This book explores the consequences of lowering the voting age to 16 from a global perspective, bringing together empirical research from countries where at least some 16-year-olds are able to vote. With the aim to show what really happens when younger people can take part in elections, the authors engage with the key debates on earlier enfranchisement and examine the lead-up to and impact of changes to the voting age in countries across the globe. The book provides the most comprehensive synthesis on this topic, including detailed case studies and broad comparative analyses. It summarizes what can be said about youth political participation and attitudes, and highlights where further research is needed. The findings will be of great interest to researchers working in youth political socialization and engagement, as well as to policymakers, youth workers and activists.

AN EXCELLENT INTRODUCTION TO ROMAN LAW. Originally published: London: Stevens & Sons, 1882. xiii, lx, 626 pp. With an extensive introduction. In this edition Mears arranged both Institutes in parallel columns to facilitate comparisons. Passages copied from Gaius are printed in italics. The two Novels, which deal with intestate succession, are included because they supplanted the sections on that subject in Justinian's Institutes. " A] concise and practical vade meecum for the student of Roman Law at the Universities and Inns of Court." --8 Law Magazine and Review 5th Series (1882-1883) 107. THOMAS LAMBERT MEARS 1839-1918] was a barrister of the Inner Temple and legal writer who taught at the University of London. Some of his notable works are Analysis of M. Ortolan's Institutes of Justinian (1876), and A Treatise on the Admiralty Jurisdiction and Practice of the High Court of Justice (1903).

"How can we strengthen the capacity of governments and parties to manage arrivals and departures at the top? Democracy requires reliable processes for the transfer of power from one generation of leaders to the next. This book introduces new analytical frameworks and presents the latest empirical evidence from comparative political research"--

McDowell and Braniff explore the relationship between commemoration and conflict in societies which have engaged in peace processes, attempting to unpack the ways in which the practices of memory and commemoration influence efforts to bring armed conflict to an end and whether it can even reactivate conflict as political circumstances change.

To step in government at only one level or to stay in opposition at both? To opt for a single consistent strategy or to try out various, but sometimes conflicting, formulae? To replicate coalition agreements at the federal level or to adapt them to the regional context, even if this means departing from a coherent party line? These are just some of the many questions that political parties face when attempting to form a successful coalition in multi-level polities. Through the example of Germany and Spain Dr. Stefuriuc seeks to explore how political parties form coalitions at the subnational level and in doing so develops a strong theoretical framework that revises existing models of government formation and creates explanations based on the multi-level institutional context. This excellent contribution to the subject is important reading for students and scholars of Comparative European Politics, Federalism, decentralization and Multi-level Governance.

The era of economic liberalization, spanning 1978 to 2008, is often regarded as a period in which government was simply dismantled. In fact, government was reconstructed to meet the needs of a globalized economy. Central banking, fiscal control, tax collection, regulation, port and airport management, infrastructure development-in all of these areas, radical reforms were made to the architecture of government.
A common philosophy shaped all of these reforms: the logic of discipline. It was premised on deep skepticism about the ability of democratic processes to make sensible policy choices. It sought to impose constraints on elected officials and citizens, often by shifting power to technocrat-guardians who were shielded from political influence. It placed great faith in the power of legal changes--new laws, treaties, and contracts--to produce significant alterations in the performance of governmental systems. Even before the global economic crisis of 2007-2009, the logic of discipline was under assault. Faced with many failed reform projects, advocates of discipline realized that they had underestimated the complexity of governmental change. Opponents of discipline emphasized the damage to democratic values that followed from the empowerment of new groups of technocrat-guardians.
The financial crisis did further damage to the logic of discipline, as governments modified their attitudes about central bank independence and fiscal control, and global financial and trade flows declined. It was the market that now appeared to behave myopically and erratically--and which now insisted that governments should abandon precepts about the role of government that it had once insisted were inviolable.
A sweeping account of neoliberal governmental restructuring across the world, The Logic of Discipline offers a powerful analysis of how this undemocratic model is unraveling in the face of a monumental--and ongoing--failure of the market.

In the first volume of its kind, a collection of top policy scholars combine empirical and methodological analysis in the field of comparative policy studies to provide compelling insights into the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies across regional and national boundaries.

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the timely question of the politicization of European integration. It shows how this issue's complex linkages with traditional political divides pose a tough challenge to politicians and lead to bitter framing contests about its actual meaning.

