Swedish social democracy was presented with a new set of challenges in the 1970s and 1980s, both domestically and externally. As the Swedish Model faced ruptures internally, social forces challenged the established idea of Swedish identity and society nurtured by the Social Democratic Party. The possibility of European integration and shifts in Social Democratic ideology would pave the way for a reconsideration of Swedish identity that underpinned the consensus on neutrality.

The years 1964–1970 are often considered as a period crucial in British post-war history. For the Labour governments under Harold Wilson, the challenges were immense: managing an economy beset by serious balance of payments problems; preserving Britain's nuclear status; fostering a détente with the Soviet Union that would reduce tension without undermining the security of either Britain or its partners in NATO; and establishing a new role for Britain in the world based on becoming a leading member of the EEC. There can be little doubt that by the time the Labour government took office in October 1964, relations between Britain and Germany had recovered. The discussion in this book has shown that both London and Bonn attached considerable importance to their bilateral relationship, specifically worked to ensure that it held good, and that moving towards a common position on European policy was a key factor in their understanding.

In some Abbasid palaces of Samarra, a distinct arrangement of halls, which so far have been identified as the throne hall, audience hall or reception hall block, is recognisable. This configuration comprises four longitudinal halls set at the four sides of a square chamber that is thought to have been covered by a dome. Each hall opens directly or through a portico onto a courtyard or a garden. Based primarily on archaeological findings from two palaces – Balkuwārā and the Caliphal Palace – Herzfeld proposed in the early twentieth century that the cruciform complex functioned as the throne hall, whereby the central chamber was used for private audiences and the semi-open halls (iwans) for public audiences. Herzfeld traced the architectural precedent for this arrangement to the early Abbasid palace of Abū Muslim (d. 137/755), the governor of Khorasan, which stood at Marv and was described by the fourth/tenth-century geographer al-Iṣṭakhrī. According to al-Iṣṭakhrī, the governmental palace (Dār al-ʾImāra) contained a domed chamber (qubba) ‘in which [Abū Muslim] used to sit. … The domed chamber (qubba) has four doors, each leading to an iwan, …, and in front of each iwan is a square courtyard (ṣaḥn).’ Herzfeld, followed by Creswell, further suggested that several palaces described in textual sources as having been built during second/seventh–third/eighth century in the Levant and Iraq and referred to as Qubbat al-Khadhrāʾ (translated as ‘The Green Dome’ or ‘The Dome of Heaven’), probably featured a similar arrangement of audience halls.

This chapter looks at local government in Britain before 1832. There is little left of the Roman administrative legacy for the provinces of Britain. All that remains are some of the towns themselves, including London as the capital city. The break up of the pax romana by the fourth century ad, and invasions by Anglo Saxons and, later, Vikings ensured that, for most purposes, towns and villages in Britain were self-governing. Above the community level, the county and its divisions were the administrative units representing central government, and hence the monarch. In practice, the power of the monarch over a county or, in a few cases, larger towns acting effectively as counties in their own right could be delegated to one or a number of powerful landlords. The chapter also discusses the Civil War and its consequences, relations between central and local governments, local government and the franchise, the county, the parish, municipal government, London, Scotland, the service functions of local authorities and financing of local governments.

This chapter covers the exchanges between London, Bonn, and Washington over the MLF proposal and the British alternative, of an Atlantic Nuclear Force (ANF). Wilson claimed that the ANF proposals were designed to ‘kill off’ the MLF concept, although it is clear that US President Lyndon B. Johnson's role was pivotal in the eventual outcome. In this context, whilst Britain and the United States were anxious to accommodate German demands for a greater say in the use by NATO of nuclear weapons, both governments agreed that this could not be at the expense of a non-proliferation agreement with the Soviet Union. Britain's underlying concern was to prevent any suggestion of German control of nuclear weapons; this objective was achieved by the creation of the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), with German representation, as the solution to NATO's nuclear sharing problem.

