P.R. Cavill offers a major reinterpretation of early Tudor constitutional history. In the grand 'Whig' tradition, the parliaments of Henry VII were a disappointing retreat from the onward march towards parliamentary democracy. The king was at best indifferent and at worst hostile to parliament; its meetings were cowed and quiescent, subservient to the royal will. Yet little research has tested these assumptions. Drawing on extensive archival research, Cavill challenges existing accounts an...

A lively and fascinating narrative history about the birth of the modern world.Beginning in the heady days just after the First Crusade, this volume—the third in the series that began with The History of the Ancient World and The History of the Medieval World—chronicles the contradictions of a world in transition.Popes continue to preach crusade, but the hope of a Christian empire comes to a bloody end at the walls of Constantinople. Arist...

Do you really know how the U.S. government operates? Most Americans have simply forgotten what they learned in their high school government class. Providing an updated history and comprehensive overview, Idiot's Guides: U.S. Government & Politics, Second Edition, is written to help readers gain an understanding about the origins of the U.S government, in addition to its complex political system and key forces that drive a successful nation. Suitable reading for supplement coursewo...

This book demonstrates that people's basic values and beliefs are changing, in ways that affect their political, sexual, economic, and religious behaviour. These changes are roughly predictable: to a large extent, they can be interpreted on the basis of a revised version of modernisation theory presented here. Drawing on a massive body of evidence from societies containing 85 percent of the world's population, the authors demonstrate that modernisation is a process of human development, in...

Absolutism in Renaissance Milan shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and emperor, was claimed by the ruling Milanese dynasties, the Visconti and the Sforza, and why this privilege was finally abandoned by Francesco II Sforza (d. 1535), the last duke. As new rulers, the Visconti and the Sforza had had to impose their regime by rewarding supporters at the expense of opponents. That process required absolute power, also known as 'plenitude of power', meaning t...

*Analyzes Lucrezia's legacy and how it endured over the centuries.*Examines the legends and rumors surrounding Lucrezia's life in an attempt to separate fact from fiction.*Includes pictures depicting Lucrezia and other important people and places in her life.*Includes a Bibliography for further reading.*Includes a Table of Contents. Lucrezia Borgia is the most unfortunate woman in modern history. Is this because she was guilty of the most hideous crimes, or is it simply because she has been u...

The Stuart monarchs reigned during a time when Britain was balanced on the brink of change. It was an era torn between absolute monarchy and revolution: kings ruled with iron fists only to be toppled by opponents who laid claim, not to a crown, but to a country. It was an era that saw the carnage of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I and the rise of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, only to then witness Charles II’s restoration, the Great Plague and the Glorious Revolution. In...

The figure of the renegade - a European Christian or Jew who had converted to Islam and was now serving the Ottoman sultan - is omnipresent in all genres produced by those early modern Christian Europeans who wrote about the Ottoman Empire. As few contemporaries failed to remark, converts were disproportionately represented among those who governed, administered, and fought for the sultan. Unsurprisingly, therefore, renegades have attracted considerable attention from historians of Europe ...

Royal Favouritism and the Governing Elite of the Spanish Monarchy, 1640-1665 presents a study of the later years of the reign of Philip IV from the perspective of his favourite (valido), don Luis Méndez de Haro, and of the other ministers who helped govern the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy. It offers a positive vision of a period that is often seen as one of failure and decline. Unlike his predecessors, Haro exercised the favour that he enjoyed in a discreet way, acting as a ...

The Westminster parliament is a highly visible political institution, and one of its core functions is approving new laws. Yet Britain's legislative process is often seen as executive-dominated, and parliament as relatively weak. As this book shows, such impressions can be misleading. Drawing on the largest study of its kind for more than forty years, Meg Russell and Daniel Gover cast new light on the political dynamics that shape the legislative process. They provide a fascinating account...

Paul C. Light examines and evaluates the 100 most significant investigations of policy failures, bureaucratic mistakes, and personal misconduct undertaken by the U.S. federal government between 1945 and 2012. Launched by Congress or the president, sometimes by both at the same time, the investigations at the core of this book were driven by the search for answers about significant breakdowns in government performance. Light reveals which investigations were most effective, and why.

How can we rethink ideas of policy failure to consider its paradoxes and contradictions as a starting point for more hopeful democratic encounters?Offering a provocative and innovative theorisation of governance as relational politics, the central argument of Power, Politics and the Emotions is that there are sets of affective dynamics which complicate the already materially and symbolically contested terrain of policy-making. This relational politics is Shona Hunter’s starting poi...