This up-to-date collection analyzes Romania's experiences of the transition form the harsh realities of the Ceausescu dictatorship to the uncertainties of the efforts to consolidate democracy and introduce a market economy. This volume focuses on Romania's progress in coming to terms with the legacy of its communist past, the realities of pluralism, the introduction of a market economy, and the challenge of European integration.

This book reexamines classical issues in the relationship between indifferent forms of democratization, civil, political and social--in Chile's transition to democracy during the 1990's. It highlights the lasting institutional limits tosocial democratization in countries that are democratizing in the context ofradical market reforms and provides an account of the politics of limiting social deepening in the crucial early years of Chile's transition, including a detailed examination of the influence of local union history and labor relations.

This book offers an innovative framework for understanding the role of civil society in regional and global policymaking. Using political economy analysis, Gerard demonstrates that ASEAN's people-oriented agenda builds legitimacy, while sidelining its detractors.

This collection examines the current stage of multicultural challenges and their influence on democracy in 12 countries of Europe and East Asia. Contributors draw out the differences between European and East Asian approaches to universalizing locality and localizing global norms regarding human rights and democratic individuality.

South Africa's 1994 election was widely hailed around the world as miraculous. In this book, Anthony Butler examines South African experiences to cast doubt on this celebratory attitude to democracy. Contemporary political analysis highlights the benefits that democracy can sometimes bring. Butler, by contrast, argues that democracy can be malign. He attacks the myth that democracy ended apartheid, and shows that democratic practices themselves contributed to its evils. The author also explores weaknesses in political science as a discipline. This book will be essential reading for specialists in South Africa, and will appeal to political theorists, students of comparative politics, and historians.

The important theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Touraine, discussed in this book, seek to explain and resolve the "crisis of democracy." They start from a critique of structural inequality in political, economic and social fields - so much in contrast to democratic principles. But their theoretical perspectives and social conclusions diverge. Bourdieu insists on the radical overthrow of dominant institutions and their control of knowledge ("symbolic power"). Touraine advocates reformist cooperation as well as contestation between social movements and political institutions. Their different approaches provide compelling insights into the "democratic deficit" of modern society, that is, inability to overcome the widespread discrimination affecting women, the weaknesses of the environmental movement, persisting educational inequalities and the precarious nature of work in a global economy.

This book highlights the rightful role of citizens as per the constitution of the country for participation in Governance of a smart city using electronic means such as high speed fiber optic networks, the internet, and mobile computing as well as Internet of Things that have the ability to transform the dominant role of citizens and technology in smart cities. These technologies can transform the way in which business is conducted, the interaction of interface with citizens and academic institutions, and improve interactions between business, industry, and city government.

This book analyses the role of the European Union in the process of institutional change in its Eastern neighbourhood and explains why EU policies arrive at contradictory outcomes at the sectoral level. Combining EU studies approaches with insights from the fields of new institutionalism, international development studies and transnationalisation, it explains how the EU policies contribute to rule persistence or lead to institutional change. Highlighting the importance of investigating how the policies of external intervention interact with domestic institutions, the book also provides a coherent presentation of the political and economic problems of Ukraine and Moldova and a comparative analysis in key areas at critical junctures of their development. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics and more broadly to International Relations, post-Soviet and Russian studies.

"The Democratization of Albania "describes" "a multi-year project designed to promote democracy in Albania through the country’s entire educational system. Instructional materials were developed, including a basic manual, to introduce open and interactive teaching by a network of almost 3000 teachers and educators, who were trained through the project on the proper application of the materials developed. To sustain the network, five democratic civic education centers were established in as many universities throughout the country. Success with young people led the author to go beyond describing the project and propose in the book a new model for accelerating the process of democratization. This can be achieved by empowering ordinary citizens through education to actively participate in building their country’s democracy.

This book examines the democratic ideas of Michael Manley, Jamaican prime minister from 1972 to 1980, and again from 1989 to 1992, during his government in the 1970s. Manley wrote three books during or about that period, The Politics of Change, A Voice at the Workplace, and Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery. The first two laid out his policy ideas regarding egalitarian democratic change and economic democracy, and the third reprised those ideas and assessed their implementation and the obstacles they faced during the eight and a half years Manley served as prime minister. While Manley was seen as a socialist firebrand, a close examination of his ideas reveals a democratic nationalist whose motivation was love of country and a desire to promote national self-confidence and egalitarianism within the framework of liberal democracy and a reformed capitalism.

