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This chapter examines the link between MCPs and the welfare state at the state level in the United States. The first section reviews existing data on the impact of race on the welfare state; the second section identifies a range of MCPs that have been adopted at the state level in the USA, as well as what is called ‘anti-MCPs’ designed to overturn or pre-empt the possible adoption of MCPs. The empirical relationship between MCPs and the welfare state is then examined to determine whether MCPs impact the welfare state independent of other factors, as critics contend. It is shown that while the impact of MCPs on the welfare state varies from one MCP to another, there is no general tendency for states with stronger MCPs to weaken their welfare policies compared to states with weaker MCPs (or anti-MCP states).

How does a country repair its harm to a vulnerable minority targeted during times of national fear because of race? How did the United States redress its then popular yet unconstitutional WWII incarceration of 120,000 innocent Japanese Americans in desolate barbed wire prisons without charges, hearings, or bona fide evidence of military necessity? In response to a Congressional inquiry, political lobbying, and lawsuits, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 directed the President to apologize and authorized over one billion dollars in reparations. Congress also created a fund to educate the public about the government’s false assertion of “national security” to restrict civil liberties. Some considered redress a tremendous victory — rewriting history and personal healing. Others questioned reparations for one U.S. group but not others. Japanese American Redress served as a catalyst for reparations movements worldwide. This paper examines its genesis, legal implementation, and apparent effects. It also explores wide-ranging political mobilization and social meanings of redress and “unfinished business”. Reparations cannot be measured by laws alone. Diverse communities must engage contested questions of history, justice, and belonging. Reparations claims face often unforeseen benefits and limitations. The paper concludes with these “lessons learned” to date.

This chapter discusses the fourth phase of UN involvement in Iraq, in which it was largely sidelined. Negotiations within the Security Council in late 2002 and early 2003 resulted in deadlock, and the decision of a US and UK-led Coalition to overthrow Saddam Hussein forcibly without a Council mandate. The chapter also addresses the early Coalition occupation of Iraq; subsequent decisions by the Security Council to lend this international action a semblance of legal cover (without providing post facto authorization of the use of force against Saddam Hussein); the nascent Sunni-dominated insurgency against Coalition forces and their local allies; and the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 that was to traumatize UN staff and inhibit significant UN post-conflict roles on the ground.

This chapter examines events in Iraq during the most recent fifth phase of UN involvement. Having been largely sidelined on Iraq in the fourth phase, the UN underwent a Crisis of Confidence between 2004 and 2005, searching for a means to address its demotion. It is argued that that the deadlock in the Council over Iraq in 2003 had critically undermined the UN’s credibility globally, which no amount of activity elsewhere, notably in Africa, could recover. During this period, under Council resolutions, the UN was meant to be playing a ‘vital’ role in Iraq, but its margin for maneuver was circumscribed on the one hand by the continuing strong guiding hand of the United States in Iraqi affairs and on the other by the dreadful security situation in Iraq, precluding deployment of a large UN international staff. During these years, various aspects of the UN’s earlier activities in Iraq, notably the OFF Program, returned to haunt it, making 2004 Kofi Annan’s ‘annus horribilis’.

Chapter introduces the main themes of the second part of the book. Above all, the global trend toward vertical disintegration in complex manufacturing in advanced countries is the focus of analysis. The book shifts its attention from long historical evolution in one industry in three countries to an analysis of supply chains in two very broad complex manufacturing sectors: Automobiles and Machinery. The country focus shifts as well, with broadly comparative initial chapters giving way to a focus on processes of recomposition in Germany and the United States The theoretical focus remains constant however: recomposition of the arrangements governing these industrial sectors are driven by creative action. The introduction also outlines the sources of data used in the analysis, above all interview based data collected by two research consortia: The Advanced Manufacturing Project and the Global Components Project

Many of the key actors in the 9/11 drama articulated their grievances using archaic religious language. But the very fact that the code involved is ancient while the behaviour that needs to be explained is recent suggests the inadequacy of causal theories that overemphasize the religious element. This chapter examines whether non-religious motives may well have been predominant in the 9/11 mission. To pursue this suggestion, the inquiry is divided into two parts, discussing first the perpetrators and then the instigators and supervisors of the plot.

Discusses the progressive cooperation established between the US and Western Europe in the period 1945–1950. The first section looks at America's position of strength in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, and the view of the US that its task was now to save the world from totalitarianism, in a mixture of self‐interest, idealism, and concern for others. The second section, ‘The United States, the World, and Western Europe’, describes Roosevelt's ambition to establish a global system based on American‐inspired principles in the context of the more regional approach that it had to adopt as regards the UN, the IMF, ITO, and GATT. The third, ‘The United States, Germany, and the Beginnings of European Integration’, looks at how Washington promoted European integration. The fourth and fifth sections discuss the economic and political aspects, and the military aspects, of the author's Western Europe as American ‘“Empire” by invitation’ thesis. The last two sections of the chapter look at the European invitations to the US to be more involved in Europe from the perspectives of the state of public opinion in Europe, and of the effect on US foreign policy.

