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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Comparative politics
Diversity in the European Union encompasses the national cultures and languages of the member states, but increasingly also assertions of difference within European societies. Immigrants have brought to the fore religious, ethnic, and racial diversity, sexual minorities have demanded equal rights, and regional and cultural minorities have clamored for recognition and participation. This volume provides an overview of EU actions seeking to manage diversity, introduces a conceptual framework to think about diversity in the European Union, and provides a tapestry of cases that illustrate minority politics and activism, contestations over identity and difference, and the construction of new meanings of European citizenship.
This book examines how Ireland's relationship with the EU was affected by a succession of crises in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The financial crisis, the Brexit crisis and the migration crisis were not of equal significance on the island of Ireland. The financial crisis was a huge issue for the Republic but not Northern Ireland, Brexit had a major impact in both polities, the migration and populism issues were less controversial, while foreign policy challenges had a minimal impact. The book provides a summary of the main features of each of the crises to be considered, from both the EU and the Irish perspective. Ireland and the European Union is the first volume of its kind to provide a comprehensive analysis on British-Irish relations in the context of Brexit. It assesses the Withdrawal Agreement and Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, the devolution settlement and the 1998 Agreement, as well as the European dimension to Northern Ireland's peace process. The contributors explore a number of policy areas that are central to the understanding of each of the crises and the impact of each for Ireland. Chapters examine issues such as security, migration and taxation as well as protest politics, political parties, the media, public opinion and the economic impact of each of these crises on Ireland's relationship with the EU. -- .
This book examines the relationship between religion and the state in a comparative perspective with special attention paid to the Western and Middle-Eastern experiences. It examines the resurgence of "fundamentalism" not only in developing nations but also in economically affluent "post-modern" societies. It seeks to elucidate whether the fusion between religion and politics is compatible with tolerance and individual freedom; or whether the Jeffersonian "wall of separation" is necessary to insure the flowering of democracy.
Britain and Africa in the twenty-first century provides the first analysis of UK-Africa policy in the era of austerity, Conservative government and Brexit. It explores how Britain's relationship with Africa has evolved since the days of Blair, Brown and 'Make Poverty History' and examines how a changing UK political environment, and international context, has impacted upon this longstanding - and deeply complex - relationship. This edited collection includes contributions from leading UK- and Africa-based scholars, as well as from Chatham House's Africa Programme Head and the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Africa. Examining trade, security, aid and peacekeeping, as well as the role of political parties, advocacy groups and the UK population itself, Britain and Africa provides an indispensable reference point for researchers and practitioners interested in contemporary UK-Africa relations and the place of Africa in British foreign policy. -- .
Human rights and detente inextricably intertwined during Carter's years. By promoting human rights in the USSR, Carter sought to build a domestic consensus for detente; through bipolar dialogue, he tried to advance human rights in the USSR. But, human rights contributed to the erosion of detente without achieving a lasting domestic consensus. -- .
A definitive study on the decades-long run of high public confidence in the military and why it may rest on some shaky foundations. What explains the high levels of public confidence in the US military and does high confidence matter? In Thanks for Your Service, the eminent civil-military relations scholar Peter D. Feaver addresses this question and focuses on what it means for the military. Proprietary survey data show that confidence is partly based on public beliefs about the military's high competence, adherence to high professional ethics, and a determination to stand apart from the bitter divisions of partisan politics. However, as Feaver argues, confidence is also shaped by a partisan gap and by social desirability bias, the idea that some individuals express confidence in the military because they believe that is the socially approved attitude to hold. Not only does Feaver help us understand how and why the public has confidence in the military, but he also exposes problems that policymakers need to be aware of. Specifically, this book traces how confidence in the institution shapes public attitudes on the use of force and may not always reinforce best practices in democratic civil-military relations.
This book develops a new theory of "identity" ecological modernization (EM), to analyze renewable history and policy development in many of the world's states, which are leading the drive to install renewable energy. "Identity EM" concerns how an industry has arisen allied to environmental NGOs to challenge the ascendancy of conventional energy technologies.
While the discussions among Brexiters mainly focus on the referendum of 2016 or David Cameron's "great miscalculation" and its repercussions, this book looks at the Brexit as a process that began decades earlier. It analyses EU-UK relations from a new perspective, taking into consideration the historical background, political aspects, and legal and economic matters. The book provides a holistic understanding of the Brexit, approaching the referendum and its outcomes as the culmination of a long process rather than an isolated political event crafted within the corridors of Westminster or Downing Street 10. Accordingly, it addresses a range of thematic issues, historical patterns of political and economic behavior both within and beyond the United Kingdom, and possible future effects on relations between the Union and one of its most important members.