Representative democracy in Britain does not work. Or more accurately, its critics argue that it does not work as theories of representative democracy would lead us to expect. If the starting point for understanding is taken to be a 'standard model' of representative democracy then that model does not get us very far. Yet it is precisely such a model that modern British governments continue to use to legitimate their actions. Democratic Incongruities explains why the standard model is deficient, why recent 'reconceptualisations' of democracy and representation come with their own problems, and why theory and political practice have to address the 'inclusion-exclusion paradox' at the core of representative democracy. The fundamental question posed in this book is of the compatibility - both ideationally and practically - of representation with democracy. The answers are found in an examination of a series of 'problems' associated with this paradox in the context of British politics: of 'the people', of the representational transmission of power; of elected representatives; of representative government (specifically the Westminster model); and of citizen participation.

What are the prospects of the liberal democratic form of state spreading throughout the world? "Democracy and the Global System" analyzes the relationship between liberal democracy and the international system while developing a critique of liberal internationalism. Fabian Biancardi examines some of the key questions of modern politics and the major ideas of a number of significant authors and texts. While sympathetic to the aim of spreading liberal democracy, he demonstrates the many tensions and contradictions involved in achieving this outcome.

This book challenges the view that liberal democracy is the inevitable outcome of economic modernization. Focusing on the stable and prosperous societies of Pacific Asia, it argues that contemporary political arrangements are legitimised by the values of hierarchy, familism and harmony. An arrangement that clearly contrasts with a western understanding of political liberalism and the communicatory democracy it facilitates. Instead of political change resulting from a demand for autonomy by interest groups in civil society, the adoption of democratic practice in Asia ought to be viewed primarily as a state strategy to manage socio-economic change.

The editors of this collection bring together scholars of comparative politics, political philosophy and democratic theory to investigate the vital transformative role of dissident democratic leaders in Asia. The contributors explore the challenges and obstacles faced by leaders seeking to introduce reforms into regimes that are either imperfectly democratic or frankly hostile to democratic practices and institutions. It also examines the way leaders conduct themselves democratically in the course of their struggle and how they respond to demands to maintain democratic dissent once they succeed.

The essence of the covenant tradition is the idea of human beings freely associating for common purposes through pacts of mutual commitment. In the political realm, the idea of covenant has been particularly influential in frontierlands. Reinformed by the idea of the federated commonwealth that emerged out of the Protestant Reformation, covenant eventually fostered the establishment of the United States of America and our modern idea of federalism. More recently, these great products of the covenant tradition helped to bring about the collapse of twentieth-century totalitarianism and fueled a new spirit in contemporary political life throughout the world. A return to political covenantalism seems to be an appropriate response to the crisis of modern civilization and the new epoch after World War II. "Covenant and Civil Society "is the final volume in Elazar's monumental series "The Covenant Tradition in Politics. "In it, he traces the tradition's rebirth and development in the modern epoch.

"Covenant and Civil Society "also considers issues of communal solidarity on a postmodern basis. Elazar traces the transition from the covenanted commonwealth of the Protestant Reformation to the civil society of the modern epoch, and explores the covenant's role in the modern statist era and the development of modern democracy. Scandiriavia, and the Latin-Germanic borderlands, many of which are typically thought of as examples of organic or hierarchical models. Elazar argues that a covenantal model is more appropriate and is part of the Western tradition as such.

The book concludes with examination of the present and future of covenantal thought. Today, the global spread of federalism, most clearly seen in the formation of the European Union, is also seen in local and private arenas. Elazar considers the benefits of covenantal thought while balancing such optimism with a realistic sense of its limits. As a prescription for change, "Covenant and Civil Society "is a fundamental and original contribution. Along with the previous volumes in this series, all available from Transaction, it will be of deep interest to historians, social scientists, political theorists, and theologians of all persuasions.

The first volume in a series of comparative studies within the ESRC's Whitehall Programme focuses on core executives in five parliamentary democracies comparing the Westminster model as in Australia, Canada and Britain with the continental democracies of Germany and the Netherlands showing how political leadership is shackled by a vast array of constraints, from globalisation to internal fragmentation and rationalisation, making a heroic model of decisive political leadership hard to sustain.

In Western countries, the theories and practices of citizenship and democracy have come under intense scrutiny. These are premised on a relatively autonomous nation state, yet national boundaries are now being tested through globalization. At the same time they are being challenged by new forms of identity based on communities, minorities and transnational belonging. Increasingly, the nation state is incapable of delivering on its promise of economic, political and social rights. The contributions in this book focus on the relationship between citizenship and difference, highlighting new tensions between the local and the global.

Democracy has many attractive features. Among them is its tendency to track the truth, at least under certain idealized assumptions. That basic result has been known since 1785, when Condorcet published his famous jury theorem. But that theorem has typically been dismissed as little more than a mathematical curiosity, with assumptions too restrictive for it to apply to the real world. In An Epistemic Theory of Democracy, Goodin and Spiekermann propose different ways of interpreting voter independence and competence to make jury theorems more generally applicable. They go on to assess a wide range of familiar political practices and alternative institutional arrangements, to determine what constellation of them might most fully exploit the truth-tracking potential of majoritarian democracy. The book closes with a discussion of how epistemic democracy might be undermined, using as case studies the Trump and Brexit campaigns.

