EU member states and candidate countries are increasingly exposed to the domestic impact of EU regulations, policy instruments, and discourses in the fields of gender equality and antidiscrimination. This impact not only affects national or subnational legislations and equality machineries, but also the framing and the wording of these policies, providing domestic actors with new resources and opportunity structures. This book explores the divergent policy outputs in the member states as regards the making of gender and other equalities, bringing together the most recent insights from Europeanization and gender scholars from a discursive-sociological perspective. Using largely unpublished empirical data, the book addresses policy issues ranging from gender violence to reconciliation and antidiscrimination policies, through case studies and comparisons covering up to 29 European countries. The result is a book that provides us with a more realistic and complex picture of Europeanization processes.

The turbulent year of 2011 has brought the appearance of mass popular unrest and the collapse of long lived autocratic regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and possibly Syria. The sudden and unanticipated fall of these regimes - often thought of as exemplars of authoritarian resilience - has brought much of the conventional wisdom on the durability and vulnerability of nondemocratic regimes into question. This book seeks to advance the existing literature by treating the autocratic state not as a unitary actor characterized by strength or weakness but rather as a structure or terrain that can alternatively inhibit or facilitate the appearance of national level forms of protests. In the mode of the Arab Spring, the color revolutions of the former Soviet Union, and the people power movement of the Philippines, such movements overcome the daunting impediments presented by autocrats, appeal to likeminded counterparts across society, and overwhelm the ability of regimes to maintain order. Conversely, in other settings, such as contemporary China, decentralized state structures provide an inhospitable environment for national-level protest, leading collective actors to opt for more local and parochial forms of contention. This outcome produces paradoxical situations, such as in the PRC, where protests are frequent but national-level mobilization and coordination is absent.

This book explores the origins of nationalism and the ideal of nation/state congruency since early-modern European thought, their transformation over time and endurance in contemporary political thought and IR theory. The author deploys a Lacanian-psychoanalytical reading of nationalism and the nation/state that goes beyond methodological nationalism and state-centrism critiques. He offers a genealogical inquiry into the emergence of the nation/state congruency ideal, thus exposing and problematising the practices that render nationalism and the ideal of the nation/state necessary. Offering a new way to read the ontology and epistemology of the nation/state, this work will be of interest to students and scholars of nations and nationalism, political thought, critical international relations and critical security studies.

In the post-Bretton Woods era, the advent of ever-expanding capital markets beyond national borders led to a series of financial reforms in many industrial economies. In comparing reform cases across different time periods in the United States, Japan, and Germany, Sara Konoe stresses the role of dynamic interactions between institutions and political contexts in determining reform paths. In non-crisis periods, regulatory fragmentation is utilized by financial sectors to pursue their demands for liberalization, though those in self-regulating or monopolized markets resist the agenda of liberalization. A time of crisis empowers reformers to restructure the financial regulatory structure and markets and enables the tightening of regulation. By drawing out key implications for global politics, Konoe sheds light on what types of reform dynamics come into play in the formation of global financial governance while considering the impact of regional-level institutionalization in the EU and EMU.

People power explores the history of the theory and practice of popular power. Western thinking about politics has two fundamental features: 1) popular power in practice is problematic and 2) nothing confers political legitimacy except popular sovereignty. This book explains how we got to our current default position, in which rule of, for and by the people is simultaneously a practical problem and a received truth of politics. The book asks readers to think about how appreciating that history shapes the way we think about the people's power in the present. Drawn from the disciplines of history and political theory, the contributors to this volume engage in a mutually informing conversation about popular power. They conclude that the problems that first gave rise to popular sovereignty remain simultaneously compelling, unresolved and worthy of further attention. -- .

Which elements do the Arab Spring, the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street have in common? How do they differ? What do they share with social movements of the past? This book discusses the recent wave of global mobilisations from an unusual angle, explaining what aspects of protests spread from one country to another, how this happened, and why diffusion occurred in certain contexts but not in others. In doing this, the book casts light on the more general mechanisms of protest diffusion in contemporary societies, explaining how mobilisations travel from one country to another and, also, from past to present times.Bridging different fields of the social sciences, and covering a broad range of empirical cases, this book develops new theoretical perspectives.