This chapter examines in detail which fundamental features of postwar American political theory facilitated a disregard of the central agency of political life: the state. The chapter presents two initial viable causes for such actions. The first gives emphasis to capitalism and its role in American political explanation while the second highlights the anti-authoritarian tendencies of Cold War political thinking in the United States. However, the chapter argues that these two are insufficient to explain such exclusion. Obsession with the exclusive, oppressive, and tyrannical character of popular opinion and conventional wisdom in the United States is also taken into consideration when discussing why a generation of political theorists removed the state and situated “liberal tradition” in its place.

This chapter contends that, in a world where the West stands truly triumphant, a fundamental debate has broken out within its ranks about unilateralism versus multilateralism. The Bush administration is not simply more unilateral than previous American administrations; under Bush, America has seemingly forfeited its leadership position as the steward of the rules and institutions of governance. “Europeans want more liberal global governance while the United States seems to want less—perhaps none.” This is at the heart of the difficulties today. Still, the chapter is optimistic about the future of the Atlantic relationship. No country can solve the world's problems alone. Ultimately even the United States will have to recognize that some form of multilateralism is necessary, although it may not necessarily be the variant espoused by the Europeans today.

This chapter looks at the future. It contends that “for the next period of history” there will be relatively few dramatic changes. The United States will remain the most important global power; the European Union will gain in relative power, despite the limitations inherent in a “United Europe of States.” Despite unilateralist temptations in America and multipolar inclinations in Europe, both sides will, learning from the lessons of recent years, resist extreme positions in dealing with each other. “Neither the United States nor the European nations will be able to identify more effective, compatible, or reliable partners among global players.” The added force of global interdependence will increase pressure on the United States and Europe to develop compatible strategies.

Wraps up the analysis of labor market developments in the U.S. through the 1940s showing how and why employers abdicated their segmentalist autonomy and submitted temporarily to state‐imposed solidarism, including intersectoral wage compression similar to what Sweden's normal peace time system brought about. During the prewar and interwar periods, the same employers actively sought another kind of intersectoral control, especially over wages in the building and construction trades, because high wages in this sector disrupted major manufacturers’ otherwise workable system of labor market governance just as they did in Sweden. Unlike in Sweden, however, major American manufacturers were unable to find allies for a cross‐class alliance against the building trade unions, and thus political relations between capital and labor remained far more hostile than in Sweden despite the Swedish labor movement's explicitly anticapitalist ideology.

This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the UN Security Council’s involvement in Iraq. It then provides background information on the Iraqi state, Saddam Hussein, the mood in the UN Security Council, post-Cold War US multilateralism, and the split between the P-5 (Permanent Five members of the Security Council). An overview of the chapters included in this volume is presented.

The conclusion notes that, while several of the contributors to this book suggest that the United States and Europe may well return to the cooperation of the past, most factors would seem to indicate that the two have entered a new period compared to the cold war years. While the Soviet threat was almost ideally handled by NATO, terrorism is not similarly unifying; America has changed compared to the cold war years, especially because of demographic developments and because of September 11; while in the foreseeable future the EU cannot challenge the US militarily or politically, slowly the EU is defining its own identity and increasing its international influence. On the other hand, a divorce between the two sides of the Atlantic appears unlikely. The two sides may not be as close as during the cold war, but, to the extent that they still need friends and allies, and they do, they will still be forced to look to each other.

This chapter returns to the analysis of twentieth century U.S. to explain the dual nature of its system of labor market governance in which cartelism, a centralized system of multiemployer collective bargaining, thrived alongside segmentalism in important sectors like bituminous coal mining, clothing, and building and construction. In these sectors, employers and unions joined in cross‐class alliance to prop up wages to stem destabilizing low‐standard competition. The regulatory alliance, distinct from Sweden's solidarism, which imposed ceilings instead of floors on wages, helped give rise to economic and political phenomena of an equally distinct nature, e.g., early ties between the Republican Party and the powerful miners’ union; corruption in building and construction (which was absent in Sweden); and ultimately, employer interests in the New Deal's labor and social legislation of the 1930s.

Struggles over ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) illustrate the politicization of international agreements, even in an area of so-called high politics where many believe that national security imperatives drive state behavior. Ratification struggles in the United States led that government to reject the treaty in 1999. Other countries, including France, Germany, Australia, and Canada, offered their support for the agreement in spite of dramatically different stances on the issue of stewardship of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. To date, the CTBT has not entered into force, in part because of decisions by select governments not to ratify the agreement.

In previous times, the United States has been considered as a state that gives utmost priority to higher education. As seen in the history of education in the United States, governmental efforts to expand opportunities for college attendance is key to providing channels for upward mobility, thus, lessening the scope and impact of economic inequality. However, recent studies have shown that this priority of promoting higher education has decreased over time. This chapter aims to explain why the United States has experienced such a departure. It emphasizes how policies created at earlier junctures foster new political dynamics. It also explains how higher education policies promoted development regarding key interest groups such as lenders. However, these same policies failed to mobilize ordinary citizens, this includes students, and families who hoped to send their children to college.