This book provides an introduction to the positive theory of the budgetary process based on the theory of public choice. Although budgetary institutions are very diverse, both between and within countries, the author identifies key elements in the budgetary process that are common to all forms of representative government. The book develops a step-by-step model that can be used to explain and predict budgetary decisions in existing institutions, as well as to analyze institutional change, including cost budgeting and various forms of privatization.

American foreign policy is a dynamic and often, controversial, field, and is currently a topic of deep interest given recent developments in the Middle East, North Korea and China. In order to understand where US foreign policy is headed, it is important to first examine where it came from. This book provides an analysis of the political, economic and military history of American foreign policy, with the aim of divulging important details that most people have either never learned or forgotten, hence the phrase "open secrets." Covering events such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the...

This book provides a compact history of the gradual development of the US into a great power. Most histories of US foreign policy and development concentrate either on economic growth or on relations with the major powers outside the continental United States. This book, however, emphasizes the longstanding conflict between the US and the American Indians and Mexico, and how the development of the United States as a great power depended primarily on its seizure of large areas of land from their previous inhabitants. Covering Christopher Columbus's famous voyage and US colonial policy up to...

My first serious thought about a scientific approach to politics was in Communist China. When the Communists seized China, the American Department of State, which was planning to recognize them, left its entire diplomatic establishment in place. At the time, I was a Vice Consul in Tientsin, so I found myself living under the Communists. While the Department of State was planning on recognizing the Communists, the Communist plans were obscure. In any event, they weren't going to recognize us in the Consulate General until formal relations were established between the two governments, so I had...