National Course Research Articles

Slavery and the Enslaved at the Frontiers of Freedom

Slavery and the Enslaved at the Frontiers of Freedom Joshua D. Rothman (bio) Alice L. Baumgartner, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2020. 365 pp. Maps, notes, and index. $32.00. William G. Thomas III, A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. 418 pp. Figures, maps, notes, and index. $35.00. It might be tempting to dismiss The 1776 Report, published in January 2021 by the "President's Advisory 1776 Commission," as one among many desperate efforts by hangers-on to cling to relevance as the Trump administration came to its miserable end. Purporting its "intention of cultivating a better education among Americans in the principles and history of our nation," the 1776 Commission, formed just a month prior to releasing its report, included almost no professional historians at all, and none trained in the history of the United States. Its assessment of the American past is not a serious and considered analysis so much as it is a paean to a supposedly "exemplary nation" committed to "universal truths of equality, liberty, justice, and government by consent." Explicit in its desire for "patriotic education," the report's ostensible commitment to "the facts of our founding" is a thin and unconvincing disguise for simplistic nationalist propaganda.1 Yet even the clumsiest propaganda can have power. That is especially so when it comes tethered to a political movement with millions of adherents determined to use an understanding of the past like that advanced in The 1776 Report as a cudgel to bury central elements of the American experience. Most particularly, the efforts of the 1776 Commission are intended as a retort to "The 1619 Project." Launched by The New York Times in 2019, that project posits the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia as a metaphorical national founding and asks us to imagine an American history that puts racial slavery and its aftermath at the narrative center. But the authors of The 1776 Report, like their ideological accomplices launching assaults on the alleged teaching of "Critical Race Theory," would instead have Americans believe that [End Page 40] the institution of slavery, the imposition of disfranchisement and segregation, and racism itself were merely "challenges to America's principles" rather than fundamental constituent elements of the history of the United States.2 The contentions made in The 1776 Report with regard to American slavery will be familiar to anyone masochistic enough to follow what passes for historical debate in most corners of social media. The Report maintains that slavery was not a uniquely American institution, that most of America's founders saw slavery as unfortunate and hoped for its abolition, that the Constitution made compromises with slavery but was ultimately an antislavery document that laid the groundwork for slavery's destruction, and that the United States was a leader among western countries in bringing slavery to an end. Alternately irrelevant, questionable, or outright false, this series of dodges also sees far greater significance in the dithering, bargaining, and arguing among white Americans than in the lives of enslaved people whose numbers increased more than sixfold between the American Revolution and the Civil War. The work historians do in classrooms and archives may sometimes feel inadequate to the task of combatting the distortions and denials of America's racial past and present. But they are the best tools at our disposal, and ceding the field is not a viable option. Fortunately, we continue to see an outpouring of scholarship demonstrating the wrenching ambiguity of the nation's founding principles. Equally important, we see the impact that ambiguity had on Black Americans who struggled to overcome enslavement, who laid claim to the freedom that the United States proclaimed as universal but provided as racially particular, and who sometimes found ways to seize that freedom when they were refused it, profoundly altering the nation's course in the process. In A Question of Freedom, William Thomas III examines hundreds of legal actions taken by enslaved families in pursuit of their own liberation, focusing especially on freedom...

Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism eds. by Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter

