both avid lake monster researchers and lovers of unexplained mysteries.

Reports of scandal and corruption have led to the downfall of numerous political leaders in Latin America in recent years. What conditions have developed that allow for the exposure of wrongdoing and the accountability of leaders? Enforcing the Rule of Law examines how elected officials in Latin American democracies have come under scrutiny from new forms of political control, and how these social accountability mechanisms have been successful in counteracting corruption and the limitations of established institutions. This volume reveals how legal claims, media interventions, civic organizations, citizen committees, electoral observation panels, and other watchdog groups have become effective tools for monitoring political authorities. Their actions have been instrumental in exposing government crime, bringing new issues to the public agenda, and influencing or even reversing policy decisions. Enforcing the Rule of Law presents compelling accounts of the emergence of civic action movements and their increasing political influence in Latin America, and sheds new light on the state of democracy in the region.

Few recent topics have claimed as much media and political attention as the fight for the right of same-sex couples to marry legally. Striking at the heart of beliefs about sexuality, marriage, family, and child-rearing, the debate has touched off national and international debate. In this practical guide to the issues and their history, the authors present the issues as a courtroom case would be presented to the jury-with an opening statement, expert testimony, and a closing argument in support of same-sex marriage. Chapters explore how we have arrived at our current understandings of homosexuality and marriage, the impact of same-sex marriage on same-sex relationships and families, the practical civil benefits denied to persons who are not allowed to marry, and the 40-year evolution in the law as it relates to sex and reproduction. This book provides a reasoned and informed history of the subject, and is ideal for readers in government, social work, and the law-and anyone curious about where this contentious issue is headed.

"Queen Bee," "busy as a bee," and "the land of milk and honey" are expressions that permeate the language within American culture. Music, movies, art, advertising, poetry, children's books, and literature all incorporate the dynamic image of the tiny, industrious honey bee into our popular imagination. Honey bees -- and the values associated with them -- have influenced American values for four centuries. Bees and beekeepers have represented order and stability in a country without a national religion, political party, language, or family structure. Bees in America is an enlightening cultural history of bees and beekeeping in the United States. Tammy Horn, herself a beekeeper, offers a social and technological history from the colonial period, when the British first brought bees to the New World, to the present, when bees are being trained by the American military to detect bombs. Horn shows how the honey bee was one of the first symbols of colonization and how bees' societal structures shaped our ideals about work, family, community, and leisure. In turn, the Puritan work ethic was modeled after the beehive, and this model continues to influence American definitions of success. Still a powerful symbol today, the honey bee is both a source of income and a metaphor for America's place at the center of global advances in information and technology.

Transparency in Global Change examines the quest for information exchange in an increasingly international, open society. Recent transformations in governments and cultures have brought about a surge in the pursuit of knowledge in areas of law, trade, professions, investment, education, and medical practice—among others. Technological advancements in communications, led by the United States, and public access to information fuel the phenomenon of transparency. This rise in transparency parallels a diminution of secrecy—though, as Burkart and Leslie Holzner point out, secrecy continues to exist on many levels. Based on current events and historical references in literature and the social sciences, Transparency in Global Change focuses on the turning points of information cultures, such as scandals, that lead to pressure for transparency. Moreover, the Holzners illuminate byproducts of transparency—debate, insight, and impetus for change, as transparency exposes the moral corruptions of dictatorship, empire, and inequity.

The book is, as the title indicates, written to support staff development in schools working towards inclusive education. The purpose of the material is to diseminate to teachers, parents and support services elements of successful practices of inclusive schooling in four European countries. It was produced by a collaborative team from Austria, Iceland, Portugal and Spain as part of a Leonardo da Vinci, European Union project called Enhancing Teachers' Ability in Inclusion. The outcome of the project was recently selected by the Directorate-General of Education and Culture of the European Commission as a good example of innovation in vocational education in the field of Social insertion/formation for the disabled. The book is based on several case studies of successful efforts towards inclusive education in compulsory schools in the four countries. The introduction to the book introduces the context of the project and the research methodology. The conclusions section discusses the findings in nine chapters representing the major themes emerging from the study. Each chapter states the main findings for the corresponding theme and then makes practical suggestions for school and staff development based on these findings. Finally, there is a short discussion of the general implications of the study, including guidance on how the materials might be used. The bulk of the material is a handbook for staff development, divided into nine chapters corresponding to the themes emerging from the study.

