front cover of American and Soviet Aid
American and Soviet Aid
A Comparative Analysis
Robert S. Walters
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970

This book presents a comprehensive comparison of economic aid programs by the United States and the Soviet Union to less developed countries. It examines aid to many of the non-Communist nations of Asia, Africa, the Near East, Latin America. Robert S. Walters views aid programs in terms of their objectives, the size and structure of disbursements, and operational and administrative principles. In addition he examines the delicate balance between trade policy and general foreign policy, and the difficulties and results experienced by the U.S. and Soviet Union in their respective programs.

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Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making
A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Choices
Juliet Kaarbo
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Every day, coalition cabinets make policy decisions critical to international politics. Juliet Kaarbo examines the dynamics of these multiparty cabinets in parliamentary democracies in order to assess both the quality of coalition decision making and the degree to which coalitions tend to favor peaceful or military solutions. Are coalition cabinets so riddled by conflict that they cannot make foreign policy effectively, or do the multiple voices represented in the cabinet create more legitimate and imaginative responses to the international system? Do political and institutional constraints inherent to coalition cabinets lead to nonaggressive policies? Or do institutional and political forces precipitate more belligerent behavior?

Employing theory from security studies and political psychology as well as a combination of quantitative cross-national analyses and twelve qualitative comparative case studies of foreign policy made by coalition cabinets in Japan, the Netherlands, and Turkey, Kaarbo identifies the factors that generate highly aggressive policies, inconsistency, and other policy outcomes. Her findings have implications not merely for foreign policy but for all types of decision making and policy-making by coalition governments.

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The Gendered Executive
A Comparative Analysis of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Chief Executives
Janet M. Martin
Temple University Press, 2016

Excluded from the ranks of elite executive decision-makers for generations, women are now exercising power as chiefs of government and chiefs of state. As of April 2016, 112 women in 73 countries have served as presidents or prime ministers.  

The Gendered Executive is a critical examination of national executives, focusing on matters of identity, representation, and power. The editors and contributors to this volume address the impact of female executives through political mobilization and participation, policy- and decision-making, and institutional change. Other topics include party nomination processes, the intersectionality of race and gender, and women-centered U.S. foreign policy in southern Africa. In addition, case studies from Chile, India, Portugal, and the United States are presented, as are cross-national comparisons of women leaders in Latin America. 

The Gendered Executive will enhance our understanding of the complexity of gender in  and comparative analyses of executive politics.

Contributors include: Amy C. Alexander, Sheetal Chhabria, Georgia Duerst-Lahti, Maria C. Escobar-Lemmon, Cory Charles Gooding, Lilly Goren, Karen M. Hult, Farida Jalalzai, Daniela F. Melo, Catherine Reyes-Housholder, Ariella R. Rotramel, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer, Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson, and the editors

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Introduction to Jewish and Catholic Bioethics
A Comparative Analysis
Aaron L. Mackler
Georgetown University Press, 2003

Leavened with compassion, common sense, and a readable style, this introduction to complicated bioethical issues from both Jewish and Catholic perspectives is as informative as it is undaunting. Aaron Mackler takes the reader through methodology in Roman Catholic moral theology and compares and contrasts it with methodology as it is practiced in Jewish ethics. He then skillfully wends his way through many topics foremost on the contemporary ethical agenda for both Jewish and Catholic ethicists: euthanasia and assisted suicide, end-of-life decisions, abortion, in vitro fertilization, and the ever-growing problem of justice regarding access to health care and medical resources. A concluding chapter summarizes general tendencies in the comparison of the two traditions, and addresses the significance of convergence and divergence between these traditions for moral thinkers within each faith community, and generally in western democracies such as the United States.

As Mackler overviews these issues, he points out the divergences and the commonalities between the two traditions—clarifying each position and outlining the structure of thinking that supports them. At the heart of both Catholic and Jewish perspectives on bioethics is a life-affirming core, and while there may be differences in the "why" of those ethical divergences, and in the "how" each arrived at varying—or the same—conclusions, both traditions, in the words of James McCartney as quoted in the introduction, "are guided by the principle that life is precious; that we are bidden to preserve and guard our health; that we are bidden to intervene in nature to raise the human estate; and that our lives are not our own, but are part of the legacy bequeathed to us by the Creator." This book has been carefully crafted in that spirit.

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Leadership in Committee
A Comparative Analysis of Leadership Behavior in the U.S. Senate
C. Lawrence Evans
University of Michigan Press, 2001

How does the leadership of a Senate committee influence the outcome of bills? In Leadership in Committee C. Lawrence Evans delves into the behavior of legislative leaders and the effects of what they do, how their tactics vary, and why. Using evidence gleaned from personal interviews with a large number of U.S. senators and Senate staff, the author compares the leadership styles of eight committee chairs and ranking minority members in the U.S. Senate. The result is a significant contribution to the literature on American politics, the first book-length, comparative analysis of legislative leadership behavior in the modern Senate.

". . . .this book is highly recommended reading for those interested in both legislative politics and political leadership. . . .Leadership in Committee establishes Evans as one of the handful of political scientists who have done justice to the subtleties of politics in the modern Senate."
---Randall Strahan, Journal of Politics

"Larry Evans has significantly influenced my own work over the years, and Leadership in Committee is one reason why. It is a model of great scholarship, the best work on committee leadership ever written. It has the discriminatory sense of context that appears only when the author truly knows his subject. It is theoretical without being reductionist or vacuously abstract. Its principal claims are general yet sufficiently concrete to be testable, and Evans provides systematic, comparative evidence to support (or qualify) each of them. Larger issues of agenda-setting, institutional structure, partisanship, anticipated reactions, participation, committee-floor bargaining, and strategic action of various kinds receive thoughtful and insightful examination. And the book is simply a terrific read. Too long in coming, the publication of Leadership in Committee in paperback ought to spark a well-deserved revival of interest in this work."
---Richard L. Hall, University of Michigan

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The Radical Right in Western Europe
A Comparative Analysis
Herbert Kitschelt
University of Michigan Press, 1997
Winner of the American Political Science Association's 1996 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award.
The rise of new political competitors on the radical right is a central feature of many contemporary European party systems. The first study of its kind based on a wide array of comparative survey data, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis provides a unifying framework to explain why rightist parties are electorally powerful in some countries but not in others. The book argues that changes in social structure and the economy do not by themselves adequately explain the success of extremist parties. Instead we must look to the competitive struggles among parties, their internal organizational patterns, and their long-term ideological traditions to understand the principles governing their success.
Radical right authoritarian parties tend to emerge when moderate parties converge toward the median voter. But the success of these parties depends on the strategy employed by the right-wing political actors. Herbert Kitschelt's in-depth analysis, based on the experiences of rightist parties in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Britain, reveals that the broadest appeal is enjoyed by parties that couple a fierce commitment to free markets with authoritarian, ethnocentric--or even racist--messages. The author also shows how a country's particular political constituency or its intellectual and organizational legacies may allow right-wing parties to diverge from these norms and still find electoral success. The book concludes by exploring the interaction between the development of the welfare state, cultural pluralization through immigrants, and the growth of the extreme right.
Herbert Kitschelt is Professor of Political Science at both Duke University and Humboldt University, Berlin. Anthony McGann is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Duke University.
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