The book analyses contemporary relations between two biggest states in East-Central Europe: Poland and Ukraine. This topic is of interest for three reasons: difficult history of the two countries, different models of development adopted after the end of communism and the common challenge of aggressive Russian policy. The timeframe of the work is from 1989-2018, with an emphasis on the period after 2014, when the Russian-Ukrainian war began. The book is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the history and determinants of Polish-Ukrainian relations. The second one presents political, economic, social and military relations between the two states. The last part focuses on more specific issues such as historical memory, the Polish-Ukrainian border and relations with the EU.

This book explores the relationship between the personality of political leaders, its interaction with top leadership positions and its impact on the respective parties' electoral performance and organization. It focuses on the less-investigated region of Eastern Europe and includes chapters on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. Each chapter compares and contrasts two party leaders with at least two terms in office between 1991 and 2019. The book applies systematically a common theoretical and methodological framework across leaders and countries, thus providing rich empirical evidence.

In this book, the author examines the media coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict by six Polish media outlets in 2014 and 2015. Using content analysis and in-depth interviews, the author explores how cultural and historical factors, as well as the national security threat to Poland, affected the media image of the conflict. Despite differences in editorial line, level of political parallelism and type of medium, the Polish media largely spoke with one voice. Interviews with journalists uncover how they view their role in reporting on the conflict, and how national prejudices had an impact on their work. The military and economic threat to Poland, resulting from Russia's actions, was the dominant tool of domestication used by the media to bring the dispute closer to the public.

This edited volume seeks to understand and explain the pattern of varying national and regional success in post-communist political and economic transition across the post-communist world. Despite widespread hopes for the development of vigorous democratic political systems and vibrant market economies, the outcomes of a quarter century of post-communist transition in the countries of the former communist bloc in Eurasia have been widely variant. Some have matched these hopes, including becoming full members of the EU; others have fallen far short, with political and economic systems little changed from the communist era. This collection, with an internationally respected list of contributors, addresses some of the pressing issues in political science and transition studies, ranging from theoretical overviews to the more specific nitty-gritty of contemporary politics.

This book explores the international diffusion of Participatory Budgeting (PB), a local policy created in 1989 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which has now spread worldwide. The book argues that the action of a group of individuals called "Ambassadors of Participation" was crucial to make PB part of the international agenda. This international dimension has been largely overlooked in the vast literature produced on participatory democracy devices. The book combines public policy analysis and the study of international relations, and makes a broad comparative study of PB, including cases from Latin America, Europe, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The book also presents a new methodology developed to examine PB diffusion, the "transnational political ethnography", which combines in-depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis both at the local and transnational level.

This book chronicles Japan's rice farmers who live in mainly rural areas in the west and south of Japan through original interviews conducted in Japanese. It argues that current agricultural policy as well as the tightening relationship between the US and Japan is a death sentence for a traditional lifestyle that is vital to Japan's notion of national identity. The project covers recent agricultural policies, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and its potential consequences on Japan's food sovereignty and documents the effect of these policies on rice farmers. This volume is ideal for those interested in Japan's agricultural policies and rural and traditional Japanese lifestyle.

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.

Illustrated by in-depth empirical research from six country studies, Gendered Electoral Financing: Money, Power and Representation in Comparative Perspective is the first cross-regional examination of the nexus between money, gender and political recruitment across the world. Money is assumingly one of the greatest barriers to women in the political recruitment process. The financial disadvantage of women is expected to constitute an obstacle for women's entry into politics everywhere and especially in developing countries where women's socio-economic status is disproportionately low relative to men's. This line of reasoning has caused a global upswing in both candidate- and party-directed financial schemes introduced to enhance gender balance in political office. This book develops a typology of different kinds of gendered electoral financing schemes and builds theories about its causes and consequences. By comparing how gendered electoral financing affects political recruitment processes in both established and emerging democracies, the authors identify whether and how the funding mechanisms incentivize a shift in political behavior. Gendered Electoral Financing is a timely, informative and well-written book that does an excellent job of explaining, in language accessible to students and researchers alike, the cost of elections, gender imbalance in political office and the effects of financial incentive mechanisms to increase women's representation in politics.

