This is an integrated range of studies focusing on Wales by a long-established and internationally-recognised academic authority and member of the House of Lords on the advance of democracy and the evolving idea of national identity in modern Britain. It casts back to the impact of change in Europe and the wider world from the 1789 Revolution in France onwards, covering key personalities such as Lloyd George and the impact of the First World War in Wales, and relates to contemporary debates on Scottish independence and the connections with Europe to open up wider issues of open government, foreign policy, the rule of law and cultural diversity.

In 2009, Ghana began pursuing the devolution of functions and responsibilities from the central government to the country’s 216 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs). Agriculture was among one of the first sectors to be devolved, a process that became effective in 2012. This paper analyzes how this transition has proceeded, with a focus on the implications for agricultural civil servants within the MMDAs, accountability to citizens, and agricultural expenditures. Empirically, the paper draws on a survey of 960 rural households, 80 District Directors of Agriculture (DDAs), district level budget data from 2012 to 2016, and semi-structured interviews with a range of national and local government stakeholders.

A revolution is sweeping across America's states and cities. From governers such as Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey, to New York's mayor Rudy Guiliani in New York, the revolutionairies are not just against big government, but also distant government. Groups of citizens have banded together with these enterprising leaders to experiment with a wide range of new approaches to governance--the future of political change in America.

The Scottish parliamentary and local elections of 2007 were significant for two key reasons: the SNP was brought to power for the first time in its history, posing a fundamental challenge to the 300-year Scottish-English Union; and the local elections used the Single Transferable Vote - the first time such an electoral system has been used in Great Britain since 1945.This book explores the significance of these two developments, asking whether they herald a revolutionary break with the past or simply mark a continuing evolution of existing patterns of Scottish politics. It uses a unique source of evidence - representative high quality annual sample surveys of the Scottish public that since 1999 have regularly measured how people in Scotland have reacted to devolution and how they have behaved in elections.Readers will gain an unparalleled insight into the identities, attitudes and electoral behaviour of people in Scotland during the first decade of devolution.

Earl A. Reitan examines the polices adopted by three revolutionary Prime Ministers, and insightfully illuminates the broader implications of the leaders' profound influence on British politics and society. Written clearly and concisely, The Thatcher Revolution is essential reading for anyone interested in the state and future of modern Britain.

Includes decisions of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 1902-1934, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 1934-1959, and various other courts of the District of Columbia.

John Phillip Reid addresses the central constitutional issues that divided the American colonists from their English legislators: the authority to tax, the authority to legislate, the security of rights, the nature of law, the foundation of constitutional government in custom and contractarian theory, and the search for a constitutional settlement.

The book explores the claim that English local government exists in one of the most centralised relationships with national government. Such a position fundamentally undermines any notion of local self-government and makes the term ‘government’ in local government a misnomer. The book will examine how the erosion of the autonomy, powers, roles, functions and responsibilities of English local government came about, the arguments of centralisers and localisers to support their view of the constitutional status of local government, and its overall role in the government of England. The book offers an antidote to the onward march of centralisation by offering a new vision of local government which emphasises both ‘local’ and ‘government’.

"Relying on a wealth of detailed institutional, policy, and elite information, Hahn presents a magisterial study that fills a significant void in our understanding of USSR's destruction. While readers may at times feel overwhelmed.... readers are presented with a conceptual approach that can be useful for appreciating ongoing institutional changes and oftern subtle elite maneuverings in the post-Soviet era. --John P. Willerton, University of Arizona "This is a big book in all respects, weighty both in size and scholarship. The core is a meticulous analysis of the perestroika period of the Soviet Union (1985-91). Followed by a concluding general chapter that applies the earlier analysis to post-Communist Russia (1992-2000). The work is based on years of painstaking analysis, considerable archival research, and numerous interviews." -- The Russian Review "This is an important book with a number of substantive strengths." -- Slavic Review The fall of the Soviet communist regime in 1991 offers a challenging contrast to other instances of democratic transition and change in the last decades of the twentieth century. The 1991 revolution was neither a peaceful revolution from below as occurred in Czechoslovakia nor a negotiated transition to democracy like those in Poland, Hungary, or Latin America. It was not primarily the result of social modernization, the rise of a new middle class, or of national liberation movements in the non-Russian union republics. Instead, as Gordon Hahn argues, the Russian transformation was a bureaucrat-led, state-based revolution managed by a group of Communist Party functionaries who won control over the Russian Republic (RSFSR) in the mid-1990s. Hahn describes how opportunistic Party and state officials, led by Boris Yeltsin, defected from the Gorbachev camp and proceeded in 1990-91 to dismantle the institutions that bound state and party. These revolutionaries from above seized control of political, economic, natural and human resources, and then separated the party apparatus from state institutions on Russian Republic territory. With the failed August 1991 hard-line coup, Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and decreed that all Union state organs, including the KGB and military were under RSFSR control. In Hahn's account, this mode of revolutionary change from above explains the troubled development of democracy in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Hahn shows how limited mobilization of the masses stunted the development of civil societies and the formation of political parties and trade unions with real grass roots. The result is a weak society unable to nudge the state to concentrate on institutional reforms society needs for the development of a free polity and economy. Russia's Revolution from Above goes far in correcting the historical record and reconceptualizing the Soviet transformation. It should be read by historians, economists, political scientists, and Russia area scholars. Gordon M. Hahn is visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His articles on Soviet and Russian politics have appeared in Europe-Asia Studies, Problems of Post-Communism, Russian Review, and Russian History/Histoire Russe.