This book describes and compares the circumstances and lived experiences of religious minorities in Tunisia, Morocco, and Israel in the 1970s, countries where the identity and mission of the state are strongly and explicitly tied to the religion of the majority. The politics and identity of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel are, therefore, shaped to a substantial degree by their status as religious minorities in non-secular states. This collection, based on in-depth fieldwork carried out during an important moment in the history of each community, and of the region, considers the nature and implications of each group's response to its circumstances. It focuses on both the community and individual levels of analysis and draws, in part, on original public opinion surveys. It also compares the three communities in order to offer generalizable insights about ways the identity, political culture, and institutional character of a minority group are shaped by the broader political environment in which it resides. The project will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of Middle Eastern and North African studies, Judaic studies, Islamic Studies, minority group politics, and international relations and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This volume examines the ways in which the socio-economic elites of the region have transformed and expanded the material bases of their power from the inception of neo-liberal policies in the 1970s through to the so-called progressive 'pink tide' governments of the past two decades. The six case study chapters-on Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala-variously explore how state policies and even United Nations peace-keeping missions have enhanced elite control of land and agricultural exports, banks and insurance companies, wholesale and import commerce, industrial activities, and alliances with foreign capital. Chapters also pay attention to the ways in which violence has been deployed to maintain elite power, and how international forces feed into sustaining historic and contemporary configurations of power.

The collapse of the financial markets in 2008 and the resulting 'Great Recession' merely accelerated an already worrisome trend: the shift away from an employer-based social welfare system in the United States. Since the end of World War II, a substantial percentage of the costs of social provision--most notably, unemployment insurance and health insurance--has been borne by employers rather than the state. The US has long been unique among advanced economies in this regard, but in recent years, its social contract has become so frayed that is fast becoming unrecognizable. Despite Obama's election, the burdens of social provision are falling increasingly upon individual families, and the situation is worsening because of the unemployment crisis. How can we repair the American social welfare system so that workers and families receive adequate protection and, if necessary, provision from the ravages of the market?
In Shared Responsibility, Shared Risk, Jacob Hacker and Ann O'Leary have gathered a distinguished group of scholars on American social policy to address this most fundamental of problems. Collectively, they analyze how the 'privatization of risk' has increased hardships for American families and increased inequality. They also propose a series of solutions that would distribute the burdens of risks more broadly and expand the social safety net. The range of issues covered is broad: health care, homeownership, social security and aging, unemployment, wealth (as opposed to income) creation, education, and family-friendly policies. The book is also comparative, measuring US social policy against the policies of other advanced nations. Given the current crisis in America social policy and the concomitant paralysis within government, the book has the potential to make an important intervention in the current debate.

The Politics of Private Security is the first in-depth conceptual and empirical analysis of the political issues, processes and themes associated with private security provision. It not only offers a new narrative about the rise of private security in the postwar era, but also facilitates the development of a much more sophisticated social-scientific understanding of this significant trend. Drawing upon a wealth of historical and contemporary data, it advances original answers to the following key questions. How have private security companies become so prominent? What motivates them? What is their relationship with the state? How can they be controlled? And what does their increasingly ubiquitous presence in twenty-first century society tell us about the future of security provision?

"This book explores the effect of semi-presidentialism on newly-democratising countries. In recent years semi-presidentialism -- the situation where a constitution makes provision for both a directly elected president and a prime minister who is responsible to the legislature -- has become the regime type of choice for many countries"--

In small plural societies, cultural differences can be exaggerated, exploited and intensified during political contests. The survival of these societies as democracies - or even at all - hangs in the balance.

The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy provides a comprehensive examination of both the concept and the practice of intra-party democracy (IPD). Acknowledging that IPD is now widely viewed, among both democratic practitioners and scholars, as a normative good, this volume suggests that there is no single, or uniformly preferred, form of IPD. Rather, each party's version of IPD results from a series of choices they make relating to the organization and division of power internally. These decisions reflect many variables including a party's democratic ethos, its electoral context, state regulation and whether or not it is in government. Individual chapters examine the relationship between party models and IPD, the decline in party membership and activism, the role of the state in regulating party democracy, issues relating to gender and party organization, norms of candidate and leadership recruitment and selection, party policy development and party finance. The analysis considers the principal issues that parties (and the state) must consider relating to IPD in each area of party activity, the range of options open to them, current trends in terms of paths chosen, what these choices tell us about parties and, most importantly, what the implications of these choices are. In doing so, we offer a common language and set of questions relating to IPD that enhance the ability for consistent evaluation of the state of internal party democracy. Through thorough analysis of associated costs and benefits, we also provide a framework to assist with considerations of IPD reforms -- particularly in terms of their scope, the range of options available and their implications.
Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, and Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia.

The growing scale of international migration has reshaped the debate on the social rights and social protection available to people outside their countries of origin. This book uses conceptual frameworks, policy analysis and empirical studies of migrants to explore international migrants' needs for and access to social protection across the world.

The first systematic analysis of why Britain and France parted company on the issue of European monetary integration. Ikemoto reveals that Britain was much keener to participate in the early stages of monetary integration than previously thought; Britain and France pursued broadly similar policies on the issue until the end of the 1970s.

Why do policy actors create branded policy ideas like the big society and does launching them on Twitter extend or curtail their life? This book reveals how policy analysis can adapt in an increasingly mediatised world, offering interpretive insights into the life and death of policy ideas in an era of hashtag politics.