Delays and denials of health coverage are troubling in a country that underperforms across many health outcomes, but how do coverage denials impose a broader set of administrative burdens? Though KFF analyses highlight the number of denied ACA marketplace claims that are appealed, this chapter offers the first survey evidence of appeals and reversals at the patient level. Such an analysis helps to unpack not only the number of appeals, but also who appeals, and to what extent the admininistrative burdens of appealing are inequitable. Drawing on survey evidence, interviews with patients, and administrative data, this chapter shows how few patients understand they can appeal, and often they underestimate the odds of prevailing against health insurance giants. What’s more, not only are less affluent patients less likely to challenge denials, but also Black and Hispanic Medicaid patients and sicker patients are less likely to appeal successfully. That appealing – and doing so successfully – is so inequitably distributed offers new insights into the scope of this health policy problem and how it can deepen racial and socioeconomic divides in access to health benefits.

This chapter analyses the interaction of the four narratives when faced with the short-term policy issue of the 2003 Iraq War. Three very different pictures emerged from the narratives' representation of the Iraqi conflict: one of imperialist aggression, one of illegal conflict and one of regrettable war. This chapter explains that there was no sustained attempt within the Irish debate to initiate and develop a European discourse vis à vis this conflict and discusses the fissure between the Irish and Global discourses over attitudes towards the United Nations.

The Caribbean is a vast geopolitical region that stretches for a span of 2,754,000 square kilometers and includes approximately 7,000 island land masses. Linguistically speaking, the Caribbean hosts an extraordinarily wide variety of languages and dialects. The sheer magnitude of inhabited islands and the accompanying geographical and social variation within each island locale sets the Anglophone Caribbean apart for other insular areas of the English-speaking world such as Ireland or the South Atlantic. English is the third most widely spoken language in the Caribbean, following Spanish and French. It is the official language of twelve Caribbean as well as of the seven British Overseas Territories in the region. This chapter provides an overview of the sociolinguistic histories and features of the English varieties of the Caribbean region and demonstrates that there are significant traits that serve to define the region. Additionally, it demonstrates that there are differences between the speech of the European-identifying and African-identifying populations of the Caribbean.

Washingtonia: A Short History of Metonymic Connections

Big dogs and small dogs. Dogs in cages, dogs being trained, dogs with hairstyles that look like people's hairdos. An Athens that is not exactly recognizable: the unfamiliar setting of a park, a museum of stuffed animals, a suburban house with a big grassy yard and a swimming pool, an empty industrial space and an old bourgeois home past its prime. Characters who speak with what could be called a deadpan delivery, a certain coldness or ironic distance, even though every single time the way in which they speak can actually be attributed to the specific circumstances in which they find themselves: a boy who lives alone without friends, a blind elderly woman alone in an empty house and so on. Scenes of training that somehow goes awry, to tragicomic effects. Awkward camera framing, often cutting off the top and bottom parts of humans and animals. Stasis and only occasional movement, in both the storyline and (it seems) people's lives. Chains of scenes that first fit together visually before one realises a possible narrative connection. Metonymical chains of signification that ask for an effort (by the characters in the film, but also by the film's viewers) in order to see where they are going. And, more often than not, chains exceeding the frame.

The very first image of this film features the long neck of a giraffe, with both its head and the rest of its body outside the frame. As the voice-over is telling us in French at the beginning of Konstantina Kotzamani's Washingtonia (2014), the giraffe has the biggest heart in the animal kingdom. Otherwise it could not pump the blood three metres high to reach the giraffe's head. ‘When the giraffe is flat on the ground, one can hear the beating of its heart, which reverberates through the earth, and all the animals synchronise themselves with the heart of the giraffe’. In the middle of the summer the heart of the giraffe stops beating so fast, and this means that all animals are somewhat disorganised. ‘And here comes the most bizarre moment of all. The last days of the summer, when the first headwinds arrive, we can hear the heart of the giraffe again’.

This chapter investigates how migration from the Indian subcontinent has led to the formation of an Indian diaspora. It explains that the Indian diaspora is the third largest diaspora in the world according to some estimates and that people of Indian origin are found in five continents and in many countries such as Mauritius, Fiji, Surinam, Guyana and Nepal. This chapter suggests that despite the initial reluctance the Indian government was forced to grant dual citizenship to certain categories of non-resident Indians (NRIs) for economic reasons.