Finance is an inescapable part of American life. From how one pursues an education, buys a home, runs a business, or saves for retirement, finance orders the lives of ordinary Americans. And as finance continues to expand, inequality soars. In Divested, Ken-Hou Lin and Megan Tobias Neely demonstrate why widening inequality cannot be understood without examining the rise of big finance. The growth of the financial sector has dramatically transformed the American economy by redistributing resources from workers and families into the hands of owners, executives, and financial professionals. The average American is now divested from a world driven by the maximization of financial profit. Lin and Neely provide systematic evidence to document how the ascendance of finance on Wall Street, Main Street, and among households is a fundamental cause of economic inequality. They argue that finance has reshaped the economy in three important ways. First, the financial sector extracts resources from the economy at large without providing economic benefits to those outside the financial services industry. Second, firms in other economic sectors have become increasingly involved in lending and investing, which weakens the demand for labor and the bargaining power of workers. And third, the escalating consumption of financial products by households shifts risks and uncertainties once shouldered by unions, corporations, and governments onto families. A clear, comprehensive, and convincing account of the forces driving economic inequality in America, Divested warns us that the most damaging consequence of the expanding financial system is not simply recurrent financial crises but a widening social divide between the have and have-nots.

This book examines the changing dynamics of stabilisation efforts in the Middle East and North Africa. Written by recognised scholars and practitioners in the field, this volume provides a rich overview of the broader spectrum of stabilisation. The topics range from a comprehensive set of lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq to transitional justice and reconciliation efforts in Tunisia and international attempts to protect the region's cultural heritage. Ultimately, this edited collection presents a comprehensive look at the attempts to increase stability in the MENA region.

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.

This volume of essays is a reflection on social memory as a force for social and economic transformation. Written by scholars and organic intellectuals, it focuses on the uses of social memory, in particular the conflict between the legacies of colonialism and the movement for fundamental change. The content addresses both experts and ordinary citizens alike, with a view to advancing discourse on where we are right now, and how we move on from here to achieve meaningful transformation. As scholars and public representatives with a deep understanding of the social, economic and political dynamics of modern history of South Africa, the contributors offer their unique perspectives and reflections on history, politics, economics, culture, education, ethics and the arts, as well as the links that bind these aspects into an ecology of ideas and attitudes.

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.

Migrants have, for some time, engaged in the politics of their homelands from a distance, but, as this book argues, politicians are increasingly looking beyond their national boundaries for electoral and political support. While migrants rarely cast decisive votes in homeland elections, they are not marginal to homeland politics. Courting Migrants looks at how extraterritorial outreach by homeland states and parties alters the boundaries of political membership and intersects with migrant agency to transform politics at home. It addresses three specific questions: under what conditions and in what ways do homeland authorities reach out to migrants? How do these migrants respond? And, to what extent does their response affect homeland governance? Katrina Burgess argues that globalization and the spread of democracy since the 1970s have encouraged politicians in the Global South to reach out to migrants in search of economic resources, foreign policy support, and/or electoral advantage. They do so by cultivating feelings of loyalty that induce some kinds of migrant engagement while discouraging others. Whether or not these politicians succeed depends on where migrants are located, how many resources they have, what kinds of identities they value, and why they left their homeland in the first place. This interaction between outreach and engagement has implications, in turn, for how migrants are responding to the current wave of populism and authoritarianism around the globe. The book is based on in-depth research on state-migrant relations in four high-migration countries: Turkey, Dominican Republic, Philippines, and Mexico.

This volume offers an innovative analysis of Roman political culture in Italy from the first to the sixth century AD on the basis of seven case studies. Its main contention is that, during the period in which Italy was subject to single rule, political culture took on a specific form, being the product of the continued existence of two traditional political institutions: the senate in the city of Rome and the local city councils in the rest of Italy. Under single rule, the position of both institutions was increasingly weakened and they became part of a much wider institutional landscape, although the fact that they continued to function until the end of the sixth century AD must imply that they retained meaning for their members, even while society as a whole was undergoing radical changes. As their powers and prerogatives shrank considerably, their significance became social rather than political as they allowed elites to enact and negotiate their own position in society. However, the tension between the participatory nature of these institutions and the restriction of their power generated complex social dynamics: on the one hand, participants became locked in mutual expectations about each other's behaviour and were compelled to enact particular social roles, while on the other hand they retained a degree of agency. They were encapsulated in an honorific language and in a set of conventions that regulated their behaviour, but that at the same time offered them room for manoeuvre: this degree of autonomy provides a compelling basis on which to challenge the prevailing view among historians that deliberative and participatory politics effectively ended with the institution of the Roman monarchy under Augustus.

