Starting from the observation that the European Union now possesses many of the attributes of modern political systems, Hix and Hoyland take an innovative approach to analysing, researching and teaching the EU. Using the general theories of political science to understand how the EU works, this text covers each of the main processes in the EU political system - executive, legislative and judicial politics, public opinion, interest groups and democracy, and regulatory, monetary and foreign policies - introducing the key political science tools, reviewing the relevant theories, and applying the knowledge in detailed descriptive analysis. As well as incorporating new data and the latest research, this new edition examines the consequences of the dramatic political and policy developments in the EU over the past decade. The methodology used in the text makes the political system of the EU accessible to political science students as a whole, as well as those specifically studying and researching the EU.

The second edition of Democracy for All: Educator's Manual is aimed at young people, adults, students and teachers. The books explain how the international community understands democracy, and explores what democracy means to each of us. Democracy for All also explains how government works in a democracy, how the abuse of power is checked, how human rights support democracy, how democratic elections take place, and how citizens can participate in democracy. The objectives of the book are: To improve students' understanding of the fundamental principles and values underlying democracy in society; To promote awareness of the current issues and controversies relating to democracy; To show students that their participation can make a difference to how democracy functions in their country; To foster justice, tolerance and fairness; To develop students' willingness and ability to resolve disputes and differences without resorting to violence; To improve basic skills, including critical thinking and reasoning, communication, observation and problem-solving. Democracy for All uses a variety of student-centred activities, including case studies, role-plays, simulations, small-group discussions, opinion polls and debates. Democracy for All: Educator's Manual explains how the lessons in the Learner's Manual can be conducted and provides solutions to the problems.

The New York Times bestselling author of My Grandmother's Hands surveys the deteriorating political climate and presents an urgent call for action to save ourselves and our countries. In The Quaking of America, therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem takes readers through a step-by-step program of somatic practices addressing the growing threat of white-supremacist political violence. Through the coordinated repetition of lies, anti-democratic elements in American society are inciting mass radicalization, violent insurrection, and voter suppression, with a goal of toppling American democracy. Currently, most pro-democracy American bodies are utterly unprepared for this uprising. This book can help prepare us--and, if possible, prevent more destructiveness. This preparation focuses not on strategy or politics, but on mental and emotional practices that can help us: Build presence and discernment Settle our bodies during the heat of conflict Maintain our safety, sanity, and stability under dangerous circumstances Heal our personal and collective racialized trauma Practice body-centered social action Turn toward instead of on one another The Quaking of America is a unique, perfectly timed, body-centered guide to each of these processes.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" once remarked Winston Churchill. In this day and age this quotation resonates more than ever. This book explores democracy from the perspective of social and cultural psychology, highlighting the importance of the everyday basis of democratic practices. This approach takes us beyond the simple understanding of democracy in its institutional guise of free elections and public accountability, and towards a focus on group dynamics and personal characteristics of the democratic citizen, including their mentalities, habits and ways of relating to others. The book features discussions of the two-way street between democracy and dictatorship; conflicts within protests, ideology and public debate; and the psychological profile of a democratic citizen and its critique. While acknowledging the limitations of today's democratic systems, this volume aims to re-invigorate democracy by bringing psychology to the table of current debates on social change and citizenship.

Challenging the conventional narrative that the European Union suffers from a "democratic deficit," Athanasios Psygkas argues that EU mandates have enhanced the democratic accountability of national regulatory agencies. This is because EU law has created entry points for stakeholder participation in the operation of national regulators; these avenues for public participation were formerly either not open or not institutionalized to this degree. By focusing on how the EU formally adopted procedural mandates to advance the substantive goal of creating an internal market in electronic communications, Psygkas demonstrates that EU requirements have had significant implications for the nature of administrative governance in the member states. Drawing on theoretical arguments in favor of decentralization traditionally applied to substantive policy-making, this book provides insight into regulatory processes to show how the decentralized EU structure may transform national regulatory authorities into individual loci of experimentation that might in turn develop innovative results. It thus contributes to debates about federalism, governance and public policy, as well as about deliberative and participatory democracy in the United States and Europe. This book informs current understandings of regulatory agency operations and institutional design by drawing on an original dataset of public consultations and interviews with agency officials, industry and consumer group representatives in Paris, Athens, Brussels, and London. The on-the-ground original research provides a strong foundation for the directions the case law could take and small- and larger-scale institutional reforms that balance the goals of democracy, accountability, and efficiency.

