Read and translate the following text without a dictionary.

Few states in the modern world have constitutional arrangements that are more than a century old. Indeed, the vast majority of all the world’s states have constitutions written in the 20th century. This is true of states such as Germany, Italy, and Japan that were defeated in World War II and of other states, such as the successor states of the Soviet Union, Spain, and China, that have experienced civil war and revolutions in the course of the century. Great Britain and the United States are almost alone among major contemporary nation-states in possessing constitutional arrangements that predate the 20th century.

The prestige of constitutional democracy was once so great that many thought all the countries of the world would eventually accede to the examples of the United States or Great Britain and establish similar arrangements. However, the collapse of the Weimar Constitu­tion in Germany in the 1930s and the recurrent political crises of the Fourth Republic in France after World War II suggested that constitu­tional democracy carries no guarantee of stability. The failure of both presidential and parliamentary systems to work as expected in less-advanced countries that modelled their constitutions on those of the United States and Britain resulted in a further diminution in the pres­tige of both systems. Functioning examples are located throughout the world, though these are generally poorly institutionalized outside of those countries with direct historical ties to Western Europe. Japan is a notable exception to this generalization, as are Costa Rica, India, and several other states to a lesser degree.

Curious enough that even in Britain and the United States, the 20th century has seen much change in the governmental system. In the United States, for example, the relationship of legislature and ex­ecutive at both the national and the state levels has been significantly altered by the growth of bureaucracies and the enlargement of the ex­ecutive’s budgetary powers. In Britain, even far more reaching chang­es have occurred in the relationship between the prime minister and Parliament and in Parliament’s role in supervising the executive es­tablishment. In both countries, the appearance of the welfare state, the impact of modern technology on the economy, and international crises have resulted in major alterations in the ways in which the insti­tutions of government function and interact.

The adoption of new constitutions is also a major aspect of polit­ical change in almost all of the states of Eastern Europe. All sys­tems, moreover, even without formal constitutional change, undergo a continual process of adjustment and mutation as their institutional arrangements respond to and reflect changes in the social order and the balance of political forces.

MODULE VII

TEXT ONE

Read the text and find important ideas.

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror or unpredictable violence against governments, publics, or individuals to attain a political ob­jective. Terrorism has been used by political organizations with both rightest and leftest objectives, by nationalistic and ethnic groups, by revolutionaries, and by the armies and secret police of the govern­ments themselves.

Terrorism has been practiced throughout history and throughout the world. The ancient Greek historian Xenophon (c. 431 – c. 350 BC) wrote of the effectiveness of psychological warfare against enemy populations. Roman emperors such as Tiberius (reigned AD 14 – 37) and Caligula (reigned AD 37 – 41) used banishment, expropriation of property, and execution as means to discourage opposition to their rule. The Spanish Inquisition used arbitrary arrest, torture, and exe­cution to punish what is viewed as religious heresy. The use of terror was openly advocated by Robespierre as a means of encouraging revo­lutionary virtue during the French Revolution, leading to the period of his political dominance called the Reign of Terror (1793 – 94). Af­ter the American Civil War (1861 – 65) defiant Southerners formed a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate support­ers of Reconstruction. In the latter half of the 19th century, terrorism was adopted by adherents of anarchism in Western Europe, Russia, and the United States. They believe that the best way to effect revo­lutionary political and social change is to assassinate persons in po­sitions of power. From 1865 to 1905 a number of kings, presidents, prime ministers, and other government officials were killed by anar­chists’ guns or bombs.

The 20th century witnessed great changes in the use and practice of terrorism. Terrorism became the hallmark of a number of political movements stretching from the extreme right to the extreme left of the political spectrum. Technological advances such as automatic weap­ons gave terrorists a new mobility and lethality.

Terrorism was adopted as virtually a state policy, though an unac­knowledged one, by such totalitarian regimes as those of Nazi Ger­many under Adolf Hitler and Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. In these states arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution were applied without legal guidance or restraints to create a climate of fear and to encourage adherence to the national ideology and the declared eco­nomic, social, and political goals of the state.

Terrorism has most commonly become identified, however, with individuals or groups attempting to destabilize or overthrow existing political institutions. Terrorism has been used by one or both sides in anticolonial conflicts (Ireland and the United Kingdom, Algeria and France, Vietnam and France/United States), in disputes between dif­ferent national groups- over possession of a contested homeland (Pal­estinians and Israel), in conflicts between different religious denomi­nations (Catholics and Protestants in the Northern Ireland), and in internal conflicts between revolutionary forces and established gov­ernments (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Argentina).

Terrorism’s public impact has been greatly magnified by the use of modern communications media. Any act of violence is certain to at­tract television coverage, which brings the event directly into millions of homes and exposes viewers to the terrorists' demands, grievances, or political goals. Modern terrorism differs from that of the past because its victims are frequently innocent civilians who are picked at random or who merely happen into terrorist situations. Many groups of terror­ists in Europe hark back to the anarchists of the 19th century in their isolation from the political mainstream and the unrealistic nature of their goals. Lacking a base of popular support, extremists substitute vio­lent acts for legitimate political activities. Such acts include kidnap­pings, assassinations, skyjackings, bombings, and hijackings.

The Baader-Meinhof gang of West Germany, the Japanese Red Army, Italy’s Red brigades, the Puerto Rican FALN, al-Fatah and other Palestinian organizations, the Shining Path of Peru, and France’s Direct Action were among the most prominent terrorist groups of the later 20th century.

TEXT TWO