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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 US Presidential election demonstrated that celebrity is now a political force to be reckoned with. It would seem that this mix of celebrity culture and politics is a relatively new phenomenon, and indeed celebrity itself is often thought to be something distinctly modern. But there were celebrities long before that particular word identified them as such.
Candidate Donald Trump’s policy proposals ranged from the bizarre to the truly frightening. Remember his “secret plan” to defeat ISIS? Turns out it consists of working with our Middle Eastern allies and tightening border security. Now that the election is over, a number of pundits predict that Candidate Trump’s extremism will give way to a more moderate, pragmatic President Trump. We can only hope.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an Irish statesman, author and orator, chiefly remembered for his championing of various causes such as Catholic emancipation, reform of the government of India and preserving the balance of the British constitution. It is commonly assumed that Edmund Burke took up incongruous positions on the American and French Revolutions…
We all have a surname, but how many of us know anything about its roots – origin, history, and what it means today? Family names are evidence of the diverse language and cultural movement of people who have settled in Britain and Ireland over history. Surnames can be varied, but not uncommon – for example there a large amount of occupational names like Smith and Baker.
In light of Secretary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, prominent voices call for replacing the Electoral College with a direct, nationwide vote for President. Among the distinguished individuals now urging abolition of the Electoral College are former Attorney General Eric Holder and outgoing Senator Barbara Boxer. Would Secretary Clinton or President-elect Trump have won in 2016 in a direct, nationwide election?
The year is winding down and we are nearing the end of our search for the Place of the Year. Thank you to everyone who voted for their pick in the longlist.
We are delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Award is A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less by Christopher Hood and Ruth Dixon. The award recognises the achievements of academics, politicians, journalists and other contributors to the study of politics. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate this year’s winners.
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) millions of Americans were able to buy commercial health insurance and millions more who were fortunate to live in states that elected to expand Medicaid were enrolled – sometimes for the first time in their lives – and gained access to subsidized healthcare. To be sure, the ACA was far from perfect: its haphazard implementation, the failure of the tax penalties to enforce mandated insurance purchasing amongst the young and healthy leading to skewed and potentially collapsing insurance markets, and the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the requirement to increase the Medicaid rolls, all led to not enough people being covered and the return of inexorably rising healthcare costs.
Life in the modern era is total chaos. From the constant outbursts of sound, to the ubiquitous bombardment of advertisements, to the racing taxi cabs, cars, and buses, to the sheer swarms of people, even a simple stroll in the city can be massively taxing on your sensory system.
When I first started researching historiography in Saudi Arabia, I came across many publications by government organizations, as they were the most readily available. At first glance, many of these history books told the same story: a narrative that focused on the royal family and its creation of a first Saudi state during the eighteenth century, a second Saudi state during the nineteenth century, and finally the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the twentieth century.
If there is a figure that has truly come to define the Human condition over the last few years, it is the refugee. From the battlefields of Syria, to the water crossings from North Africa to Europe and the boats of Rohingyas escaping the Myanmarese state, to camps in Calais or Nauru, the refugee is not far from our sight. In popular and legal imaginations, the refugee is someone who has crossed an international border.
As Graham Ruddick put it in the Guardian on 26 October, ‘One by one, Theresa May’s government is giving the go-ahead to major infrastructure projects that will cost taxpayers billions of pounds’. By doing so, she signalled her determination to promote growth and the creation of new jobs, as well as to offset the oft predicted economic downturn following Brexit.
Since 2001, the response to HIV/AIDS has evolved into an unprecedented global health effort, extending access to treatment to 17 million people living with HIV across the developing world, some considerable successes in HIV prevention (especially regarding mother-to-child transmission), and becoming a very significant aspect of global development assistance.
The World Health Organization estimates that “about 1 in 3 (35%) women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.” Few data exists and measurements can vary substantially across cultures, but evidence suggests that even more women face psychological violence
Arterial roads in cities have peculiar ways of acquiring distinct identities. The character of each main road, the lifestyle of its residents, their occupations, their social habits, the architecture of their houses and shops, their cultural tastes (even their mannerisms and ways of speaking) – all these shape every road in different ways.
Organisations that suffer a major crisis have more than a one in four chance of going out of business. Yet despite this level of risk, many companies continue to leave crisis management in the hands of operational middle managers or inexperienced technicians. Corporate crisis management traditionally has a strong emphasis on tactical elements such as crisis manuals cross-functional teams, and table-top simulations.