More than 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, European integration remains a work in progress, especially in those Eastern European nations most dramatically reshaped by democratization and economic liberalization. This volume assembles detailed, empirically grounded studies of eleven states-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and the former East Germany-that went on to join the European Union. Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformations that have taken place in these nations, using a comparative approach to identify structural similarities and assess outcomes relative to one another as well as the rest of the EU.

This book explores the intersection of fuzzy mathematics and the spatial modeling of preferences in political science. Beginning with a critique of conventional modeling approaches predicated on Cantor set theoretical assumptions, the authors outline the potential benefits of a fuzzy approach to the study of ambiguous or uncertain preference profiles. This is a good text for a graduate seminar in formal modeling. It is also suitable as an introductory text in fuzzy mathematics.

In the post-war era one of the most significant transformations in the democratic process throughout Western Europe has been the widespread introduction of regional elections. Symptomatic of this decentralization has been the shift of various legislative powers to regional governing bodies. As a result, electorates throughout Western Europe now have more opportunities to express their preferences and air their grievances across electoral arenas while the dynamics of electoral competition have become increasingly multifarious and complex. Voters can now use regional elections to articulate their discontent with the policies of the national government or can elect based on the political offer in the regional electoral arena.This book brings together leading experts on elections who analyze differences between regional and national electoral outcomes in thirteen West European countries between 1945 and 2011. It extends existing insights by providing new empirical evidence and by presenting alternative accounts for differences between the regional and national vote across Western Europe.

Despite the large amounts of human and financial resources invested to foster democratic governance in developing countries, statistics show that the majority of these countries have not yet achieved significant improvements in living standards. While some regions make strides towards improving the living conditions of their citizens, Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, is still trapped in poverty with more than 40% of its 600 million people living below the internationally recognized absolute poverty line of one US dollar per day. Poor governance and corruption should be highlighted as the most important systemic factors contributing to poverty in developing countries. As a result the institutional foundations of these countries are weakened, public funds are misappropriated, and policies and programs aimed at reducing poverty and fostering sustainable economic growth are undermined. It is therefore not surprising that a 2008 Transparency International report found a direct link between corruption and the failure of the societal institutions designed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in the majority of developing countries. This book investigates the problems of democratic governance, particularly as they relate to corruption, and also whether democracy should be based on universal principles or local context and historical factors. It also analyses the rule of law, in promoting democratic governance and curbing corruption and if governmental, non-governmental organizations, and civil societies are effective in promoting democratic governance and curbing corruption. This book will go beyond identifying the challenges and offer plausible solutions that could be adapted to various developing countries. It is premised on the importance of bridging theory and practice, which has been lacking in most local and international development publications, making of interest to scholars and policy-makers alike concerned with public administration in developing countries.

This book analyzes the implementation of peace processes in Northern Ireland and Guatemala, with emphasis on the role of mid-level civil society and religious organizations, or "the voluntary sector." Both countries interrupted years of conflict, signed peace accords in 1998 and 1996 respectively, and still struggle to make them work. Despite very different economic development levels, both countries have colonial legacies, deep cultural divisions, and engaged diaspora. They grapple with violence, poverty and inequitable distribution of wealth and power. While religious differences are a backdrop to violence and reconciliation in both cases, insecurity and inequity are the root cause and consequence of these conflicts. The book summarizes lessons learned and makes policy recommendations for more civil post-conflict societies, arguing that similar dynamics fuel sustainable peace-building and authentic development.

Macrocomparative researchers use a variety of methodological approaches. This book features analyses of a single substantive topic, comparative employment performance in affluent countries, using three of the most common macrocomparative techniques: pooled cross-section time-series regression, qualitative comparative analysis, and small-N analysis.

This title develops an account of 'inclusive multicultural governance' which is contrasted with assimilationist and separatist/differentialist approaches to the political management of and accommodation of multicultural diversity in liberal democracies.

Examining the debate on quality of jobs in Europe, this book focuses on the work-life balance-a central element of the EU agenda. It addresses tensions between work and private life, examining job quality, job security, working conditions and time-use patterns of individuals and households as well as institutional contexts.

An epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature.

This book examines the decisions by Tony Blair and John Howard to take their nations into the 2003 Iraq War, and the questions these decisions raise about democratic governance. It also explores the significance of the US alliance in UK and Australian decision-making, and the process for taking a nation to war. Relying on primary government documents and interviews, and bringing together various strands of literature that have so far been discussed in isolation (including historical accounts, party politics, prime ministerial leadership and intelligence studies), the authors provide a comprehensive and original view on the various post-war inquiries conducted in the UK, Australia.

Standards are replacing tariffs as the main trade barriers facing African agro-food exports. This book examines the challenges and opportunities that new public and private standards present to African countries - focusing on food safety, environmental and climate change, and social and labour standards.

During the past decade governments around the globe have introduced institutional mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, including measures to increase women's political participation rates and to incorporate women's interests into policy-making. Why have they done so? How successful have these initiatives been? What are the emerging agendas facing gender equality advocates now? In the New Politics of Gender Equality Judith Squires examines the origins, evolution and key features of three strategies that have been employed across the world in pursuit of gender equality - quotas, policy agencies and gender mainstreaming. The author critically examines each strategy to see how far they transform political institutions and agendas and to what extent they lead rather to the assimilation of women in male-defined structures. Squires argues that a multi-pronged approach, drawing on democratic rather than technocratic strategies, offers the best potential for advancing gender equality. She highlights too the limitations of approaches that ignore inequalities among women and the challenges of developing equality initiatives to address multiple and cross-cutting inequalities between groups. Judith Squires is Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol. She has written, researched and published widely in the field of gender politics and gender equality.

