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American Experience (american + experience)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences90%

Selected Abstracts

Transatlantic constitutionalism: Comparing the United States and the European Union

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2004
SERGIO FABBRINI
The European Union has more to learn from the American experience of constitutionalism than from any of its own Member States. Like the United States, the European Union will have a frame of government constitution that will try to order a system of multiple and concurrent communities of interests, as happened in America, and designed by an indirectly elected assembly. The European Union and the United States will continue to manifest many differences in other crucial aspects of their institutional and cultural development. However, although constrained by their respective historical and institutional paths, their constitutional evolution is making the Atlantic Ocean less wide than it used to be. [source]

CANADIAN URBAN POLITICS: ANOTHER "BLACK HOLE"?

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2010
GABRIEL EIDELMAN
ABSTRACT:,This article supplements and enriches,Judd's and Sapotichne, Jones, and Wolfe's,controversial diagnosis of a disjuncture between "mainstream" political science and the study of urban politics in the United States by suggesting that Canadian urban political science scholarship is equally isolated. Yet for the most part, the underlying causes of this predicament differ greatly from the U.S. experience. We offer three interpretations,one institutional, one epistemological, and one ontological,to explain the marginality of Canadian urban political science in relation to both mainstream Canadian political science and American urban politics. First, the growth of Canadian urban political science has been inhibited not because there are too few interested scholars, but rather because interested faculty are so thinly dispersed across the country's academic institutions. Second, unlike the American experience, the historical development of Canadian political science as a discipline has led it to focus on national-level issues at the expense of local and urban politics. Finally, Canadian cities have developed differently from American cities in important respects, again leading Canadian scholars to privilege the national over the local. [source]

Correlates of Levels of Democracy in Latin America During the 1990s

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2006
Cynthia McClintock
ABSTRACT Does the conventional wisdom about the relationships between economic, cultural, and political party variables and democracy stand up in the Latin American experience of the 1990s? This study, utilizing new data sets for the region, finds that some traditional hypotheses are upheld better than others. It sustains the conventional wisdom that economic development, economic growth, democratic values, and (with a two-year lead) education correlate positively with the level of democracy. Surprisingly, however, neither social trust nor the number of political parties is significantly correlated with the level of democracy. The study suggests various possible explanations for the weak or nonexistent relationships for social trust and number of parties, in the hope that these surprising results will stimulate further research. [source]

An American Perspective on the EU's Constitutional Treaty

POLITICS, Issue 1 2007
Alberta Sbragia
This article argues that the American experience can help illuminate some of the tensions surrounding the European Union's embattled Constitutional Treaty. I want to emphasise, however, that I am not trying to make any rigorous comparative statement here. I am not arguing that the United States and the EU are similar. They have developed in very different historical periods: the 13 colonies were certainly not equivalent to the old and well-established nation states which form the EU. Nonetheless, I am saying that some aspects of the American experience may be useful in thinking about the current state of tension which surrounds the process of European integration. In this article, therefore, I shall very schematically contrast the American and the European experience of integration and use that contrast to help illuminate the tensions which are now at work in the EU. [source]

The Travel and Travail of Negro Showpeople

ANTHROPOLOGY & HUMANISM, Issue 1 2001
Iris Carter Ford
African American performers have always been essential cultural commodities for audiences who demand "authenticity." But to meet the demand in the segregated South, how were they to get there? Autobiographies of Negro showpeople located in northern cultural centers before desegregation of public accommodations illustrate the power of storytelling to reveal an important,but largely unexplored,dimension of the African American experience: travel. [source]

Reviewing child deaths,learning from the American experience,

CHILD ABUSE REVIEW, Issue 2 2005
Lisa Bunting
Abstract Current systems for investigating child deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have come under intense scrutiny in recent years and questions have been raised about the accuracy of child death investigations and resulting statistics. Research has highlighted the ways in which multidisciplinary input can contribute to investigative and review processes, a perspective which is further supported by recent UK policy developments. The experience of creating multidisciplinary child death review teams (CDRTs) in America highlights the potential benefits the introduction of a similar system might have. These benefits include improved multi-agency working and communication, more effective identification of suspicious cases, a decrease in inadequate death certification and a broader and more in-depth understanding of the causes of child deaths through the systematic collection and analysis of data. While a lack of funding, regional coordination and evaluation limit the impact of American CDRTs, the positive aspects of this process make it worthwhile, and timely, to consider how such a model might fit within our own context. Current policy developments such as the Home Office review of coroner services, the Children Bill and related Department for Education and Skills (DfES) work on developing screening groups demonstrate that strides have been made in respect of introducing a multidisciplinary process. Similarly, the development of local protocols for the investigation and[sol ]or review of child deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland highlights an increased focus on multidisciplinary processes. However, key issues from the American experience, such as the remit of CDRTs[sol ]screening panels, the need for national coordination and the importance of rigorous evaluation, can inform the development of a similar process in the UK. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Behavioural, developmental and child protection outcomes following exposure to Class A drugs in pregnancy

