Precariousness has become a defining experience in contemporary society, as an inescapable condition and state of being. Living with Precariousness presents a spectrum of timely case studies that explore precarious existences – at individual, collective and structural levels, and as manifested through space and the body. These range from the plight of asylum seekers, to the tiny house movement as a response to affordable housing crises; from the global impacts of climate change, to the daily challenges of living with a chronic illness. This multidisciplinary book illustrates the pervasiveness of precarity, but furthermore shows how those entanglements with other agents, human or otherwise, that put us at risk are also the connections that make living with (and through) precariousness endurable.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French political thinker and historian, and wrote the famous work "Democracy in America" in two volumes. This work is renowned for characterising the American Institutions and adding to the understanding of the United States like no other. He analysed the social standards of people and the relationship between raising social standards and the free market. He thereby became one of the founding fathers of sociology and political science. This book is a seminal text in economic sociology. Tocqueville has the capacity to stand back from the object of his study and to reflect deeply and at times with wit, whilst offering the reader his incisive clarity. This collection includes both volumes of Democracy in America, in addition it includes the "Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville" - his thoughts and observations on the French Revolution, another work demonstrating his shrewd objective perspective. He identified the hazards of the course that his country was taking and also the difficulties of ensuring that there was both equality and freedom. It is a first-hand account of the upheavals that the country suffered over the months of the revolution - consequently it is exhilarating, honest and thrilling to read. Tocqueville's analysis is relevant for any democracy and consequently this work is relevant far beyond the borders of France.

Written by one of the premier scholars on the European Union and hailed as the best undergraduate text on the subject, this book has been thoroughly revised and updated to include the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. Clear and comprehensive, it 'demystifies' one of the world's most important and least understood institutions. Roy H. Ginsberg contextualizes European integration through the foundation blocks of history, law, economics, and politics. He then breaks the EU down into its components so that they can be understood individually and in relation to the whole. Reconstructing the EU as a single polity, Ginsberg evaluates the EU's domestic and foreign policies and their effects on Europeans and non-Europeans alike. The author thus challenges students to see what the European Union truly represents: a unique experiment in regional cooperation and a remarkable model of conflict resolution for the world's troubled regions.

Focussing on his term as Prime Minister from 2001-06, this scholarly volume provides the first assessment of how the neo-conservative values attributed to Berlusconi were contested and resisted by a variety of groups. The continuing influence of the controversial figure of Silvio Berlusconi on contemporary Italian life, culture and politics is beyond question. Focussing on his term as Prime Minister, this volume assesses how the neo-conservative values attributed to Berlusconi were contested and resisted by social/minority movements, intellectuals (radical and moderate) and media practitioners. Edited by members of the Centre for European Languages and Cultures at the University of Birmingham, and bringing together academics in Britain, Ireland, the US and Italy, it has an international perspective. Analysis investigates how resistance to the new conservative culture has been articulated, and how this has been expressed and explained by those involved. This interdisciplinary volume is divided into three (overlapping) areas: contemporary Italian politics (including the evolution of left and right, unions vs government; the G8 in Genoa and the anti-war movement); cultural texts (including films and documentaries, television programmes, novels and theatre; and experiences (the voices and practices of those who have opposed neo-conservative values from within the cultural industries and identity movements). Wide-ranging, innovative and challenging, this volume should appeal to all those who have an interest in Italy, in politics, in culture and cultural studies.

This title examines Sub-Saharan Africa's relations with states such as the US, India, China, the EU, and Britain as well as with non-state actors. "The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa" is an in-depth examination Africa's place in global politics. The book provides a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the ways in which peace, prosperity, and democracy are being advanced (or restricted) by the activities of the great powers in Africa, including non-state actors, as well as who benefits from these policies and who does not. The book is a needed comparative study of the role of great powers and 'new' actors such as China and India in Africa within the wider context of neo-liberal hegemony. It fills a gap in the literature and will be of interest to any student of the continent. Its focus on external actors contributes to providing a fuller picture of Africa's place in the global political economy and how the continent interacts with the rest of the world. This is an essential work for anyone researching issues in international relations, comparative foreign policies, and African politics.

Voting Advice Applications - VAAs - have become a widespread online feature of electoral campaigns in Europe, attracting growing interest from social and political scientists. But until now, there has been no systematic and reliable comparative assessment of these tools. Previously published research on VAAs has resulted almost exclusively in national case studies. This lack of an integrated framework for analysis has made research on VAAs unable to serve the scientific goal of systematic knowledge accumulation. Against this background, Matching Voters With Parties and Candidates aims first at a comprehensive overview of the VAA phenomenon in a truly comparative perspective. Featuring the biggest number of European experts on the topic ever assembled, the book answers a number of open questions and addresses debates in VAA research. It also aims to bridge the gap between VAA research and related fields of political science.

