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. -- .

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 offers a thoughtful analysis of the international and domestic political impact of the global war on terrorism through the prism of US security relations in the wake of September 11, 2001. While focused on regional and country-specific responses and consequences, the book redresses the balance between change and continuity in the international system brought about by the war on terror. The unusual meshing of wide-ranging views and perspectives represents the shared wisdom of an epistemic community emerging at the intersection of international relations, comparative politics and foreign policy analysis.

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.

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'.

This volume brings together a number of essays that citizens, academics, election officials, policy makers, and other stakeholders can read to become better informed about procedures that used today to audit elections and election administration, and to learn more about new approaches to improve existing election audit procedures.

This book analyzes Spanish political parties and institutions in comparative theoretical perspective. Two primary themes are addressed: "institutionalization" and the "distribution "of institutionalization in the polity, and the relationship between "institutional design" and "representation."

This study examines conflicts arising from the dual processes of Europeanization and post-socialist transformations, from gaining independence in 1991 to facing the current economic crisis. Through an in-depth comparison of Estonia and Slovenia over time, it shows how elite actors within these two very different welfare capitalist states resisted EU pressures to change their cohesive and successful national models.

A comparison of Singapore and Taiwan presents an interesting case study for those wishing to understand how small states struggle to overcome their strategic disadvantage. Since their independence, Singapore and Taiwan have faced numerous challenges resulting from their relative strategic disadvantage. They have struggled to overcome vulnerable bases, an unformed conception of state, and weak governmental institutes for defence. While territorial borders are difficult to change, both states have focused on nation building, economic growth, and military build-up in order to overcome their predicaments. During the Cold War, both states employed similarly authoritarian policies to preserve their survival. However, in the post-Cold War era, Taiwan has experienced political and economic weakness in the face of the rising China, while Singapore, with its polity of one-party domination, has continued to strengthen its hard and soft power. This book examines the unique context for each case, drawing comparisons and offering analysis of their distinct approaches.

A cross-country comparison of recent Labour Party governments in New Zealand, Britain, and Australia, and an exploration of how those countries' labour movements responded to their parties' neoliberal policies in power.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the 'technocratic shift' in ministerial recruitment, measuring its extent and variations over time in fourteen European countries. It addresses the question: who governs in European democratic regimes? Just a few decades ago, the answer would have been straightforward: party-men and (fewer) party-women. More recently, however, and in varying degrees across Europe, a greater proportion of non-politicians or experts have been recruited to government, as exemplified by the 2017 election of Emmanuel Macron to the French Presidency. These experts, frequently labelled "technocrats", increasingly occupy key executive positions and have emerged as powerful actors in the decision-making process. This edited collection explores the contemporary debates surrounding the relationship between technocracy, democracy and political leadership, and will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in these fields.

Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has been the stage of a large-scale project of international socialization. European regional organizations such as the OSCE, the Council of Europe, NATO, and the EU assumed the task of inducting the transition countries to the liberal-democratic standards of the Western international community. How and when have Western organizations had an impact on the transformation of Europe? Why have they been successful in some countries but not in others? How can we adequately analyze and theorize international socialization in Europe? In a comparative analysis of nine countries, the book tests theoretical conditions and mechanisms of international norm promotion and shows that successful socialization has been a result of credible EU and NATO membership conditionality as well as moderate political costs of compliance for the target governments.

What explains the variety of responses that states adopt toward different refugee groups? Refugees might be granted protection or turned away; they might be permitted to live where they wish and earn an income, pursue education, and access medical treatment; or, they might be confined to a camp and forced to rely on aid while being denied basic services. However, states do not consistently wield their capacity for control, nor do they jealously guard their authority to regulate. In this book, Lamis Elmy Abdelaaty asks why states sometimes assert their sovereignty vis-a-vis refugee rights and at other times seemingly cede it by delegating refugee oversight to the United Nations. To explain this selective exercise of sovereignty, Abdelaaty develops a two-part theoretical framework in which policymakers in refugee-receiving countries weigh international and domestic concerns. Policymakers in a receiving country might decide to offer protection to refugees from a rival country in order to undermine the sending country's stability, saddle it with reputation costs, and even engage in guerilla-style cross-border attacks. At the domestic level, policymakers consider political competition among ethnic groups-welcoming refugees who are ethnic kin of citizens can satisfy domestic constituencies, expand the base of support for the government, and encourage mobilization along ethnic lines. When these international and domestic incentives conflict, the state shifts responsibility for refugees to the UN, which allows policymakers to placate both refugee-sending countries and domestic constituencies. Abdelaaty analyzes asylum admissions worldwide, and then examines three case studies in-depth: Egypt (a country that is broadly representative of most refugee recipients), Turkey (an outlier that has limited the geographic application of the Refugee Convention), and Kenya (home to one of the largest refugee populations in the world). Discrimination and Delegation argues that foreign policy and ethnic identity, more so than resources, humanitarianism, or labor skills, shape reactions to refugees.

