The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (292 page)

As the neatest term available to refer to Western Europe, the United States, and other countries of European settlement in one breath, the word connotes an ideal of secular and democratic liberalism and economic growth which peoples in Russia, Turkey, China, and elsewhere have pursued and rejected by turns throughout the modern period. This was subsequently overlaid, from the later 1940s, by Cold War ideological and military rivalry between an avowedly communist East under Soviet and Chinese leadership and a West, now clearly centred upon the United States, in which the values of consumerism, economic growth, and personal liberty assumed heightened prominence. It is against this supposedly degenerate modern culture, in the aftermath of the
Cold War
, that Islamic states as varied as Iran and Saudi Arabia have continued to define themselves, though without abandoning the standards of technological and military sophistication and material well-being first achieved in the West.
CJ 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Western European Union
(WEU)

Currently comprising nine members (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom), the Western European Union may be seen as the postwar repository of a specifically European conception of defence co-operation. It is closely related to the wider European integration movement, but its development was historically constrained by the
Cold War
, the need for American military resources, and internal disagreements.
Following the failure in 1954 of the French parliament to ratify the European Defence Community (EDC) treaty, the future of European integration was in serious doubt. The integration of national defence forces (including an uncomfortable measure of German rearmament only nine years after the war) as proposed by the EDC treaty was a radical abdication of sovereign control which few countries were willing to countenance. In this context, the Western European Union became in 1955 the compromise successor organization, with a small secretariat in London. It was a much looser arrangement, and it remained overshadowed by the more purposeful US-led
NATO
alliance (established 1949) throughout the Cold War years.
The WEU grew in importance during the 1980s as
European Union
(EU) members sought to develop defence and foreign policy co-operation more systematically, particularly in the aftermath of the Cold War. France and Germany established a joint military brigade under WEU auspices, and the organization remains the focus for efforts at European co-operation on defence matters. Itshas recently received additional impetus from the common foreign and defence policy measures of the Treaty of
Maastricht
on European Union, signed in 1991 and implemented in 1993.
GU 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

See
Western European Union
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1785–1848)
Closely associated with Mary Wollstonecraft , Anna Wheeler was a radical feminist and an Irish Protestant. A keen advocate of women's rights, she translated an article from the Parisian Women's paper
La Femme Libre
, which explains her view that ‘with the emancipation of women will come the emancipation of the useful class’.
STh

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

In British usage, originally a Scottish Presbyterian opponent of Anglican government; subsequently applied in 1679 to those who opposed the succession of the Catholic James II to the throne ( see
Locke
) and thence to those who supported the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1689. They were in government for most of the eighteenth century, in opposition for most of the period following the French Revolution, and in government again after the 1832 Reform Act. In the nineteenth century the word was partly superseded by ‘Liberal’ but retained to denote the right-wing, aristocratic faction of liberalism. Most of its members joined the Tories in or after 1886.
In US usage, member of a party opposing the Democrats between 1834 and 1856; the name was chosen deliberately for its echoes of English resistance to the executive.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search