Reagan Congress And Human Rights

Demonstrates how the Reagan administration and members of Congress shaped US human rights policy in the late Cold War.

Assistance; worker-rights law; overseas private investment

More than any of his recent predecessors, President Reagan has raised fundamental questions regarding the directions of the human rights policies pursued for the past twenty years. The ten original essays collected in this volume examine the influence of the Reagan Administration on the Justice Department, voting rights, gender discrimination, the ERA, education, housing discrimination, the pro-family agenda, affirmative action, the Civil Rights Commission, and international human rights policy. By bringing together information on many areas of human rights, the volume presents an important overall picture of the Reagan administration's impact on this vital policy field.

This important work provides a comparison of the human rights policies of the Carter and Reagan administrations, developed through a general survey of these policies, a reliance on extensive interviewing and congressional hearings, and four case studies. The book deals first with the background of the human rights foreign policies of the two administrations, their conceptual frameworks, rationales, systems of priorities, the objectives they sought, and the selection of national situations to which the policies were applied. The survey then proceeds to identify and describe the sources of the policies, both legal political, international treaties and agreements, national legislation, and the bureaucracy and Congress. It also examines actions taken to implement the policies and diplomatic pressures and inducements. The case studies describe and compare the approaches of the two administrations to the human rights situations in South Africa, Chile, South Korea, and the Soviet Union.

Reagan's First Year describes Ronald Reagan's first year in office. It was a year marked by legislative and personal triumphs. In addition to describing the president's economic program, the book provides an overview of Reagan's lobbying efforts in achieving his legislative victories. Other sections deal with the administration's defense and foreign policies, and its domestic agenda. The book also contains a chronology of Reagan's first year in office, major Reagan messages, new conference transcripts, executive branch nominations and congressional Quarterly's annual presidential support study.

Arnson, a foreign policy consultant, has written an incisive study of the tug-of-war between President Reagan and Congress and how the circumvention of Congress's ban on military aid culminated in the Iran-contra scandal. At first, the Reagan administration depicted the contras as freedom fighters and the Sandinistas as ferrying arms to the rebels in El Salvador. When both proved false, Reagan adopted a popular anti-Communist stance, and the real aim of overthrowing the Sandinistas and reinstating Somoza's old guard became clear. It was the means, not the end, of ridding the area of undemocratic regimes, that separated Congress from the Oval Office. Central America was caught in the crossfire as blatant abuse of executive authority threatened the checks-and-balances system of the Constitution.