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Post-Cold War military reforms in Britain, France and Germany have been characterized by patterns of convergence in the objectives, instruments and institutional forums of defense policy, but by divergence in temporality. These patterns of convergence and divergence cannot be fully explained by cultural approaches. Neither can they be explained solely by a focus on the role of 'international structure', as neo-realism posits, although the post-Cold War distribution of capabilities is driving Britain, France and Germany towards policy convergence. Instead the analysis builds upon the insights of neo-classical realism and its emphasis upon 'state power' by demonstrating the important intervening role played by domestic material power relationships in incentivizing figures within the core executive to respond to systemic power shifts. The paper argues that in Britain and France 'executive autonomy' in defense policy, resulting from the unitary state, weak linkages between defense and social policy subsystems and formal powers of the core executive in defense has allowed policy leaders to focus on the 'national interest' and convergence with 'systemic imperatives'. In Germany the federal system and linkages between social and defense policy circumscribed 'executive autonomy' in defense policy and incentivized an acute concern within the core executive about the domestic political ramifications of convergence with systemic imperatives, leading to the temporal management of reform, producing short-medium term policy stasis. Culture emerges not so much as a cause of action as instrumental and a resource for policy leaders in the domestic political and temporal management of reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British, German, and French states have recently stepped up their actions against racist violence. There are significant policy similarities across the countries, but equally meaningful differences. In relative terms, Britain has focused more of its energies on reforming the police and the judicial process for prosecuting racially aggravated offences; Germany has delegated power and resources to civil society groups for developing programs against right-wing activities; and France has taken high-profile symbolic actions and has begun adapting its educational policies to address racist violence. This paper maps the policy terrain within each country. It also assesses the effectiveness of different policy approaches. It demonstrates that raw statistics on racist violence are inadequate measures of success, and argues that policies must be judged by how societal groups perceive them and therefore by the extent to which they foster national cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the political mobilization of Muslims in Britain and France on two major issues: state funding of Islamic schools and the wearing of the hijab by Muslim schoolgirls in state schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay assesses levels of anti-Muslim prejudice in two important European countriesâ??Britain and Franceâ??to begin a process of systematically evaluating the status of Muslims on national ethno-racial hierarchies. It reviews major scholarly and institutional public opinion polls from 1988 through 2008 to discern attitudes toward Muslims over time and in comparison to other religious and ethnic groups. The findings support the following three conclusions: (1) negative attitudes toward Muslims have risen over the past twenty years in Britain and France; (2) when compared to other religious groups, Muslims are viewed with tremendous suspicion by British and French respondents; and (3) in spite of the events of recent years, Muslims have not yet sunk to the bottom of the ethno-racial hierarchy; most measures suggest that other groups remain more distant ethno-racial outsiders than Muslims in both Britain and France. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all EU member-states, which have in turn clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. These changes in practices and challenges to ideas have profoundly affected all EU member states, but some more so than others, largely as a question of ?institutional fit.? The EU, as a ?compound? supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to ?simple? national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to ?compound? national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member-states, however, is not so much that practices have changed and that ideas have been challenged than that national leaders have generally failed to come up with new ideas and discourse that reflect the new Europeanized realities. But here, too, institutional differences matter, although to differing effect. Simple polities have greater potential for speaking to changes in practices and challenges to ideas, were they to so choose, because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate ?communicative? discourse to the general public, in which they are better able to speak in one voice and to convey a single message than more compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]