By revealing the contextual conditions which promote or hinder democratic development, "Comparative Politics" shows how democracy may not be the best institutional arrangement given a country's unique set of historical, economic, social, cultural and international circumstances. Addresses the contextual conditions which promote or hinder democratic developmentReveals that democracy may not be the best institutional arrangement given a country's unique set of historical, economic, social, cultural and international circumstancesApplies theories and principles relating to the promotion of the development of democracy to the contemporary case studies

How do governments make key decisions on vital economic questions of national importance? Can they advance the national interest on issues that are highly politicized? How do they respond to competing pressures from the international and domestic environments? Forming Economic Policy explores these and other questions in Canada and Mexico, two very different countries which share a common vulnerability to the world economy. Using the case of energy, the book argues that policymakers will address the national interest, but only episodically with the onset of major national crises that invoke a higher and sustained sense of national priorities. These crises are frequently induced by the interaction of domestic and foreign political and economic forces. The conclusions are surprising. Despite profound political and economic differences between these two countries, policymakers have behaved in remarkably similar ways when arriving at key policy decisions. The explanation - which integrates two competing views of politics, the pluralist and the statist - has important implications with regard to the political processes in those states which, like Canada and Mexico, are exposed to the world economy and face problems of political legitimacy at home. Forming Economic Policy will appeal to students and teachers of political economy and comparative politics as well as to those interested in the politics of energy policy.

This book deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy of law and constitutional thought: how to understand clashes of fundamental rights, such as the conflict between free speech and privacy. The main argument of this book is that much can be learned about the nature of fundamental legal rights by examining them through the lens of conflicts among such rights, and criticizing the views of scholars and jurists who have discussed both fundamental legal rights and the nature of conflicts among them.
Theories of rights are necessarily abstract, aiming at providing the best possible answers to pressing social problems. Yet such theories must also respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. Taking up the problem of conflicting rights, Zucca seeks a theory of rights that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to rights discourse.
The idea of constitutional rights is one of the most powerful tools to advance justice in the Western tradition. But as this book demonstrates, even the most ambitious theory of rights cannot satisfactorily address questions of conflicting rights. How, for instance, can we fully secure privacy when it clashes with free speech? To what extent can our societies assist people in dying without compromising the protection of life? Exploring the limitations of the rights discourse in these areas, Zucca questions the role of law in settling ethical dilemmas helping to clarify thinking about the limitations of rights discourse.

Under what conditions do citizens most effectively connect to the democratic process? We tend to think that factors like education, income, and workforce participation are most important, but research has shown that they exert less influence than expected when it comes to women's attitudes and engagement. Scholars have begun to look more closely at how political context affects engagement. This book asks how contexts promote women's interest and connection to democracy, and it looks to Latin America for answers. The region provides a good test case as the institution of gender quotas has led to more recent and dramatic increases in women's political representation. Specifically, Magda Hinojosa and Miki Caul Kittilson argue that the election of women to political office-particularly where women's presence is highly visible to the public-strengthens the connections between women and the democratic process. For women, seeing more "people like me" in politics changes attitudes and orientations toward government and politics. The authors untangle the effects of gender quotas and the subsequent rise in women's share of elected positions, finding that the latter exerts greater impact on women's connections to the democratic process. Women citizens are more knowledgeable, interested, and efficacious when they see women holding elected office. They also express more trust in government and in political institutions and greater satisfaction with democracy when they see more women in politics. The authors look at comparative data from across Latin America, but focus on an in-depth case study of Uruguay. Here, the authors find that gender gaps in political engagement declined significantly after a doubling of women's representation in the Senate. The authors therefore argue that far-reaching gender gaps can be overcome by more equitable representation in our political institutions.

European governments have re-discovered labor migration, but are eager to be perceived as controlling unsolicited forms of migration, especially through asylum and family reunion. The emerging paradigm of managed migration combines the construction of more permissive channels for desirable and actively recruited labor migrants with ever more restrictive approaches towards asylum seekers. Non-state actors, especially employer organizations, trade unions, and humanitarian non-governmental organizations, attempt to shape regulatory measures, but their success varies depending on organizational characteristics. Labor market interest associations' lobbying strategies regarding quantities and skill profile of labor migrants will be influenced by the respective system of political economy they are embedded in. Trade unions are generally supportive of well-managed labor recruitment strategies. But migration policy-making also proceeds at the European Union (EU) level. While national actors seek to upload their national model as a blueprint for future EU policy to avoid costly adaptation, top-down Europeanization is re-casting national regulation in important ways, notwithstanding highly divergent national regulatory philosophies.
Based on field work in and analysis of primary documents from six European countries (France, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, and Poland), The Political Economy of Managed Migration makes an important contribution to the study of a rapidly Europeanized policy domain. Combining insights from the literature on comparative political economy, Europeanization, and migration studies, the book makes important contributions to all three, while demonstrating how migration policy can be fruitfully studied by employing tools from mainstream political science, rather than treating it as a distinct subfield.

