Today, regional parties in India win nearly as many votes as national parties. In Why Regional Parties?, Professor Adam Ziegfeld questions the conventional wisdom that regional parties in India are electorally successful because they harness popular grievances and benefit from strong regional identities. He draws on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evidence from over eighteen months of field research to demonstrate that regional parties are, in actuality, successful because they represent expedient options for office-seeking politicians. By focusing on clientelism, coalition government, and state-level factional alignments, Ziegfeld explains why politicians in India find membership in a regional party appealing. He therefore accounts for the remarkable success of India's regional parties and, in doing so, outlines how party systems take root and evolve in democracies where patronage, vote buying, and machine politics are common.

Foregrounding religious, racialized and gendered disputes, Decision Making and Controversies in State Supreme Courts examines state supreme court decision making during controversies. Using case studies within Alabama, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, Salmon Shomade identifies and analyses the predominant factors influencing decision making in times of court contention. In this book, Shomade assesses how the justices' interpersonal dynamics and controversial issues of religion, race, and gender impact their decision making. Specifically, the book focuses on former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and the Ten Commandments monument crisis, Louisiana Chief Justice Bernette Johnson and her elevation dispute, and former Wisconsin Justice David Prosser and his conflicts with two female colleagues. The book contributes to the literature on decision making in state appellate courts by building upon established models utilized for assessing these courts.

Are politics local? Why? Where? When? How do we measure local versus national politics? And what are the effects? This book provides answers to these questions, within an explicitly comparative framework, including both advanced and developing democracies. It does so by using a statistically-based and graphical account of party nationalization, providing methodology and data for legislative elections covering scores of parties across dozens of countries. The book divides party nationalization into two dimensions - static and dynamic - to capture different aspects of localism, both with important implications for representation. Static nationalization measures the consistency in a party's support across the country and thus shows whether parties are able to encompass local concerns into their platforms. Dynamic nationalization, in turn, measures the consistency among the districts in over-time change in electoral results, under the presumption that where districts differ in their electoral responses, local factors must drive politics. Each of the two dimensions, in sum, considers representation from the perspective of the mix of national versus local politics.

Border regions are often considered to be the neglected margins. In this book, Paul Nugent argues that through a comparison of the Senegambia and the trans-Volta (Ghana/Togo), we can see that the geographical margins have shaped notional centres at least as much as the reverse. Through a study of three centuries of history, this book demonstrates that states were forged through an extended process of converting a topography of settled states and slaving frontiers into colonial borders. It argues that post-colonial states and larger social contracts have been configured very differently as a consequence. It underscores the impact on regional dynamics and the phenomenon of peripheral urbanism. Nugent also addresses the manner in which a variegated sense of community has been forged amongst Mandinka, Jola, Ewe and Agotime populations who have both shaped and been shaped by the border. This is an exercise in reciprocal comparison and shuttles between scales, from the local and the particular to the national and the regional.

Sources of Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Behavior delves into the nature and importance of the relationship between sources of knowledge and entrepreneurial behavior, and should be of interest to both academics and policy-makers. David B. Audretsch and Albert N. Link use the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship as the conceptual foundation for why individuals decide to become entrepreneurs. Then, using a database of more than 4,000 small and relatively new European companies from 10 different countries, called the AEGIS database, Audretsch and Link offer new insights about the relationship between knowledge sources and entrepreneurial behavior. In their analysis of the empirical evidence in support of the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship, Audretsch and Link conclude that there is no singular source of knowledge driving entrepreneurship, but a plethora of knowledge sources, each associated with different dimensions of entrepreneurial activity. The intellectual breakthrough in this book is not that knowledge matters or that it especially matters for entrepreneurship. Rather, Audretsch and Link show that knowledge, and especially entrepreneurial knowledge, is not a homogeneous phenomenon. There are multiple sources of knowledge that act on entrepreneurial performance in a myriad of ways.

Indonesia is Southeast Asia's largest economy and freest democracy yet vested interests and local politics serve as formidable obstacles to infrastructure reform. In this critical analysis of the politics inhibiting infrastructure investment, Jamie S. Davidson utilizes evidence from his research, press reports and rarely used consultancy studies to challenge mainstream explanations for low investment rates and the sluggish adoption of liberalizing reforms. He argues that obstacles have less to do with weak formal institutions and low fiscal capacities of the state than with entrenched, rent-seeking interests, misaligned central-local government relations, and state-society struggles over land. Using a political-sociological approach, Davidson demonstrates that 'getting the politics right' matters as much as getting the prices right or putting the proper institutional safeguards in place for infrastructure development. This innovative account and its conclusions will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asia and policymakers of infrastructure investment and economic growth.

