Decline and fall of the Versailles settlement

W.N. Medlicott, Douglas Dakin and M.E. Lambert (eds.), Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, First Series, Volume XX. German Reparation and Allied Military Control 1922. Russia, March 1921-December 1922 (London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1976). 970 + lxx pp. £23. ISBN 0-11-591553-2

W.N. Medlicott and Douglas Dakin (eds.), assisted by Gillian Bennett, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, First Series, Volume XXII. Central Europe and the Balkans 1921. Albania 1921-2 (London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1980). 885 + cxii pp. £45. ISBN 0-11-591555-9

David S. Newhall, Clemenceau. A Life at War (The Edwin Meilen Press: Lampeter, 1991). 682 + xv pp. £35.95. ISBN 0-88946-785-4

J. Calvitt Clarke III, Russia and Italy against Hitler. The Bolshevik-Fascist Rapprochement of the 1930s (Contributions to the Study of World History No. 21, Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1991). 218 + xvii pp. £59.95. ISBN 0-313-27468-1

David Dutton, Simon. A political biography of Sir John Simon (Aurum Press, 1992). 364 + viii pp. £25. ISBN 1-85410-204-4

Peter Neville, Neville Chamberlain. A study in failure? (Personalities and Power Series, Hodder and Stoughton, 1992). £5. ISBN 0-340-56308-7     

Palestinian women from Femina Sacra to agents of active resistance

Jawaher Abu-Rahmah, who was killed by tear gas on New Year Day 2001, was among many Palestinian women, in the state of Israel and the occupied territory, who, despite being victims of what I theorise as the Israeli 'racial state', are also active agents of resistance. Nahla Abdo (1994, 2008) historicises Palestinian women's participation in the national struggle from the 1920s to the present, suggesting that their participation, in the first and second Intifadas for example, was not only a vital part of the resistance movement, but also had profound effect on gender relations within Palestinian society. This paper, while theorising the Palestinian woman - citizen of Israel, or occupied subject in the Palestinian territory - as femina sacra, the female version of Agamben's homo sacer, or 'bare life' (1995), and at the same time as an agent of resistance, attempts not to remain within the theoretical, combining theories with examples from the lived experiences of Palestinian women, believing, after Frantz Fanon in antiracism and anticolonialism as firmly rooted in the lived experience of the racialised.     

Is the government exhausting its powers? An empirical examination of eminent domain exercises in New York City pre- and post-Kelo

A controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) which did not limit the use of state's eminent domain powers, led to an unprecedented legislative reaction by almost all 50 states. Of all, New York State stands out as one of the single states not to respond with a legislative amendment. In this study, I ask whether the state's predation was greater in the years following these legal and political developments, in light of the freedom which was granted to local politicians by both the Supreme Court and the state's legislators. The article hypothesizes that contrary to common perceptions, judicial decisions impact local government actions even when no limits on the use of powers are being posed. I use rigorous statistics and scrupulously defined data to expand scholarly understanding of the aftermath of the judicial decision in Kelo. The main finding is that the decision has in fact affected political behavior, but in the opposite direction than commonly expected: politicians in New York City acted consistently with public opinion, which was hostile too Kelo, not by changing the law, but by changing their practice. Studying all known taking exercises in New York City between 1991 and 2019, the paper finds no increase in the number of development projects involving condemnations after 2005. In fact, the probability of a taking for economic development or urban renewal dropped by 90%. The use of eminent domain for such projects declined even when both state and federal courts refrain from interposing any actual limit on its use. The paper lends qualified support to an alternative assertion that takings decisions by government officials are largely shaped by planning and political needs and that officials are sensitive to revealed public preferences even when there is no constitutional or legal impediment on their exercise of power.