Reviewed by: Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism eds. by Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter Mark J. Dixon Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism. Edited by Heath W. Carter and Laura Rominger Porter. Grand Rapids: Eerd-mans, 2017. 297 pp. "Some Lutherans in America don't like the word 'evangelical' because it has been monopolized by biblical fundamentalists." [The New Church Debate: Issues Facing American Lutheranism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983, 2] Carl Braaten's imprecise use of terms did not invalidate his assessment of Lutheran attitudes, which still rings true today. In fact, Lutherans in America have been skeptical of evangelicalism (and closely related movements) long before it came to be associated almost exclusively with the modern Religious Right. This skepticism implies that evangelicalism is easily defined, and unworthy of serious or respectful engagement. This collection puts these assumptions to the lie. Here readers encounter evangelicalism as "the single most powerful explanatory device adopted by academic historians to account for the distinctive features of American society, culture, and identity," and see the folly in pigeonholing a tradition without a universally accepted "consistent historical referent" (xvi). Carter and Porter open their introduction by summarizing the evangelical influence on modern American life—from the Bakkers to the Osteens, The Total Woman to The Purpose Driven Life, Nixon to [End Page 118] Trump. Despite evangelicalism's obvious contemporary significance, its history was neglected until the "historiographical revolution" of the 1980s, which emanated largely from Wheaton College's Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (founded 1982). This surge in scholarship located the modern faith associated with Billy Graham within a tradition "extend[ing] all the way back to colonial revivals led by the likes of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and Sarah Osborn." It also led to a growing recognition that "no other faith had so powerfully shaped the nation's course" (xv). Despite (or because of) this increased critical attention, a satisfactory historical definition for evangelicalism has proved elusive. Carter and Porter intentionally refrain from offering a comprehensive definition, and instead frame this collection of essays as "a variety of historical approaches to a term that … points to a set of family resemblances that spring from a shared genealogy" (xvi). Decisive moments in the history of several branches of this family tree are laid out in twelve essays spanning from the Great Awakening to the 1974 Lausanne Congress. Every essay is worth your time. I regret that I can only mention a few. Some, like Harry Stout's on the Great Awakening or George Marsden's on fundamentalism, conveniently repackage field-shaping theses from these authors' own monographs to fit the "turning points" device. Catherine Brekus' essay is notable for treating a classic theme (the relationship between evangelicalism and the Enlightenment) in a new way, in this case by approaching the issue through figures like Sarah Osborn and Newport Gardner instead of, for example, Jonathan Edwards. Edith Blumhofer's essay on the origins of Pentecostalism in Chicago is so highly detailed that it almost functions as a very brief introduction to the subject. This reader particularly appreciated Luke Harlow's chapter, "The Civil War and the Making of Conservative American Evangelicalism," and its convincing argument that the slavery debate and its effective resolution in the Thirteenth Amendment created the narrower, more conservative evangelicalism that would go into the twentieth century prepared to devote tremendous energy to a range of issues that would come to define fundamentalism. [End Page 119] I craved at least one more chapter after Daren Dochuk's on Lausanne, or at least an explanation for the absence of an essay dedicated to the modern evangelical culture with which Carter and Porter chose to open their introduction. Of course a scholarly critique of evangelical Christianity in the context of the 2016 presidential election is most to be desired, but that history almost certainly unfolded too close to publication. In any event it is difficult to know what this turning point means yet. Where will evangelicalism go from here? I also would have liked more from Carter and Porter on their intriguing "genealogical" definition of evangelicalism. What are the family resemblances between figures like George Whitefield...

