To those who study or work in government regulation of business,the Federal Trade Commission has been of intense interest since1969. Regarded before 1969 as dormant and ineffective, the FTC hasbecome widely viewed as a major agency focusing on problems thataffect most American consumers and businesses. This book, the workof Contributors under the editorship of Kenneth W. Clarkson andTimothy J. Muris, is a comprehensive attempt to analyse the'revitalized' FTC.

First published in 2004, Congress, Progressive Reform and theNew American State uses a series of case-studies of reformlegislation in Congress during the early twentieth century toexplore the nature of progressivism and the processes of politicalchange which resulted in the establishment of the modern Americanstate. Among the topics covered are railroad regulation, laborrelations, social policy of the District of Columbia, Republicaninsurgency, and the nature of Democratic progressivism. This workwill be of interest to students of twentieth-century politicalhistory, the history of Congress, and the origins of the modernAmerican state.

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The political parties in Congress are as polarized as they havebeen in 100 years. This book examines more than 30 years ofcongressional history to understand how it is that the Democratsand Republicans on Capitol Hill have become so divided. It findsthat two steps were critical for this development. First, therespective parties' constituencies became more politically andideologically aligned. Second, members ceded more power to theirparty leaders, who implemented procedures more frequently and withgreater consequence. In fact, almost the entire rise in partypolarization can be accounted for in the increasing frequency ofand polarization on procedures used during the legislativeprocess.

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This book examines the relationship between free markets anddemocracy. It demonstrates how the implementation of even verypainful free-market economic reforms in Chile and Mexico havehelped to consolidate democratic politics without engendering abacklash against either reform or democratization. Thisnational-level compatibility between free markets and democracy,however, is founded on their rural incompatibility. In thecountryside, free-market reforms socially isolate peasants to sucha degree that they become unable to organize independently, and arevulnerable to the pressures of local economic elites. This helps tocreate an electoral coalition behind free-market reforms that iscritically based in some of the market's biggest victims: thepeasantry. The book concludes that the comparatively stablefree-market democracy in Latin America hinges critically on itsdefects in the countryside; conservative, free-market elites mayconsent to open politics only if they have a rural electoralredoubt.

This book re-evaluates the nature of Elizabethan politics andElizabeth's queenship in late sixteenth-century England, Wales andIreland. Natalie Mears shows that Elizabeth took an active role inpolicy-making and suggests that Elizabethan politics has to beperceived in terms of personal relations between the queen and heradvisers rather than of the hegemony of the privy council. Shechallenges current perceptions of political debate at court asrestricted and integrates recent research on court drama andreligious ritual into the wider context of political debate.Finally, providing a survey of the nature of political debateoutside the court, Dr Mears challenges seminal work by JürgenHabermas, as well as of seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuryhistorians, by showing that a 'public sphere' existed in latesixteenth-century England, Wales and Ireland. In doing so, shere-evaluates how sociologists and historians have, and should,conceptualize the 'public sphere'.

当今中国正在继续发轫于近代的借鉴西方走向富强之路的现代化进程，而中华民族悲壮的近代磨难的主要原因便在于对西方文化的跨文化误读，进而反思近代中国的悲壮历程对当前中国或许尤为紧要。很多中华学人矢志于辨析近代悲剧，不断阐发各自的宏论新见，以期尽可能认知近代悲剧的历史语境，而成为当前中国之鉴。袁伟时先生的《晚清大变局中的思潮与人物》便是辨剖近代悲剧的近著中极蕴新见的佳构。