This chapter studies Kavanagh's perspectives on some of the women she discusses in Woman in France during the Eighteenth Century, noting that her main purpose was a celebration of women and of the presence of women in history. It shows that Kavanagh focuses primarily on women of privilege, whose position gave them immense social influence and power over men, and who helped change the course of eighteenth-century France. The chapter determines that Woman in France during the Eighteenth Century serves as an important contribution to women's history, since it succeeds in drawing attention to the experiences and lives of women during that period.

This chapter discusses John Keats, who can be considered as the kind of poet who is particularly concerned with asking about what ignorance feels like, and examines the Keatsian urge towards anepistemology, or the poet's apparent desire for ignorance and his resistance to the epistemophilic drive. It determines that his poems present the concern with agnoiology that is clearly expressed in his letters, which are characteristically concerned with the states of ignorance. The chapter also shows that Keats's poetic dream of hypnological uncertainty is expressed in at least one of his letters.

The most obvious place to start in assessing Rock Against Racism's (RAR's) politics and its links with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is the account in David Widgery's book Beating Time. Written from an insider's perspective, Beating Time advances the argument that the RAR/SWP partnership was crucial, both for the success of RAR and the health of socialism in Britain. When viewed as a popular-cultural phenomenon, it is accepted that punk rock and reggae were key components of RAR's success. RAR events were given prominent coverage in the music papers, with Sounds offering RAR space to promote itself in the journal's special report on racism in the music industry. Dick Hebdige famously described post-war British youth cultures as 'a succession of differential responses to the black immigrant presence in Britain'. RAR itself was founded in defence of the proposition that popular culture and multiculturalism went hand in hand.

This chapter examines the megapolicy objectives of the Third Pillar related to counter-terrorism and police co-operation. It addresses the issues of achieving an agreed and nationally implemented common definition of terrorism across all the member states and the development of Europol as the main vehicle for police co-operation within the European Union (EU). The analysis reveals that in the case of police co-operation, the narrative tends to zigzag from position to position, depending on who is addressing the issue of interpreting the legal text. In the case of counter terrorism, there was, in effect, the sound of silence over the key issue of agreeing a common definition of terrorism and a common definition existed solely on paper, and not in reality.

This chapter considers how William Blundell constructed his commonplace books Adversaria and Historica. It evaluates the extent to which these commonplace books support the argument that by the end of the seventeenth century commonplace authors abandoned the forms expounded in printed guides on structuring commonplace books and exerted autonomy over the style that they employed. It suggests that Blundell did not stick stringently to established methods of commonplacing and he designed a method that suited his purposes and accorded with his reading practice.

With the benefit of hindsight, it can be difficult to imagine that people in Britain were ever unsure about what Nazism stood for, yet it was the case that early impressions were developed without knowledge of what was to come, and it is with this in mind that their accuracy or otherwise should be judged today. As Nazism followed its winding course from the margins of German political life, in Britain it was the far left that subjected it to the closest scrutiny. Although British Marxism became increasingly associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1920s, some of the smaller revolutionary groups active in the early part of the decade were also perceptive observers of the young Nazi movement, and it was in their publications that several of the first reports on it appeared.

This chapter examines Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, which he wrote after he came down with an illness that nearly killed him – or so he believed – observing that there are several important points of contact between devotional and epistolary modes in this work. It shows that Devotions is mostly focused on the speaker's communion and communication with God. The chapter determines that proof of Donne's personal attitude towards the advantages of verse over prose – and vice versa – can be found in his prose letters. An analysis of Donne's use of verse as opposed to prose is included.

This chapter considers the influence of compulsory voting on electoral integrity and the overall legitimacy of the political system. Reducing electoral abuse and improving electoral integrity were among the most important reasons for the introduction of compulsory attendance at the polls in many states. It is therefore worth considering whether making electoral participation mandatory improves the conduct of elections and thereby improves confidence in the political process. This chapter tests the hypothesis on the basis of case studies as well as aggregate data. It also considers whether mandatory voting enhances the legitimacy of the democratic process overall.

The historical development of the Westminster parliament has bestowed a pre-eminent position on the executive inside the House of Commons. Reforms intended to improve the efficiency of the House of Commons are qualitatively different from those that are intended to improve its effectiveness. The distinction is derived from the historical development of the executive and legislature at Westminster, and has a direct bearing both upon the content of reform and the likelihood of its success. This chapter explores the notion of parliamentary efficiency in Britain. It discusses two strands of efficiency reform — streamlining and expediting — and looks at how government business was expedited during 1900–1930. It also focuses on the Balfour reforms introduced in 1902 to enhance parliamentary procedure with respect to legislation, the 1906 Procedure Committee, increased use of standing committees for the purposes of legislative scrutiny, the 1931 Procedure Committee, the post-war Procedure Committee, parliamentary reform during the 1950s, streamlining of the work of the House of Commons during 1961–1997, and controversy over House of Commons sitting hours.

This book explores the presidency of Hugo Chávez Frías of Venezuela (1999–present) in the context of theory on populism. It examines issues such as the continued relevance of populism itself in Latin American politics, populism's origins in the profound race/class cleavages found in the region, its ideological diversity, with, however, a programmatic emphasis on popular participation, and finally populist claims to legitimacy within a region with weak democratic institutions. It contends that it is sometimes necessary to step outside and infringe existing institutionality when that institutionality lacks legitimacy and is acting against democracy's progressive tendencies. It also looks at the dispute on populism between the ‘historical/sociological perspective’ of Gino Germani and others, and the ‘ideological perspective’ of Ernesto Laclau. Central to Germani's theories was the belief that modernisation processes formed the context in which populism emerged in Latin America. The book concludes by looking at the role of neoliberal globalisation in increasing inequality in the region.

This chapter traces the ideological development of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) from the Fascist period to the party's assumption of a gatekeeper role in Italian politics in the 1970s. It explains that the PCI was founded in 1921 and suggests that the party's early identity was thus formed in clandestinity and in exile. This chapter chronicles the development of the Palmiro Togliatti's Italian road to socialism, the repeated confrontations between left and right within the party, and with Enrico Berlinguer's historic compromise programme. It describes how Berlinguer's leadership enabled the party to engage constructively with the first cycle of contention, but made a hostile engagement with the second cycle inevitable.

When considering the threat of fascism in Britain, the left repeated the familiar arguments they had had regarding Italy and Germany, and divided over the nature of the democratic state, as well as the potential of reaction to emerge from within it. This was especially true concerning the National Government, which the parliamentarians of Labour and the Trades Union Congress saw as a legitimately elected government that could only be defeated at the polls. Talk of extra-parliamentary action was not only inimical to Labour's creed, but would, the party felt, increase the danger of fascism by provoking a backlash from the right. British revolutionaries, however, looked on the National Government as a dangerous step towards, or a precursor of, fascism, feeling that the necessary response to this was the radicalisation of the labour movement and a move away from constitutional methods. To do otherwise, which they felt had happened in Italy and Germany, had left workers weakened and demoralised in the face of the fascist threat.