This chapter gives background information on policy-making to tackle the global warming problem in Japan and Britain. It has already been mentioned that Japan could be considered corporatist and Britain pluralist in terms of government-industry relations, patterns of interest representation, and the norm of decision-making. The chapter explains how these differences are actually reflected in the traditionally dominant environmental policy styles of the two countries. It considers those industrial structural contexts that have important implications for the politics of global warming. It first describes policy styles and environmental politics in Japan, focusing on consensus, concertation, and developmentalism. It then discusses pitfalls in environmental policy in Japan, consultation as well as science and reactivism in Britain, and the main actors who are either very concerned about or very committed to the policy of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

This chapter makes a case for the book's contribution to the constructivist field of research in international relations. The main part of the chapter is dedicated to further reflections on the empirical findings. Above all, it emphasises how diverging norms and bilateral disturbances complicate European actorness; but it also sheds light on the potential for closer EU-Russia co-operation in the global arena, and suggests possible consequences for the USA.

Puerto Rican English (PRE) in Puerto Rico (PR) and in the continental United States emerged, at the end of the nineteenth century, from the socio-economic and political relations between the territory and its overseeing country. From virtual non-existence before the US invasion, English has appeared in PR’s linguistic landscape and areas of daily life, particularly among educated, upper-class residents. Frequent changes in official and educational language policies have affected English use in schools: it has decreased in the public school system but has grown in private and bilingual schools. Circular migration and contact with other language varieties, as well as language attitudes, have influenced PRE in PR and in the United States. Puerto Ricans display a range of language dominance, from minimal English knowledge to English monolingualism, along with diverse phonological and morphosyntactic traits and bilingual practices. The global dominance of English and its linguistic hegemony in PR’s colonial context will continue to affect its interaction with Spanish in PR and the United States, surfacing as mutual influence, resistance and transformation.

Administrative burdens from coverage delays and denials are hardly isolated to patients. In fact, physicians bear many of the costs of not only learning what is likely to be covered under their patients’ health plans, but also helping patients to appeal denials. This can elicit substantial frustrations because “peer to peer” processes are not closely regulated by states, such that cases are reviewed by physicians in inappropriate specialties. What’s more, prior authorization burdens can require substantial staffing to administer – staffing that less well-resourced practices may not be able to support. Thus, there are inequities not only in patient experiences of denials and their subsequent health care access, but also across medical practices, the effects of which can trickle down to their patients. Drawing on interviews with physicians across the country, this chapter highlights the ways that the tools of managed health care – while aiming at cost containment and guarding against overutilization – can lead to physician administrative burden, underprescribing to avoid further burden, and even contribute to the public health crisis of physician burnout.

This chapter examines the background to the formal adoption by NATO in 1967 of the revised nuclear strategy of ‘flexible response’. By the early 1960s, the security guarantee provided to NATO members by the United States had been undermined as the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity and by the demand that its European allies strengthen their conventional forces assigned to NATO. For the Germans in particular, either the consequences of a failure of deterrence or the prospect of a conventional battle fought on their territory was too serious to contemplate. Britain clearly understood German concerns and to some extent shared them. The agreement on the revised NATO strategy represented a compromise between these respective positions. Britain was a key player in the development of NATO strategy and, with Germany, was influential in developing guidance on the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the Alliance as part of flexible response.

This chapter introduces Japan, and also takes up India and Indonesia, where the problems of securing consent to the authority of the state and democratic constitutional rules were potentially immense. Forty-four allied states met at Bretton Woods to discuss post-war monetary and exchange-rate matters, reaching an agreement that contained three central provisions. The inter-war experience in Europe had suggested that the internal authority of modern states did depend on governments. The West German economy had become the locomotive of west European growth. The internal authority of the French state and French democracy proved far less pliable to American power than the British. Indian democracy succeeded without American support, while Indonesian democracy owed its existence to American power. Where the state's internal authority was weak, low inflation proved politically impossible and democracy tended to fail.

This chapter examines accountability as a sub-practice of EU governance. It first distinguishes between political and other forms of accountability, then tries to spell out the basic rationale behind political accountability and examine what we do—and do not do—when we hold someone to account. Next, it is shown that in order for accountability to be effective, the institutional structure in a system of governance must meet two requirements: what we will call ‘check’ and ‘forum’. The second part of the chapter examines the extent to which the requirements of accountability are being met in the EU, taking into account recent developments in the Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty.

There would appear to be sufficient evidence for regarding English-lexifier Atlantic creoles as forming a single family, especially given the lexical and syntactic parallels which have been shown in the pioneering work of Ian Hancock. In addition to the similarities in grammar and vocabulary, there is also a case to be made for phonological criteria justifying further subdivisions of the English-lexifier Atlantic creoles. The present study proposed that three main groups of these creoles can be posited based on pronunciation characteristics.

During the administrations of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, there was a decline in trust between local and central government. New Right theory is not necessarily inimical to local as opposed to central government. New Right policy for the Thatcher government meant that public services should be transferred to the private sector and that welfare services should be reduced to a minimum necessary to prevent destitution among the deserving poor. Fashionable monetarism also committed the Government to ensure that the money supply was kept within limits compatible with economic growth, and at a time of relatively high inflation, this required reductions in public spending. This chapter looks at local government in Britain under the Thatcher and Major administrations. It discusses the 1980 Local Government Planning and Land Act, privatisation of Direct Labour Organisations, housing and regeneration, local socialism, the 1984 Rates Act and its consequences, abolition of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils, and the poll tax.

This chapter discusses the events leading up to Britain's decision in 1967 to reapply for membership of the European Community and bilateral contacts with Germany after the application was rejected. Harold Wilson proved to be the key figure in establishing British policy towards membership of the EEC, as he coaxed a divided Labour government into supporting a second application. The chapter argues that although this strategy did not succeed, it did serve to demonstrate a more convincing commitment to Europe and placed Britain in a position from which membership of the EEC could be negotiated once de Gaulle had left the scene. Again, Britain's approach to Europe and the strategy of a close relationship with Germany were key foreign policy issues of the period.

In Britain, the inter-war years were dominated by a resurgent Conservative Party, many of whose members' sympathies still lay, as regards local governance, on the Salisbury plain of a dual polity. However, fears that urban government might be captured by socialists and used to further ownership of the means of production compelled Conservatives to reluctantly interfere in local politics. Even Conservatives, such as Neville Chamberlain, who sympathised with new liberal values of equality of opportunity tempered their support for the larger enterprising local authorities once poplarism suggested to them the dangers of the cat being in charge of the jug of cream. This chapter looks at the British local government's slow road to ‘modernisation’, the growth and rivalry between authorities, the decline of municipalisation, the ending of the local Poor Law, local finance and the decline of the dual state, the inclusive professional authorities and local government's relations with the central government in the 1930s.

This chapter examines the role of hospital contributory schemes in the British welfare state after 1948. It evaluates the extent to which the schemes have retained their distinctive orientation and social purpose since 1948 and analyses the impact of social and economic change on the schemes. This chapter shows that after 1948 some schemes found a new role as providers of health cash plans or low-cost insurance products dealing with services either not easily available on the NHS or with issues where NHS services were perceived to offer little consumer choice.

This chapter deals with the spread of English to the Caribbean Rim: socio-history and present sociolinguistic situation, language contacts and linguistic outcomes. One of the first regions settled by the English, it merits more scholarly attention than has been bestowed on it before. A detailed literature review as well as data from the author’s fieldwork are included.