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Islamic terrorism may only be abated through political reconciliation and a "proper" amount of political representation. This research paper focuses on whether and to what extent Muslim citizens serve on various federal legislative bodies throughout the western world. Is it fair to say, for example, that Muslim communities are well assimilated in the U.S. when there is only one Congressman currently serving out of 435 who holds that particular faith? While, conversely, there are four Muslim members of the British House of Commons? In this multicase comparative analysis, I have counted all Muslim politicians serving at the federal legislative level in 2007, in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and Israel. My initial findings point to a nation's acculturation/immigration policies, as well as its electoral procedures, as being major factors in determining the proportion of Muslim federal legislators. Are Muslims in these countries actively involved in nonviolent political exploration as advocated by theorist Hannah Arendt, or is the anti-democratic impulse currently present in many Islamic countries too culturally imbedded, as hinted by Seymour M. Lipset? Political scientists need to answer questions like these and conduct this type of research if we ever hope to solve religious conflict through the channel of representative democracy, at home and abroad. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the issue regarding the question if G. Esping-Anderson's liberal regime is adequate in terms of health care in the U.S., Great Britain, and in Canada. This liberal regime cluster is inaccurate when applied to the delivery and coverage of health care. Both Canada and Great Britain provide its citizens with a highly decommodified Public Health Program. While in the U.S., citizens are its commodities.

Electoral competition has long been held as a required and essential component of a smoothly functioning democracy. This common wisdom suggests that representative responsiveness is likely to decrease as the level of general election competitiveness falls off. The closer the election the more uncertain the incumbent member of the legislature is about her ability to get reelected, which motivates her to work harder to win votes (i.e. campaign harder, spend more time in the district, secure more pork projects, modify voting behavior in the legislature, etc.). In turn these activities should increase voter satisfaction and efficacy. This final linkage is what we take up here. Namely, do voters in districts that have competitive elections demonstrate higher levels of efficacy and higher levels of satisfaction with the representative and with the legislature itself? Using survey data from the most recent elections in three western democracies with single member district systems (UK, Canada, and the U.S.) we find no such connection. Rather, the winner/loser dichotomy is primal. Electoral competitiveness has no measurable effect on voters (be they winners or losers). This finding has important implications for democratic theory and for redistricting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variations in the degree of public support for war in Iraq can be traced to differences in the way news media in different countries represented the crisis to their publics. We present related studies of news coverage of the Iraq war in news magazines of five nations over a one-year period leading up to and including the war and its aftermath. We draw on a sample of stories about Iraq in major news magazines from France, Canada, the US, the UK, and Germany. We find support for the hypothesis that international (non-American) media framed the issues of war and foreign policy objectives by advocating a less aggressive, more internationalist, and more diplomatic foreign policy approach than US media, and that these distinctions reflect the widening gap between the United States and Europe on issues of geopolitics and global cooperation. Such differences not only reflect critically important distinctions in national policy positions towards Iraq, they also have likely contributed to differences in public perceptions of the need for war at all. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]