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Early general history up to 1900. "I have listened to the stories told about it by the old time cowboys, by the old settlers, and by some of the old Fort Concho soldiers themselves. As a result of this experience, I have wanted to go into its past more carefully and search for more facts regarding the region, its first inhabitants, and its early history in general."-- leaf iii.

Il presente lavoro intende esaminare il processo di decision making relativo alla politica sociale statunitense sviluppatosi a partire dalla fine degli anni Sessanta, fornendo un’analisi di carattere «istituzionalista» che ponga in rilievo gli snodi cruciali del dibattito relativo al welfare system federale svoltosi sia all’interno del Congresso, sia presso i think tank, i centri universitari, le organizzazioni culturali e religiose, le lobby e le altre realtà associative emerse dalla società civile. In particolare, la ricerca si concentra sull’intreccio tra ideologia politica, mentalità tradizionale, opinione pubblica e interessi specifici, e sull’influsso esercitato dalla dimensione culturale e istituzionale sul processo legislativo. Sono stati individuati quattro principali indirizzi socio-politici, ciascuno dei quali ha avuto un particolare influsso su altrettante ‘fasi’ del processo di riforma del welfare system statunitense svoltosi tra il 1968 e il 2006. L’analisi del dibattito culturale e politico è stata suddivisa pertanto in quattro diversi capitoli (capp. 2-5) che consentono di delineare percorsi distinti per le diverse ipotesi socio-culturali individuate, ai quali viene anteposta una premessa storica relativa alle origini del sistema assistenziale e previdenziale statunitense e alle politiche riformiste degli anni Sessanta (cap. 1). / The dissertation examines the process of decision making that determined the development of U.S. social policy from the end of the Sixties. It analyzes the institutional character of the debate that took place inside the Congress and inside the think tanks, the academic centers, the cultural and religious foundations and other associations. In particular, the research is focused on the tangle between political ideologies, traditional culture, public opinion and legislative process. The dissertation identifies four different socio-political streams: each of them influenced a particular “phase” of the reform of the U.S. welfare system from 1968 up to 2006. The analysis of the cultural and political debate has been divided in four chapters (chapters 2-5) that allow to delineate different developments for the four streams, after an historical premise (chapter 1) that presents the origins of American welfare system, from the colonial times to the Sixties.

This thesis explores the content of presidential communication to children, specifically the only three presidential speeches that have been designed for children. These three speeches are President Barack Obama's speech to children in 2009, George H.W. Bush's speech to children in 1991, and Ronald Reagan's speech to children in 1988. Through content analysis this thesis was designed to determine whether persuasive strategies were used in these messages to children, and if persuasive strategies were present, which ones were used. Through qualitative analysis conducting a focus group discussion with children exposed to one of the presidential speeches, this thesis also explored the speeches from children's perspectives. Political socialization theory is used as framework for developing the study, and three persuasive theories are used for analysis of the speeches. The findings provide insight into presidential communication to children and implications of future research in this area. Findings suggest that persuasive strategies are present and a variety of techniques are utilized in the speeches. The purpose and common topics of these speeches are also explored. Focus group findings support that children can identify persuasive strategies present in the speeches and provide insight into the knowledge children retain from exposure to the communication.

At the start of the George H.W. Bush administration, American involvement in El Salvador‘s civil war, one of the last Cold War battlegrounds, had disappeared from the foreign policy agenda. However, two events in November 1989 shattered the bipartisan consensus on US policy toward El Salvador: the failure of the FMLN‘s largest military offensive of the war and the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the Salvadoran military, the FAES. Despite more than one billion dollars in US military assistance, the war had stalemated, promoting both sides to seek a negotiated political settlement mediated by the United Nations. The Jesuit murders demonstrated the failure of the policy of promoting respect for democracy and human rights and revived the debate in Congress over US aid to El Salvador. This thesis argues that the Bush administration sought to remove the burden of El Salvador from its foreign policy agenda by actively pushing for the investigation and prosecution of the Jesuit case and fully supporting the UN-mediated peace process. Using recently declassified government documents from the George Bush Presidential Library, this thesis will examine how the Bush administration fundamentally changed US policy toward El Salvador. Administration officials carried out an unprecedented campaign to pressure the FAES to investigate the Jesuit murders and bring the killers to justice while simultaneously attempting to prevent Congress from cutting American military assistance. The Bush administration changed the objective of its El Salvador policy from military victory over the guerrillas to a negotiated political settlement. The US facilitated the peace process by pressuring the Salvadoran government and the FMLN to negotiate in good faith and accept compromises. When both sides signed a comprehensive peace agreement on January 16, 1992, the burden of El Salvador was lifted.

