The political system of the Federal Republic is sometimes described as 'chancellor democracy', because of the dominant role occupied by the chancellor in that political system. This chapter surveys the way in which the Basic Law provides the political instruments that permit the chancellor to play such a dominant role. It examines the constraints on the chancellor's political authority, such as those associated with the necessity to form governing coalitions, and discusses the roles of the cabinet and civil service, and other agencies within government. Compared to the chancellor, and in contrast to the situation in the Weimar Republic, the status of the federal president is very limited. The chapter presents a review of the office of federal president as a prelude to closer examination of that of federal chancellor. A detailed consideration of the process of forming coalition governments is also provided.

Focusing on non-professional footballing activity, this chapter provides an assessment of how the game developed within schools during the early twentieth century. It also considers how, by 1919, the Manchester region housed multiple leagues and competitions for all ages. By this time football was prevalent across Manchester’s communities, but it was the efforts of new organisations such as the Manchester Schools Football Association and the Manchester and Salford Playing Fields Society which transformed spaces and provided opportunities to allow football to become embedded within Mancunian life. This chapter explores how the game grew and was promoted outside the professional clubs, considering the efforts of individuals in establishing a network of leagues, clubs and school-based activities.

This chapter situates Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech within the context of 1968 as a global year of dramatic change. To understand the purchase of Powell’s words, the chapter examines the end of the post-war consensus and how immigration and race both reflected and remoulded a new form of politics.

Building on scholarship concerning migration and exile, this chapter deploys the figure of the stranger in reading solo works in and around the border regimes of the UK and EU. If – as Sara Ahmed suggests – stranger recognition involves (often unmarked) assumptions about which bodies belong and which are out of place, performance interventions in and around border regimes bring such beliefs to light while demonstrating how misrecognition and uncertainty are preserved as technologies of control. Though associated with cosmopolitan fantasies of mobility and hospitality, the stranger allows us to follow how a selective distribution of legitimacy serves to limit access to Western Europe’s territories of wealth.Featured practitioners: Kay Adshead, Zodwa Nyoni, Oreet Ashery, Nassim Soleimanpour, Tanja Ostojić.

This section presents Part II of The Malleus Maleficarum, one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches, written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris. Part II is intended for preachers and certainly contains a large number of anecdotes and instances which they could use in their sermons, but it is far from being a mere collection of useful stories. Its constant thrust not only repeats the messages of Part I, but also makes clear an important step in Institoris’s general argument – that the many popular beliefs and practices there presented, in one form or another, show that one cannot distinguish between a practitioner of magic of whatever kind she or he might be and a heretical devotee of Satan.

The name of the German state, the Federal Republic of Germany, indicates and emphasises one of its fundamental characteristics: its federal structure. This chapter describes the principal reasons for the development of the federal system in Germany. It discusses various Articles of the Basic Law that makes reference to the federal organisation of the political system. The most distinctive feature of the structure of German federalism, though, is the functional division which exists between the federal government and the Länder. To allow the political system to operate effectively in a federal state such as that of Germany, a network of institutions which foster co-ordination and co-operation is necessary. The chapter describes the functions of the most obvious institution of co-ordination, the Bundesrat, which participates influentially in the legislative process at the federal level. The reunification of Germany in 1990 offered a new opportunity to rationalise the federal structure.

This chapter comprises case studies of three fanzines: Jolt, Anathema and Hard as Nails. Each is examined as a means of understanding how fanzines offered space to develop political discourses and/or to define cultural identities in the face of competing media constructions. In their various ways, the fanzines engage with questions of feminism, anarchism and class.

Starting with Neil Bartlett’s AIDS-era work A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, this chapter explores performances of singular individuality in which the state of being neither wholly included nor fully excluded invites us to reconsider liberal narratives of historical progress. While mainstream LGBT activism emphasises the possibilities of assimilation as a means of recovery from exclusion in the past, the singular figure of the pariah offers a new way of thinking marginal and politicised identity’s investment in its own history of hurt.Featured practitioners: Neil Bartlett, Marc Rees, Seiriol Davies, Jon Brittain and Matt Tedford, David Hoyle

During the early decades of the sixteenth century, several Atlantic states developed new ship designs, new navigation techniques and new weapons systems. These innovations increased their capabilities, their power and their wealth. This chapter discusses these innovations and shows how they paved the way for the ‘great discoveries’ and for Western conquests in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The chapter also shows how the invention of movable type contributed to a religious Reformation – which provoked religious quarrels that in turn undermined the authority of religion. The chapter discusses several authors – among them Italian diplomat Alberico Gentili and Spanish lawyer Francisco de Vitoria – who stimulated international theorizing. It singles out French philosopher Jean Bodin for special attention. Bodin foreshadowed the modern notion of the state and explored the concept of ‘sovereignty’ in ways which exerted a formative influence on subsequent scholarship on the state and on interstate relations.

The majority of political institutions provided in the Basic Law, and the relations between them, have been profoundly affected by what the 'founding fathers' in Bonn perceived to be those flaws in the Weimar democracy which directly contributed to the rise of the Third Reich. The concept of 'combative democracy' exists in the Federal Republic of Germany precisely because of the causes of the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. Political education, the role of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the 'radicals decree' and other measures associated with 'combative democracy' are put in place to prevent the re-emergence of Nazism. From the 1970s onwards, the wave of 'new politics' activity increased in significance. Local and regional 'citizen initiative groups' took action to block projects likely to damage the local environment or to promote projects to provide better public amenities.