The Mad Heir Apparent and the Spanish Succession: The Fate of the Infante Don Carlos

In twentieth-century Britain, the monarch no longer exercises governmental power directly, and a monarch’s incapability creates rather different issues and problems than in periods when kings ruled as well as reigned. How was a situation such as that of disabled heir apparent, or a monarch who became physically or mentally incapable while reigning, dealt with when monarchs ruled directly? This article considers some examples of monarchs in the past who were physically or mentally disabled on accession or became so while reigning, and heirs apparent who were set aside by reason of disability. It reflects upon constitutional solutions and political actions taken and how was these were presented according to the ideas of the time.     

The Mad Heir Apparent and the Spanish Succession: The Fate of the Infante Don Carlos

In twentieth-century Britain, the monarch no longer exercises governmental power directly, and a monarch’s incapability creates rather different issues and problems than in periods when kings ruled as well as reigned. How was a situation such as that of disabled heir apparent, or a monarch who became physically or mentally incapable while reigning, dealt with when monarchs ruled directly? This article considers some examples of monarchs in the past who were physically or mentally disabled on accession or became so while reigning, and heirs apparent who were set aside by reason of disability. It reflects upon constitutional solutions and political actions taken and how these were presented according to the ideas of the time.     

Australia's security and the threat of Islamic extremism in southeast Asia

Australian foreign and security policy confronts a series of difficult challenges in coping with the emergence of an Islamic extremist threat in Southeast Asia. Australian policy makers are being drawn into unfamiliar linkages with moderate Islam, and into closer cooperation with Indonesia, the most populous Islamic nation in the world, in an attempt to offset Islamic extremists. Further, they must achieve those objectives at a time when important interests are at stake beyond Southeast Asia, when bipartisan agreement about the direction of foreign policy is waning, and when divisions over the appropriate trajectory of Australian security policy are intense. A delicacy almost unprecedented in Australian foreign policy will be required.     

The new surveillance: Electronic technologies and the maximum security society

Conclusion Gary Marx' Undercover provides a fine basis for fuller sociological analysis of electronic surveillance in the late twentieth century. He is correct that new technology is implicated in a new surveillance, although the interplay between social and technological factors must constantly be in view. Above all it is computers, or, more properly, computers-plus-telecommunications that facilitate the new surveillance. They do so by allowing for the creation of novel categories of personal data, seen especially at present in computer matching. But they may also be enabling anather new departure, the integration of moments of surveillance once the province of quite distinct social institutions.The threat of a maximum security society emerging within the very liberal democratic contexts that cherish (above all economic) liberties is a reality. But fresh social analysis is called for, as the popularly-used and illuminative panoptic concept suffers from a number of basic flaws, and because we have yet to connect satisfactorily the equally pertinent themes of privacy and freedom. Modern social control seems to utilize several different disciplines, often acting in concert but in complex ways. The fact that some of the most potent arise in situations as apparently innocent as buying a restaurant meal with a credit card should not lull us into thinking that they are any less worrisome than certain undercover police tactics.