Suchergebnisse

A CONGRESSMAN FROM INDIANA QUOTES TRUMAN'S OBSERVATION "I MAKE FOREIGN POLICY" AND NOTES THAT WATERGATE AND VIETNAM AND THE INTERVENING LEGACY BETWEEN TRUMAN AND REAGAN KEEPS REAGAN FROM SAYING THE SAME THING. CONGRESS HAS BECOME A FULL-PARTNER IN THE FORMULATION OF FOREIGN POLICY. THIS IS NOT AN ESSENTIAL CONDITION OF SOUND FOREIGN POLICY. HE SAYS SEPARATION OF POWERS PRODUCES HEALTHY AND CREATIVE TENSION.

The theory about "empowerment" has been formulated primarily in the academy. Consumers and social work practitioners generally have not taken an active role in the theoretical development of this concept. This study examines empowerment from consumers' and social workers' point of view. Twenty focus groups composed of four different Israeli consumer populations and social workers serving them were examined. The findings reveal the significance of empowerment from the perspectives of the different groups and identify differences among the consumer populations, as well as between consumers and social workers. The perceptions of consumers and social workers about empowerment provide deeper insights into and sharper formulation of this concept. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Translator's Forward: These are not happy times in Japan. Its economy, at one time the most dynamic on the planet, has been in the dumps for over a decade. The population is both aging and declining. A "lost generation" of young Japanese has come of age amid diminished, and diminishing, expectations. The government, controlled as always by the Liberal Democratic Party ("LDP"), is rigid, bloated, corrupt, and deeply in debt. And there is no real reason to believe that the next decade will bring improvement in any of these areas. Not surprisingly, as Japan's economic juggernaut has faltered, the tone of Japanese writing on Japan has moved from self-celebration to self-doubt. It was against this background that in 2000 Kamiya Masako compiled a collection of essays entitled "Rereading the Japanese National Constitution." Included in the collection was Professor Annen's "Constitutionalism as a Political Culture." Professor Annen's essay stands out because it confirms the widely held suspicion that the commitment of the Japanese people to their national constitution is tenuous at best. He argues that the peace and prosperity of postwar Japan made the Constitution a tolerable, if only marginal, piece of Japan's social and political fabric. With prosperity fading and patience with Japan's security arrangements growing thin, Annen asks whether the Constitution itself could become a casualty. He answers the question more or less in the affinmative. For an American reader, both the discussion and the conclusion are stunning. While Americans may disagree over any number of political issues, the discourse always assumes the continued validity and vitality of the United States Constitution. It is simply unthinkable that the Constitution would be discarded due to changing economic conditions or public apathy. Indeed, the Constitution and the national identity are so firmly intertwined that to abandon the former would be to extinguish the latter. Not so in Japan. There are two explanations for the shallow roots of ...