Assessing the Dynamics of Democratization grows out of attempts by academics and activists to contribute to transformative politics by building up more and better evidence, and analysing the processes of democratisation in a way that is theoretically more inclusive than in the mainstream assessments that have come to parallel the industry of measuring economic growth. The book summarises the critique of these mainstream assessments, proposes an alternative framework, and shows how the alternative works through a case study of the largest of the new democracies, Indonesia. It is a book for critical scholars, students and practitioners.

This book examines the history of the German-Korean relationship from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century, focusing on the nations' varied encounters with each other during the last years of the Yi dynasty, the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War era. With essays from a range of internationally respected scholars, this collection moves between history, diplomacy, politics, education, migration, literature, cinema, and architecture to uncover historical and cultural intersections between Germany and Korea. Each nation has navigated the challenges of modernity in different ways, and yet traditional East-West dichotomies belie the deeper affinities between them. This book points to those affinities, focusing in particular on the past and present internal divisions that perhaps make Germany and Korea as similar as Germany and Japan.

"This book provides political science perspective on higher education reform in Central and Eastern Europe. It examines the impact of historical institutions and transnational networking on institutions of higher education and assesses whether Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania are converging towards a common model of market-based governance"--

What does it mean to be 'vulnerable'? Exploring the rise of 'vulnerability' as an organising concept in migration detention, integration, public health, national security and social policy, this volume reveals the blurring of welfare state logics with national security ends. Governments and international agencies use the language of vulnerability to identify needy constituents and communities, but also to frame that need as potentially dangerous. Using international case studies this book shows how vulnerability governance permeates policy sectors - transforming the methods used to govern, problematise and resolve - bringing questions of risk management and security into social policy, but simultaneously brings social policy sectors into counterterrorism delivery. The combination of welfare state and security logics brings interventions deeper into societies, securitising communities and individuals on account of their needs, governing the social through security politics. -- .

The book focuses on the mutual implications of bureaucratic neutrality and democracy from the perspective of societies formerly under authoritarian regimes. It explores the impact of democratization on bureaucratic neutrality as well as the implications of neutral bureaucracies for democracy. Theoretical and conceptual dimensions of the subject are spelled out, and specialists discuss case studies from Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, therefore compounding a broad panel of the challenges and opportunities confronting the democratization process throughout the world.

This book explores the causes of corruption in the Middle East and North Africa through a systematic cross-national comparative analysis of fifteen countries in the region. It aims to explain causal relationships between corruption and differences in political and socio-economic dimensions within these different countries over the period 1999-2010. The countries are grouped together into three sub-regions (the Gulf region, North Africa, and Mashreq plus Yemen). The author finds that the main variables that showed robustness in impacting the intensity of corruption are the rule of law, quality of regulations, and trade openness. Poverty rates and income inequality have been clear triggers for petty corruption. Meanwhile, natural resources endowments have shown less of an impact on the levels of corruption, and similarly women's empowerment has not been found to be a strong indicator.

This volume examines Japanese and Korean politics from both Japanese and Korean angles, exploring why the two countries do not cooperate bilaterally or consult one another, despite their geographical closeness and a number of common features that are central to both countries' domestic politics and foreign policies.

This highly-regarded text provides a wide-ranging introduction to the social, political, cultural and economic life of South Africa. Thoroughly revised and updated, the third edition takes account of recent key developments, including the impact of the economic crisis, the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, and increasing tensions within South Africa's politics and government.

This book contributes to the theoretical and policy debate on the existence of a European public sphere. It presents a critical discussion of the links between media, history and politics in Europe today, examining the re-organization of ideological and political dimensions and debates the existence of a European editorial culture.

This book contributes to both the internal debate in liberalism and the application of political liberalism to the process of democratization in East Asia. Beyond John Rawls' original intention to limit the scope of political liberalism to only existing and well-ordered liberal democracies, political liberalism has the potential to inspire and contribute to democratic establishment and maintenance in East Asia. Specifically, the book has two main objectives. First, it will demonstrate that political liberalism offers the most promising vision for liberal democracy, and it can be defended against contemporary perfectionist objections. Second, it will show that perfectionist approaches to political Confucianism suffer from practical and theoretical difficulties. Instead, an alternative model of democracy inspired by political liberalism will be explored in order to achieve a multivariate structure for citizens to come to terms with democracy in their own ways, to support a neutral state that ensures the establishment and stability of democracy, and to maintain an active public role for Confucianism to prevent it from being banished to the private sphere. This model represents a more promising future for democracy in East Asia.