Why do we need European integration in increasingly fragmented and antagonised European societies? How can European integration relate to the national stories we carry about who we are as a nation and where we belong? What to do with the national stories that tell traumatising tales of past loss and sacrifice, and depict others as villains or foes? Can we still claim that our national states are the most legitimate way of organising European political communities today? Engaging with these big questions of European politics, Nevena Nancheva tells a small story from the periphery of Europe. Looking at two post-communist Balkan states - Bulgaria and Macedonia - she explores how their narratives of national identity have changed in the context of Europeanisation and EU membership preparations. In doing so, Nancheva suggests that national identity and European integration might be more relevant than previously thought.

Free Market Criminal Justice offers a critique of the ideology behind the US criminal justice system. It argues that the distinctive ideology shaping American criminal processes is a commitment to a set of values in institutional design as divided into two categories - "democracy" and "markets". Here, democracy describes the ideas and practices of politically responsive, popularly accountable governance. Markets refers to norms, premises and mechanisms of private ordering in contrast to public management; competition between private agents acting for self-interest. Arguing against recent attempts to re-invigorate democratic processes in criminal justice, this book claims that there are significant downsides to a criminal justice system that favors democratic processes over legal regulation. The commitment to democracy has undermined the rule of law in American criminal justice resulting in mass incarceration and wrongful convictions, particularly as institutional democracy goes hand in hand with the development of market-inspired mechanisms. This book concludes with proposals for reforms to rebuild the rule of law in the criminal process.

Although many contemporary scholars have deepened our understanding of civil society, a concept that made its entry into modern social thought in the 17th century, by offering insightful exegetical inquiries into the tradition of thinking about this concept, critiquing the limits of civil society discourse, or seeking to offer empirical analyses of existing civil societies, none have attempted anything as bold or original as Jeffrey C. Alexander's The Civil Sphere. While consciously building on this three centuries long tradition of thought on the subject, Alexander has broken new ground by articulating in considerable detail a theoretical framework that differs from what he sees as the two major perspectives that have heretofore shaped civil society discourse. In so doing, he has sought to construct from the bottom up a model of what he calls the civil sphere, which he treats in Durkheimian fashion as a new social fact. In this volume, six internationally recognized scholars comment on the civil sphere thesis. Robert Bellah, Bryan S. Turner, and Axel Honneth consider the work as a whole. Mario Diani, Chad Alan Goldberg, and Farhad Khosrokhavar offer analyses of specific aspects of the civil sphere. In their substantive introduction, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino locate the civil sphere thesis in terms of Alexander's larger theoretical arc as it has shifted from neofunctionalism to cultural sociology. Finally, Alexander's clarifies and further elaborates on the concept of the civil sphere.

This book examines the relationship between national identity and foreign policy discourses on Russia in Germany, Poland and Finland in the years 2005–2015. The case studies focus on the Nord Stream pipeline controversy, the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, the post-electoral protests in Russian cities in 2011–2012 and the Ukraine crisis. Siddi argues that divergent foreign policy narratives of Russia are rooted in different national identity constructions. Most significantly, the Ukraine crisis and the Nord Stream controversy have exposed how deep-rooted and different perceptions of the 'Russian Other' in EU member states are still influential and lead to conflicting national agendas for foreign policy towards Russia.

In this timely and important work, eminent political theorist John Dunn argues that democracy is not synonymous with good government. The author explores the labyrinthine reality behind the basic concept of democracy, demonstrating how the political system that people in the West generally view as straightforward and obvious is, in fact, deeply unclear and, in many cases, dysfunctional. Consisting of four thought-provoking lectures, Dunn's book sketches the path by which democracy became the only form of government with moral legitimacy, analyzes the contradictions and pitfalls of modern American democracy, and challenges the academic world to take responsibility for giving the world a more coherent understanding of this widely misrepresented political institution. Suggesting that the supposedly ideal marriage of liberal economics with liberal democracy can neither ensure its continuance nor even address the problems of contemporary life, this courageous analysis attempts to show how we came to be so gripped by democracy's spell and why we must now learn to break it.

This major new text provides an original and comprehensive assessment of key contemporary trends in democratic politics and governance across major established democracies of the world.

Contemporary debates on the role of religion in American public life ignore the overlap between religion and race in the formation of American democratic traditions and more often than not imagine democracy within the terrain of John Rawls's political liberalism. This kind of political liberalism, which focuses on political commitments at the expense of our religious beliefs, fosters the necessary conditions to open historically closed doors to black bodies, allows blacks to sit at the King's table and creates the necessary safeguards for black protest against discrimination within a constitutional democracy. By implication of its emphasis on rights and inclusion, political liberalism assumes that the presence of black bodies signifies the materialization of a robust American democracy. However, political liberalism discounts the historical role of religion in forming and fashioning the nation's construction of race. Tragic Soul-Life argues that the collision between religion and politics during U.S. slavery and segregation created the fragments from which emerged a firm but shifting moral disdain for blackness within the nation's collective moral imagination.
The very problem political liberals want to avoid, our comprehensive philosophy, is central to solving the political and economic problems facing blacks.

