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This paper provides an introduction to the articles and report excerpt submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime on ‘Organised crime and illegal markets in the UK and Ireland’. The aim of the special issue is to draw together empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on various manifestations of organised crime in the particular geographic context(s), the evolution of organised crime, the links between organised crime, the legal sphere and paramilitary groups, as well as an account of the demographic profile and attitudes of citizens in areas in which organised crime groups thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a study of American, British and Canadian records, this article examines the relationship of France to the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty from the perspective of the ‘ABC’ countries, particularly Canada. How did the perceived vulnerability of France influence the approach of the members of the ‘North Atlantic Triangle’ to the justification, timing and contents of the proposed pact? How did France's inclusion in Western Union and its exclusion from the preliminary talks in the Pentagon affect American, British and Canadian attitudes to the development of the draft alternatively known as the ‘Pentagon Paper’ or the ‘State Department Draft’? These questions are addressed, as well as the impact on the later ambassadorial talks of France's priority to immediate rearmament and its determination to include the departments of Algeria within the defensive perimeter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Finally, the article assesses the extent to which France and its requirements influenced the policies and actions of the Canadian government throughout the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the natural monopoly features of infrastructure industries, together with their strategic roles, have been important elements in state intervention. The aim of this paper is to evaluate what relative weight was attached to market failure problems on the one hand and geo-political factors on the other. For the period 1830-1939, how far were geo-political factors stronger than natural monopoly problems in accounting for the scale of intervention in the various countries of the Western World? How far did the policy instruments for security and market failure overlap? Whilst most of the infrastructure sectors are covered - including internal telecommunications, coal, gas, shipping, electricity and water - special attention is devoted to international submarine telegraph tables and railways. The paper concludes by demonstrating strong differences between Britain and USA on the one hand and Continental Europe plus Japan on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares rental housing tools in the US, Britain and the Netherlands in order to determine the best strategy for enhancing rental housing accessibility. In doing so, the authors employ a 'tools approach' of governance paradigm, based on the work of Salamon's The Tools of Governance (2002). Rental housing tools are called housing vouchers in the US, housing benefits in Britain and housing allowances in the Netherlands. Overall, it was found that Britain and the Netherlands can learn from the US on means and ways of designing more efficient and fiscally responsible housing vouchers, benefits, and allowances (VBAs). The US, in turn, can learn from Britain and the Netherlands on means and needs of achieving higher equity and effectiveness. This analysis contributes in a meaningful way by addressing the missing middle link between policies and programs - namely, the tools perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the framing in four British and American newspapers of the second-wave feminist movement during its most politically active period (1968-1982). Using content and critical discourse analysis of 555 news articles, the article investigates how movement members were represented, what problems and solutions to women's oppression/inequality were posed and whose voices were used. This paper identifies: opposition to the movement, support for the movement, conflict and movement defined in terms of its goals. In addition to exploring nuances in coverage across time and space, we use a feminist perspective to make political statements about how gendered hierarchies function through media discourse, and argue that the circulation of patriarchal and capitalist ideologies worked to prevent women's equal partnership with men in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a key methodological challenge in the modeling of individual poverty dynamics—the influence of measurement error. Taking the US and Britain as case studies and building on recent research that uses latent Markov models to reduce bias, we examine how measurement error can affect a range of important poverty estimates. Our data are taken from the British Household Panel Survey and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, for working-aged adults over the period 1993–2003. For both national samples we ask how common vulnerability to poverty was over the period in question, what the entry and exit probabilities were for the group likely to transition into or out of poverty, and how effective redistributive programs were at protecting those most at risk. Crucially, in answering these questions we estimate and remove the effects of error in the measurement of poverty status. Throughout, we compare our results with estimates that do not take this error into account, and assess the implications for understanding poverty dynamics both within and between the two countries. Our modeling strategy extends previous research in several respects, enabling us to make stronger statements about measurement error and individual poverty dynamics. We find that correcting for error affects conclusions in important ways: Poverty is less temporary and risks are less widely dispersed than otherwise assumed, while cross-national differences are more pronounced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For sixty years, the phrase ‘North Atlantic triangle’ has been employed by Canadian scholars to describe the relations of Canada, Britain and the USA. That image was a product of its time and its originator's perspective, with particular relevance to an understanding of Canada's international relations in the Second World War and its aftermath. This paper weighs the evidence for and against the existence of a triangular relationship in the 1940s and it concludes that the geometric form conveyed an incomplete understanding at the time and it has even less relevance since then. