Researching the Far Right brings together researchers from across the humanities and social sciences to provide much needed discussion about the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise when researching far right parties, their electoral support, and far right protest movements. Drawing on original research focussing mainly on Europe and North America over the last 30 years, this volume explores in detail the opportunities and challenges associated with using ethnographic, interview-based, quantitative and online research methods to study the far right. These reflections are set within a wider discussion of the evolution of far right studies from a variety of disciplinary viewpoints within the humanities or the social sciences, tracing the key developments and debates that shape the field today. This volume will be essential reading for students and scholars with an interest in understanding the many manifestations of the far right and cognate movements today. It also offers insight and reflection that is likely to be valuable for a wider range of students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences who are carrying out work of an ethically, politically, personally, practically and professionally challenging nature.

This volume describes and analyzes the proliferation of new mechanisms for participation in Latin American democracies and considers the relationship between direct participation and the consolidation of representative institutions based on traditional electoral conceptions of democracy. Encompassing case studies of Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela, the book draws on original fieldwork to assess how institutions operate in practice, thus illuminating the conditions under which direct participation enhances broader aims of democratic participation. In so doing, it conveys fresh perspectives on the quality of democracy in Latin America today and about future prospects for deepening democratic citizenship.

This book provides a defense of democratic politics in American public service and offers the political ethics of public service as a realistic and optimistic alternative to the cynical American view toward politics and public service. The author's alternative helps career public servants regain public trust by exercising constitutionally centered moral and political leadership that balances the regime values of liberty and equality in governing American society while contributing to the ethical progress of the nation. She identifies three distinct leadership styles of political ethics, enabling career public servants to reconcile their personal loyalties, morality, and consciences with the public and private morality of American society and their constitutional obligations to secure the democratic freedoms of Americans. Recognizing career public servants' moral and institutional struggles, the book proposes a rigorous leadership development program to acclimate individuals to workplace psychological, moral, and political challenges. The view offered here is that career public servants must be a part of, rather than isolated from, American politics to be effective on the job.

This book argues that 'social democratic criminology' is an important critical perspective which is essential for the analysis of crime and criminal justice and crucial for humane and effective policy. The end of World War II resulted in 30 years of strategies to create a more peaceful international order. In domestic policy, all Western countries followed agendas informed by a social democratic sensibility. Social Democratic Criminology argues that the social democratic consensus has been pulled apart since the late 1960s, by the hegemony of neoliberalism: a resuscitation of nineteenth-century free market economics. There is now a gathering storm of apocalyptic dangers from climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and other existential threats. This book shows that the neoliberal revolution of the rich pushed aside social democratic values and policies regarding crime and security and replaced them with tougher 'law and order' approaches. The initial consequence was a tsunami of crime in all senses. Smarter security techniques did succeed in abating this for a while, but the decade of austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has seen growing violent and serious crime. Social Democratic Criminology charts the history of social democracy, discusses the variety of conflicting ways in which it has been interpreted, and identifies its core uniting concepts and influence on criminology in the twentieth century. It analyses the decline of social democratic criminology and the sustained intellectual and political attacks it has endured. The concluding chapter looks at the prospects for reviving social democratic criminology, itself dependent on the prospects for a rebirth of the broader social democratic movement. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, cultural studies, politics, history, social policy, and all those interested in social democracy and its importance for society.

This book argues that 'social democratic criminology' is an important critical perspective which is essential for the analysis of crime and criminal justice and crucial for humane and effective policy. The end of World War II resulted in 30 years of strategies to create a more peaceful international order. In domestic policy, all Western countries followed agendas informed by a social democratic sensibility. Social Democratic Criminology argues that the social democratic consensus has been pulled apart since the late 1960s, by the hegemony of neoliberalism: a resuscitation of nineteenth-century free market economics. There is now a gathering storm of apocalyptic dangers from climate change, pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and other existential threats. This book shows that the neoliberal revolution of the rich pushed aside social democratic values and policies regarding crime and security and replaced them with tougher 'law and order' approaches. The initial consequence was a tsunami of crime in all senses. Smarter security techniques did succeed in abating this for a while, but the decade of austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis has seen growing violent and serious crime. Social Democratic Criminology charts the history of social democracy, discusses the variety of conflicting ways in which it has been interpreted, and identifies its core uniting concepts and influence on criminology in the twentieth century. It analyses the decline of social democratic criminology and the sustained intellectual and political attacks it has endured. The concluding chapter looks at the prospects for reviving social democratic criminology, itself dependent on the prospects for a rebirth of the broader social democratic movement. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, cultural studies, politics, history, social policy, and all those interested in social democracy and its importance for society.

