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In 1949 the newly created Federal Republic of Germany lacked freedom of action. The country was under Western Allied occupation, its new Government under supervision by the Allied High Commission. After coming to office in September 1949, chancellor Konrad Adenauer was determined to achieve West Germany's firm anchoring in the Western community, sovereignty, political, economic, and military security, and Western European integration. However, his later success should not obscure the fact that his policy was risky. In 1949-50 his course was complicated by the Saar issue, sparse Allied granting of sovereign rights, the rearmament question, and the problem of German unity. Meanwhile, the Opposition social Democrats under Kurt Schumacher criticized the concessions to the Allies and, as western integration assumed a quicker pace, stressed the primacy of German unity. Even members of the Bonn Cabinet started to doubt a policy that seemed likely to solidify German division. The West German press mirrored and judged the domestic fight over foreign policy. Four of the five leading publicists examined in this study tended to support economic and political integration in Western Europe, while not prepared to cede to French interests and to renounce German claims on the Saar, they did support the Petersberg Agreement on dismantling, accession to the Council of Europe, and involvement in the Schuman Plan negotiations. The issue of German unity played a limited role in their editorials. Two pundits, Paul Sethe and Hans Baumgarten, never mentioned it, while two others, Richard Tungel and Ernst Friedlaender, believed that western integration offered perspectives to regain East Germany in the future. Moreover, Schumacher's opposition found little positive echo. Only Rudolf Augstein and Sethe at times backed similar policies to that of the SPD. Although the broad tenets of Adenauer's course were accepted, there was consistent criticism of his diplomatic methods, in fact, in the spring of 1950 three commentators called on the Chancellor to surrender diplomatic affairs to someone else. Amongst the editorialists examined, only Augstein advocated a neutralist policy, hoping it would facilitate German unification. However, he did not sufficiently discuss the great risks associated with German neutrality. Augstein was also the only commentator to oppose West German rearmament categorically. Although none of the commentators supported outright rearmament, the pundits backed a para-military federal police against the perceived East German threat. The question of direct remilitarization was ignored or made dependent on Allied concessions.

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Opposition to the West is one of the stable characteristics of the Russian history. It is not only enshrined in the mentality of Russian people, but has become an integral part of the social and political culture of the country. The crisis facing Russia at the present time, the active modernisation and inclusion in the globalisation not only further exacerbate this confrontation, but also actualise the perennial alternative facing Russia: to converge with the West, or enter a new confrontation with it. This study explores the influence of the ethnocentric dimension on the cultural and historical dynamics of the paradigm 'Russia vs the West'. The new concept of content, structure, forms and levels of the ethnocentrism phenomenon developed by the author is tested on the basis of integrated analysis of cultural and historical evolution of Russia, the exploration of interaction between the processes of modernisation and the peculiarities of the perception of its 'modernisation standard' – the West. The data employed by the author comes from sociological studies conducted in the last 20 years and enables not only to identify the major determinants and factors influencing the current strategy of relations between Russia and the West, but also to predict the possible scenario of the development of processes of post-Soviet modernisation of this country and its interaction with the outside world.

The study is a multidimensional analysis of regional economic integration with special reference to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It looks at the interaction between economics, politics and society in the context of integration and asks if the predominantly economic and mainly a priori advantages postulated by integration theory are feasible in West Africa. The thesis is both descriptive and analytical. First it paints the political and social landscape of West Africa in broad strokes. Using the picture thus created, it analyses integration in the sub-region by measuring the extent of integration achieved by ECOWAS since its formation in 1975. A heuristic paradigm, originally proposed by Leon Lindberg, is used to measure and explain the level of integration achieved so far. Field research, of a preliminary kind, is also used to examine the impact of society on national politics and intra-regional relations, and hence on regional co-operation and integration. The conclusions of the thesis include: the need for a revision of the dynamic theory of regional integration to formulate process mechanisms that can be implemented by developing countries; regional collective decision making is extremely difficult in unstable political systems; the need to tone down the exaggerated expectations of regional integration among developing countries; that tribes across borders have both positive and negative implications for integration; and that the ideology of the dynamic theory of integration is rapidly becoming obsolete in that dirigisme is no longer a viable policy option for most governments. Despite the need for higher levels of economic interaction among developing countries there is no reason, from our study, to believe that such relations will be different from those that pertain in international relations generally. The issues of national interest are just as salient in the interaction between developing countries as they are in the relations between the developed and developing countries. The study did not find any overwhelming desire among West African countries to co-operate. Neither did it find a cosmopolitanism that puts the regional good over the national interest. It therefore calls into question the premise on which integration among developing countries is based; that states ought to rationalise their industries.

The four short stories in this collection all take place in Galvin, a rural Midwestern town plagued by its reluctance to acknowledge the problems that are destroying it: methamphetamines, unemployment, and a dwindling police force to name a few. The characters in this collection realize that stasis eventually becomes paralysis, and that escape is both necessary and inevitable, whether it is through uprooting, obsession, or substance abuse. Each character experiences alienation and struggles with the way their past decisions have shaped the trajectory of their lives. There is a sense of danger throughout the collection for the next generation of the town's inhabitants, as small children are usually in trouble or under the guidance of adults who are still struggling to untie the knots of their own lies. These characters are all running down ghosts—of the loved ones they've lost or abandoned, of the innocence they've surrendered, of the lives they lived before regret. / Department of English

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The importance of the Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian Homily Books as the earliest monuments of continuous prose in Old West Norse has long been recognized, but to date the style of the homilies has only been given cursory treatment in short articles or general literary histories and has not been the subject of a special study. In my dissertation I have examined various aspects of Old West Norse homiletic prose style in an effort to show how the early homilists were able to take advantage of a Latin literary tradition to enhance the resources of their own language. The first chapter is a general discussion of rhetorical and "narrative" techniques in the Homily Books. Here those traits normally associated with Icelandic prose written in the so-called "popular style" are compared with stylistic features developed in imitation of Latin models. The second and third chapters of the thesis deal with native proverbs and learned sententiae in the homilies, with special reference to the use of the phrases at fagrt meala ok flatt hyggia and at bera dust I vindi. Chapter four is devoted to a discussion of metaphorical compounds. Commonplace metaphors and similitudes used in the homilies are set against their Latin background and compared with analogous figures in later Old West Norse religious literature. The next two sections are semantic studies -- chapter five, of the special use of sjooa in the sense "to ponder" in an Easter sermon in the Old Norwegian Homily Book, and chapter six, of the cryptic phrase vl ma mm sal a bita gras meó aórum salom found in a sermon on Judgement Day included in the same collection. The final chapter is an investigation of source-material for the sermon Postola mal in the Old Icelandic Homily Book. This piece illustrates the eclectic method of sermon-construction characteristic of most of the "original" compositions in the Homily Books.

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