Critics of referendums often lament that big money may buy success at the ballot box. But spending by interest groups may also be informative for citizens. This can only happen, however, if the financing of referendum campaigns is regulated. This book offers an overview of these regulations and presents research on their effects.

How and to what degree have the radical right in Eastern Europe affected democratic quality? What is the relationship between the radical right's electoral strength, its coalition and blackmail potential and its impact? How do other parties respond if nationalism gains ground in a democracy? Depleting democracies explores these questions through the examples of three groups of countries where radical right parties are strong: Bulgaria and Slovakia; Hungary, Poland and Romania; and the Czech Republic and Estonia. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, the book examines how radical right parties influenced mainstream parties' positions and public policy regarding vulnerable groups such as ethnic and national minorities and asylum-seekers between 2000 and 2016. It argues that by undermining the liberal values of equality and inclusiveness, they drive a process of depletion that fundamentally challenges democratic quality in the region. -- .

Why did democracy survive in some European countries between the wars while fascism or authoritarianism emerged elsewhere? This innovative study approaches this question through the comparative analysis of the inter-war experience of eighteen countries within a common comprehensive analytical framework. It combines (social and economic) structure- and (political) actor-related aspects to provide detailed historical accounts of each case which serve as background information for the systematic testing of major theories of fascism and democracy.

"The Surplus American" documents a chilling social unraveling in which the majority of Americans are being rendered jobless and redundant. The book explains the long crisis of surplus people, showing that the jobless are the tip of the iceberg. The book identifies a number of primary groups within the category of surplus, including the underemployed, people forcibly removed from or induced to leave the labor force, retirees, people involved in make-work by government or business, those hired to control the unemployed, and those employed to boost consumption and manage unrest. Surplus people are the dirty underside of our capitalist economy, and the authors sketch their story over the past several centuries, as well as the present condition and the future destiny of a surplus nation. Offering a timely analysis of social movements such as Occupy Wall Street, and using both narrative and theatrical devices, the authors conclude that new inclusive social justice movements are essential not only to solving the crisis of surplus people but also to redirecting an economy driven by outsourcing, new technology, and a merciless global corporate strategy. "

Is it possible to evolve a form of socialism which, while promoting industrial development, will be merciful to the ideals of democracy? This book attempts to answer this question: first the author deals with the differing conceptions of socialism and democracy and discusses co-operative socialism. The he turns to the problem of industrialization; the need for leadership in economic transition and the role of the concept of property; the capitalist solution; decentralization; and finally industrialization within the democratic framework.This book raises issues which are as important now as when it was first published in 1962.

This book is about the mundane, local, every day practices that constitutes democracy. It defines politicization as the key process in understanding democracy in different cultural contexts throughstudies ofFrance and Finland. By means of comparative ethnographic, media, and visual analysis that focuseson how democracy is actually practiced in different contexts, thiswork sets outa more nuanced and controversial picture of two opposite models of European politics. The familiar juxtaposition of Southern and Northern political cultures is set in a new perspective through comparative analyses of politicizations: the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy.The book explores the ways in which people in different contexts deliberate, resist, and politicize, and hence practice, challenge, and transform democracy in ways that are of relevance to all political systems.

Contemporary observers of politics in America often reduce democracy to demography. Whatever portion of the vote not explained by the class, gender, race, and religious differences of voters is attributed to the candidates' positions on the issues of the day. But are these the only--or even the main--factors that determine the vote?
The Performance of Politics develops a new way of looking at democratic struggles for power, explaining what happened, and why, during the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States. Drawing on vivid examples taken from a range of media coverage, participant observation at a Camp Obama, and interviews with leading political journalists, Jeffrey Alexander argues that images, emotion, and performance are the central features of the battle for power. While these features have been largely overlooked by pundits, they are, in fact, the primary foci of politicians and their staff. Obama and McCain painstakingly constructed heroic self-images for their campaigns and the successful projections of those images suffused not only each candidate's actual rallies, and not only their media messages, but also the ground game. Money and organization facilitate the ground game, but they do not determine it. Emotion, images, and performance do. Though an untested senator and the underdog in his own party, Obama succeeded in casting himself as the hero--and McCain the anti-hero--and the only candidate fit to lead in challenging times.
Illuminating the drama of Obama's celebrity, the effect of Sarah Palin on the race, and the impact of the emerging financial crisis, Alexander's engaging narrative marries the immediacy and excitement of the final months of this historic presidential campaign with a new understanding of how politics work.

Published in association with the United Nations, this book builds on the existing body of literature on gender and democratization by looking at the relevance of national machineries for the advancement of women. It considers the appropriate mechanisms through which the mainstreaming of gender can take place, and the levels of governance involved; defines what the interests of women are, and how and by what processes these interests are represented to the state policy making structures. Global strategies for the advancement of women are considered, and how far these have penetrated at national level, illuminated by a series of case studies - gender equality in Sweden and other Nordic countries, the Ugandan ministry of Gender, Culture and Social services, gender awareness in Central and Eastern Europe, and further examples from South Korea, the Lebanon, Beijing and Australia. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, Gender equality. -- .