This study seeks to explain major shifts in health policy and focuses on the politics of hospital mergers. It takes as case studies two governmentally-led hospital mergers in the 1990s - one in London and one in Reykjavik - when national governments, as part of broader administrative reforms, decided to merge teaching hospitals in their capitals. The decision to merge, and the implementation of the decision, followed a long history in both cities, in which the mergers had been repeatedly held up as highly desirable but had always been blocked or abandoned. The merger decisions in the 1990s represent the impossible becoming possible and stand out as defining moments for the way they shape the successive course of events in their respective health care systems.

The overall aim of this book is to ask what the reforms of poverty alleviation programmes and policy tell us about state reform. This can be divided into two elements. Firstly, to evaluate critically the impact of the institutional reforms mandated under the Structural Adjustment agenda on the governance of poverty alleviation programmes. Secondly, to analyse the structural, attitudinal and behavioural dimensions of the progress towards the reform of the African state in the process of poverty alleviation. A key issue that is emerging in the political development of African states is the increasing role of the World Bank and donor organisations, as well as a greater contribution of NGOs in the formulation and implementation of policy. It is hypothesised that policy is forming as a part of a triangular relationship between state institutions, donor agencies and NGOs. Poverty Alleviation Policy in Uganda Since 1986 concerns the way that active state intervention in the alleviation of poverty is decreasing, while on the institutional level, a transformation is occurring that is taking provision away from the state sector and reducing the role of public transfers to the poor. This work highlights a fundamental contradiction in the poverty alleviation agenda; namely that it has been pursued to address short-term problems, while the strategy and institutional environment are designed to yield results only in the long term.

The 'friendly invasion' of American servicemen (and women) began in 1942 and by 1945 around three million had passed through the United Kingdom. With money in their pockets, a smart uniform, and access to goods the British housewife hadn't seen in the shops for many years they were generally popular but resented by some. The phrase 'Over-paid, over-sexed, and over here' being used to describe them in less than complimentary terms. This booklet was issued to American forces in an attempt to get them acquainted with the British, their country, and their ways, and avoid some of the more obvious misunderstandings that could easily occur without at least a little knowledge of the strange and wonderful British customs. Covering a diverse range of subjects such as, customs & manners, sports and pastimes, history and language, as well as some important do's and dont's, it is a delight to read and goes to show that some things haven't changed that much in the last 60 years since this was originally produced.

The Unveiled Ladies of Istanbul (Stamboul) is a picturesque description of women's life in post-World War I Turkey during a period of social and political turmoil. Here Demetra Vaka (1877-1946), an expatriate of Ottoman Turkey, established American journalist and acquaintance of Prince Sabaheddin, returns to her native Istanbul after a 20-year absence. Describing women's lives in post-World War I Turkey, she reports on the successful project of female emancipation pursued by Mustafa Kemal as part of the nationalist agenda. Noting how much this project had benefited upper- and middle-class Turkish women, Vaka nonetheless regrets that the gradual emergence of the monocultural, modern Republic was bringing an end to the multiethnic character of the Ottoman State.

Lust is arguably the most basic of human desires. It determines much of our behavior and our culture, but is it understood? Building on his groundbreaking work in Ecstasy and Rage, Michael Eigen confronts lust, mining the history of psychology and religion as well as the literary depths of the Symposium, the Iliad, and the book of Genesis. He also takes us into his own sessions as a psychoanalyst to show how lust expresses itself in the daily lives of real people. This comprehensive and accessible account of a still-taboo subject includes lust's inescapable ties to reproduction and its ultimate resolution in death. The author uses contemporary and historical examples to show how lust is simultaneously a positive force and potentially destructive. In championing the life-affirming aspects of lust, Eigen's conclusions are thought-provoking, illuminating, and ultimately healing.