This book analyzes the contributing factors responsible for the emergence of terrorism in the Middle East with specific case studies based on empirical data that anchors the analyses in real life observation and posits unbiased, bipartisan solutions. Terrorists are targeting civilian populations around the world and increasing pressure on civil liberties, public policy and democratic institutions. With the defeat of one terrorist organization several more take its place. This book includes case studies in public administration initiatives from various Middle Eastern countries, and investigates regulation, public information, monetary and financial responsibilities, security, and civic infrastructure as possible solutions to this ever-worsening problem. With terrorism emerging as a major global policy issue this book speaks to global security and public policy and administrative issues in the Middle East, and will be of interest to researchers in terrorism and security in the Middle East, public administration, international relations, political economy, and to government officials, security analysts and investors.
Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach have made a significant contribution to our contemporary understanding of global politics. This collection contains some of their classic essays and many unpublished articles which have been edited into a coherent and stimulating collection. Subjects covered include: Theory and method in global politics; The role of values and the postmodern challenge; The complex roles of actors in global politics 9/11 and its aftermath; and, The changing nature of war US unilateralism, hegemony and empire. A World of Polities will be essential reading for all advanced students and scholars in international relations.
Population ageing and slower economic growth have raised serious questions about the willingness and ability of governments to maintain current social policies. Within this new reality, discussions on the future of public pensions have been predominant in political debates across Europe. This book explains why certain countries have been able to radically transform their pension system while others have simply altered parameters. To answer this question an extensive comparative analysis, including more than 60 interviews, was conducted in Belgium, France, Sweden and the UK. This empirical data provides an interesting contrast between reforms. Parametric reforms have stemmed from the creation of pension administrations outside the traditional state apparatus in France and Belgium and the resulting inclusion of social partners; while the state administrations of Sweden and the UK where debates have been internalised have led to programmatic reforms. Two controversial findings of this book include an explanation for the lack of influence on the part of the labour movement in the 1994/98 Swedish reform and a rejection of arguments claiming that policy change will be minimal with coalition governments. Finally the conclusion seeks to extend the applicability of the model to other industrialized countries. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of public policy, specifically social policy, political economy, the welfare state and comparative politics.
How are responses to urban policy challenges affected by new ideas about governance? How can we explain the governance transformations that result? And what are the consequences for democracy? This wide-ranging study of three European cities - Birmingham, Copenhagen and Rotterdam - shows how hybrid forms of governance emerge from the tensions between new visions and past legacies, and existing institutional arrangements and powerful actors. Hybrid governance includes public-private partnerships, stakeholders boards, and multi-actor forums operating at arm's length to institutions of representative democracy. Offering detailed studies of migration and neighbourhood policy, as well as a novel Q methodology analysis of public administrators' views on democracy, the book explores how actors generate new practices, shows how these develop, and evaluates the democratic implications. The book concludes that hybrid governance is both widespread and diverse, is spatially and policy specific and that actors - public managers, politicians and the public - contribute to hybrid designs in ways that promote and challenge democratic conventions.
This book deals with the theoretical and empirical questions of federalism in the context of five case studies: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland. The central argument is that in the long run the political institutions of federalism adapt to achieve congruence with the underlying social structure. This change could be in the centralist direction reflecting ethno-linguistic homogeneity, or in decentralist terms corresponding to ethno-linguistic heterogeneity. In this context, the volume:
Explaining Federalism will be of interest to students and scholars of federalism, comparative government, comparative institutional analysis and comparative public policy.
Images of political leaders as everyday figures, involved in commonplace activities, now form an increasingly important aspect of electoral presentation. This text examines how and why selected political figures have embraced a populist agenda in a social context and addresses the scope and limitations of such an approach in the US and the UK.
The 2011 Arab uprisings re-ignited global interest in the role that Islam and Islamist parties play in democratic transitions, especially with regard to women's lawful rights to share in governance and leadership. This book advances a theory of party religiosity to explain women's leadership across parties and countries, drawing on robust qualitative and quantitative findings from cross-national multiple cases and a case-study of Lebanon. The theory travels across 330 parties in 26 different countries - in Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is powerful and generalizable with explanatory and predictive powers.
This book's conceptual introduction to foreign policy analysis focuses on decision makers and decision making. Each chapter is organized around puzzles and questions to which undergraduate students can easily relate. The book emphasizes the importance of individuals in foreign policy decision making, while also placing decision makers within the context that shapes their perceptions and actions.