All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay from Lincoln to Roosevelt. By JohnTaliaferro. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. 673 pp.

All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay from to Roosevelt. By John Taliaferro. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. 673 pp. It is not clear whether or not the young John Hay, an office secretary busy with envelopes and ink working for Abraham Lincoln, longed for any greater political future. Fortune, though, would open a way for his unique brand of quiet ambition. His career in the White House would span a stunning 66 years and 10 presidents; he was a witness to great transformations of American life, from the Civil War to the Gilded Age to the United States' emergence as a superpower. He was acquainted with such luminaries as Mark Twain and Henry Adams, and contributed his own insights on the times as the author of several novels and hundreds of poems. Yet he was also instrumental in shaping those times with two monumental foreign policy achievements: the treaty ending the Spanish-American War and the Open Door Policy on China, both major contributions to the United States' role in geopolitics. His various roles in civil service were perhaps more critical to American foreign policy than any president of his day. John Taliaferro's new book, All the Great Prizes, is a lengthy but engaging record of the life and times of America's most illustrious civil servant. It is a beautifully researched account of the man, both professionally and personally, his formative experiences, and how his decisions shaped so much of modern America. Taliaferro describes the book as an attempt to allow [Hay] to speak for himself, in order that the brilliance of his life, the example of his life, and, what is more, the sheer poignancy of his life might at last be considered in full (13). Hay might have lived out his life in obscurity working at his uncle's law firm in Illinois were it not for his early acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln. The newly elected president invited Hay into his small nucleus of secretaries, living in close quarters baring every seam of their natures, as war and the affairs of the nation enveloped them, and they in turn endeavored to steer the nation's course (p. 40). It was no doubt that closeness to and a familiarity with his rhetorical power that enabled Hay to respond to the president's mail during the most intense days of the Civil War. Hay became a keen observer of the president's character--his dark melancholy, his poetic sense, and his devastating humor. But above all, Hay was a student of Lincoln's greatness. In Lincoln, he found a standard for all subsequent presidents, not to mention a view of the republic that served as Hay's political creed. Over Hay's public life, Lincoln would always be watching (p. 108). Though Hay's ties to opened every door in Washington, he always chose the State Department. He had many important experiences in European politics, which revealed his own country's uniqueness in the world. He was alarmed at the declining authority of the Austrian aristocracy, where tension between cosmopolitan liberal democracy and the paranoid upper classes indicated a dark future for Europe. Already he observed the desperation of monarchies and foresaw the volatility of rampant nationalism when backed by modern weaponry, Taliaferro writes. [T]he more he saw of the Old World's way of governance, the more he appreciated his own country's methods (p. 119). The possibility of an American century lay ahead. Leaders of the new generation, men like Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt, were certainly up to that task. …