This dissertation examines how the major television networks, in conjunction with the Reagan administration, launched a lingering cloud of nuclear anxiety that helped to revive the Cold War during the 1980s. Placed within a larger political and cultural post-war context, this national preoccupation with a global show-down with the Soviet Union at times both hindered and bolstered Reagan’s image as the archetypal conservative, cowboy President that could free America from its liberal adolescent past now caustically referred to as “the sixties.” This stalwart image of Reagan, created and carefully managed by a number of highly-paid marketing executives, as one of the embodiment of peaceful deterrence, came under attack in the early 1980s when the “liberal” Nuclear Freeze movement showed signs of becoming politically threatening to the staunch conservative pledging to win the Cold War at any cost. And even if the nuclear freeze movement itself was not powerful enough to undergo the Herculean task of removing the President in 1984, the movement was compassionate enough to appeal to a mass audience, especially when framed in narrative form on network television. In the early 1980s, debates over the possibility of nuclear war and other pertinent Cold War related issues became much more democratized in their visibility on the network airwaves. However, the message disseminated from the networks was not placed in an educational framework, nor did these television productions clarify complicated nuclear issues such as nuclear winter theory and proliferation. I argue this renewed network attention on nuclear issues was not placed in an historical framework and likely confused American viewers because it routinely exposed audiences to both fact and fiction, undifferentiated at the level of the mass media.

Nell’aprile 1982, l’Argentina – un Paese alleato degli Stati Uniti attraverso il Patto di Rio – invase le isole Falkland, un Territorio d’Oltremare del Regno Unito, rivendicato da Buenos Aires sin dal XIX secolo. Margaret Thatcher, l’allora Primo Ministro britannico, rispose con vigore. Alla fine la Gran Bretagna – alleato NATO degli USA – riuscì a riconquistare le isole e a ristabilire lo status quo ante. Il conflitto va inquadrato nel framework della ‘seconda Guerra Fredda’. Il confronto tra gli Stati Uniti e l’Unione Sovietica fu particolarmente aspro nei primi anni Ottanta e la logica bipolare influenzò le dinamiche diplomatiche della guerra del 1982. Da un lato, l’Emisfero occidentale era al centro della rinnovata strategia americana anti-comunista e l’Argentina era il principale pilastro nel Cono Sud. Dall’altro lato, il rafforzamento della ‘speciale relazione’ anglo-americana costituiva la pietra angolare della grand strategy statunitense nel teatro europeo. Con questo sfondo, è naturale domandarsi quale ruolo Washington scelse di giocare nella guerra delle Falkland tra due dei suoi alleati. A causa di interessi divergenti, la ‘relazione speciale’ non fu infatti del tutto speciale. / In April 1982, Argentina – a country allied with the United States through the Rio Pact – suddenly invaded the Falkland Islands, a long-time Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom, disputed by Buenos Aires since the XIXth century. Margaret Thatcher, the then British Prime Minister, vigorously responded and finally Britain – a US NATO ally – was able to regain the Islands and re-establish the status quo ante. The conflict needs to be contextualized in the ‘second Cold War’ framework. The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union was particularly tough in the first years of the 1980s and the bipolar logic strongly influenced the diplomatic course of the 1982 war. On the one hand, the Western hemisphere was at the core of the renewed anti-communist US strategy and Argentina was the main pillar in the Southern Cone. On the other hand, the strengthening of the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ was the European cornerstone of the US grand strategy. Against this background, what kind of role the US chose to play in the Falklands war between two of their allies instinctively arises as the main question. Affected by diverging interests, the ‘special relationship’ was not indeed entirely special.