International Aid and Democracy Promotion investigates the link between foreign aid and the promotion of democracy, using theory, statistical tests, and illustrative case studies. This book challenges the field of development to recognize that democracy promotion is unlike other development goals. With a goal like economic development, the interests of the recipient and the donor coincide; whereas, with democratization, authoritarian recipients have strong reasons to oppose what donors seek. The different motivations of donors and recipients must be considered if democracy aid is to be effective. The author examines how donors exercise their leverage over aid recipients, and, more importantly, why, using selectorate theory to understand the incentives of both aid donors and recipients. International Aid and Democracy Promotion will be of great interest to academics and students of development and democratization, as well as policy makers with authority over foreign aid allocation. "The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003050438, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Open Access for this book is generously supported by the Ashoka University.

Reformulating a problem of both constitutionalism and liberalism discussed in the works of Ernst-Wolfgang Boeckenfoerde, Hannah Arendt, and Alexis de Tocqueville, the book examines one generally overlooked manifestation of constitutionalism: the role of the courts in shaping democratic politics and the inter-relationship between citizens and state. Drawing on constitutional history, law, and political theory, David Miles argues that constitutionalism cannot be seen merely as an institutional mechanism to limit government, as it also has a crucial civic dimension upon which the liberal state depends. Utilising the works of Boeckenfoerde, Arendt, and Tocqueville, constitutionalism is conceived in the book as part of a broader system of communal norms which sustains representative democracy and liberalism. Through an analysis of judicial interventions in the electoral processes of the United States and Germany, Miles explores the role of civil society actors in transforming constitutionalism through legal challenges to oligarchical or exclusionary practices. He assesses how, in adjudicating these cases, the US Supreme Court and the German Constitutional Court have mediated the tension between threats to stability and the imperative of democratic renewal. Democracy, the Courts, and the Liberal State will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in comparative politics, political theory, and constitutional law and history.

The emergence of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has revived analysis of one of Latin America's most enduring political traditions - populism. Yet Latin America has changed since the heyday of Peron and Evita. Globalisation, implemented through harsh IMF inspired Structural Adjustment Programmes, has taken hold throughout the region and democracy is supposedly the 'only game in town'. This book examines the phenomenon that is Hugo Chavez within these contexts, assessing to what extent his government fits into established ideas on populism in Latin America. The book also provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of Chavez's emergence, his government's social and economic policies, its foreign policy, as well as assessing the charges of authoritarianism brought against him. Written in clear, accessible prose, the book carries debate beyond current polarised views on the Venezuelan president, to consider the prospects of the new Bolivarian model surviving beyond its leader and progenitor, Hugo Chavez. -- .

While liberal-democratic states like America, Britain and Australia claim to value freedom of expression and the right to dissent, they have always actually criminalized dissent. This disposition has worsened since 9/11 and the 2008 Great Recession. This ground-breaking study shows that just as dissent involves far more than protest marches, so too liberal-democratic states have expanded the criminalization of dissent. Drawing on political and social theorists like Arendt, Bourdieu and Isin, the book offers a new way of thinking about politics, dissent and its criminalization relationally. Using case studies like the Occupy movement, selective refusal by Israeli soldiers, urban squatters, democratic education and violence by anti-Apartheid activists, the book highlights the many forms dissent takes along with the many ways liberal-democratic states criminalize it. The book highlights the mix of fear and delusion in play when states privilege security to protect an imagined 'political order' from difference and disagreement. The book makes a major contribution to political theory, legal studies and sociology. Linking legal, political and normative studies in new ways, Watts shows that ultimately liberal-democracies rely more on sovereignty and the capacity for coercion and declarations of legal 'states of exception' than on liberal-democratic principles. In a time marked by a deepening crisis of democracy, the book argues dissent is increasingly valuable.