The internal enemy: slavery and war in Virginia, 1772-1832

Frederick Douglass recalled that slaves living along Chesapeake Bay longingly viewed sailing ships as freedom's swift-winged angels. In 1813 those angels appeared in the bay as British warships coming to punish the Americans for declaring war on the empire. Over many nights, hundreds of slaves paddled out to the warships seeking protection for their families from the ravages of slavery. The runaways pressured the British admirals into becoming liberators. As guides, pilots, sailors, and marines, the former slaves used their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war. They enabled the British to escalate their onshore attacks and to capture and burn Washington, D.C. Tidewater masters had long dreaded their slaves as an internal enemy. By mobilizing that enemy, the war ignited the deepest fears of Chesapeake slaveholders. It also alienated Virginians from a national government that had neglected their defense. Instead they turned south, their interests aligning more and more with their section. In 1820 Thomas Jefferson observed of sectionalism: Like a firebell in the night [it] awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell of the union. The notes of alarm in Jefferson's comment speak of the fear aroused by the recent crisis over slavery in his home state. His vision of a cataclysm to come proved prescient. Jefferson's startling observation registered a turn in the nation's course, a pivot from the national purpose of the founding toward the threat of disunion. Drawn from new sources, Alan Taylor's riveting narrative re-creates the events that inspired black Virginians, haunted slaveholders, and set the nation on a new and dangerous course.

The Trial in American Life

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessThe Trial in American LifeMichael C. Harlow M.D., J.D.Michael C. Harlow M.D., J.D.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Jun 2008https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.2008.59.6.701AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The book The Trial in American Life examines the impact of high-profile trials on American culture. In this book, Robert Ferguson, a professor of law, literature, and criticism at Columbia University, explores how popular trials develop into an expression of consensus and discord for American society, with public sentiment often affecting a trial's development and outcome. Part 1 of the book examines the various literal and symbolic roles that trial participants play. The American trial is a ritual designed to foster respect for the legal process and participation by antagonistic parties. The ultimate symbolic goal of a trial is an expression and acceptance of communal justice. However, highly controversial cases, such as the Scopes Trial about evolution, can have the opposite effect of polarizing American society regarding a particular issue.Part 2 of the book reviews a constellation of controversial trials that helped shape American history. The first such occurrence was the trial of former Vice-President Aaron Burr on charges of treason. This trial became a proxy referendum on Thomas Jefferson's presidency. This trial displayed the pubic and political pressures placed on an independent judiciary from a controversial trial.During the prelude and strife of the American Civil War, controversial trials became metaphors for the emerging American experience. The 1859 trial of John Brown after his failed raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, received immediate national coverage via the telegraph. During his trial, Brown redefined himself from a failed, violent radical into a martyr for human freedom. The public response to this trial was heightened Southern fears of a slave rebellion and inflamed passions among Northern abolitionists, accelerating the nation's course toward civil war.The book's discussion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination and subsequent trials of alleged assassination conspirators reveal how public fear and rage can nullify a defendant's due-process right to a fair trial. In the trial of Mary Surratt, one of the codefendants charged with conspiracy, her conviction was based on circumstantial evidence, with the ruling military tribunal intentionally suppressing evidence of Surratt's innocence. Prosecutors crafted Mary Surratt into a key figure of the conspiracy, resulting in her public demonization even after her execution.The trial of the 1887 Chicago Haymarket Massacre defendants exemplified how public tensions regarding entire segments of American society can manifest into a vast injustice. In this case, dozens of policemen and labor protesters were killed after an explosion and were subsequently linked to immigrant anarchists. In the wake of the killings, several innocent anarchist activists were convicted and sentenced to death by a prejudicial jury and judge. The trial outcome exacerbated American fears of new immigrants and the threat of anarchist terrorism.American mass hysteria regarding the specter of domestic enemies was revisited in the courts during the Red Scare of the 1950s. The book portrays the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage. Although evidence indicates that the Rosenbergs were agents of Soviet intelligence, it is unclear that they had any role in passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, the charge for which they were both convicted and executed. During sentencing, the presiding judge justified the death sentences for the Rosenbergs as a means of deterring other Americans from committing espionage. The American public vilified the Rosenbergs as the tangible embodiment of a nebulous Communist menace lurking on American shores, in part due to highly sensationalized and biased media trial coverage.Part 3 of the book discusses the impact of modern media on trial proceedings. With the advent of modern technology, controversial trials have been distorted into high entertainment for commercial gain. The result is a skewed public understanding of the criminal justice process, increased potential for externally influenced trial outcomes, and heightened societal conflict over identified trial issues. Ferguson suggests that such negative outcomes could be minimized if trials were televised without interruption, commercials, or media commentary. He speculates that such modifications would enhance both public understanding and validation of American trials. This book offers a broad view of American trials throughout history and their impact on America. It is of value to both the general and academic reader interested in America's legal development. Ferguson's lucid writing style makes The Trial in American Life an enjoyable read. Dr. Harlow is a clinical instructor at the Department of Psychiatry, Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota, Sioux Falls. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 59Issue 6 June, 2008Pages 701-701PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES June 2008 Volume 59 Number 6 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 June 2008 Published in print 1 June 2008

