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European legal institutions have recognized legal protections for minority groups across Europe. These legal protections and other transnational legal norms increasingly define and shape domestic legal systems. Equally important to this dynamic, is the growing number and strength of civil society organizations that utilize international courts and law to bring domestic policy reforms. This process of internalization, by which international law becomes integrated, enforceable and meaningful within the domestic legal order, is increasingly determined by a dynamic interaction between international courts and civil society organizations. While many scholars have focused on the growing legalization of world politics, few have focused on the domestic effects of this process. Further, the role of civil society in the domestic internalization of international law remains virtually ignored. In this paper, I examine the conditions under which international law becomes institutionalized in domestic politics. In particular, if, how and why domestic politics and civil society shape the degree to which international law becomes integrated, enforceable and meaningful within domestic legal and political systems. To carry out this analysis, I explore the linkages between civil society, transnational law and its integration into domestic politics, focusing on anti-discrimination law of the European Union and the Council of Europe. I examine the process of internalization in the context of Roma housing rights in France and the UK. The three conditions that I explore are institutional fit, activism of state actors and civil society. I argue that the degree to which European law becomes internal to domestic law is driven by European-minded social actors who mobilize European legal norms and lead state actors to provide "surveillance" over the application of European law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates the administration of the U.S. rail system in the 19th century by the federal government. It compares the antebellum U.S. railroads with 19th century rail systems in Great Britain and France. It also analyzes the limitations in early American rail development system which included dividing the policy responsibility for infrastructure between local governments and private companies.

This study asks under what domestic conditions environmental groups in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany will overcome the collective action, resource, and ideological impediments to cooperative activity. A political opportunity approach is employed which looks at the relationship between elite alliances and domestic cleavages and the choice to engage in domestic as well as transnational cooperation. Using data gathered through content analysis over a nearly twenty-five year period, I find that changes in domestic opportunities influence the choice of environmental groups to engage in cooperative activities. An open POS is found to depress both domestic and transnational cooperation; while a closed POS increases cooperative activities. ..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]