Although party membership has been extensively analysed in the EU Members States from Western and Eastern Europe, there is a gap in systematic data collection and analyses for the other countries in the Balkans and post-Soviet region. This book provides new and innovative insights in the area of party membership research to analyse the evolution of membership organizations in political parties from under-investigated countries. Specifically, it seeks to understand the way in which political parties and the national legislation conceptualize the notion of membership within and across countries. It provides original data and affords a first comprehensive, comparative study of party members in the EU neighbouring countries, which resonate particular interest because some of them occupy the "precarious middle ground between a full-fledge democracy and outright dictatorship". In light of these relevant observations, this systematic analysis of membership evolutions in democratizing countries brings valuable insights for the study of party politics in general. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party systems, party organisation and elections, post-Soviet and East European politics and more broadly to democratization studies and comparative politics.

The volume sheds light on the backsliding process of Turkish democratization from the early 2010's until 2018. In addition to historical contextualization, the book analyzes data collected through a nationally representative survey of Turkish voters during the 2018 elections and data available by the Supreme Election Board (YSK) in a pre-and post-election panel design. A more centralized administration of elections that are directly under the control of the central government brought reliability of election results as well as the free and fair nature of the elections in question. Mobilization efforts of the parties, as well as the varying degree of influence of the economy, appear to have simultaneously influential over the vote choices. Yet another factor of potency in shaping the vote choices was the longer-term effects of ideology, conservative values, and hence the party identification. Through the 2018 elections in Turkey, the book provides an excellent glimpse into the dynamics of Turkish politics, society and culture. Targeting students and scholars of Middle Eastern and North African politics, the book is a key resource for any readers interested in the political developments of Turkey, comparative politics, and voting behavior.

This book represents the first comprehensive study of how technocracy currently challenges representative democracy and asks how technocratic politics undermines democratic legitimacy. How strong is its challenge to democratic institutions? The book offers a solid theory and conceptualization of technocratic politics and the technocratic challenge is analyzed empirically at all levels of the national and supra-national institutions and actors, such as cabinets, parties, the EU, independent bodies, central banks and direct democratic campaigns in a comparative and policy perspective. It takes an in-depth analysis addressing elitism, meritocracy, de-politicization, efficiency, neutrality, reliance on science and distrust toward party politics and ideologies, and their impact when pitched against democratic responsiveness, accountability, citizens' input and pluralist competition. In the current crisis of democracy, this book assesses the effects of the technocratic critique against representative institutions, which are perceived to be unable to deal with complex and global problems. It analyzes demands for competent and responsible policy making in combination with the simultaneous populist resistance to experts. The book will be of key interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, political theory, policy analysis, multi-level governance as well as practitioners working in bureaucracies, media, think-tanks and policy making.

Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, this book analyses the politics of memory. Since the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, memory politics in Serbia has undergone drastic changes in the way in which the Second World War and its aftermath is understood and interpreted. The glorification and romanticisation of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, more commonly referred to as the Chetnik movement, has become the central theme of Serbia's memory politics during this period. The book traces their construction as a national antifascist movement equal to the communist-led Partisans and as victims of communism, showing the parallel justification and denial of their wartime activities of collaboration and mass atrocities. The multifaceted approach of this book combines a diachronic perspective that illuminates the continuities and ruptures of narratives, actors and practices, with in-depth analysis of contemporary Serbia, rooted in ethnographic fieldwork and exploring multiple levels of memory work and their interactions. It will appeal to students and academics working on contemporary history of the region, memory studies, sociology, public history, transitional justice, human rights and Southeast and East European Studies.