The Patriot Act's Institutional Story: More Evidence of Congressional Ambivalence

In the first year after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress agreed with President George W. Bush and his administration that the key to national security at home and abroad was enhancing executive branch power. To this end, leaders smoothed the legislative process and members largely consented to the new policies and rapid review pace. By December 2002, Congress passed two major domestic laws related to the new War on Terrorism and two war resolutions. But beginning in 2003, many members, largely but not all Democrats, renewed their interest in legislative powers and prerogatives by mounting small rebellions against these once-popular policies, especially the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. Committees and the chamber floors re-emerged as arenas for heated debate on policy oversight, funding, and implementation and management. While members critical of the war have had a hard time gaining traction to alter the nation's course in Iraq, there was a golden opportunity to recalibrate power and policy on the Patriot Act as 16 of its most controversial provisions were scheduled to sunset in 2005. Although the Patriot Act's second legislative round was far more complex than the first, the result gave even more power to the executive branch. Congress's ambition subsided, again. My thanks to the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Louisville, for funding related to this project. A version of this paper was presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association and I thank the discussant, Lilly Goren, for her comments and suggestions, as well as the anonymous reviewers for PS.

Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War by James M. s> Goldgeier Michael McFaul (review)

152 SEER, 83, I, 2005 intrigued by some of the questions the author did not pose, the answers to which westilldonotknow. University ofBradford G. BATONYI Goldgeier, James M. and McFaul, Michael. Powerand Purpose.U.S. Policy Toward Russia AftertheColdWar.BrookingsInstitutionPress,Washington, D.C., 2003. viii + 467 pp. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Index. $19.95: ?14.50 (paperback). THIS Brookings Institution study provides a thorough analytical account of US policy towardsRussia in the eventful decade between the abortive Soviet coup in August I99I and iI September 200I. The authorshave had access to most of the American policymakersinvolved as well as severalin Russia and othercountries,and have conductednearlya hundredinterviewsin all.These, togetherwith the use of memoirs and contemporarypublications,must make this account aswell-basedas any can be before the opening of the archives. As political scientists, the authors are interested in the wider, and more theoretical, implications of their study. The analysis is structuredaround a distinction between what they see as 'two deep traditions in the making of American foreign policy' (p. 5) a 'realist'concern with the distributionof power between states and a 'Wilsonian'belief that American securityis best achieved through the universalization of liberal values. This difference in worldviewsis important,it is argued,because 'ideasdo matter'in the making of American foreign policy: 'structuralor systemic factors be they the balance of power or internationalinstitutions are least constrainingforthe mostpowerfulstatein the system'(p. 8). In thiscontext, too, individual'policy entrepreneurs'(p. 8) can have a keyinfluence.Thus, Secretaryof StateJames Bakerwas crucial in the adoption and effectiveimplementation of the policy of removingnuclearweapons fromthe Ukraine, Belarusand Kazakhstan. Baker's concern with Realpolitik security issues is seen as typical of the George H. W. Bush administration with its concentration on reaching disarmament agreements with Gorbachev and relative indifference to the issue of democratization. Even when the August I99I coup seemed to be successful,Bush made it clear this would not check the START I treaty. By contrast, the Clinton administration, and particularly Strobe Talbott, who had effectivecontrolof Russianpolicy formost of the time, sawthe promotion of democracy in Russia as the main priority.The pendulum swungback with George W. Bush, for whom Condoleeza Rice insistedthat 'U.S. policy must concentrate on the importantsecurityagendawith Russia'(p. 309). The authorsadmitthatthisneatpatternistoo simpleand that allPresidents have to pay attention to both the balance of power and liberalvalues, a point amplydemonstratedin thenarrative.Similarly,astheyalsoshow,both 'power balancers' and 'regime transformers' can differ among themselves as 'realists'did over the desirabilityof Ukraine's having nuclear weapons and 'Wilsonians' over NATO enlargement. But in stressing the fundamental character of the ideological divide, Goldgeier and McFaul follow many historiansof American foreign policy. It is clear where their own sympathies REVIEWS 153 lie. They are criticalof the failureof the United Statesto do more to promote democracy and economic reform, particularly in I99I-92. The fact that acrimony over such issuesas NATO enlargement or Kosovo did not resultin a return to the Cold War is taken to show that 'historyhas vindicated those Wilsonians in all three U.S. administrations who believed that Russian transformationwas a U.S. securityinterest'(p. 365). 'Realists' might respond that Moscow's acquiescent attitude reflected consciousness of its weakness. The authors themselves remark on the 'breathtakingspeed' of Russia's decline as a major power (p. 359); where Khrushchev once dreamt of overtakingthe West, Putin now aspiresto catch up with Portugal.As ispointed out, therewas a lag inWashington'sperception of this, and in his firstterm Clinton had no higherforeignpolicy prioritythan the support of El'tsin. But later in the decade Russia received much less attention, and lessconsiderationwas given to thewishesof itsleaders.In other respects,too, the storytold here seems to vindicate a 'realist'perspective.The valuable statistics(and tables) on aid not only show how small the American effortwas in comparisonto that of Europe (especiallyGermany)but also how much more aid was provided for securitypurposes (thedismantlingof Soviet nuclear and chemical weapons) than for economic assistance or democracy promotion. This reflected the prioritiesof Congress, which of course has to appropriatethe funds. Whatever latitude of choice the United States enjoys with respect to its external environment, there are significant internal constraintson policymakers'ability to chart the nation's course. In this case, the influence of domestic...

Electoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe by Sarah s> Birch (review)