This book examines the ways in which European democracies, including former communist states, are dealing with the new demands placed on their security policies since the cold war by transforming their military structures, and the effects this is having on the conceptualisation of soldiering.

In the new security environment, democratic states have called upon their armed forces increasingly to fulfil unconventional tasks partly civilian, partly humanitarian, and partly military in most complex, multi-national missions. Not only have military structures been transformed to make them fit for these new types of deployments, but the new mission types highlight the necessity for democracies to come to terms with a new image and ethos of soldiering in defence of a transnational value community.

Combining a qualitative comparison of twelve countries with an interdisciplinary methodology, this edited volume argues that the ongoing transformations of international politics make it necessary for democracies to address both internal and external factors as they shape their own civil-military relations. The issues discussed in this work are informed by Democratic Peace theory, which makes it possible to investigate relations within the state at the same time as analysing the international dimension. This approach gives the book a systematic theoretical framework which distinguishes it from the majority of existing literature on this subject.

This book will be of much interest to students of civil-military relations, European politics, democratisation and post-communist transitions, and IR in general.

This text combines critical historical analysis and case studies of the theory and practice of post-1945 international development. The book begins with a Gramscian analysis of institutional and academic development discourse and continues with critiques of international institutions' current neo-liberal economic and "governance" practices. This is followed by studies of African moral opposition to structural adjustment's "scientific capitalism", South African housing struggles, Zimbabwean development strategies, Costa Rican agrarian NGOs, and northern Albertan public environmental hearings. Throughout, the text advocates deepening radical and popular participatory democracy.

There is much speculation about whether democracy is still advancing around the world and the influence that leading authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes such as Russia are starting to have on the trends. This collection assesses global trends in democratisation, reviews the condition of international democracy promotion and enquires into whether serious competition in the form of autocracy promotion is now a major possibility. The influence of international politics on national political regimes is explored in more detail for Russia's resistance to democracy promotion and Russian influence on regimes in Central Asia in particular, along with an Indian perspective on India's reluctance to push for democracy abroad and concerns that democracy promotion itself should be considered more critically if it undermines democratisation in foreign aid-dependent states. The book concludes by briefly addressing the potential significance of the 2011 'Arab spring' for these themes. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

Africa represents the next frontier of the transnational politics of democratization. Recent efforts to promote human rights and democracy have yielded a mixed record of success. A comparison of regime change in Kenya and Uganda reveals how principled interventions have unintentional adverse effects on the democratic reform process. Persistent external efforts compromise the independence of domestic allies and strengthen those resisting democratic reforms. Domestic activists must carefully weigh the short-term benefits of transnational support against the harm it may cause.

Political participation is falling and citizen alienation and cynicism is increasing. In response to evidence of this decline in democracy, a growing number of philosophers and political practitioners have advocated a more deliberative form of democracy. This volume brings together the first work of this kind by leading scholars in the US and Europe. The results of this work raise questions regarding the conception and practice of deliberative democracy. To address these questions, four of the leading philosophers of deliberative democracy contribute their commentaries on the groundbreaking empirical research.

Under what conditions is democracy stable? What forces undermine or reinforce democratic institutions in Latin America? This book suggests answers to these questions in the context of Peru, one of Latin America's least stable democracies. It identifies the micro and macro causes that explain the gradual breakdown of democracy in the period between the 1980 transition from authoritarian rule and the 1992 suspension of the Constitution and closure of Congress by President Alberto Fujimore. Similar 'self-coups' were subsequently threatened in Bolivia, unsuccessfully attempted in Guatemala, and actively considered in Brazil. Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru stresses how recent changes in the class structure - particularly the informalization of the economy - created social conditions unfavorable to stable political coalitions in Peru. However, it also traces the mechanisms through which democracy has been undermined by exploring the choices and strategies of political actors in response to changing structural conditions. The book provides an analysis of the crisis of Peruvian democracy that weighs the importance of structural constraints and political choices. It is of broad interest to anyone concerned with problems of democratic consolidation.

How do different meanings of the concept of 'democracy' operate in democracy promotion? How do conceptual decisions influence real political events? How is policy and reflection on democracy promotion shaped by the way different practitioners and scholars understand democracy? The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion explores the way in which the meaning, content and context of 'democracy' are interpreted by different actors in democracy promotion, and how these influence political decisions. Introducing a theoretically new approach to the study of democracy promotion, the volume shows how the alternate ways that democracy can be understood reflects specific interpretations of political and normative ideals, as well as being closely tied to social power relations, interests, and struggles between political actors. With original contributions from some of the most prominent specialists on democracy promotion and democratization, the book examines a number of concrete cases of democracy promotion and contestation over democracy's meaning. Re-examining democracy promotion at its time of crisis, this book will be of interest scholars and students of democracy and democratization, politics and international relations, international law, development studies and political theory.