This volume is a holistic assessment of six decades of European integration as seen through a gender lens. It features the insights of scholars from nine countries, who analyze new and old barriers to gender equality in all realms of EU activity. The first part of the volume offers a critique of mainstream integration theories and situates women across core institutional settings. It traces women's roles as formal actors, as participants in expert networks, and as creative conceptualizers introducing paradigm-changing frameworks and strategies. It also recognizes women as policy innovators contributing to the larger integration project. In the second part the contributors pay special attention to the development and effects of gender mainstreaming. They explore 'gendering' dynamics and outcomes in EU policy domains, including agriculture, the employment and social policy fields, the research, science and technology sector, and the emergent EU migration and citizenship policy arena.

Why does the EU deal with some issues but not others? This is the central question of this book dedicated to agenda-setting processes in the EU. Through a comparison of EU and US policy agendas and the analysis of four case studies in environmental and health policy, this book offers a new understanding of how policy issues come onto the EU agenda.

The second edition of this introductory textbook on foreign policy analysis focuses on the key explanatory factors that underlie the foreign policies of states and other actors to show how theory can illuminate practice. Genuinely international in scope and drawing on a wide range of examples, it provides an accessible introduction to the key elements of foreign policy analysis to explain, predict and evaluate what states and other collective actors want, how they make decisions, and key determinants of state security, diplomatic, and economic foreign policies. Providing a broad set of theoretical tools for analysing foreign policy, and including increased coverage of methodology, this new edition provides students with the skills to undertake their own foreign policy analysis.

This book investigates a phenomenon in world politics that is largely overlooked by scholars, namely entities lacking international recognition of their status as independent states. It includes case studies on the Eurasian Quartet, Kosovo, Somaliland, Palestine, Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara and Taiwan.

The recent resurgence of populist movements and parties has led to a revival of scholarly interest in populism. This volume brings together well-established and new scholars to reassess the subject and combine historical and theoretical perspectives to shed new light on the history of the subject, as well as enriching contemporary discussions. In three parts, the contributors explore the history of populism in different regions, theories of populism and recent populist movements. Taken together, the contributions included in this book represent the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of the topic to date. Questions addressed include: - What are the 'essential' characteristics of populism? - Is it important to distinguish between left- and right-wing populism? - How can the transformation of populist movements be explained? This is the most thorough and up to date comparative historical study of populism available. As such it will be of great value to anyone researching or studying the topic.

The economic crises of the 1970s marked the end of the 'Golden Age' of the welfare state and triggered a broad range of cost containment measures in OECD countries. In the healthcare sector the difficulties of cutting back state involvement are largely caused by the fact that the legitimacy of health systems is based on their capability to provide a satisfactory standard of healthcare for all citizens, irrespective of their ability to pay for it. Hence, the divergent healthcare system types of the heydays of the welfare state which were characterized by the distinct role of the state have now changed profoundly. Combining cross-sectional studies on healthcare financing, provision and policy values with in-depth country studies of Britain, Germany and the US, this volume argues that divergent healthcare system types are now converging toward hybrid forms.

This book explores the role of new modes of governance in helping future member states to cope with their accession to the European Union. The authors demonstrate that the accession countries of the Southern and Eastern enlargements have lacked two fundamental preconditions for the emergence and effectiveness of new modes of governance: state and non-state actors with sufficient resources to engage in non-hierarchical coordination to improve the effectiveness of public policy. This 'governance capacity' has been largely taken for granted by the governance literature since it has almost exclusively focused on Western democracies. The double weakness of transition countries results in a serious dilemma for governance research and practice alike - the stronger the need for non-hierarchical modes of governance, the less favourable are the conditions for their emergence and effectiveness.

This book is the first comparative analysis of the political behaviour of older people, using evidence from 20+ European democracies. In contrast to younger people across European societies, older people do not behave uniformly. For political participation in later life, it matters where and when individuals have grown up and in which country they become old.

This volume argues that a renewed commitment to sound macroeconomic policies and structural reforms is needed for countries in South East Europe, or 'the Balkans' achieve to sustainable prosperity, along with enhanced support from the international community. New fiscal and financial architecture has valuable lessons for policymakers in SEE.

By applying the nodality, authority, treasure and organisation public policy framework and neo-institutional theory to the dictatorship of Salazar and Franco respectively, this study explores the instruments that governments used to control the military and explains the divergent paths of civil-military relations in 20th Century Portugal and Spain.

This book examines the contribution of mass media to modern democracies, in comparative perspective. Part I deals with the conceptualization and implementation of a systematic framework to assess democratic media performance, both in terms of media systems and content. Part II studies media effects on the quality of democracy.

This book examines how foreign policy analysis can be enriched by 'domestic realm' public policy approaches, concepts and theories. Starting out from the observation that foreign policy has in many ways become more similar to (and intertwined with) 'domestic' public policies, it bridges the divide that still persists between the two fields. The book includes chapters by leading experts in their fields on arguably the most important public policy approaches, including, for example, multiple streams, advocacy coalition, punctuated equilibrium and veto player approaches. The chapters explore how the approaches can be adapted and transferred to the study of foreign policy and point to the challenges this entails. By establishing a critical dialogue between approaches in public policy and research on foreign policy, the main contribution of the book is to broaden the available theoretical 'toolkit' in foreign policy analysis. -- .