REVIEWS 153 lie. They are criticalof the failureof the United Statesto do more to promote democracy and economic reform, particularly in I99I-92. The fact that acrimony over such issuesas NATO enlargement or Kosovo did not resultin a return to the Cold War is taken to show that 'historyhas vindicated those Wilsonians in all three U.S. administrations who believed that Russian transformationwas a U.S. securityinterest'(p. 365). 'Realists' might respond that Moscow's acquiescent attitude reflected consciousness of its weakness. The authors themselves remark on the 'breathtakingspeed' of Russia's decline as a major power (p. 359); where Khrushchev once dreamt of overtakingthe West, Putin now aspiresto catch up with Portugal.As ispointed out, therewas a lag inWashington'sperception of this, and in his firstterm Clinton had no higherforeignpolicy prioritythan the support of El'tsin. But later in the decade Russia received much less attention, and lessconsiderationwas given to thewishesof itsleaders.In other respects,too, the storytold here seems to vindicate a 'realist'perspective.The valuable statistics(and tables) on aid not only show how small the American effortwas in comparisonto that of Europe (especiallyGermany)but also how much more aid was provided for securitypurposes (thedismantlingof Soviet nuclear and chemical weapons) than for economic assistance or democracy promotion. This reflected the prioritiesof Congress, which of course has to appropriatethe funds. Whatever latitude of choice the United States enjoys with respect to its external environment, there are significant internal constraintson policymakers'ability to chart the nation's course. In this case, the influence of domestic lobbies is apparent over NATO enlargement, the distribution of aid between Russia and the Newly Independent States (especiallyUkraine)and the amount thatwent in the form of food. Finally, there is the question of how much influence on Russian internal developments the United States could have had a subject on which the authors seem in two minds (p. 40). The dream that propaganda and foreign aid can produce an American-styledemocracyin Russiadatesbackat least to I9I7. The authors are evidently close to Russian reformerswho shared this aspiration,but historysuggeststhatin both countriesmost people have always had otherpriorities. StCatharine's College, Cambridge JOHN A. THOMPSON Birch, Sarah. ElectoralSystemsand Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe. One Europe or Several? Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2003. xii + 2 I2 pp. Notes. Tables. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. ?45.00? THIS is an important and well-written contribution to the fast-growing literature on electoral systems and party politics in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. The main aim of the book is to explore the influence of electoral systemson the degree of inclusion of citizens into political processes and to establish the patterns of impact of electoral systems on party system institutionalization. Included in the study are lower house parliamentary elections between i990 and 2002 in twenty states of East-Central Europe 154 SEER, 83, I, 2005 (ECE);only Azerbaijan,Belarusand Yugoslaviabefore 2000 were left out on the basis of not being democratic enough by international standards. The book convincingly demonstrates its main hypothesis, namely that electoral systems have a systematic impact on how representativestructuresfunction even in the period shortly after regime change. The first part serves as an introductionto the generaldiscussionaboutthe originsof electoralinstitutions in ECE. In the second part the relationship between electoral rules and inclusion of voters into political processes is explored. The third part deals with questions of how electoral institutions influence the size and shape of partysystemsanditsoverallstabilityandchange. The analysisissupplemented with a summaryof electoralresultsin all countriesunderconsideration. Even though the relationshipbetween electoralsystemsand partycompetition is notoriously complex, the author argues that in establishing electoral institutions,politicians in ECE in many cases took a long-term view and did not necessarilychoose the electoral rulesthat would enhance theirindividual or party chances. Moreover, despite ratherfrequent tampering with various aspects of electoral systems (e.g. gradual increases in electoral thresholds), generallythe electoralinstitutionsshow considerablestabilityand persistence. Unlike the single member district (SMD) majority systems used in the Communistperiod, all new democraciesuse electoralsystemswith important (or only) proportional representation components. In addition, in many countrieselectoral systemsare specifiedin the constitutions,a practice rather unusualin WesternEurope. Because no countryin ECE adopted compulsoryvoting, variousaspectsof electoral institutions and other political variables (e.g. closeness of political competition or support for the left...

Kissinger, Ford, and Congress: The Very Bitter End in Vietnam

Although not elected to the office, Gerald Ford nonetheless had the opportunity to change the nation's course in Vietnam when he assumed the presidency in August 1974. He did not do so, leaving the burden of ending the war there to the U.S. Congress. Contrary to what some policymakers and historians have subsequently argued, Congress did not sell out a healthy, viable South Vietnamese government to the communists in 1974–1975. Instead, the senators and representatives who voted to reduce, not cut off, military and economic assistance to the government of Nguyen Van Thieu made the correct and proper decision in the face of that regime's obviously untenable nature and the overwhelming desire of the American people to curtail support for it. Rather than working out a plan to end the war and remove those South Vietnamese who had worked with the Americans over the years, the Ford administration, led by the President himself, his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Graham Martin, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, chose to pursue a deliberate policy of denial, one designed to place the blame for the loss of South Vietnam on the shoulders of Congress. The resulting tragedy left thousands of Vietnamese to face life as the clear losers in a civil war.