Harnessing a cultural sociological approach to explore transformations in key social spheres in post-1989 Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer illuminates shifts in religiosity, sympathy towards others, and civic activity in post-Communist Poland in the light of Western influence over elements of Polish life. Reshaping Poland's Community after Communism focuses on three major cases, largely ignored in Polish scholarship: (1) a hugely popular, faux-baroque Catholic shrine, which illustrates new strategies adopted by the Polish Catholic Church to attract believers; (2) Woodstock Station, a widely known free charity music festival, demonstrating new practices of sympathy towards strangers; and (3) the emergence of national internet pro-voting campaigns and small-town watchdog websites, which uncover changes in practical uses of civic engagement. In exploring grass-roots, everyday negotiations of religiosity, charity, and civic engagement in contemporary Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer demonstrates how a country's cultural changes can suggest wider, dramatic democratic transformation.

Three unprecedented large-scale democratic experiments have recently taken place. Citizen assemblies on electoral reform were conducted in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario. Groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. In each case, the participants spent almost an entire year learning about electoral systems, consulting the public, deliberating, debating, and ultimately deciding what specific institution should be adopted. When Citizens Decide uses these unique cases to examine claims about citizens' capacity for democratic deliberation and active engagement in policy-making. It offers empirical insight into numerous debates and provides answers to a series of key questions: 1) Are ordinary citizens able to decide about a complex issue? Are their decisions reasonable? 2) Who takes part in such proceedings? Are they dominated by people dissatisfied by the status quo? 3) Do some citizens play a more prominent role than others? Are decisions driven by the most vocal or most informed members? 4) Did the participants decide by themselves? Were they influenced by staff, political parties, interest groups, or the public hearings? 5) Does participation in a deliberative process foster citizenship? Did participants become more trusting, tolerant, open-minded, civic-minded, interested in politics, and active in politics? 6) How do the other political actors react? Can the electorate accept policy proposals made by a group of ordinary citizens? The analyses rely upon various types of evidence about both the inner workings of the assemblies and the reactions toward them outside: multi-wave panel surveys of assembly members, content analysis of newspaper coverage, and public opinion survey data. The lessons drawn from this research are relevant to those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr. The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.

This book outlines the importance of political institutions in achieving good governance within a democratic polity and sets forth an argument to explore what sorts of institutions do the job best. By focusing on 'centripetal institutions', which maximize both representation and authority by bringing political energy and actors toward the centre of a polity, the authors set forth a relatively novel theory of democratic governance, applicable to all political settings in which multi-party competition obtains. Basing their theory on national-level political institutions, the authors argue that there are three types of political institutions that are fundamental in securing a centripetal style of democratic governance: unitary (rather than federal) sovereignty, a parliamentary (rather than presidential) executive, and a closed-list PR electoral system (rather than a single-member district or preferential-vote system).

This book presents a new democratic theory of election reform, using the tradition of political realism to interrogate and synthesize findings from global elections research and voting theory. In a world of democratic deficits and uncivil societies, political researchers and reformers should prioritize creating smarter ballots before smarter voters. Many democracies' electoral systems impose a dilemma of disempowerment which traps voters between the twin dangers of vote-splitting and "lesser evil" choices, restricting individual expression while degrading systemic accountability. The application of innovative conceptual tools to comparative empirical analysis and previous experimental results reveals that ballot structure is crucial, but often overlooked, in sustaining this dilemma. Multi-mark ballot structures can resolve the dilemma of disempowerment by allowing voters to rank or grade multiple parties or candidates per contest, thereby furnishing democratic citizens with a broader array of options, finer tools of expression, and stronger powers of accountability. Innovative proposals for ranking and grading ballots in both multi-winner and single-winner contests, including referendums, are offered to provoke further experimentation and reform-a process that may help the cause of democratic elections' relevance and survival.

Citizen participation is a central component of democratic governance. As participatory schemes have grown in number and gained in social legitimacy over recent years, the research community has analyzed the virtues of participatory policies from several points of view, but usually giving focus to the most successful and well-known grass-roots cases. This book examines a wider range of participatory interventions that have been created or legitimized by central governments, providing original exploration of institutional democratic participatory mechanisms. Looking at a huge variety of subnational examples across Italy, Spain and France, the book interrogates the rich findings of a substantial research project. The authors use quantitative and qualitative methods to compare why these cases of participatory mechanisms have emerged, how they function, and what cultural impact they ve achieved. This allows highly original insights into why participatory mechanisms work in some places, but not others, and the sorts of choices that organizers of participatory processes have to consider when creating such policies."