Studying paradiplomacy comparatively, this book explains why and how sub-state governments (SSG) conduct their international relations (IR) with external actors, and how federal authorities and local governments coordinate, or not, in the definition and implementation of the national foreign policy. Sub-state diplomacy plays an increasingly influential international role as regions, federal states, provinces and cities seek to promote trade, investments, cooperation and partnership on a range of issues. This raises interesting new questions about the future of the state system. Schiavon conducts a comparative study of paradiplomacy in 11 federal systems which are representative of all the regions of the world, stages of economic development and degree of consolidation of their democratic institutions (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States). The author constructs a typology to measure and explain paradiplomacy based on domestic political institutions, especially constitutional provisions relating foreign affairs and the intergovernmental mechanisms for foreign policy decision making and implementation. This comparative, systematic and theoretically based analysis of paradiplomacy between and within countries will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, diplomacy, foreign policy, governance and federalism, as well as practitioners of diplomacy and paradiplomacy around the world.

The early twenty-first century is witnessing both an increasing internationalization of many markets, firms, and regulatory institutions, and a reinforcement of the key role of nation states in managing economic development, financial crises, and market upheavals in many OECD and developing economies. Drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives from leading US and European scholars, this book analyses how capitalism and national capitalisms are changing in this context. It focuses on the economic rise of new countries such as the BRICs, the increasing influence of regional organizations such as the EU and NAFTA, and new forms of private and public international regulation. It also considers how states are adapting their economic policies and processes in this new environment, and the consequences of these adaptations for inequality and risk within different societies. These changes are linked to how firms are developing new strategies for organizing global value chains and the application of scientific knowledge to the commercialization of products in contexts where financial markets are becoming more uncertain and crisis prone, and where different groups are making new demands for more effective forms of corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. Drawing on examples from Europe, North and Latin America, and Asia, it illustrates the complex ways in which different forms of national capitalism are adapting and changing their institutions in response to international financial markets, the global financial crisis, the development of cross-border value chains, and expansion of multinational firms.

The quality of working life has been central to the sociological agenda for several decades, and has also been increasingly salient as a policy issue, and for companies. This book breaks new ground in the study of the quality of work by providing the first rigorous comparative assessment of the way it has been affected by the economic crisis. It examines the implications of the crisis on developments in skills and training, employees' control over their jobs, and the pressure of work and job security. It also assesses how changing experiences at work affect people's lives outside of work: the risks of work-life conflict, the motivation to work, personal well-being, and attitudes towards society. The book draws on a rich new source of evidence-the European Social Survey-to provide a comparative view over the period 2004 to 2010. The survey provides evidence for countries across the different regions of Europe and allows for a detailed assessment of the view that institutional differences between European societies-in terms of styles of management, social partnership practices, and government policies-lead to very different levels of work quality and different experiences of the crisis. This comparative aspect will thus forward our understanding of how institutional differences between European societies affect work experiences and their implications for non-work life.

Written by a team of experts, this text introduces all of the main competing theoretical approaches to the study of the state, including pluralism, Marxism, institutionalism, feminism, green theory and more. A brand new 'issues' section enables readers to apply these key concepts and theoretical approaches to important developments in the state today. This new edition offers: - Coverage of all key empirical and theoretical developments in the field, with analysis of the impact of globalisation, global financial upheavals, Brexit, Covid-19 and social movements such as Black Lives Matter - A wide range of voices, perspectives, contemporary and historical examples, giving readers a holistic overview of the field, as well as deeper dives into key issues - Brand new chapters on sovereignty, security, territory, capital, nationalism and populism - Guided further reading suggestions at the end of each chapter Providing both a firm grounding in the key concepts and critical engagement with contemporary controversies and debates, this text is ideal for those studying all aspects of the state.

A Classic Study of Early Constitutional Law. First published in 1914, this is one of the most important studies of early constitutional law. Kern observes that discussions of the state in the ninth, eleventh and thirteenth centuries invariably asked whose rights were paramount. Were they those of the ruler or the people? Kern locates the origins of this debate, which has continued to the twentieth century, in church doctrine and the history of the early German states. He demonstrates that the interaction of "these two sets of influences in conflict and alliance prepared the ground for a new outlook in the relations between the ruler and the ruled, and laid the foundations both of absolutist and of constitutional theory" (4). " A] pioneering and classic study." --Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 106. Fritz Kern 1884-1950] was a professor, journalist and state official. From 1914 to 1918 he worked for the Foreign Ministry and the General Staff in Berlin. One of the leading medieval historians of his time, his works include Die Anfange der Franzosischen Ausdehnungspolitik bis zum Jahr 1308 (1910) and Recht und Verfassung im Mittelalter (1919).

This book examines the political costs of monetary union in Europe. It does so by gauging the degree to which four small European states - Iceland, Latvia, Hungary and Ireland - employed their monetary policies in response to the financial crisis. Contrary to popular and academic perception, Moses finds that small states in Europe still enjoy monetary policy autonomy, and this autonomy was used to prioritise the needs of domestic constituents over those of international markets. Eurozone member states, by contrast, pursued policies that prioritised the (long-term) needs of international lenders and European institutions, at the (short-term) expense of their own constituents. By illustrating the degree to which monetary policy autonomy still plays an effective role in responding to economic shocks, this book documents the substantial sacrifices that states have made in joining a suboptimum currency area. These are the political costs of monetary union in Europe.