This book examines the relationship between the middle class and the welfare state. Taking an interpretive approach which understands the middle class as a socially constructed category, it combines discourse analysis, welfare state theory, and interpretive policy analysis in an innovative way to investigate how the middle class becomes a meaningful object of public debates and policymaking. Comparing Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the book reconstructs the prevalent images and meanings of the middle class from each country's public debates and tracks how the middle classes with their various meanings and characteristics are entangled with the identification of societal problems, the articulation of political demands, and the construction of welfare policies. Ultimately, it shows how the formation and consolidation of different welfare regimes can be interpreted as specific ways of solving the puzzle of how to incorporate the middle class in the construction of a welfare state consensus. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative welfare state research, policy analysis, political sociology, political theory, and European and comparative politics.

Today, the European Union faces challenges that threaten not only internal cohesion but also its position in the global system. This book is about the future of the EU in the light of global power transition taking place in the twenty-first century and demonstrates how its future rests on a delicate balance between policy challenge, member states' interests, and convergence or divergence of societal values across its peoples. The book examines factors behind the decline of the EU relative to the rise of China and other powers in the global hierarchy and what policy options are available for EU leaders to implement in order to compete as a global actor. It analyses determinants of regional integration and key policy challenges the EU faces in its quest for an "ever deeper union," and identifies significant factors (i.e., power relations, economic relations, emergent social values across the EU) that can explain the likelihood of further integration or conflict between EU member states. This text will be essential reading for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in European Union politics international relations, security studies, and comparative politics.

This book focuses on the problem of regionalism, the crucial phenomenon in international relations at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Regionalism is analyzed both in terms of regional economic and political integration, as well as regional competition and conflict. The book is divided into three parts, based on the functional and geographical criteria. The first part is devoted to the theoretical setting, including brief introduction to regionalism problems and classical theories of integration, as well as new approaches to regionalism, which are followed by the analysis of regions in the context of regional security complexes concept. The second part of the book focuses on Asian and African challenges to regionalism and the third, and final, part is devoted to the most developed subregional order, namely the European region.

Iranian politics has been marked by sharp ideological divisions and infighting. These divides, kept largely out of public view until the 1990s, came to greater light with the contested 2009 presidential elections. To explain the diverse and complex forces that led to this event and that animate Iran s current fractured society and polity, author Shireen T. Hunter looks beyond the battle between the forces of reform and reaction, democracy and dictatorship, and considers the historic forces that created the conditions faced by Iran since the revolution. Iran Divided: The Historic Roots of Iranian Debates on Identity, Culture, and Governance in the 21st Century explains historical and political factors and their relevance to Iran today, shedding light on the forces behind Iranian politics and society. This book discusses: .historical roots of Iran s current divisions and debates; .Iran versus Islam; .secularism versus religion; .constitutionalism versus Islamic government; .fundamental issues of identity, culture, and governance; .aging of the revolutionary coalition; .development of new elites; .experiences of the Islamic republic; .and new international conditions moving the country beyond old divides and ideological rifts toward a new national consensus. A comprehensive survey, the book will be an indispensable tool to any student seeking to understand the Islamic Republic of Iran and its standing in the world today."

Do International Criminal Tribunals trigger social change, provide reconciliation, stabilize fragile post-conflict societies? Many authors claim they do, but they base their assumptions mainly on theoretical considerations and opinion polls. The editors and authors of this book take a different position: based on extensive field research in nine European and African countries, they examine whether tribunal decisions resulted in changes in media frames about the conflicts which gave rise to the creation of these tribunals. International Tribunals hardly ever shape or change the grand narratives about wars and other conflicts, but they often manage to trigger small changes in media frames which, in some cases, even lead to public reflexion about guilt and responsibility and more awareness for (the respective enemy's) victims. On an empirical basis, this book shows the potential of International Criminal Justice, the possibilities, but also the limits of International Criminal Tribunals. Volume 2 presents the evidence from Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan and South Sudan.

