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This paper explores the Post Cold War origins of the organized criminal violence that once gripped Colombia and now grips Mexico and particularly the highly controversial counterinsurgency strategy used in Colombia that forms the basis for the current strategy in Mexico. It argues that ideology is a reason why the military aspect of these problems was neglected for so long and the reason its detractors see it as a strategy that reduces national sovereignty and endangers democracy when statistics on control of territory, reduction of violence and democratic progress demonstrate the opposite to be true. The paper uses the term “colombianization” to emphasize Colombia’s dramatic shift from almost ungovernable to one of the most stable countries in the region. Colombianization is defined not as a counterdrug strategy as are both the Colombian and Mexican U.S. assistance strategies but as an integrated, law-based, counterinsurgency strategy implemented from the bottom up that facilitates the establishment of elite consensus and puts the country on a path toward rule of law. Ironically, it was democratic and free market reforms that strengthened the forces of instability in both Colombia and Mexico and the militarization of security that appears to facilitate democratic stability. This study uses local level assessments of Plan Colombia and local interviews conducted in Chihuahua and Michoacán to evaluate the prospects of colombianization in urban and rural Mexico. Colombia's experience suggests that colombianization can stabilize the country and help reactivate the economy but democratic progress is painfully slow and the strategy has little impact on the drug industry and the corruption associated with it.

This article examines the debate over the compatibility of trade and the environment. First, it discusses the range of arguments in the debate from trade being inherently beneficial to inherently harmful to the environment. Second, the entry examines the place of the environment within the GATT/WTO and various controversies surrounding the GATT/WTO and environmental protection. Finally, the article examines the role of multilateral environmental agreements in protecting the environment and their possible consequences for the international trading system.

This article identifies and explores the presence of republican thought in the intellectual and policy writings of Alexander Hamilton, particularly as it applied to his theoretical understanding of the American executive branch. The article moves chronothematically, highlighting, through the Revolutionary, Constitutional, and Governmental periods of American political development, Hamilton's unique sense of republicanism with respect to international and domestic politics, as well as American political economy. The article not only attempts to demonstrate Hamilton's intellectual adherence to the republican tradition, but also his commitment to rhetorically applying the ideology to the realization of practical executive policy goals.

Aristotelian republicanism rests on an important premise, that persuasion is more virtuous than coercion. Nonetheless, there is an uneasy tension between the two approaches to rule in the republican tradition. This is particularly true with respect to Aristotle’s views on foreign policy, wherein coercive means of bringing about justice among nations may be viewed as much an offspring of republican thought as the exercise of moral suasion to the same end. This article takes this interesting tension in Aristotelian republican thought and attempts to apply it as an exegetical lens for looking into the republican ideological contours of the fin-de-siècle American imperialism debate. Particular attention is paid to how the tension in republican approaches to rule informed and helped give shape to the debate. Analysed through this lens is the rhetoric of two of the debate’s most important exponents, Theodore Roosevelt, advocating greater coercive means, and Carl Schurz, an advocate of moral suasion. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

The British Empire reached its territorial peak less than a century ago in 1920 when one could walk from South Africa to Kuwait and not set foot in a country in which English was not the language of government. By 1959, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt, Sudan, and other countries were no longer within Britain's imperial fold. In the space of little more than 30 years, the British Empire suffered a precipitous decline and collapse that left the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland little more than the rump successor state of a once great empire. Yet, imperial attitudes lingered and have an undue influence on British life, culture, and politics up to the present day. Through the lens of pivotal moments in the world since World War II, this article examines the breakup of the British Empire and how the vision of empire lives on in the context of global populism.

This paper examines the appointment of male versus female career diplomats to ambassadorial posts. We assess the role played by ambassadors' individual characteristics, including education, marital status, and number of children, and host countries' characteristics, such as quality of life and regime type, in determining if a male or female is appointed to ambassadorial positions to represent the United States in foreign countries. The time frame of this study is the entire presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (1993-2008), during which 603 career diplomats were appointed as ambassadors. The study provides empirical evidence that there remain significant differences between women and men serving as ambassadors. Female ambassadors are more likely to be single and have no children and are less likely to be Ivy League graduates than male ambassadors. Furthermore, they are more likely to be appointed to countries with lower quality of life and better human rights records. Finally, time plays a role in the likelihood of a woman being appointed as ambassador.