This book provides a comprehensive interpretation of the multiple manifestations of populism using Italy, the only country amongst consolidated constitutional democracies in which populist political forces have been in government on various occasions since the early 1990s, as the starting point and benchmark. Populism is a complex, multi-faceted political phenomenon which redefines many of the essential characteristics of democracy; participation, representation, and political conflict. This book considers contemporary versions of populism that pose a real challenge to representative and constitutional democracy. Contributors provide an integrative interpretation of populism and analyse its principal historical, social and politico-legal variables to provide a multi-dimensional reflection on the concept of populism, comprehensive analysis of the populist phenomenon and a theoretical and comparative perspective on the diverse political experiences of populism. Based on conceptual and interdisciplinary reflections from expert authors, this book will be of great interest to scholars and post-graduate students of cultural studies, European studies, political sociology, political science, comparative politics, political philosophy, and political theory with an interest in a comparative and interdisciplinary theory of populism and its manifestations.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan provides a compelling perspective on the far-reaching hazards of military intervention. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev decided that a withdrawal from Afghanistan should occur as soon as possible. The Soviet Union's senior leadership had become aware that their strategy was unraveling, their operational and tactical methods were not working, and the sacrifices they were demanding from the Soviet people and military were unlikely to produce the forecasted results. Despite this state of affairs, operations in Afghanistan persisted and four more years passed before the Soviets finally withdrew their military forces. In No Miracles, Michael Fenzel explains why and how that happened, as viewed from the center of the Soviet state. From that perspective, three sources of failure stand out: poor civil-military relations, repeated and rapid turnover of Soviet leadership, and the perception that Soviet global prestige and influence were inexorably tied to the success of the Afghan mission. Fenzel enumerates the series of misperceptions and misjudgments that led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, tracing the hazards of their military intervention and occupation. Ultimately, he offers a cautionary tale to nation states and policymakers considering military intervention and the use of force.

Democracy is on the run, and elected governments are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. Legislatures are increasingly seen as unrepresentative. To give legitimacy to democratic government, experts argue that we need more democracy and more opportunities for direct citizen participation. Representative democracy needs to be complemented by forms of direct engagement, such as referendums, popular votes, the recall, citizens' juries, eDemocracy, etc. This is what we term Complementary Democracy. In this book experts from the worlds of practice and theory come together to explain - and occasionally critique - these complements to representative democracy. The volume provides an invaluable starting point for anyone who wants to know more about the new directions of democratic governance, and hopes to inspire those who seek to build stronger democracies.

Is democracy, in its neoliberalized form, responsible in part for bringing us to the brink of self-destruction and the policy inertia that is doing away with our chances of survival? Surviving Democracy probes the way democracy became neoliberalized and the role neoliberalized democracy plays in our dealings with-causing, understanding, denying, and mitigating-climate change. Defining neoliberalism as the art of exclusion through inclusion, Chien-Yi Lu treats climate change as collateral damage of the neoliberal order established to ensure upward power and wealth redistribution. Highlighting the role money played in the "free" competition of ideas between Keynes and Hayek, she investigates the resulting global structure, wherein the wealthy and powerful sit above the market and democracy, and the way this structure fundamentally contradicts with honest climate mitigation. Central to the structure is neoliberal elites' leveraging of the fluid relationship between the market and the state. Merging citizen power with consumer and investor powers is therefore imperative to the success of climate action. While expediting the bursting of the carbon bubble is an obvious answer, it is the discussion of the meat bubble that brings the book full circle, linking our survival to neoliberalism, inclusion, and democracy. Surviving Democracy probes the role democracy plays in our dealings with-causing, understanding, denying, and hopefully, mitigating-climate change.

This book examines contemporary militant democracies in post-communist states in the European Union. Examining, through case studies, their broader relevance to political, legal, and social structures, this book looks in revealing detail at the struggles between these democratic and anti-democratic actors that share similar historical experiences of contentious politics, communism, and political transformation. It importantly unravels the tension between them, determining which are already authoritarian, and which are teetering on the brink of an anti-democratic breakthrough. Analysing regimes' continuance trajectories to capture how and what shaped the neo-militant aspects of democracies (neomilitancy) over time, the book accounts for why particular post-communist European neo-militant democracies emerge while others decline or transform into quasi-militant democracies despite transformation, how they differ from each other, what brings about the differences and similarities between them, and how and why they change over time. With right-wing populist parties coming to power on the back of fears associated with economic, social, and cultural globalisation and the misuse of state authorities to strengthen protective measures against threats to democratic institutions, the book represents a timely and important contribution. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Post-Soviet/Communist/East European Studies, Democratic Backsliding, European and Comparative Politics, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, Democracy and Dictatorship, Public Comparative Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law and Political Theory.

