Electoral Choice

Britain will hold its first election in five years on May 6.And unlike any since the early 1990s, it is very hard to see who might win. Current Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labor Party is unpopular and, despite work-ing hard to keep the recession from turning into a depression, is blamed for the huge lev-els of debt Britain has.     

Directing the Diplomats

Europe’s foreign affairs head faces knotty problem of developing new structure     

G8 Struggles for Relevance

<正>The world’s most powerful countries assess their dwindling influence The first meeting of the Group of Eight(G8)countries,then the G7,was convend by French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaingin the 1970s.     

Managing the Birth Pangs of the New Global Order

As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown notes in this section, we are witnessing the birth pangs of a new global order in this deepest financial and economic crash since the Great Depression. There will be plenty of pain all around for a while. And when the quarter-century leveraged-debt bubble of the United States—the explosion of which detonated the crash—is finally unwound, the new global balance will favor an Asia flush with cash. The G-20 will replace the G-7 as the executive committee of globalization. And, if wise leadership stays the course, there will be a "green lining" to the recovery as the fiscal stimulus is imbued with an environmental sensibility.     

Bridging the Gender Gap In Bill Sponsorship

Under what circumstances do men sponsor issues that are traditionally regarded as salient primarily to women? By examining the sponsorship of legislation in the upper and lower chambers of 15 state legislatures in 2001, we explored the conditions under which men are likely to focus attention on policy areas involving women's issues and children's issues. We found little effect of institutional context (such as party control of the legislature or diversity within the legislature) on the sponsorship behavior of either men or women. Personal characteristics such as race, education, age, and family circumstances are associated with sponsorship by men, but not by women. Committee service is also strongly associated with sponsorship behavior, particularly for men. Differences in sponsorship are relatively marked in the sponsorship of legislation that focuses on reproduction or other health issues particularly relevant to women. We conclude that the boundaries of the set of issues traditionally defined as “women's issues” may be changing over time and that it is important to recognize that the influences on the sponsorship of women's issues can be different for men than they are for women.