The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (144 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Political institutions based on family relationships are the staple of
anthropology
. Anthropologists have established that the structure of powers and rights may be patrilineal or matrilineal (in Western written codes it has been almost exclusively patrilineal—
see
feminism). Some anthropologists have highlighted the importance of lineage (descent) in perpetuating political structures; others prefer to stress the role of marriage. There is a long ethical tradition of encouraging people to be as altruistic towards non-relations as they are (assumed to be) towards relations. This may be seen in writers as various as
Plato
, the Christian Gospel writers, and
Rousseau
. It has been boosted from an unexpected quarter by the recent emergence of kin selection as a central theme in evolutionary biology. The evolutionary advantage in being altruistic on behalf of one's relations lies in the transmission of one's own genetic pattern. Can this explain human impulses towards love of one's children?

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Small group of close advisers to a prime minister or president, who informally gather to take decisions on government policy. The term was first used to describe the meetings in the White House kitchen between President Andrew Jackson and his friends to discuss government business. There is often tension between members of a kitchen cabinet, who are able to influence policy in an informal way, and those ministers who have direct and official responsibility for government departments but see themselves cut out of the decision-making process.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when the forces of communist North Korea crossed the 38th Parallel of latitude to invade South Korea. At the time it was widely assumed in the West, and in the United States in particular, that this act of aggression had been planned and ordered by the Soviet Union as a test of Western resolve in the wider context of the Cold War. Nowadays, however, it is believed that the initiative came primarily from the North Korean regime which bitterly resented the artificial partition of the country that had followed the collapse of Japanese rule in 1945. So it may be that President Harry Truman's extremely robust response was based on a misapprehension of what was involved.
In any event, the upshot was that the United States persuaded the Security Council of the United Nations, which was being temporarily boycotted by the veto-wielding Soviet Union, to authorize the sending of military assistance to the victim. The United Nations forces, commanded by US General Douglas MacArthur , narrowly succeeded in preventing the total conquest of South Korea and then went on to drive the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel. At this point Truman , perhaps unwisely, insisted on punishing the aggressor by taking the war into North Korea. This in turn provoked Chinese intervention in October 1950 which saved North Korea and eventually led to an armistice being agreed in 1953 on the basis of a virtual return to the
status quo ante
.
Late in 1950, however, Truman was urged by some Americans to go for all-out victory even if it meant bombing China, thereby risking a possible escalation to nuclear war if the Soviets then saw fit to intervene. But he resisted this advice and accordingly felt driven to dismiss MacArthur , who did not try to conceal his dissent. Thus the outcome of the Korean War was seen by some as the first war the Americans had failed to win and was held by others to be the first example of the UN-based collective security system actually succeeding in rescuing a victim of aggression.
DC 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1842–1921)
A Russian aristocrat by birth, Kropotkin renounced his title in 1872 and henceforth devoted himself to the cause of social revolution, spending most of his later life in Western Europe and Britain. He embraced principles of libertarian communist
anarchism
, and expounded his ideas in a number of influential works, including
The Conquest of Bread
(1892),
Fields Factories and Workshops
(1899), and
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
(1902).
The expulsion of anarchists from the First International in 1872 opened up a wide split in the European revolutionary movement between anarchists and the followers of the ‘scientific socialism’ of
Marx
and
Engels
. Kropotkin continued to criticize what he considered to be the authoritarian and centralizing tendencies of Marxist theory, and offered an alternative vision of a new society based on principles of voluntarism, mutual aid, and federalist communitarianism.
KT 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search