Why do some ethno-national groups live peacefully with the states that govern them, whereas others develop into serious threats to state authority? Through a comparative historical analysis, this book compares the evolution of Kurdish mobilization in Turkey with the Berber mobilization in Morocco by looking at the different nation-building strategies of the respective states. Using a variety of sources, including archival documents, interviews, and memoirs, Senem Aslan emphasizes the varying levels of willingness and the varying capabilities of the Turkish and Moroccan states to intrude into their citizens' lives. She argues that complex interactions at the ground level - where states have demanded changes in everyday behavior, such as how to dress, what language to speak, what names to give children, and more mundane practices - account for the nature of emerging state-minority relations. By taking the local and informal interactions between state officials and citizens seriously, this study calls attention to the actual implementation of state policies and the often unintended consequences of these policies.

As recently as the early 1960s, Latinos were almost totally excluded from city politics. This makes the rise of Latino mayors in the past three decades a remarkable American story-one that explains ethnic succession, changing urban demography, and political contexts. The vibrant collection Latino Mayors features case studies of eleven Latino mayors in six American cities: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Denver, Hartford, Miami, and Providence. The editors and contributors analyze Latino mayors for their governing styles and policies. They describe how candidates shaped race, class, and economic issues-particularly in deracialized campaigns. Latino Mayors also addresses coalition politics, political incorporation, and how community groups operate, as well as the challenges these pioneers have faced in office from political tensions and governance issues that sometimes even harm Latinos. Ultimately, Latino Mayors charts the performances, successes, and failures of these elected officials to represent their constituents in a changing economic and urban environment. Contributors include: Stefanie Chambers, Carlos E. Cuellar, Emily M. Farris, Maria Ilcheva, Robert Preuhs, Heywood T. Sanders, Ellen Shiau, and the editors.

As recently as the early 1960s, Latinos were almost totally excluded from city politics. This makes the rise of Latino mayors in the past three decades a remarkable American story—one that explains ethnic succession, changing urban demography, and political contexts. The vibrant collection Latino Mayors features case studies of eleven Latino mayors in six American cities: San Antonio, Los Angeles, Denver, Hartford, Miami, and Providence. The editors and contributors analyze Latino mayors for their governing styles and policies. They describe how candidates shaped race, class, and economic issues—particularly in deracialized campaigns. Latino Mayors also addresses coalition politics, political incorporation, and how community groups operate, as well as the challenges these pioneers have faced in office from political tensions and governance issues that sometimes even harm Latinos.  Ultimately, Latino Mayors charts the performances, successes, and failures of these elected officials to represent their constituents in a changing economic and urban environment. Contributors include: Stefanie Chambers, Carlos E. Cuéllar, Emily M. Farris, Maria Ilcheva, Robert Preuhs, Heywood T. Sanders, Ellen Shiau, and the editors.

El libro presenta articulos derivados de investigaciones que abordan, desde diferentes angulos, el tema de la memoria politica en algunos paises de America Latina como Colombia, Argentina y Brasil. Los trabajos evidencian, en las luchas por la memoria, un gesto de sublevacion, de protesta, de resistencia frente a los relatos dominantes que inundan la esfera publica y no permiten la expresion de otras narrativas, ni el surgimiento de las otras memorias. En la primera parte del libro la discusion esta centrada en las formas de registrar la memoria, como representacion a traves del cine, o como documento y repertorios de accion politica en la escena publica o en el ambito juridico. La segunda presenta trabajos que analizan el testimonio, lo dicho y lo silenciado. El valor de aquel que sobrevive para dar testimonio, los silencios que se guardan a la espera del momento y el contexto favorable para el habla y las disputas presentes en esas diferentes narrativas que se construyen sobre el pasado.

Das voelkergewohnheitsrechtliche Interventionsverbot ist seit jeher ein unverzichtbares Element des internationalen Friedenssicherungssystems. Trotz seiner unbestrittenen Wichtigkeit ist unklar, welche Handlungsweisen gegenwartig von dem Verbot umfasst sind. Aufbauend auf eine umfassende Auswertung der Staatenpraxis seit 2011 untersucht die Autorin, unter welchen Voraussetzungen Regierungen und Oppositionsbewegungen in Burgerkriegen voelkerrechtsgemass unterstutzt werden durfen. Angesichts der Schneise der Verwustung, die sich seit Beginn des "Arabischen Fruhlings" durch die betroffenen Lander erstreckt, hinterfragt die Autorin die kontemporare rechtliche Relevanz des Interventionsverbots.

Why have so many established political parties across Latin America collapsed in recent years? Party Brands in Crisis offers an explanation that highlights the effect of elite actions on voter behavior. During the 1980s and 1990s, political elites across the region implemented policies inconsistent with the traditional positions of their party, provoked internal party conflicts, and formed strange-bedfellow alliances with traditional rivals. These actions diluted party brands and eroded voter attachment. Without the assured support of a partisan base, parties became more susceptible to short-term retrospective voting, and voters without party attachments deserted incumbent parties when they performed poorly. Party Brands in Crisis offers the first general explanation of party breakdown in Latin America, reinforcing the interaction between elite behavior and mass attitudes.