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the impact of long working hours on home–work–family reconciliation from a household perspective. It focuses on discrete interactions between long working hours for households with two parents engaged in paid employment, raising awareness of the integrated nature of work–life balance. Attention is paid to the ‘strong economy paradox’ confronting dual earning households in ‘successful’ cities. Evidence is presented to suggest limited resistance to long hours as well as diverse ways one partner adapts their mode of employment to fit the constraints of the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Governance is a form of statecraft used to work through networks. A complementary perspective to governance is depoliticization which considers statecraft under neoliberalism. This article argues that depoliticization is a way of practicing governance. Depoliticization techniques can be understood as institutional, societal, or discursive and each technique is associated with a particular style of governance. Case studies of government efforts to revive nuclear power in Britain and the United States [US] through governance are used to consider the argument and extend the literature on depoliticization. Evidence is presented that a failure to realize policy goals through governance may be due to the use of inappropriate techniques of depoliticization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1941 and 1943 British and US policy-makers intervened in the Venezuelan Government's attempts to increase taxation of Venezuela's oil industry. British and US officials utilised their links with multinational oil companies in an attempt to steer negotiations and safeguard their, wartime and post-war, access to Venezuelan oil. Events in Venezuela saw the inception of a US foreign oil policy that reflected New Deal ideals and took inspiration from British oil diplomacy. However, the issue created conflict within the Anglo-US wartime alliance as events became imbued with wider tensions concerning Latin America and the international oil industry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines and compares how four British and American newspapers reported the second-wave feminist movement during its most active political period, 1968–1982. Through the use of both content analysis and critical discourse analysis, this study reveals that despite socio-political differences, both US (The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune) and UK (The Times, Daily Mirror) newspapers used a similar range of discourses when addressing the women's movement and its members. While coverage overall can best be described as fragmented and contradictory, I argue that on the surface, there was significantly more “positive” or supportive articles on the women's movement than previous scholars have noted. However, these news stories rarely addressed the ways in which capitalism and patriarchy oppress women as a group, and often created a demarcation between “legitimate” and “de-legitimate” feminists, the latter being anyone who deviates from traditional feminine norms. Such constructions therefore were not only politically incapable of challenging women's oppression, but helped construct feminism as a dirty word, a connotation which still exists today. This paper will also address the emergence and eventual dominance of oppositional discourses, examining the patriarchal and capitalist ideologies used in both countries to rebuff the movement, its members and their goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Both Britain and the US are committed to social and ethnic equality. But how much ethnic disadvantage is there in the two countries? Do minority ethnics fare better in one country than in the other? Is there progress over time? This paper examines the employment status and the class position of minority ethnics in the two countries using micro-data from the two recent censuses of the population. The analysis shows that most minority ethnics in both countries were heavily disadvantaged in employment and in access to professional-managerial (salariat) positions. Among comparable groups, people in the US fared better than in Britain, but those in Britain, especially those of the second-generation, were making more progress over time. There was also greater ethnic polarisation 99in the US than in Britain. Overall, while some signs of improvement are visible, persistent disadvantages are the defining feature of the social structure in both countries. Much more needs to be done to ensure socio-ethnic equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does the unique political space of cities tell us about the forms working-class politics took and the barriers it confronted during the period of rapid industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? Three points of reference are crucial. First, city politics addressed immediate, tangible needs of workers and their families that were common to urban, industrial life irrespective of national boundaries. Second, the forms of political mobilization and relative success of these movements were remarkably congruent across the industrializing world but with interesting and important variations; and the US case at the municipal level, contrary to the tradition of 'American exceptionalism', was not an outlier. Third, municipal activists crafted a new local politics, that was internationalist in orientation (recall the contemporary slogan: “think globally, act locally”), and that challenged the nationalist aspirations of their parliamentary-oriented party colleagues. This divergence had profound consequences in the World War I era. With the city as the unit of analysis, we are able to transcend the framework of national political narratives that has so stamped the historiographies of the respective countries. Borders dissolve, at least conceptually, and we can examine the new political landscapes of industrializing cities for what they have in common and for their distinctiveness. We can talk about Cripple Creek, Colorado, and Broken Hill, New South Wales, in the same breath, and similarly, Cleveland, Ohio, and Brisbane, Australia; Christchurch, New Zealand, and Malmö, Sweden; Hamburg, Germany, and Liverpool, England; Vienna, Austria, and Chicago. But, what makes these comparisons that much more intriguing is that they are also linked through the cross-fertilization of political ideas. At a key point in this period, Milwaukee social democrat Walter Thomas Mills played a critical role in facilitating the organization of a New Zealand Labour Party. Two decades earlier Henry George's single tax swept through Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and