Confidence in the future of democracy has been shaken by the authoritarian resurgence of the past decade, and some now argue that it is not realistic for the US to continue to champion democracy abroad. Does Democracy Matter? provides the conclusions of eleven scholars from widely different backgrounds who ask whether and, if so, how the US should support democracy beyond its own borders. The authors agree that American strategic interests are served in the long run by the spread of democracy abroad, but they differ as to how this support meshes with other national security goals. The concluding chapter outlines a system of triage for realistically assessing where and how such assistance can be effective in promoting US security interests. Contributions by Adrian A. Basora, Sarah Bush, Larry Diamond, Carl Gershman, Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Melinda Haring, Michal Koran, Richard Kraemer, Agnieszka Marczyk, Tsveta Petrova, and Kenneth Yalowitz.

South Korea has experienced new challenges both internally and externally with respect to its foreign policies. Internally, democratization has changed political terrain for domestic and international politics. Democratization and the information revolution have reinvigorated civic life and citizens have become active in expressing very divergent and often polarized views on foreign policies. Democratization also promotes South Korean nationalism. Rising nationalist sentiments make it difficult for the U.S. to effectively handle regional security-related issues such as the North Korean nuclear program, balancing against China, and dealing with the potential Sino-Japanese conflict. Externally, globalization has brought significant changes to South Korea's foreign policies. Economic dimension and issues rather than security-related issues become salient and important. For example, although security concerns are still dominant in Korean society, economic interests necessitate South Korea improve its relations with China and redefine its political position between the U.S. and China. Globalization has also promoted Korea's national interests to reach out to other countries. The Korean government has tried to develop new economic partnerships with developing countries for the purpose of securing energy and natural resources and expanding its soft power. Economic globalization and democratization have brought about changes in South Korea that raise many interesting questions with respect to foreign policy. Has South Korea's rise as an economic power and a democracy changed its relationship with neighboring powers? Does economic integration between South Korea and China reshape their relationship? How about its impact on U.S.-Korea relations? Are geopolitical and security-related concerns still the dominant factor in explaining South Korea's foreign policies? Does economic integration between Korea and Japan help to reduce tensions or emotional animosities that derive from historical disputes? Has South Korea, as a growing economic power, sought to forge relations with other middle or small powers beyond the confines of its region? Overall, this book theoretically and empirically explores how democratization and economic globalization have changed domestic politics in South Korea and reshaped its foreign policies.

How do we prevent the next pandemic? Will governments successfully tackle climate change? Will they find ways to close the gap between the haves and have-nots and to eliminate poverty? Which solution - democratic or authoritarian - will determine the global governance of a f lawed nation-state system? This unique contribution to global studies advances a multidisciplinary theory that the governments of all human societies are the tenuous outcome of the competing solutions to the Imperatives of Order, Welfare, and Legitimacy (OWL). The OWL paradigm provides a common framework to evaluate the contrasting responses of the liberal democratic, Chinese, and Russian solutions to global governance. Underscored is the volume's contention that global governance is the overriding issue confronting nation-states and the diverse and divided peoples of what is now a global society for the first time in the evolution of the species. The volume addresses a wide spectrum of audiences, united in their shared resolve that the democracies prevail in a projected century-long struggle between democratic and authoritarian regimes to determine global governance. Scholars, teachers, students, elected officials, policy analysts, media professionals, and engaged citizens who make self-government work will profit from this visionary and provocative study.

Provides a clear and concise overview of public policymaking, designed to equip citizens to participate more effectively in the policymaking process. Includes information on new modes of public policymaking participation, impediments to participation, and the role of whistleblowers as part of bureaucratic responsibility. Offers all-new case studies throughout the book on topics of interest to students and citizens alike, such as the policy response to COVID-19, George Floyd and police reform, homelessness, and the Affordable Care Act. Student projects are offered throughout the text, along with a glossary, and extensive coverage on Project Citizen, a format that provides students with hands-on tools for participating in the policymaking process. May be used in introductory courses on public policy, internships, or service-learning programs, but it equally serves as an invaluable resource for any organized effort to involve citizens in community service and the exercise of civic responsibility.

