This study presents the thesis that religious cleavages in Lebanon have been the major factor behind most of the country's problems since the achievement of independence in 1943. The coming of the Palestinians in 1948 and in the 1970s upset Lebanon's delicate sociopolitical balance between Christians and Muslims in favor of the latter. The study's four chapters describe the origins of Lebanon's religious groups, the arrival of the Palestinians, Lebanon's emergence as the sole Palestinian guerrilla base, and the outbreak and aftermath of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1976. Finally, suggestions are made for the resolution of the continuing Christian-Muslim conflict, notably the alternatives of federalism and confederalism as possible future political arrangements for Lebanon.

The mass media's role in informing the American public is critical to public support for government policies. The media are said to set the national agenda. This view is based on the assumption of selective coverage they give to news items. Media coverage also influences the salience the public attaches to issues. However, media agenda effect has been challenged by Lang and Lang (1983). These scholars, in their media agenda-building theory, argued that the success of media effect on national agenda is dependent on group support. In order to test this theory, time-related data on South Africa crises, media coverage"of South Africa, American public reactions, congressional, and presidential apartheid-related activities, between 1976 and 1988, were analyzed. Congressional anti-apartheid policies were the dependent and others, the independent variables. The theory made analysis of the data amenable to the additive adopted to test for the significance of the interactive variables, indicated that these variables were negatively related to congressional anti-apartheid policies. The additive model was subsequently analyzed. The time series multiple regression analysis was used in analyzing the relationships. Given autocorrelation and multicollinearity problems associated with time series analysis, the Arima (p, d, q) model was used to model the relationships. This …

The objective of this study is to describe and analyze the management of communal conflict in the Middle East, focusing on the Kurds. To this end, an effort is made to examine (1) the means that have been used to manage the Kurdish conflict by Middle Eastern countries; (2) the degree of success or failure of applied measures and (3) possible explanations for the first two questions.