State borders regulate cross-border mobility and determine peoples' chances to travel, work, and study across the globe. This book looks at how global mobility is defined by borders in 2011 in comparison to the 1970s. The authors trace the transformation of OECD-state borders in recent decades and show how borders have become ever more selective.

"Decades go by and nothing happens; then weeks go by and decades happen." This apt saying encapsulates the dramatic convulsions taking place across the Arab world that first erupted in 2011 in Tunisia and which rapidly spread to other countries. These events have affected the lives of ordinary citizens in many more ways than had been intended when the 'Arab Spring' broke out, with the endgame still not very clear as demonstrated in countries like Egypt, Syria and Libya.

By comparison, with some exceptions, the six countries comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council have been relatively unaffected by the general turbulence and uncertainties lapping around them. However, geopolitical shifts involving global superpower rivalries, combined with revolutionary breakthroughs in the non-conventional hydrocarbon energy sector are threatening to challenge the importance of the Arabian Gulf as the world's leading suppliers of energy, putting their economies under fiscal stress. The author examines such challenges by:

Providing the first in-depth statistical analytical assessment of the GCC countries using monthly data over the period 2001 -2013 for the three risk categories- economic, financial and political risks- and their sub -components so as to enable policymakers enhance components with low risk, while addressing components with perceived higher risk,
Assessing FDI and capital inflows and outflows before and after the "Arab Spring," and how to encourage FDI inflows,
Inter -Arab and GCC trade and synergies in power transmission, transportation links and establishing new hubs of centers of manufacturing excellence,
Exploring private sector-led growth models to reduce forecasted unemployment.

Being complacent is not an option for the GCC. The aim of the book is that having a better understanding of each of the GCC countries' individual risk parameters will enable the GCC meet future challenges and reduce the chances of a negative 'Arab Spring' occurring in the region.
Mohamed Ramady is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Finance and Economics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. His main research interests are the economics of the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in particular, as well as money and banking He also held senior positions with international financial institutions in the Arabian Gulf and Europe."

This book analyzes George Orwell's politics and their reception across both sides of the Atlantic. It considers Orwell's place in the politics of his native Britain and his reception in the USA, where he has had some of his most fervent emulators, exegetists, and detractors. Written by an ex "teenage Maoist" from Liverpool, UK, who now lives and writes in New York, the book points out how often the different strands of opinion derive from "ancestral" ideological struggles within the Communist/Trotskyist movement in the 30's, and how these often overlook or indeed consciously ignore the indigenous British politics and sociology that did so much to influence Orwell's political and literary development. It examines in the modern era what Orwell did in his-the seductions of simplistic and absolutist ideologies for some intellectuals, especially in their reactions to Orwell himself.

Beliefs held by US and European elites about unregulated markets and a currency union without fiscal union led to a transatlantic crisis unmatched in severity since the Great Depression. Leading scholars of elites analyze how elites have responded to the crisis, are altered by it and what this 'hour of elites' means for democracy.

This book opens the institutional Pandora's box of conflict management, focusing on two central questions: To what degree do Latin American political contexts create spaces for institutional designs that deal with conflicts in a feasible and legitimate way? How can institutional architects exploit such spaces to manage conflict innovatively? The authors' point of departure is that institutions are primarily conflict-solving entities guiding individual and social behaviour, and that they set out to be much more than rules of the game: institutions do (and should) evolve and are eventually redesigned to meet human necessities. In light of the pending socioeconomic challenges in most of Latin America, institutional designers are confronted with the fact that nothing inherent within the institutions guarantees that conflict is processed in ways that tackle distributive and ethnic inequalities.

Do party systems help or hinder democracy in Africa? Drawing lessons from different types of party systems in six African countries, this volume shows that party systems affect democracy in Africa in ways that are unexpectedly different from the relation between party systems and democracy observed elsewhere.

The Internet and related technologies have dramatically changed the way we live, work, socialize, and even topple national governments. As the Internet becomes increasingly pervasive across societies, we find more often that governments adopt Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as part of their toolbox for facilitating efficient and citizen-oriented service delivery at all levels of government. Local governments across the major industrialized democracies have not been an exception to this trend and have set sail into the age of digital government. Closest to their citizens, towns and cities have adopted ICTs to facilitate electronic government (e-government). While research on local e-government functionality in terms of information dissemination, service delivery, and citizen engagement continues at an impressive empirical and methodological pace, gaps in our knowledge remain. Cross-national comparative research on local e-government that covers a wide range of municipalities in combination with in-depth case study analyses is lacking. Informed by a comparative case study approach, this book seeks to narrow that gap and offer practical policy solutions to facilitate local e-government. We do so by pursuing both a macro and micro perspective of e-government functionality in the federal republics of Germany and the United States and unitary France and Japan. The macro perspective focuses on the state and scope of e-government functionality across a large number of randomly selected municipalities of all sizes in these advanced industrialized countries. Based on a small sample of case studies, the micro perspective analyzes the successful implementation of e-government in Seattle (United States), Nuremberg (Germany), Bordeaux (France), and Shizuoka City (Japan).