Progress in European market integration over the past two decades has come at the expense of growing flexibility, or differentiation, in the laws that govern the Single Market (SM) as well as the way that these laws are implemented. This volume examines how the completion of the SM has been held back in the varied implementation of European Union competition policy, variation in national policies on services, corporate law, telecommunications, energy, taxation, and gambling, and the EU 's uneven transportation network. These sectors and issue-areas form the frontier at which the main political struggles over the future shape of the SM have taken place in the past decade. Broadly, progress in economic integration in the EU has been complicated by the need to reconcile perfections to the SM with the global competitiveness of European producers, and efficiency gains with ideational and normative concerns. In services, there is a clash between deregulation and social policy. Financial integration has had to reconcile different institutionalized views among the member states about the place of finance in the economy and society. The SM notion supposedly entails a concrete set of substantive policy commitments that form the basis of the ever closer union . However, increasing differentiation in the SM undermines the identification of the EU 's core constitutional commitments.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

This book brings together the conceptual and theoretical writings of Joseph Schumpeter, Robert A. Dahl, Guillermo O Donnell, and T. H. Marshall. It demonstrates that most of the different conceptions of democracy in the democratization literature can be ordered in one systematic regime typology that distinguishes between thinner and thicker definitions of democracy.

The authors argue that the empirical pattern revealed by this typology is explained by the combination of internal structural constraints and international factors facilitating democracy. The result of such contending forces is that most of the democratizations in recent decades have only produced competitive elections, rather than more demanding attributes of democracy such as political liberties, the rule of law, and social rights.

Examining theoretical and empirical approaches to measuring, defining and understanding democracy, the book will be of interest to scholars of political theory and comparative politics in general and democratization studies in particular.

This book brings together leading figures in democratic reform and civic engagement to show why and how better state-citizen cooperation is necessary for achieving positive social change. Their contributions demonstrate that, while protest and non-state action may have their place, citizens must also work effectively with public bodies to secure sustainable improvements. The authors explain why the problem of civic disengagement poses a major threat, highlight what actions can be taken, and suggest how the underlying obstacles to democratic cooperation between citizens and state institutions can be overcome across a range of policy areas and in varied national contexts.

It took two hundred years to implement democracy within the nation-state, from the emergence of democratic theories during the Enlightenment to the introduction of popular government after World War I. If the same process were to follow at the international level, and the treaty of Versailles was taken as the baseline for the calculation, a democratic world order could be expected to emerge by 2119 - hence the title of this book. The point is the long perspective. Most scholars in mainstream political science and international relations are skeptical of the prospect of global democracy and believe that in the short run the fight against corruption and abuse of power is a more pressing task. This is true and very much an important mission; as such, corruption is treated in a special chapter of the book.

This is the first comprehensive study of the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe which includes the processes in party-formation, political culture-building, institution-building and economic transformation, and to differentiate between areas and countries. East and southeastern Europe are included as well as the Republics of the former Soviet Union. The theories of transformation to democracy developed in former transitions, such as 1919, 1945 and the 1970s are tested in the case of Eastern Europe. In many areas the picture developed by the author is not very optimistic. He feels that 'Anocracy', a mixture between democracy and authoritarian regimes, is likely to develop in many countries.

Presenting a new framework for analysing the intra-party representation and accommodation of ethnic diversity, Bogaards proposes the concept of the 'consociational party' to reveal how consociationalism within parties differs from that among parties.
This unique comparative study examines minority representation and power sharing, in Canada, Fiji, India, Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa, and Yugoslavia, and notes why this matters for social peace and democracy. Case studies of the (former) ruling parties in these diverse societies show how consociational parties struggle with the dual role of representation and accommodation, weakening their performance. Consociational parties have a narrow support base, tend to be dominated by one group, provide conflict management only when in power, benefit from majoritarian institutions, and are associated with democratic decline, breakdown, and even dictatorship. These differences have so far gone unnoticed in the literature, but are brought out by Bogaards' systematic empirical analysis.

Truth commissions, official apologies and reparations are just some of the transitional justice mechanisms embraced by established democracies. This groundbreaking work of political theory explains how these forms of state redress repair the damage state wrongdoing inflicts upon political legitimacy. Richly illustrated with real-life examples, the book's 'legitimating theory' explains the connections, and the conflicts, between the transitional practice of administrative, corrective and restorative justice. The book shows how political responses to state wrongdoing are part of a larger transitional history of the post-War 'rights revolution' in the settler democracies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The result is an incisive theoretical exploration that not only explains the rectificatory work of established democracies but also provides new ways to think about the broader field of transitional justice.

This book critically examines the realities of liberal democracy: its elitism and non-accountability; and its inequalities and injustices. Participatory systems and movements, whether in Athens, seventeenth and nineteenth-century England, or South Africa 1970-90, are more effective in satisfying the democratic aspirations of the people and in curtailing ambitious elites than what is passed off now as 'democracy.'By interrogating contemporary democratic regimes in the United States, and in Botswana and South Africa, the severe limitations and constraints inherent in liberal democracy are highlighted. The need for a clear evaluation of what constitutes democracy emerges as a powerful message of Kenneth Good's argument.

"The book evaluates alternative policy options for the African countries to overcome the food crisis and the changing structure of world trade to sustain their impressive growth of the early 2000s. These policies must go beyond economic reforms and seek a solution to the entrenched political problems that divided the continent"--Provided by publisher.