This book provides an original argument that rejects the idea of national MPs having but one 'standard' mode of representation. It acknowledges the national electoral connection, but considers representation beyond national borders. The author empirically investigates such patterns of representation in MPs' parliamentary speech-making behavior and their attitudes in Austria, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The book analyzes representative claims in parliamentary debates on the Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty and the Eurozone crisis, and relies on qualitative interviews with members of the European affairs and budget committees. It finds a Eurosceptic Europeanization in that national MPs from the Eurosceptic left particularly represent other EU citizens.

This book explores domestic opposition to formal US military bases in Latin America, and provides evidence of a growing network of informal and secretive base-like arrangements that supports US military operations in the Latin American Region.

From childcare to healthcare to provision for the elderly and the homeless, the Nordic countries are world leaders in organising society - no wonder Finland has been ranked among the happiest places on the planet. In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Finnish journalist and US immigrant Anu Partanen sets out to understand why America - and much of the Western world - suffers from such stark inequality and struggling social services. Filled with fascinating insights, advice and practical solutions, she makes a convincing argument that we can rebuild society, rekindle optimism and become more autonomous citizens by following in the footsteps of our neighbours to the North.

Contemporary bureaucracy is a set of norms, rules, procedures, and formalities which includes administration, business, and NGOs. Where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Beatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying this process. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control, producing social and political indifference.

This book analyses the discourses of economic liberalization reform in six Western European countries - Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. It provides systematic empirical evidence that policy-related discourses are much more than noise; rather, they are detailed expressions of institutional complementarities and political struggles. The author posits that the more open a discourse, the broader the range of perceived interests, which, in turn, increases the intensity of conflicts. Similarly, the more public discourse centres on coordination, the more intense actors need to engage with opposite interests, which most probably intensifies political disputes as well. Moreover, Wueest argues that the formation of a consensus within the political mainstream has left a vacuum for outsider parties such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain to feed on the contentiousness of economic liberalization policies.

Sets the standard for introducing the field of comparative politics This text begins by laying out a proven analytical framework that is accessible for students new to the field. The framework is then consistently implemented in twelve authoritative country cases, not only to introduce students to what politics and governments are like around the world but to also understand the importance of their similarities and differences. Written by leading comparativists and area study specialists, Comparative Politics Today helps to sort through the world's complexity and to recognize patterns that lead to genuine political insight. MyPoliSciLab is an integral part of the Powell/Dalton/Strom program. Explorer is a hands-on way to develop quantitative literacy and to move students beyond punditry and opinion. Video Series features Pearson authors and top scholars discussing the big ideas in each chapter and applying them to enduring political issues. Simulations are a game-like opportunity to play the role of a political actor and apply course concepts to make realistic political decisions. ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. Packages Access codes for Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products may not be included when purchasing or renting from companies other than Pearson; check with the seller before completing your purchase. Used or rental books If you rent or purchase a used book with an access code, the access code may have been redeemed previously and you may have to purchase a new access code. Access codes Access codes that are purchased from sellers other than Pearson carry a higher risk of being either the wrong ISBN or a previously redeemed code. Check with the seller prior to purchase.

This book discusses key issues in global and regional social policy, exploring Bob Deacon's pioneering approach to regulation, rights and redistribution. It addresses the role of international actors in shaping social policy and discusses the problems and possibilities of new alliances for global social justice.

This collection emphasizes a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem of scale, with essays ranging in subject matter from literature to film, architecture, the plastic arts, philosophy, and scientific and political writing. Its contributors consider a variety of issues provoked by the sudden and pressing shifts in scale brought on by globalization and the era of the Anthropocene, including: the difficulties of defining the concept of scale; the challenges that shifts in scale pose to knowledge formation; the role of scale in mediating individual subjectivity and agency; the barriers to understanding objects existing in scalar realms different from our own; the role of scale in mediating the relationship between humans and the environment; and the nature of power, authority, and democracy at different social scales.

When examining ethnic minorities’ educational attainments in urban China and Canada, they outperform or are on par with the non-minority population. However, when analyzing high-wage, education-intensive occupations, this cohort are not as prevalent as the non-minority population.  What accounts for this discrepancy? How far does ethnicity affect one's occupational opportunities?  What does this tangibly mean with respect to the management of urban ethnic differences?  And, what steps can we take to improve this situation? Drawing upon the latest statistics and detailed interviews, this book examines the experiences of ethnic minorities from schooling to the job search, hiring, and promotion processes.