We in the West are living in the midst of a deadly culture war. Our rival worldviews clash with increasing violence in the public arena, culminating in deadly riots and mass shootings. A fragmented left now confronts a resurgent and reactionary right, which threatens to reverse decades of social progress. Commentators have declared that we live in a "post-truth world," one dominated by online trolls and conspiracy theorists. How did we arrive at this cultural crisis? How do we respond? This book speaks to this critical moment through a new reading of the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. Over thirty years ago, MacIntyre predicted the coming of a new Dark Ages. The premise of this book is that MacIntyre was right all along. It presents his diagnosis of our cultural crisis. It further presents his answer to the challenge of public reasoning without foundations. Pitting him against John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, and Chantal Mouffe, Ethics Under Capital argues that MacIntyre offers hope for a critical democratic politics in the face of the culture wars.

Can the internet fundamentally challenge non-free regimes? The role that social networking played in political change in the Middle East and beyond raises important questions about the ability of authoritarian leaders to control the information sphere and their subjects. Revolution Stalled goes beyond the idea of "virtual " politics to study five key components in the relationship between the online sphere and society: content, community, catalysts, control, and co-optation. This analysis of the contemporary Russian internet, written by a scholar with in-depth knowledge of both the post-Soviet media and media theory, illuminates how and when online activity can spark political action. This book argues that there are critical pre-conditions that help the internet to challenge non-free states. For example, Russian leaders became vulnerable to online protest movements and online social entrepreneurs when they failed to control the internet as effectively as they control traditional media. At the same time, Russia experienced explosive growth in online audiences, tipping the balance of control away from state-run television and toward the more open online sphere. Drawing upon studies of small-scale protests involving health issues and children with disabilities, Oates provides compelling evidence of the way Russians are translating individual grievances into rising political awareness and efficacy via the online sphere. The Russian state is struggling to change its information and control strategy in response to new types of information dissemination, networking, and protest. At the same time, this new environment has transformed a state strategy of co-opted elections into a powerful catalyst for protest and demands for rights. While the revolution remains stalled, Oates shows how a new and changing generation of internet users is transforming the public sphere in Russia.

Politics as Radical Creation examines the meaning of democratic practice through the critical social theory of the Frankfurt School. It provides an understanding of democratic politics as a potentially performative good-in-itself, undertaken not just to the extent that it seeks to achieve a certain extrinsic goal, but also in that it functions as a medium for the expression of creative human impulses. Christopher Holman develops this potential model through a critical examination of the political philosophies of Herbert Marcuse and Hannah Arendt. Holman argues that, while Arendt and Marcuse's respective theorizations each ultimately restrict the potential scope of creative human expression, their juxtaposition - which has not been previously explored - results in a more comprehensive theory of democratic existence, one that is uniquely able to affirm the creative capacities of the human being. Yielding important theoretical results that will interest scholars of each theorist and of theories of democracy more generally, Politics as Radical Creation provides a valuable means for rethinking the nature of contemporary democratic practice.

Citizenship and Democratization in Southeast Asia redirects the largely western-oriented study of citizenship to postcolonial states. Providing various fascinating first-hand accounts of how citizens interpret and realize the recognition of their property, identity, security and welfare in the context of a weak rule of law and clientelistic politics, this study highlights the importance of studying citizenship for understanding democratization processes in Southeast Asia. With case studies from Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia, this book provides a unique bottom-up perspective on the character of public life in Southeast Asia. Contributors are: Mary Austin, Laurens Bakker, Ward Berenschot, Sheri Lynn Gibbings, Takeshi Ito, David Kloos, Merlyna Lim, Astrid Noren-Nilsson, Oona Pardedes, Emma Porio, Apichat Satitniramai, Wolfram Schaffer and Henk Schulte Nordholt.

The Age of Foolishness is a doubter's guide to current lawyerly thinking about all things related to constitutionalism in a democracy. This book offers a thorough-going skeptical critique of the views that dominate our legal caste, including in law schools and among judges, and place too much weight on judges to resolve important social policy disputes and too little on democratic politics. The author argues that politics matters in a way that our legal orthodoxy often downplays.