This book analyses the processes and factors that contributed to the emergence and eventual consolidation of the Greek Cypriot Right in the era of British colonialism. It seeks to understand political developments in Cyprus in the period extending from 1900 to 1955 with regard to their social, ideological and economic determinants. By examining changing forms of political life, a general reconstitution of the political sphere and a specific set of changes in the ideology and organisation of the Greek Cypriots, the author offers a framework for analysing Greek Cypriot right-wing party politics, identifying its sources of mobilisation and main actors such as the Church of Cyprus, and understanding its subsequent transformations.

This book offers novel insights about the ability of a democracy to accommodate violence. In El Salvador, the end of war has brought about a violent peace, one in which various forms of violence have become incorporated into Salvadorans' imaginaries and enactments of democracy. Based on ethnographic research, The Violence of Democracy argues that war legacies and the country's neoliberalization have enabled an intricate entanglement of violence and political life in postwar El Salvador. This volume explores various manifestations of this entanglement: the clandestine connections between violent entrepreneurs and political actors; the blurring of the licit and illicit through the consolidation of economies of violence; and the reenactment of latent wartime conflicts and political cleavages during postwar electoral seasons. The author also discusses the potential for grassroots memory work and a political party shift to foster hopeful visions of the future and, ultimately, to transform the country's violent democracy.

The European Union means many different things to its many peoples. In Germany, for example, the European project was conceived mainly as post-national, or even post-sovereign. In France, by contrast, President Emmanuel Macron has pursued the vision of a sovereign Europe; that is, an EU that would become a formidable geopolitical actor. Yet, instead, Europe has struggled to ascertain its values abroad and even domestically, facing a sovereignist rebellion from its newer member states, such as Hungary and Poland, and the departure of Britain. The eurozone crisis has undermined the EU's economic credentials, the refugee crisis its societal cohesion, the failure to stand up to Russia its sense of purpose, and the Covid-19 pandemic its credibility as a protector of European citizens. The key argument of this book is that the multiple crises of the European project are caused by one underlying factor: its bold attempt to overcome the age of nation-states. Left unchecked, supranational institutions tend to become ever more bureaucratic, eluding control of the people they are meant to serve. The logic of technocracy is thus pitted against the democratic impulse, which the European Union is supposed to embody. Democracy in Europe has suffered as a result.

Forty-one different African states have adopted over fifty-seven new constitutions since 1989; yet few of these have become foundations for democracy. Failed transitions, subsequent instability, and violent conflict make it clear that democracy cannot simply be constructed by holding elections and implementing new constitutions.

Unlike other attempts to explain both the frequent failures and the success stories of African constitutionalism by focusing on constitutional outcomes, Wing's study examines the "process" by which constitutions and democratic institutions are constructed. Based on extensive field work in Mali, this book explores how innovative constitutional dialogues involving participation, negotiation, and recognition of groups previously excluded from political decision-making may be the key to a legitimate constitution.Winner of the 2009 Best Book Award from the African Politics Conference Group

This book addresses the question: "What should be the appropriate limits to free speech?" The author claims that it is the state, rather than abstract principles, that must provide the answer. The book defends a version of Hobbesian absolutism and rejects the dominant liberal idea that there is a right (human or civil) setting the boundaries of free speech. This liberal view can be known as the "principled defence of free speech", in which speech is established as a constitutional principle that has priority over the state. The author instead offers an "unprincipled approach to free speech", suggesting that the boundaries of speech must necessarily be set by the state, which in liberal democracies means through social and political contestation. The final chapter applies the argument to the topic of hate speech and argues that it is appropriate to limit such speech when it causes harm and offense. The book will be of use to students and scholars across political theory, political science, sociology, philosophy and law.

This book offers a comparative perspective on data protection and cybersecurity in Europe. In light of the digital revolution and the implementation of social media applications and big data innovations, it analyzes threat perceptions regarding privacy and cyber security, and examines socio-political differences in the fundamental conceptions and narratives of privacy, and in data protection regimes, across various European countries. The first part of the book raises fundamental legal and ethical questions concerning data protection; the second analyses discourses on cybersecurity and data protection in various European countries; and the third part discusses EU regulations and norms intended to create harmonized data protection regimes.

Notwithstanding its contemporary critics, political representation remains at the core of democratic politics. Based on a comparative research project that gathered data from observations, surveys, experiments and expert interviews, this book examines the process and the quality of political representation in France and Germany from a dual perspective. First, it analyzes MPs' behavior during their district activities. Second, it investigates the perceptions and evaluations of the represented, the French and German citizens. In ten chapters different facets of MPs' activities as well as citizens' attitudes are comparatively investigated. The book is relevant for Politics scholars and practitioners at national parliaments to better understand representative democracies, and it may also contribute to improve representation itself.