Although the commission government movement is often treated by historians as an element of the reform surge of the Progressive Era, this is the first full-scale study of the origins, spread, and decline of the commission idea.
Commission government originated in Galveston, Texas, where business leaders conceived the plan as a temporary measure to speed recovery from the great hurricane of 1900. Other cities in Texas and across the nation soon followed; by 1920, about 500 municipalities had adopted the plan in which elected representatives serve as heads of city departments and, collectively, as a policy-making body.
Beginning with Galveston and Houston and Des Moines, Iowa, Bradley Robert Rice presents detailed case studies of the earliest commission cities and shows how the plan was developed and modified to suit each community’s needs. He goes on to chronicle the adoption of the commission plan by other cities across the country that strove for “businesslike efficiency” as a reaction against corruption and machine politics in urban government. Most commission charters included a wide-ranging package of municipal reforms, such as the short ballot, at-large representation, nonpartisanship, civil service, and direct legislation. Yet Rice shows that the commission plan generally offered little in the way of social reform to accompany its reorganization of municipal government.
Applying a model of innovation diffusion, the author analyzes how and why the new form of city government spread across Progressive Era America. He also thoroughly explores the relationship between the commission plan and other Progressive Era reforms and reports on the reasons for its decline from both a social and a practical perspective.
Progressive Cities is described by Professor Bruce M. Stave, editor of the Journal of Urban History, as “a sound piece of work which should make a useful and worthwhile contribution to the existing scholarship on urban reform and should appeal to an audience which cuts across disciplines: history, political science, urban studies and urban planning.”

Russia and Chechnia: The Permanent Crisis: Essays on Russo-Chechen Relations

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Palgrave Schol, Print UK

In this fascinating book, Taj. I. Hashmi takes a long historical view of the position of women in society in general and that of Muslim women under Islam in particular. He argues that women have been under male domination in all societies ever since the days of Socrates and that this is not particular to Islam or Muslim societies. Then he explores how women in urban and rural Bangladesh are persecuted at the behest of the self-proclaimed custodians of Islam or mullahs. NGOs active in the country are also not free from the accusation of exploiting women in the name of empowering them. Nor has militant feminism done much good to the cause of their liberation. The author finds hope in the work of a large body of educated Bangladesh men and women in eradicating not only poverty but also illiteracy and religious fanaticism as a surer way to women's liberation from male domination.

Women and Islam in Bangladesh: Beyond Subjection and Tyranny

Taj I. Taj I. Hashmi

History

Exploring Twins presents an analysis of twinship considered as a specifically social phenomenom. Drawing upon a wide range of interdisciplinary, historical, and cross-cultural data, Elizabeth Stewart argues that in both traditional and modern societies, twinship represents a recurrent anomaly that calls into question the assumptions around which different types of society are organized.

Exploring Twins: Towards a Social Analysis of Twinship

E. Stewart

Sociology

Following the treatment of internal political and economic questions in the two preceding volumes, this volume covers the foreign relations of Soviet Russia for the same period.

A History of Soviet Russia: 1 The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923: Volume 3: Soviet Russia and the World

Edward Hallett Carr

Positive Accounting: Problems and Solutions

Business & Money

Trevor Gambling

Economics

Ariadne’s Thread: The Search for New Modes of Thinking

Mary E. Clark

World

This collection of essays explores the relationship between the Chechens and their Russian conquerors, tracing the growth of mistrust and hostility, the rise of Chechen national feeling, and the culmination of this process in the war of 1994-1996. Each contributor seeks to illuminate the development of this relationship from a different angle: the changing image of the independence fighters of the nineteenth century, the tragic story of the deportation of 1944, and the background of the recent conflict.

While the water dispute between Israelis and Palestinians seldom grabs newspaper headlines like the issues of Jerusalem or Jewish settlements, no permanent peace accord can be achieved between these two peoples without agreement over allocations of shared water resources. While historical, environmental, and economic dimensions of the issue are examined, the book demonstrates the essential political nature of the dispute and concludes that it can be solved only through political accommodation.

Turning Water Into Politics

Rouyer, Alwyn R. Dr

Rouyer

Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (Studies in Diplomacy)

This book offers an introductory guide for students to four centuries of diplomatic thought. Since diplomacy as we know it was created during the Renaissance in Italy, a number of major figures have reflected on the place of diplomacy in foreign affairs and the problems associated with its pursuit. These include statesmen, international lawyers and historians, most of whom had experience as diplomats of the first or second rank. This book examines the thought of some of the most important of them, from Niccolò Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century to Henry Kissinger in the late twentieth century.

G.R. Berridge

T. G. Otte Maurice Keens-Soper

Maurice Keens-Soper

Europe

Censorship is one of the key controversies debated by Renaissance historians and literary critics. Commentators are divided on a number of questions. Was there once a concerted plan to censor all material hostile to the status quo? Or did authorities only intervene in periods of acute crisis? Did they actually read the material referred to them? This is the first collection that brings together the key figures in the field and includes essays by Richard Burt, Janet Clare, Cyndia Clegg, Richard Dutton, Richard McCabe and Annabel Patterson.

Literature and Censorship in Renaissance England

Andrew Hadfield

International

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