Sweden, shaping the thinking of working-class activists and middle-class reformers. Fabian socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb visited the US, Australia, and New Zealand on the eve of their own intensive examination of the history of English local government. They were preceded in Australia by the legendary British docker Ben Tillett and followed soon thereafter by Labour Party activists Tom Mann and E. R. Hartley. The traffic moved the other way as well. A young Christchurch organizer, 'Jimmy' Thorn, went off for four years to organize for the Independent Labour Party in Britain; Labour Party activists, Patrick Hickey in New Zealand and Claude Thompson in Australia, had each spent time with militant miners in the western United States; evolutionary socialist Eduard Bernstein spent a decade exiled in London before returning to Germany, imbibing the experience of independent labour activists and imparting his own evolving ideas to sympathizers in London. Using a few selected cases, drawn from research in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US, this paper will examine both the international networks municipal activists forged and the lessons of local political mobilization they shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper attempts to bring new insights to a long-standing historical debate over medical specialization by analyzing the formation of medical mycology, a somewhat marginal biomedical discipline that emerged in the mid-twentieth century around studies of fungal disease in humans. The study of fungi predates that of bacteria and viruses, but from the 1880s it became eclipsed by bacteriology. However, in the postwar period, there were moves to establish medical mycology as an independent speciality. I trace the processes that led to the launch of professional societies in the United States, Britain and Japan, three major players in medical mycology, and more broadly in biomedicine. The analysis of the three different national contexts illustrates how geographical, medico-technological, epidemiological, political and social conditions gave the specialty a distinctive character in each country; this was further complicated by the different and changing medical fields in which fungal diseases were studied and treated. The three case studies show medical specialization as a process that is not simply cumulative but responds to specific historical events and developments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Information technology has a revolutionary impact on the development of education. Therefore, it is a strategic choice to comprehensively respond to educational development challenges in the information age to promote the modernization of education with education informatization. Countries worldwide have begun to attach importance to the development of educational information technology and have successively formulated a series of policies and plan to guide its development. At the same time, implementing a number of measures has dramatically promoted the realization of educational information technology development goals. Taking the United States, Britain, China, and Singapore as examples, we reviewed the promotion strategies of global education informatization and summarized its typical characteristics and development trends based on an overview of the development routes of various countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the reduction in duties under US President James Polk, enshrined in the Walker Tariff of 1846, as a proxy for understanding the interrelationship between the executive, the legislature, and broader societal developments. It concludes that congressional debates on the subject were constrained by three parameters: the perceived threat of sectionalism, fears of international belligerence, and the legacy of colonialism. First, memories of the earlier Nullification Crisis of 1833 determined that the political discourse was characterised by a striking emphasis on national unity. Second, contrary to the usual association of free trade with peace, the Walker Tariff was necessarily debated in terms of compatibility with ongoing warfare. Lastly, Britain's shadow coloured congressional language, with both sides exploiting simultaneous reductions of tariffs in the former colonising power to advance their rhetorical ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many influential theorists of nationalism see war as a social conflict that to a great extent homogenizes and unifies the nation. Nowhere is that unity more clearly expressed than in war memorials and cemeteries. This article considers the examples of Britain and the USA during the aftermath of World War I in order to examine how the state legitimized its ownership of the bodies of its dead soldiers. It argues first that in an internal dispute, when all sides share a normative ideology, nationalism cannot offer an effective basis for legitimacy. Second, it shows that during the aftermath of World War I, the bodies of dead soldiers were not symbols. This article concludes that in order to transform a dead body into a symbol, the body first has to be "de-individualized." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows the evolution of biopharmaceutical firms as they bore great uncertainty and risks in their endeavours to commercialise new therapies – through the regenerative medicine industry in the United States, Britain and Japan. Despite its beginnings in the 1970s, regenerative medicines have yet to become a widely accepted form of medicine. A large part of the problem lay with the lack of 'fit' with the broader health context. This article illustrates how the trajectory of the sector was shaped, not only by the nature of the technology, but also by the complex contexts in which firms were embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counter-extremism approaches in America and Britain have come under criticism and scrutiny due to the recurrence of terrorist incidents and the perception that they are alienating Muslim communities. This essay analyzes the course of counter-extremism policy development on both sides of the Atlantic and proposes potential solutions to some of the most entrenched difficulties that policymakers have encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservatism and conservative party politics in Britain and America is associated with neo-colonial attitudes, including pursuit of national interests ahead of post-colonial development. Based on interviews conducted in Washington and London with actors involved with African development, this article examines comparative shifts in conservatives’ engagements