This book explores the extent to which a transformation of public employment regimes has taken place in four Western countries, and the factors influencing the pathways of reform. It demonstrates how public employment regimes have unravelled in different domains of public service, contesting the idea that the state remains a 'model' employer.

"Theories of Democratic Network Governance" aims to renew and refocus the political and scholarly debate on the use of governance networks in public policy making by raising and answering a series of questions about the dynamics of governance networks, the conditions for governance network success and failure, the forms and functions of metagovernance (defined as the regulation of self-regulating networks) and the democratic implications of network governance. In an attempt to answer these pressing questions, the contributors draw on a wide range of theoretical approaches within governance network theory, institutional theory and democratic theory.

The Nordic welfare states have found themselves in the firing line of post-industrial developments, resulting in fundamental changes in societal institutions at all levels. In particular, changes in the labour market and family, reinforced by processes of migration and international market integration, have presented the welfare states with new social needs to attend to. This book critically explores responses to changing social risks across areas such as structural unemployment, entrepreneurship, immigration, single parenthood, education and health. It explores critical changes in the structure of the Nordic welfare states and the social policy strategies for alleviating social risks. While the Nordic countries are shining in most international comparisons, such changes and their wider implications have often been overlooked in the literature. The book raises the question whether certain risks are even being evoked actively through new social policies instating incentive structures concomitant with policy goals in order to encourage certain behaviour among citizens.

The first comparative study to examine the role of religion in the formation of Greek and Turkish nationalisms, this book argues that the shift to an increasingly religious paradigm in both countries can be explained in terms of the exigencies of consolidation and the need to appeal to grassroots elements and account for diversity.

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. -- .

This book presents numerous discussions of specific aspects of democratic politics, showing how 'democracy' can be projected as a model of deliberate imperfection - a model that tolerates various loose ends in the system - and how democracy recognizes a multiplicity of possible courses open to the system at any point in time. Against this backdrop, the book carefully analyzes the lifetime work of D.L. Sheth, which, seen as a whole, offers us with a theory of Indian politics. The selection of fifteen essays has been clustered into five sections that signify the major domains of democratic politics: State, Nation, Democracy; Parapolitics of Democracy; Social Power and Democracy; Representation in Liberal Democracy; and Emerging Challenges of Democracy. These essays give a sense of the transformations and struggles that are underway in India, brought about by the dynamics of democratic politics. Each of the fifteen chapters focuses on one aspect, providing a unique analysis of the deepening of democracy in India.

This book analyses the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA), focusing on the communalities and differences in the way foreign policy is conceptualized in its member states. Utilizing 83 interviews with foreign policy makers and experts, as well as the analysis of 119 foreign-policy speeches, the author traces key shifts in official foreign policy discourse. In order to evaluate the degree of support for key IBSA Dialogue Forum concepts within national discourse, the author also examines the interplay between official and broader societal discourses on foreign policy. This analysis combines political science factors (foreign policy role conceptions) with linguistic factors, thus enabling a qualitative and quantitative comparison of different framings of foreign policy. Extensive empirical material collected during six months of field research in India, Brazil and South Africa allows the author to present a differentiated account of their alleged like-mindedness.

Considers how legal reforms and awareness-raising associated with building the rule of law, have engaged the popular legal consciousness, producing contradictions that have in turn shaped the nature of the resultant legality. Explores the case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This book will appeal to comparativists, Africanists, and socio-legal scholars.

This book discusses the interaction between and the impact of overlapping actions by regional organizations while dealing with critical events. It compares all the sub-regions in South America and Africa from this perspective and creates new knowledge through cross-regional gleanings. The book analyses types of institutional interaction among regional organizations and the effects of overlapping actions on the coexistence or fracturing of regional processes. It examines and compares the dynamics of these interactions in both South America and Africa. The book contributes to the study of comparative regionalism by providing generalization and institutional learning based on a cross-regional approach. It gives to students, researchers and interested readers an understanding of the complexity of regional affairs in multi-organizational environments.