Europe is becoming increasingly anxious about issues of immigration and immigrant integration. Bans on the construction of minarets in Switzerland, prohibition of the wearing of face-covering veils in Belgium and crackdowns on Roma migrants in France and Italy are all signs of the growing prominence of the issue. Apart from these headline-grabbing policies, many European countries have also been imposing civic integration policies on migrants and restricting their rights to participate in public life. What is driving such policies at the national level? And where does the EU fit into this picture? This book provides a comparative analysis of the impact of the EU, if any, on the policies and politics of immigrant integration in its member states. It investigates whether the EU can be a force for good in a policy area until now thought to be at the discretion of member states.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the changing dynamics in the relationship between the African continent and the EU, provided by leading experts in the field. Structured into five parts, the handbook provides an incisive look at the past, present and potential futures of EU-Africa relations. The cutting-edge chapters cover themes like multilateralism, development assistance, institutions, gender equality and science and technology, among others. Thoroughly researched, this book provides original reflections from a diversity of conceptual and theoretical perspectives, from experts in Africa, Europe and beyond. The handbook thus offers rich and comprehensive analyses of contemporary global politics as manifested in Africa and Europe. The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations will be an essential reference for scholars, students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners interested and working in a range of fields within the (sub)disciplines of African and EU studies, European politics and international studies. The Routledge Handbook of EU-Africa Relations is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations and established by Professor Wei Shen.

Narratives or storytelling are a feature of the everyday life of all who work in government. They tell each other stories about the origins, aims and effects of policies to make sense of their world. These stories form the collective memory of a government department; a retelling of yesterday to make sense of today. This book examines policies through the eyes of the practitioners, both top-down and bottom-up; it decentres policies and policymaking. To decentre is to unpack practices as the contingent beliefs and actions of individuals. Decentred analysis produces detailed studies of people's beliefs and practices. It challenges the idea that inexorable or impersonal forces drive politics, focusing instead on the relevant meanings, the beliefs and preferences of the people involved. This book presents ten case studies, covering penal policy, zero-carbon homes, parliamentary scrutiny, children's rights, obesity, pension reform, public service reform, evidence-based policing, and local economic knowledge. It introduces a different angle of vision on the policy process; it looks at it through the eyes of individual actors, not institutions. In other words, it looks at policies from the other end of the telescope. It concludes there is much to learn from a decentred approach. It delivers edification because it offers a novel alliance of interpretive theory with an ethnographic toolkit to explore policy and policymaking from the bottom-up. Written by members of the Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Southampton, with their collaborators at other universities, the book's decentred approach provides an alternative to the dominant evidence-based policy nostrums of the day.

This book offers a comparative study of military reserves in contemporary democracies. A combination of budgetary pressures, new missions and emerging military roles during the past three decades has led the armed forces of democracies to rethink the training and use of reserve forces. Moreover, reservists have become central to the armed forces as part of moves towards "total" or "comprehensive" defense. Despite this, a scholarly bias towards studying regulars and conscripts means that reservists and reserve soldiers continue to receive only marginal attention. This volume fills that lacuna through a series of country studies examining how best to understand the peculiarities of reservist service. In contrast to regulars and conscripts, reservists are marked by their dual management of civilian and military careers, different family dynamics, diverse motivations and commitment to the armed forces, the material and non-material incentives they are offered, and their place in the political sphere. This volume suggests two frames to make sense of such differences: first, it looks at reservists as "transmigrants" traveling between the military and civilian worlds; and, second, it analyzes the multiple informal "contracts" and negotiations that bind them to the military. All the chapters adopt these conceptualizations, granting the volume a common focus and integrative frame. The volume will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, civil-military relations, sociology and International Relations.

This book analyses the evolving geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific region and explains how Djibouti fits in the global strategies of four major powers-the US, China, Japan, and France. It shows how Djibouti is emerging as a key nation in the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, explores the interconnections between Djibouti and the Indian as well as Pacific Oceans, and through Djibouti examines broader trends in contemporary great power politics in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Belt and Road Initiative of China. Moving beyond contemporary works on the region, the author integrates Africa and the Middle East with discussions on the Indo-Pacific to illustrate the coalescing of strategic geography from Eastern Africa to the Western coast of the Americas. A major intervention, the volume will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and researchers of politics and international relations, security studies, African studies, peace and conflict studies, and maritime studies.