CHILD: CARE, HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2008
J. Topley
Abstract Background The long-term consequences of intrauterine exposure to Class A drugs are still relatively undocumented, and much of the literature relates to the North American experience, where cocaine use predominates. In Britain, heroin and amphetamine use is more common and, within Britain, patterns of drug use vary. Clearly the long-term educational and welfare needs of these children will be enhanced if the behavioural, developmental and child-care outcomes are known. This study attempts to explore some of these issues. Methods The developmental, behavioural and child protection outcomes in a group of 62 children exposed to Class A drugs in utero were investigated when the children were in full-time schooling. Results Seventy-four per cent (46/62) of the children at the time of the study had no educational or behavioural problems, and 11 (17.7%) were receiving extra support in school. No child had a statement of special educational need. Twelve (19.3%) were reported to have behaviour and concentration problems, and in four cases, this was attributed to poor-quality parenting at the time of the study. Three of the 12 children had fetal alcohol syndrome. Twenty-six (42%) children were placed on the Child Protection Register, and care orders or residence orders were granted for 22 (35.5%) of those who were placed on the register. All of the 22 children went into substitute care at some stage. Of these children, nine were adopted and 10 were placed permanently with other family members. Ten of the 62 (16.1%) children at the time of the study were of concern to professionals for child protection reasons, and four of them were on the Child Protection Register. Conclusions This study suggests we can be reasonably optimistic about the developmental and behavioural outcomes for children exposed to Class A drugs in utero. Over 50% required an intervention by social services, and 31% were in substitute care at the time of the study. There were continuing child protection concerns in 16% at school entry. [source]

Modalities of Microfinance Delivery in Asia and Latin America: Lessons for China

CHINA AND WORLD ECONOMY, Issue 1 2006
Heather Montgomery
O19; G21; D02 Abstract Microfinance, the provision of small size loans and other financial services to low income households, is often seen as the key innovation of the last 25 years in terms of means of reaching out to the poor and vulnerable. There is extensive experience in microfinance provision in both Asia and Latin America, but as yet relatively little use of the approach in China. This paper assesses different approaches to microfinance delivery using a threefold distinction, the credit union approach, the non-government organization approach and the banking approach, to generalize across recent Asian and Latin American experience and discuss the role of microfinance in poverty reduction in a theoretical framework. Considering the current state of microfinance in China and international experience, we suggest the banking approach as the way to best increase outreach of micro-financial services in China. (Edited by Xiaoming Feng) [source]

The Empire Meets the New Deal: Interwar Encounters in Conservation and Regional Planning

GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2005
J.M. POWELL
Abstract British imperial and American experiences in conservation and planning are providing fresh interdisciplinary challenges for university teaching and research. The Roosevelt administration's ,New Deal' included government-sponsored interventions in soil erosion and water management and sophisticated regional development agendas. Reviewing samples of the latter areas of concern, this article explores the proposition that, although the British Empire was scarcely bereft of comparable interwar programmes and was becoming somewhat preoccupied with centrifugal tendencies, persistent porosity, exhausting struggles with postwar reconstruction, and comprehensive economic depression, New Deal evangelism was in fact variously anticipated, harnessed, challenged and ignored. A discussion of widely separated national and regional examples locates a layered interplay between uneven imperial and US pulsations, independent local manoeuvres, and critical inputs from key individual agents. The most important filters included the presence of comparatively robust bureaucratic infrastructures and the cultivation of international relationships by scientists and technologists. Encounters with convergent revisionism suggest cautionary leads for students, researchers and teachers alike. Reconstructions of selected contexts underline the presence of familiar posturing, opportunism, and astute patriotic deployment during the emergence of modern styles of globalization. [source]

The historiography of nationalism and national identity in Latin America

NATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 2 2006
NICOLA MILLER
ABSTRACT. This article surveys the current state of research on nationalism in Latin America, focusing on the large body of work produced from the 1990s onwards in a wide variety of disciplines (history, the social sciences and cultural studies). Covering work on both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it takes as a starting point the impact of Benedict Anderson's work, Imagined Communities, on Latin Americanists. It discusses the ways in which Latin Americanists have applied his ideas, and their critiques of many of his claims about Latin American nationalism. It goes on to outline major recent developments across the field, within the context of an argument that it is important for all scholars of nationalism to incorporate Latin American experiences into their debates on the history and theory of nationalism. The references have been selected to guide readers to key relevant works; regrettably, the article cannot, for reasons of space, offer a fully comprehensive bibliography. [source]