This book examines Egypt's turbulent and contradictory political period (2011-2015) as key to understanding contemporary politics in the country and the developments in the Arab region after the mass protests in 2010/11, more broadly. In doing so, it breaks new ground in the study of political representation, providing analytical innovation to the study of disenchantment with politics, democracy fatigue and social cohesion. Based on five years of intense fieldwork, the author provides rare insights into local and national ideas on politics, justice and identity, and on how people situate themselves and Egypt in the regional and global context. It analyzes how the creation of an alternate, political system was discussed and negotiated among the Egyptian population, the military, the government, public figures, the media, and international actors, and yet nevertheless today, Egypt has a new political regime that is the most repressive in the countries' modern history. Finally, it recalls the emotions and perceptions of individuals and collectives and interlinks these local perspectives to national events and developments through time. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of democratization and authoritarianism, Middle East Studies, political representation and informality, collective action, and more broadly to cultural studies and international relations.

Presenting Regional insights (authors from Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand) on Cutting edge issues and development in Asian political development. Providing insightful typolocial analysis with case studies among Asian countries. Reflecting over western modality of democratic development with regional features. Appealing in Asian studies with topical focus on democratization.

Fully updated new edition, focusing on countries where the religion-state nexus is of particular importance. Explores the constantly evolving relationship between religion and democracy, and problematizes the findings in light of developments during the last decade. Adds a new qualitative approach to the first edition's quantitative approach, providing a mixed methodology and nuanced analysis of the religion/democracy relationship. Explores how religion is used instrumentally by political leaders - both democratically elected and authoritarian ones - in different parts of the world; particularly topical at the moment.

High technology capitalism utilizes computers, robots, and global information networks. It has engendered new classes - technocrats, bureaucrats, service and office workers - who will impact the structure and values of society. The question most central for us is that of the survival of democracy on this new base. Will the New Middle Class become the carrying class for a modern form of democracy utilizing the sophisticated communications technology, or, will democracy decline under the weight of the managerial and technocratic strata essential to the functioning of the modern economic and political institutions?

Autocracies not only resist the global spread of democracy but are sources of autocratic influence and pressure. This book presents a conceptual model to understand, assess, and explain the promotion and diffusion of authoritarian elements. Employing a cross-regional approach, leading experts empirically test the concept of authoritarian gravity centers (AGCs), defined as "regimes that constitute a force of attraction and contagion for countries in geopolitical proximity." With an analysis extending across Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Asia, these AGCs are shown to be effective as active promoters (push) or as neutral sources of attraction (pull). The authors contend that the influence of exogenous factors, along with international and regional contexts for the transformation of regime types, is vital to understanding and analyzing the transmission of autocratic institutional settings, ideas, norms, procedures, and practices, thus explaining the regional clustering of autocracies. It is the regional context in which external actors can influence authoritarian processes most effectively. Authoritarian Gravity Centers is a vibrant and comprehensive contribution to the growing field of autocratization, which will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of comparative area studies, illiberalism, international politics, and studies of democracy.

In the past 20 years, a wave of right-wing populist movements has swept over Europe, changing the face of European politics. The Netherlands has been one of the more iconic countries to partake in this shift. Known internationally as an emblem of progressivism and tolerance, the country soon became a frontrunner in the revival of nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment. This is the first study to offer an extensive engagement with the ideas behind the Dutch swing to the right. The emergence of Dutch populism, this book shows, formed an integral part of a broader conservative tendency, identified as the Dutch New Right. In the US and the UK, the term New Right has been used to describe conservative backlash movements that arose in opposition to the progressive movements of the 1960s. The Dutch swing to the right, this book argues, formed a belated iteration of the New Right backlash that occurred overseas. This text will be essential reading for students and scholars in the fields of European Studies and Political Science, and Dutch politics and society more specifically.

This book examines the working procedures of parliamentary party groups within specialised committees - the backstage but primary means for MPs to influence policy. It explains which MPs specialise in particular policy areas, how they make policy choices in committees, and, subsequently, how these individual decisions are aggregated and 'unified' within and via parliamentary party groups. In doing so, the book expertly reveals the internal working procedures of parliaments and the role of individual MPs vis-a-vis the parliamentary party group leadership. Based on an analysis of more than 3,000 committee assignments and over 100 in-depth interviews with MPs, it shows that individual experts in committees have a central role and decision-making power which is more varied and decentralised from the leadership than commonly assumed. It demonstrates that most policy decisions are prepared bottom-up rather than dictated top-down and that parliamentary party groups are not strictly hierarchical organisations dominated by elites. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of legislative and parliamentary studies, representative democracy, comparative politics, and journalists and practitioners within parliaments.