from the late Cold War era to the G. W. Bush and Cameron governments. Greater ideological heterogeneity and distinctiveness among American conservative interests groups, combined with a bureaucratic environment in the US allowing more direct channels for ideological input into policy, results in a more clearly conservative stamp on Africa policy in the US than in Britain where ideological lines on development have become more blurred since the 1997 New Labour election victory and the creation of the Department for International Development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article makes a critical examination of the economic case made for the prohibition of individual resale price maintenance (IRPM) in 1964. The Resale Prices Act had major implications for the future structure of British retailing and was lobbied for by multiple grocery retailers. This article demonstrates how a government enquiry which preceded the legislation privileged one side of the debate and marginalised other – arguably more rigorous – analysis. The article endorses a central role for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and is a case study of the role of economic theory in business–government relations and the development of economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late nineteenth century, both Argentina and Chile were integral parts of Britain’s ‘informal’ empire in Latin America. It has been suggested by historians that this ‘informal empire’ came to an end around the mid-twentieth century. By analysing contemporary sources from within the British government and the findings of later economic historians, it is the purpose of this article to contest this viewpoint. It will instead argue that the end of ‘informal’ empire in these countries was a direct consequence of the First World War, and that the decline in British influence in the region was registered by British policy-makers much earlier than has previously been argued. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The category of the 'non-religious' has been subject to increasing academic attention in recent years, but questions about the political mobilisation of non-religious actors remain substantially under-researched. This article addresses this issue through a comparative analysis of non-religion in the United States and Britain. Drawing on theoretical insights from Social Movement Theory, it argues that political mobilisation is shaped by varying patterns of conflict between religious and non-religious actors, as well as within and between non-religious groups themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1930 and 1945 professional wrestling could lay claim to being one of the most transnational sports moving across the Anglo-world. Participants originated from western and eastern Europe, North America, the Antipodes, Britain and India. Significantly, wrestling was one of the few sports in which participants from the British Empire and the USA competed in these decades of comparative sporting isolationism. It is argued here that the ‘All-In’ American style which came to dominate the sport as an extreme and theatrical form of ‘catch-as-catch-can’ wrestling was not uniformly accepted across the Anglo-world. Cultural differences between the USA and the British Empire meant wrestling styles had to be adapted as they crossed national boundaries. The notion of ‘cultural hybridity’ is a valuable concept here as ‘All-In’ met three different responses within the Empire: complete acceptance, modification and rejection. The reasons for the varied responses are considered and the argument made that while American culture was at one level admired in the British Empire, there was also concern about perceived professionalization and corruption in North America, which wrestling seemed to epitomize. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Conservatism in the USA has been the subject of much recent historical study, but rarely have scholars looked to how foreign observers viewed the rise of this political movement from the mid-1950s. Focussing on a specific group of observers – British diplomats – this article examines how conservative Republican senator Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign was viewed from abroad. Already prone to viewing the USA in a condescending light, Britain's diplomats reserved a particular level of opprobrium for Goldwater, a man who challenged conventional ideas about foreign and domestic policy and who seemed to threaten the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In March 2010 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) recommended that the appellation ‘special relationship’ no longer be used to describe Anglo-American relations. This article examines and extrapolates upon the report as a means of gaining insights into the contemporary special relationship. It argues that the period 2008–2010 was unusual in Anglo-American relations insofar as governments on both sides of the Atlantic signalled a cooling of the special relationship. However, it is argued that this shift was in high-level ‘mood music’ as political distance was sought from the Bush–Blair years rather than in the substance of Anglo-American relations or in British commitment to the special relationship. Of perhaps more long-term significance is the apparent mismatch between the ‘power and interest’ and the ‘sentimental myth’ dimensions of the special relationship. The FAC Report hinted at this in terms of expectation management of what the contemporary Anglo-American relationship could deliver to Britain. However, the gap between these two dimensions of the special relationship is potentially highly significant and though British governments clearly recognise this they remain unwilling to develop a newly modulated communicative discourse designed to better align them. Potential political vulnerability, it seems, is preferred to challenging a sentimental myth of Anglo-American relations that has over time become culturally embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin's views on Anglo-American relations during the crucial year of 1947. It challenges the view that Bevin was unquestioningly pro-American. It demonstrates how Bevin pushed the embassy in Washington to project a view of Britain, based on answering American criticisms robustly. He saw Britain's problems to be a consequence of American failures to act responsibly, as he saw it. Bevin was frustrated with American attitudes, and sought to bring them to underwrite his own policies and shape theirs around his strong belief that Britain had earned their support and that they should compensate Britain for its past sacrifices in the common