The return to public assemblies and direct democratic methods in the wave of the global "squares movements" since 2011 has rejuvenated interest in forms of council organisation and action. The European council movements, which developed in the immediate post-First World War era, were the most impressive of a number of attempts to develop workers' councils throughout the twentieth century. However, in spite of the recent challenges to liberal democracy, the question of council democracy has so far been neglected within democratic theory. This book seeks to interrogate contemporary democratic institutions from the perspective of the resources that can be drawn from a revival and re-evaluation of the forgotten ideal of council democracy. This collection brings together democratic theorists, socialists and labour historians on the question of the relevance of council democracy for contemporary democratic practices. Historical reflection on the councils opens our political imagination to an expanded scope of the possibilities for political transformation by drawing from debates and events at an important historical juncture before the dominance of current forms of liberal democracy. It offers a critical perspective on the limits of current democratic regimes for enabling widespread political participation and holding elites accountable. This timely read provides students and scholars with innovative analyses of the councils on the 100th anniversary of their development. It offers new analytic frameworks for conceptualising the relationship between politics and the economy and contributes to emerging debates within political theory on workplace, economic and council democracy.

2017 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, a work acknowledged as one of the most insightful books written in the twentieth century. It retains a contemporary quality, and still invites criticisms, new interpretations, and extensions and across disciplines. This book, in addition to re-examining Schumpeter's seminal work and undertaking a twenty-first-century update of its main themes, brings together leading social scientists to provide contemporary amendments, extensions - or eventually refutations - of key elements of Schumpeter's vision and thesis. Issues covered include a new take on creative destruction, the contours of a theory of innovative enterprise, finance and financialisation, a critique of the secular stagnation thesis, Schumpeter's contributions to a theory of the entrepreneurial state, his conception of socialism and its current relevance for understanding the 'China model' as well as a rekindling of his democracy thesis for our times. Bringing together leading international contributors, this book provides fresh perspectives on ideas that continue to be hugely relevant to contemporary social sciences and a guide for understanding the current tensions among capitalism, the state and democracy. These chapters will be of interest to economists, social scientists and anyone with an interest in modern capitalism.

In Colonial America, democracy was centered in provincial assemblies and based on the collection of neighbors whose freehold ownership made them permanent stakeholders in the community. The removal of the property qualification for voting in the United States occurred over three-quarters of a century and was among the more important events in the history of democratization, functioning to shift voting from a corporate privilege toward a human right. Moving beyond the standard histories of property standard histories of property qualification removal, Justin Moeller and Ronald F. King adopt the theories and methods of social science to discover underlying patterns and regularities, attempting a more systematic understanding of subject. While no historical event has a single cause, party consolidation and party competition provided a necessary mechanism, making background factors politically relevant. No change in franchise rules could occur without the explicit consent of incumbent politicians, always sensitive to the anticipated impact. Moeller and King argue that political parties acted strategically, accepting or rejecting removal of the property qualification as a means of advancing their electoral position. The authors identify four different variants of the strategic calculation variable, significantly helping to explain both the temporal differences across states and the pattern of contestation with each state individually.

For a long time, Orthodox Christianity was regarded as a religious tradition that was incompatible with democracy. This book challenges this incompatibility thesis, offering an innovative and fresh theoretical framework for dealing with the issue of Orthodoxy and democracy. This book focuses on the political behaviour of Orthodox Christian Churches in the democratization processes from a comparative perspective, and shows that different Orthodox Churches acted differently in the democratization processes in Greece, Serbia and Russia. The fundamental question that arises is - why? By focusing on institutions, rather than on political theology, this book answers this question from a comparative perspective. By studying the historical, cultural, and political roles of the Orthodox Christian Church in these three countries, the author examines whether it is logical to presume that the Church played a significant role in the democratization process. This book will be of great interest to academics and students globally who teach, study, and research in the emerging field of religion and democracy.