Continuity and change in American foreign policy

D elivering a "major appraisal" of current American foreign policy presents me with a di lemma-a difficult choice between public interest in the subject on the one hand and the imperatives of responsibility on the other. Despite my notorious humility, it would be tempting for me to speculate about how I might have dealt with this or that tactical situation if I had been in office these past ten months. But those who have borne the responsibility of high office know too well the complexities, ambiguities, and anguish of charting our nation's course in a turbulent period. The new administration deserves the opportunity to develop its policies without harassment or second-guessing. Ten months is, after all, but an instant in the life of nations. President Carter and Secretary of State Vance are on the verge of delicate and important negotiations-with the Soviet Union on strategic arms limitation, with the Middle East foreign ministers on peace in that crucial area, and with other leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly on a variety of complex issues. The hopes of all Americans go with them. The success of the administration in promoting peace and progress will be a success for the nation. Any setbacks of the administration would affect the lives and prosperity of all Americans. When a performer is taking careful and complicated steps on a high wire, it is profoundly inappropriate, not to say dangerous, for a spectator in a seat far below to shout at him that he is putting his toe in the wrong place. So I would like to discuss some of the philosophical underpinnings from which tactical decisions derive: the nature and purpose of bipartisanship in our democracy; the challenge of pursuing our moral values, especially human rights, in a complex world; and the relationship of issues such as human rights to others, the so-called problem of linkage.

Trayectoria histórica del desarrollo urbano y regional en una zona del occidente de México

El propósito central del artículo es reflexionar sobre algunas de las características de los fenómenos de centralización y de concentración urbana a partir de datos procedentes de variadas fuentes de información referidos a los procesos de cambio que han tenido lugar en una región del occidente de México. Tomando en cuenta el marco concreto del desarrollo histórico regional, se examina la relación entre los objetivos de algunas de las políticas que de facto ha seguido el desarrollo nacional, y las circunstancias locales y regionales que han facilitado ciertos cambios, a veces en detrimento, a veces en favor del bienestar del llamado “Bajío zamorano”. El trabajo sugiere cómo una ciudad de tamaño medio como Zamora ha llegado a ser el ámbito desde el cual se ha ido organizando el conjunto de relaciones económicas, sociales y políticas de la región inmediata, a la vez que ha servido también como centro de intermediación entre los niveles nacional y local. El conjunto de datos presentados puede servir, más que para calificar simplemente el sentido de la trayectoria nacional como “centralizadora” o “concentradora”, para reflexionar sobre el sentido múltiple de los variados efectos que han seguido a la dinámica de cambio regional durante lo que va de este siglo.

Japan's decisive decade: how a determined minority changed the nation's course in the 1950s

Japan's decisive decade: how a determined minority changed the nation's course in the 1950s

Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Regional Religion and North-South Alienation in Antebellum America

I have long been intrigued with the role of the American churches in dividing the nation and reinforcing the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War. Elsewhere I have argued that evangelical Protestantism was a major bond of unity for the United States during the first part of the nineteenth century; that the chief institutional forms of this faith were the large popular denominations—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, each with nationwide constituencies; that these denominations, increasingly agitated by disputes over slavery, sundered into northern and southern factions long before political rupture, thus opening the first major cleavage between slaveholding and free states; and that the denominational schisms portended and to some extent provoked the crisis of the Union in 1861. What I wish to pursue further in this article is how the regional religion which these schisms both exposed and augmented not only broke a primary bond of national unity but also furnished a persuasive example of sectional independence, encouraged the myth of peaceable secession, reinforced North-South alienation, and heightened the moral outrage which each section felt against the other. The “inner civil war” of the divided churches thus exacerbated the ordeal of the Union and confirmed the nation's course to unrepressed conflict.

The New, New Japan

JAPAN'S REMARKABLE postwar history is coming to an end in a understated crisis that will probably last for the next several months and perhaps a year, probably determining the nation's course for another half century. A vastly complex situation can be narrowed down to three individual problems and their possible solutions. A rapacious inflation, part of the worldwide phenomenon but also very distinctive, has altered Japanese economic policy and sharpened issues that had been developing for some time. Second, the erosion of the Liberal Democratic Party as the holding company for Japanese conservatism has reached a stage where it probably cannot be halted. Japan is thus standing on the threshold of a new political era, probably to be characterized by more unstable government than in the past. Both of these factors-and linked to what appears to be America's weakened role in world affairs-are, ini turn, forcing at least a modulation of Japanese foreign policy and its world role, which for 25 years has been marked by almost total reliance on the United States. One caveat must be entered immediately into any discussion of Japan's future. More than the other industrial powers, because of its complete dependence on overseas sources of raw materials and disproportionately heavy reliance on foreign markets, Japan is the quintessential example of contemporary international interdependence. What happens to the economics and politics of Western Europe and the United States will dictate in no small measure the future of Japan. Yet it is also worth noting that Japan has retained-certainly far more than any of the other great industrial nations-a sense of selfdiscipline and restraint on the part of the masses. One should discount much of what is being said in the media about the basic changes al-