cause. Bevin was not coldly pragmatic, nor was he uncritically pro-American, or merely a puppet in the hands of his Foreign Office officials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on Anglo-American relations during, what US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger termed, the ‘Year of Europe’. In particular, Anglo-American interaction leading up to, and during, the Washington Energy Conference (11–13 February 1974) is examined. By doing this, subtle nuances in the foreign policy of Edward Heath, British Prime Minister, 1970–1974, can be better appreciated. Traditionally viewed by commentators as varying between lukewarm and antagonistic towards the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’, this article highlights that Heath was more than capable with working closely with Washington when he believed British interests were best promoted by doing so. Heath showed throughout the Arab oil embargo of 1973–1974 an ability to work in close cooperation with Washington. Indeed, Heath demonstrated that he was prepared to sacrifice his wider European ambitions in order to secure this. This was largely driven by Heath's overriding concern that US support was imperative to prevent the outbreak of ‘beggar thy neighbour’ oil policies that he concluded would result if the European Economic Community approach, predominantly driven by French thinking, was endorsed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses the divergent patterns of large-scale retailing in the USA and Britain to explore the limitations of the conventional view of the rise of large-scale organisations in terms of the role of market forces, the visible hand of management and the work of Chandler and Williamson. Their analysis pays insufficient attention to the role of legal frameworks, state regulation, the relationship of market power and collusion and the role of class structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the images of America's three foremost European allies in US public opinion over the course of the Presidency of George W. Bush. Public country images are seen to consist of a valence and a salience dimension. Employing a mix of opinion polls and media content data, the article locates the country images under study within this two-dimensional space. It finds that US relations with Britain, Germany and France rest on rather different foundations in the American public: the British image displays both the most positive valence and the highest salience; the valence of the German image is the second most positive but its image is the least salient; the French image has the least positive valence, and its salience takes on a middle position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language of Anglophobia has been widely accepted as the coin of American politics throughout the nineteenth century. However, the grand narrative of Anglo-American rapprochement in the final quarter of the century has diverted attention away from the many forms and purposes bestowed upon Anglophobia. The discourse of Anglophobia fits hand in glove within debates regarding American nationality and citizenship. For this reason a variety of ethnic, social, and political groups deployed anti-English sentiments for the purposes of mobilizing the electorate and as a surrogate for attacking other social and economic elites. What follows is an examination of the panoply of Anglophobias that existed in Gilded Age America. Utilizing its protean and malleable nature, Anglophobia was a lens through which Americans refracted, reformulated, and refined the concepts of national identity, domestic policy, and American interests abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at highlighting two 'special' transatlantic relationships whose cultivation resulted from Theodore Roosevelt's personal diplomacy. One of them was between America and Britain - the celebrated 'special relationship' par excellence - and the other - the lesser-known one - was between America and France. The latter bilateral rapport was by far the most satisfying one for Roosevelt as the outcome of personal ties; it rested on a fascinating character, France's ambassador to Washington, Jean Jules Jusserand, who assisted America's 26th president on both sides of the Atlantic through his contacts in France and Britain. Transatlantica, which would owe a lot to Roosevelt's cosmopolitanism, was then in the making, paradoxically marked in its incipient stage by Anglo-American bickering over the Alaska boundary and US honeymooning with the French. The Gallic factor, thanks to Jusserand, would bring about diplomatic cooperation and harmony between America and France throughout Roosevelt's major foreign policy initiatives, three of which are singled out in this essay: the second Venezuelan crisis, the Russo-Japanese war, and the Moroccan crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased academic attention has been drawn to democratisation in higher education, following the implementation of affirmative action in America. However, the models of Access policies presented by certain European educational systems deserve more attention. France and Britain share a common position on elitism, although they define it according to very different principles: on the one hand, France emphases the old model of meritocracy through academic performance, whereas in Britain, some institutions still tend to favour a more hereditary transmission of ethos. A comprehensive comparison of 'positive discrimination' and Outreach policies allows us to try and rebuild the political conditions (and debates) around the implementation of these policies, which now target individuals rather than the usual macrosocial or territorial categories. Regulation patterns - although not yet finalised - reveal to some extent a general willingness for 'potential and ability assessment', which would make recruitment systems for higher education in both France and Britain less socially exclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature has identified a number of exogenous advantages that enabled US firms to dominate the global film industry. This article explores how these firms actually operated in their largest foreign market, and in doing so looks for evidence of endogenous advantages that may have enabled some US firms to outperform their rivals. It finds that firms which developed the most distinct local element to their production portfolios typically achieved a greater share of the British market. However, it does not find evidence that locally-based producers were any more effective at developing such locally-themed films than those based in Hollywood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]