In Northern and Western Europe, and within the European Union, governance networks are increasingly conceived as an efficient and legitimate way of formulating and implementing public policy in a complex, differentiated and multilayered world. "Democratic Network Governance in Europe" aims to assess the recent experiences with governance in and through interactive networks at local, national and transnational levels.
This book provides a scholarly yet accessible account of the Irish nationalist youth organisation Na Fianna Eireann and its contribution to the Irish Revolution in the period 1909-23. Countess Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson established Na Fianna Eireann, or the Irish National Boy Scouts, as an Irish nationalist antidote to Robert Baden-Powell's scouting movement founded in 1908. Between their establishment in 1909 and near decimation during the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, Na Fianna Eireann recruited, trained and nurtured a cadre of young nationalist activists who made an essential contribution to the struggle for Irish independence. This book will be of interest to historians and students specialising in the history of the Irish Revolution, youth culture, paramilitarism and twentieth-century Ireland. It will also appeal to the general reader with an interest in the history of the Irish Revolution. -- .
The book analyzes the topic of judicial reforms in four countries of South-East Europe, focusing on two specific factors that have influenced the reforms in the past two decades: the role played by the European Union in light of the east Enlargement process and the legacies of the communist regimes. Specifically, the aim is to account for similarities and differences in the reform paths of Slovenia, Romania, Croatia, and Serbia. In each country, in fact, the influence of the EU policies has been differently mediated by national factors that, broadly conceived, may be considered as expressing the legacies of the past regimes. In some cases, these legacies challenged judicial reforms and inhibited the influence of the EU; in other cases, they were positively overcome by following the route suggested by the EU. Some explanatory factors for these differences will be proposed drawing from democratization studies, Europeanization literature, and comparative judicial systems. The book focuses on countries having different status vis-a -vis the EU and differently involved, in term of timing, in the EU accession process: some of them are new member states entered in 2004 (Slovenia) or in 2007 (Romania); others were, until recently, acceding countries (Croatia) or candidates to the membership (Serbia). This comparison allows investigation of the power of EU conditionality in different phases of the EU enlargement process.vis-a -vis the EU and differently involved, in term of timing, in the EU accession process: some of them are new member states entered in 2004 (Slovenia) or in 2007 (Romania); others were, until recently, acceding countries (Croatia) or candidates to the membership (Serbia). This comparison allows investigation of the power of EU conditionality in different phases of the EU enlargement process.
This book analyzes the link between economic and political inequalities and investigates the mechanisms that lead to economically rooted inequalities in the political representation of citizens' policy preferences. Focusing on the case of Switzerland and evaluating data from the post-electoral survey, Selects 2007, the author demonstrates that the policy preferences of members of the Federal Assembly best reflect those of rich citizens. This pattern is explained by differential levels of political participation and knowledge across income groups, party finance, the fact that representatives tend to come from higher economic strata, and the failure of the party-system structure to reflect the complexity of policy preferences among citizens.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith's canonical book on political science turned conventional wisdom on its head. They started from a single assertion: leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the "national interest"-or even their subjects-unless they must. Newly updated to reflect the global rise of authoritarianism, this clever and accessible book illustrates how leaders amass and retain power. As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith show, democracy is essentially just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind, but only in the number of essential supporters or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. And it is also the key to returning power to the people.
The Westminster-stylized model of Parliamentary democratic politics and public service accountability is increasingly out of step with the realities of today's digitally and socially networked era. This book explores the reconfiguration of democratic and managerial governance within democratic societies due to the advent of technological mobility. More specifically, the traditional public sector prism of organizational and accountability - denoted as 'machinery of government', is increasingly strained in an era characterized by smart devices, social media, and cloud computing. This book examines the roots and implications of the tensions between machinery and mobility and the sorts of investments and initiatives that have been undertaken by governments around the world as well as their appropriateness and relative impacts. This book also examines the prospects for holistic adaptation of democratic and managerial systems going forward, identifying the most crucial directions and determinants for improving public sector performance in terms of outcomes, accountability, and agility.Accordingly, the ultimate aim of this initiative is to contribute to the formation of intellectual foundations for more systemic reforms of public sector governance in Canada and elsewhere, and to offer forward-looking trajectories for government adaptation in shifting from a traditional prism of 'machinery' to new organizational and institutional arrangements better suited for an era of 'mobility'. |
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