What role should (non-normative) facts such as people's confined generosity and scarcity of resources play in the normative theorising of political philosophers? The chapters in this book investigate different aspects of this broad question. Political philosophers are often silent on questions of what types of facts are relevant, if any, for normative theory, and what methodological assumptions about agency and behaviour need to be made, if any such assumptions are necessary. However, due to recent debates among and between idealists, non-idealists and realists in political theory, the issue about the relation between facts and norms in political philosophy/theory is beginning to attract greater attention from political theorists/philosophers. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Condorcet (1743–1794) was the last of the great eighteenth-century French philosophes and one of the most fervent américanistes of his time. A friend of Franklin, Jefferson, and Paine and a member of the American Philosophical Society, he was well informed and enthusiastic about the American Revolution. Condorcet’s writings on the American Revolution, the Federal Constitution, and the new political culture emerging in the United States constitute milestones in the history of French political thought and of French attitudes toward the United States. These remarkable texts, however, have not been available in modern editions or translations. This book presents first or new translations of all of Condorcet’s major writings on the United States, including an essay on the impact of the American Revolution on Europe; a commentary on the Federal Constitution, the first such commentary to be published in the Old World; and his Eulogy of Franklin, in which Condorcet paints a vivid picture of his recently deceased friend as the archetype of the new American man: self-made, practical, talented but modest, tolerant and free of prejudice—the embodiment of reason, common sense, and the liberal values of the Enlightenment.

This book contributes to our understanding of the trajectories and prerogatives of female political leaders in the varying context of democratization, political institutions and cultural norms. No woman had been elected leader of a country before 1960, but with democratic transitions on the rise since the 1970s, the number of women in executive office gradually became a trend of global scope. In 2015, nineteen countries had an elected female Head of State and/or Government, a proportionally small number that is expected to climb as more women compete for high office, sometimes against other female candidates. This volume compares how women executives differ in promoting gender equality and advocating for women's rights and interests, as well as in their ability to negotiate gender policy agendas. Comparative and theoretical chapters on post-transition women leaders are complemented by case studies in eight countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern and Central Europe. This book will be of use to students and scholars interested in gender studies, comparative politics, and political leadership.

In a front-page review in the Washington Post Book World, John Judis wrote: "Political analysts have been poring over exit polls and precinct-level votes to gauge the meaning of last November's election, but they would probably better employ their time reading the late Christopher Lasch's book." And in the National Review, Robert Bork says The Revolt of the Elites "ranges provocatively [and] insightfully." Controversy has raged around Lasch's targeted attack on the elites, their loss of moral values, and their abandonment of the middle class and poor, for he sets up the media and educational institutions as a large source of the problem. In this spirited work, Lasch calls out for a return to community, schools that teach history not self-esteem, and a return to morality and even the teachings of religion. He does this in a nonpartisan manner, looking to the lessons of American history, and castigating those in power for the ever-widening gap between the economic classes, which has created a crisis in American society. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy is riveting social commentary.

Deliberative democracy is an embattled political project. It is accused of political naivete for it only talks about power without taking power. Others, meanwhile, take issue with deliberative democracy's dominance in the field of democratic theory and practice. An industry of consultants, facilitators, and experts of deliberative forums has grown over the past decades, suggesting that the field has benefited from a broken political system. This book is inspired by these accusations. It argues that deliberative democracy's tense relationship with power is not a pathology but constitutive of deliberative practice. Deliberative democracy gains relevance when it navigates complex relations of power in modern societies, learns from its mistakes, remains epistemically humble but not politically meek. These arguments are situated in three facets of deliberative democracy-norms, forums, and systems-and concludes by applying these ideas to three of the most pressing issues in contemporary times-post-truth politics, populism, and illiberalism.

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.

The book provides an in-depth discussion of democratic theory questions in relation to refugee law. The work introduces readers to the evolution of refugee law and its core issues today, as well as central lines in the debate about democracy and migration. Bringing together these fields, the book links theoretical considerations and legal analysis. Based on its specific understanding of the refugee concept, it offers a reconstruction of refugee law as constantly confronted with the question of how to secure rights to those who have no voice in the democratic process. In this reconstruction, the book highlights, on the one hand, the need to look beyond the legal regulations for understanding the challenges and gaps in refugee protection. It is also the structural lack of political voice, the book argues, which shapes the refugee's situation. On the other hand, the book opposes a view of law as mere expression of power and points out the dynamics within the law which reflect endeavors towards mitigating exclusion. The book will be essential reading for academics and researchers working in the areas of migration and refugee law, legal theory and political theory.