Presidential Coequality: The Evolution of a Concept

The assertion that the presidency is coequal in power to the other branches in the American system of government is often heard, has been suggested by all recent presidents, and has even made its way into political science. But tracing the history of the concept demonstrates that this assertion is an invention of quite recent vintage. Those who wrote and favored the Constitution did not make such claims, nor did early presidents. Even Andrew Jackson's famous and, to his generation, shocking assertion of coequality coincident with his censure was not really a claim of equal power between branches. According to our systematic analysis of presidential rhetoric it was Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford who initiated and popularized the idea of interbranch coequality. They did so to defend themselves in two episodes of substantial presidential vulnerability: Watergate and the ensuing midterm elections. Subsequent presidents have elevated something that would have seemed wrong and absurd to any founder into a blithe truism. This belief harms governance by creating both artificially high expectations for the president and a presumption of institutional stasis. The “second constitution” based on popular beliefs about interbranch relations continues to evolve, as much a product of happenstance as of rational design.     

The paradoxical nature of growth in the US bison industry

In the bison industry, a paradox has emerged in which the ideal of bison restoration has become increasingly disconnected from the management practices that orient and coordinate the lives of bison on private ranches. Although the industry has spurred the growth and reintroduction of the species, it has not been able to restore it in a theoretically significant way that approximates historic bison populations. This article examines the economic, cultural, and material variables that have generated this paradox. While considerable diversity remains within the industry, economic crises, consumer expectations and governmental regulations have reduced the influence of alternative practices and perspectives. Representations of the bison industry should acknowledge these contradictory forces to facilitate better understanding of the costs and benefits of these developments.     

Chicago goes global: redevelopment,culture, and fear

Chicago's remarkably flexible growth machine, like their brethren across Rust Belt America, continues to aggressively press forward to build an internationally competitive city. This paper deepens our understanding of Chicago's recently changed growth machine. It focuses on its current redevelopment narrative as it is used on the South Side and chronicles two new features about it: its revamped use of fear and its re-fashioned notion of culture. I flesh out these two elements as they circulate through a now dominant redevelopment program: historic preservation. I chronicle three points in this paper. First, programs like historic preservation, like so many current city programs, have now fully shifted to being a neoliberal economic development tool to promote the “go-global Chicago” project. Second, two dominant fears recently nuanced anchor the narrative: fear of a city-destroying globalization and fear of city-subverting poor African-Americans. Third, a revamped notion of culture is used that helps provide resonance and dark appeal to the two offered fears. The culture notion is put into play as two dominant things, as the idealized and timeless glue that unifies Chicago's mainstream and as problematic values and meanings carried by black bodies which renders them civic tainting “ocular trash”.     

The European policy of the Jospin government: A new twist to old French games

This article presents a constructivist-inspired analysis of the Jospin government's European policy, understanding most policy developments during this period as variations on well-established French preferences—rooted in a modified Gaullist paradigm—embedded in French state identity. The variations reflect external political and economic pressures. By June 1997, the potential contradiction between perceptions of European integration as an extension of French state identity and the actual constraints imposed by integration was never greater, due to the reinforced constraints imposed by the operation of the Single European Market (SEM) and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), in additional to the rise of German unilateralism and the need for European Union (EU) institutional and policy reforms made necessary by the approaching enlargement of the EU eastwards and the increased pressure on the Jospin government to reconceptualise an end-goal to European integration.     

Henry I of Germany's 929 military campaign in archaeological perspective

In 929, King Henry I of Germany (919–36) launched an exceptionally successful offensive against the Slav polities along the length of his eastern frontier. This campaign, which is recorded in contemporary written accounts, has long been known to historians, and its importance in the political history of the German kingdom is undisputed. However, to date, there is no book‐length or article‐length study devoted to Henry's military successes in 929. This article fills that striking lacuna by drawing on the vast body of information provided through excavations, which sheds considerable new light on the scale and sophistication of Henry I's undertaking.     

An alternative approach to hab 1,2‐2,20

Abstract

In the first part the ideological nature of the OT historical narrative is stressed, which means that it is hardly usable as a historical source alone. Therefore, in the second part three demands are formulated should we decide to use an OT text in a historical analysis: 1) the event we want to investigate has to be mentioned in the OT, 2) must correlate with material from archaeological excavations, and 3) must be mentioned in at least one external written source. The final part is devoted to an overview over the Scandinavian excavations at Tel Fukhar, Jordan.