Explores the fundamental shift that has occurred in America and Britain as elites accumulate unprecedented capital and influence and a meritocracy has emerged to manage national affairs, a change that means opportunity, affluence, and power have gravitated away from most of the population. Stoesz connects present and past to look at the progressive-era, the history of professions, and questions of welfare state reform, post-neoliberalism, and marketization.

Since the Third Wave of democratization research on clientelism has experienced a revival. The puzzling persistence of clientelism in new and old democracies inspired researchers to investigate the micro-foundations and causes of this phenomenon. Though the decline of clientelistic practices - such as vote buying and patronage - in democratic contexts has often been predicted, they have proven to be highly adaptive strategies of electoral mobilization and party building. This volume seeks to contribute to this new line of research and develops a theoretical framework to study the consequences of clientelism for democratic governance. Under governance we understand "all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization, or territory, and whether through laws, norms, power or language".

This book addresses some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is democracy threatened by globalisation? Is there a legitimacy crisis in contemporary democracies? Is the welfare state in individual countries under pressure from global trends? What are the implications of high-level migration and rising populism for democracy? Does authoritarianism pose a challenge? The volume builds on a cross-cultural study of democracy conducted by the Transformation Research Unit (TRU) at Stellenbosch University in South Africa for nearly twenty years. Three of the countries studied - South Africa, Turkey and Poland - receive individual attention as their respective democracies appear to be the most vulnerable at present. Germany, Sweden, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan are assessed in their regional contexts. Further insights are gained by examining the impact on democracy of the global screen culture of Television and the Internet, and by pointing out the lessons democracy should learn from diplomacy to fare better in the future. The book will appeal to both students and practitioners of democracy as well as the general reader.

Present day knowledge about public sector reforms in Asia is quite scattered and seldom focuses on the challenges of leadership. This edited collection seeks to address this issue by presenting country cases that reflect the great diversity of the region. Home to roughly one-third of the world's population, Asia-Pacific governments typically play leading roles in social and economic development, yet by measures of expenditures or civil servants per capita, most are among the smaller ones in the world. These regimes include democracies, one-party states and unstable systems; there is a broad range of cultural legacies including Confucian, Buddhist, and Western, and vastly different levels of economic development; the region includes some of the very least corrupt countries and those with high corruption levels; it includes the world's most populous country, as well as some of the smallest. Public sector reforms are very relevant to these countries and their leaders. In Asia, a strong government is invaluable and public sector reforms are relevant to helping modern states meet their goals and performance. This collection explores what is known about these reforms with an eye towards helping leaders responsible for reforms. Clearly, there is very large variation; some Asia-Pacific countries are leading in public sector reforms, while others are not, and this book also seeks to further our understanding what leaders might need to do to be successful.

In Discursive Disruption, Populist Communication and Democracy, Elena Block explores the links between declining democratic discourses, populist communication, and reflects on the communicative and moral dimensions of populism. Block proposes the concept of discursive disruption to help to identify, analyze and understand the disruptive power of populist speech, turning to the communicative styles of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez and the US's President Donald J. Trump to illustrate and support this new conceptual and analytical tool. While the mainstream political class and media traditionally sought to manage the processes of political communication, the book contends that they have now been displaced and their role has been undermined. Middle ground politics and journalism have been substituted by the adversarial rhetorical styles of populists, multiplied through multi-fragmented channels, texts and voices. With this book, Block continues her introspection in the conceptual, communicative and mediatic dimensions of populism by adding a perspective that draws on democratic and discursive theories. Discursive Disruption, Populist Communication and Democracy is ideally designed for scholars and professional communicators in political science and communication studies eager to understand the connection between weakening discourses of modern democracy and the pervasiness of confrontational styles of populist communication in contemporary political exchanges.