This work examines expressions of personal hostility and animosity toward presidents―even beloved ones―throughout American history and their impact on policymaking, politics, and culture.• Investigates a unique form of expressions of hatred toward American presidents, focusing on the personal rather than the political• Covers every president from Washington to Trump• Includes coverage of personal attacks on First Families• Details how presidents and allies responded to these attacks

Studies of the institutional development of the presidency and popular leadership by presidents over time lead us to contrary expectations as to how a nineteenth-century president would react to a major political scandal. Scholarship on newspapers of the late 1800s is also unclear on how a quasipartisan media, with some outlets moving toward independence, would cover a White House scandal. I find that a close analysis of the case of President Ulysses S. Grant and the Whiskey Ring scandal forces us to reconsider what we assume to be firmly modern developments in both presidential studies and media history. Though a supposedly “premodern” president, Grant still mounted a concerted effort to mitigate the damage of the scandal. Further, although the president could get his version of events across in prominent newspapers, Republican newspaper coverage was hardly reliable. Newspapers also connected politicians’ character and psychology to mistakes made in office and made presidential strategies to shape public perception clear to their audiences—emphases on political gamesmanship considered hallmarks of the modern media environment.

This article is one of the first to systematically assess the ability of state fragility measures to predict violent protests and adverse regime changes in countries. We focus on the Arab Spring as an example of a situation that such measures ought to predict. Through a variety of analyses, we find that none of the measures are predictive. We then create a simple model using the literature of protest and revolts to predict both the level of violence and the extent of regime change in the Arab Spring countries. This simpler model does a better job of predicting the level of involvement in the Arab Spring than any of the complex State Fragility Indexes. Thus, the goal of this article is not to explain the causes of the Arab Spring, but to add to the discussion of the predictive value of measures of instability.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act came into existence at a time when the president’s ability to lead the public was in question, political polarization had intensified, and the media environment appeared ever more fragmented, fast-moving, and resistant to control. Under such circumstances, how can contemporary American presidents such as Barack Obama build and maintain support for themselves and their policies, particularly as controversies arise? Using case studies of major contests over how key elements of the Affordable Care Act would be framed, and analysis of how those frames fared in influential and popular U.S. news sources, Hopper examines the conditions under which the president can effectively shape public debates today. She argues that despite the difficult political and communications context, the president retains substantial advantages in framing major controversial issues for the media and the public. These presidential framing advantages are conditional, however, and Hopper explores the factors that help make presidential frames more or less likely to gain hold in the news today. More so than in the past, an element of unpredictability in this news environment means that in pursuing favorable messaging, the president and his surrogates may also generate some unintentional consequences in how issues are portrayed to the public. Presidential frames can evolve with unfolding events to take on new meanings and applications, a process facilitated alternately by supporters, opponents, and media actors. Still, media figures and political opponents remain largely reactive to presidential communications, even as some seek to publicize and exploit weaknesses in the administration’s narratives. A close look at these recent cases casts new light on the scholarly debate surrounding the president’s ability to persuasively communicate and challenges conventional wisdom that the 21st century media largely present an unmanageable news environment for the White House. Presidential Framing in the 21st Century News Media engages with current events in American politics, focusing on the Obama Administration and the Affordable Care Act, while also reflecting upon the state of the American presidency, the news media, and the public in ways that have substantial implications for all of these actors, not merely in the present, but into the future, making it a compelling read for scholars of Political Science, Media Studies, Communication Studies, and Public Policy. © 2017 Taylor & Francis.

America’s strategy of containment, designed to confront postwar Soviet aggression, real and perceived, grew out of a series of disparate and seemingly unrelated conflicts. Thus the clash over the future of defeated Germany was direct, immediate and of obvious importance for vital United States interests in Europe and the world. By contrast, the communist insurgency in Greece was originally perceived as a basically domestic affair of a small country in a remote region of little strategic value. Yet the Truman Doctrine, which paved the way for containment’s gradual global implementation—Marshall Plan, Berlin airlift, NATO, wars in Korea and Indochina—was ostensibly focused primarily on Greece. After remaining a benevolent but deliberately passive observer of turmoil and violence in Greece, Washington boldly replaced Britain as the foreign patron of that small and troubled Balkan state. This study documents the transformation of United States policy toward Greece, and the birth of containment. It argues that the change was fundamentally one of perceptions of the nature of Soviet policy itself within the Truman administration, rather than of realities in Greece. In retrospect, Greece was an unlikely springboard for launching the strategy of containing Moscow’s ideology and power. The significance of the communist threat in Greece was more a matter of alarmist assumptions, loose perceptions and questionable symbolism than of hard facts and geostrategic realities. But in human affairs perceptions and symbolism are important, especially if clothed in an aura of success, as was the application of containment in Greece.