What threatens the property rights of business owners? And what makes these rights secure? This book transcends the conventional diagnosis of the issue in modern developing countries by moving beyond expropriation by the state ruler or by petty bureaucratic corruption. It identifies 'agent predation' as a novel threat type, showing it to be particularly widespread and detrimental. The book also questions the orthodox prescription: institutionalized state commitment cannot secure property rights against agent predation. Instead, this volume argues that business actors can hold the predatory state agents accountable through firm-level alliances with foreign actors, labor, and local communities. Beyond securing ownership, such alliances promote rule of law in a rent-seeking society. Taking Russia and Ukraine between 2000 and 2012 as its empirical focus, the book advances these arguments by drawing on more than 150 qualitative interviews with business owners, policy makers, and bureaucrats, as well as an original large-N survey of firms.

Renewed interest in Swiss history has sought to overcome the old stereotypes of peasant liberty and republican exceptionalism. The heroic age of the Confederation in the fifteenth century is now seen as a turning-point as the Swiss polity achieved a measure of institutional consolidation and stability, and began to mark out clear frontiers. The Swiss and their Neighbours, 1460-1560 questions both assumptions. It argues that the administration of the common lordships by the cantons collectively gave rise to as much discord as co-operation, and remained a pragmatic device not a political principle. It argues that the Swiss War of 1499 was an avoidable catastrophe, from which developed a modus vivendi between the Swiss and the Empire as the Rhine became a buffer-zone, not a boundary. It then investigates the background to Bern's conquest of the Vaud in 1536, under the guise of relieving Geneva from beleaguerment, to suggest that Bern's actions were driven not by predeterminate territorial expansion but by the need to halt French designs upon Geneva and Savoy. The geopolitical balance of the Confederation was fundamentally altered by Bern's acquisition of the Vaud and adjacent lands. Nevertheless, the political fabric of the Confederation, which had been tested to the brink during the Reformation, proved itself flexible enough to absorb such a major reorientation, not least because what held the Confederation together was not so much institutions as a sense of common identity and mutual obligation forged during the Burgundian Wars of the 1470s.

Das Buch untersucht in unterschiedlichen raumlichen Kontexten den Zusammenhang von Religion und Politik vom 7. Jahrhundert bis in die jungste Vergangenheit. Aus historischer, theologisch-systematischer und literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive werden die Verflechtung der Religion mit Macht und Gewalt sowie der Umgang mit religioeser Pluralitat in der Vergangenheit vor Augen gefuhrt. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit finden die Weltreligionen Christentum und Islam. Die AutorInnen analysieren die Wurzeln aktueller Problemlagen und die vielfaltige politische Instrumentalisierung des Religioesen sowie die Grundkonstellationen im historischen Wandel.

In one of the only accounts of Latino legislative behavior, Stella M. Rouse examines how well the growing Latino population translates their increased presence into legislative influence. Latinos in the Legislative Process explores Latino representation by considering the role of ethnicity throughout the legislative process - from bill sponsorship, to committee deliberations, to floor votes - in seven state legislatures. Rouse first identifies issues that are priorities for Latinos and tells us whether a Latino political agenda exists. She then provides a theoretical framework for ethnicity in legislative behavior and outcomes. Rouse demonstrates that ethnicity is a complex dynamic that plays a variable role in the legislative process. Thus, Latino representation cannot be viewed monolithically.

Unsere Demokratien stehen vor grossen politischen Herausforderungen, nicht zuletzt durch populistische Bewegungen und die Ruckkehr nationalistischer Trugbilder. Die Autoren des Bandes befragen das kritische philosophische, emanzipatorische Denken der Existentialisten Sartre, Camus und Beauvoir nicht nur in ihrem Zwiegesprach miteinander, sondern auch mit Vorlaufern, Wegbereitern, Nachfolgern wie Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Arendt, Foucault und Butler und Gegnern wie Schmitt.

This accessible text summarizes and explains the structure of British local government, focusing on key changes introduced during the Thatcher/Major years and initiatives implemented by the current Labour administration. While offering a detailed discussion of these policies, the book examines how local government has sought to respond in a proactive way to a range of important social, political and economic changes.

Readers are introduced to local government as a lively and complex site of political engagement. British local government is set in a wider political, social and theoretical context. Throughout, the authors argue that the attempt by the Thatcher and Major administrations of 1979-97 to push local government into the role of merely administrating centrally defined policies was largely short-circuited. While outlining and explaining these changes and their effects, the authors argue that far from being defenceless victims of central government, local authorities devised numerous strategies to protect their independent policy-making role. The authors go on to examine the proposals for change introduced by the Labour government and assess their implications for local government in the twenty-first century.

This book will be essential reading for lecturers and students of local government, politics, public policy and urban policy, as well as practitioners.

How do public employees win and lose their collective bargaining rights? And how can public sector labor unions protect those rights? These are the questions answered in From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging. Dominic Wells takes a mixed-methods approach and uses more than five decades of state-level data to analyze the expansion and restriction of rights.   Wells identifies the factors that led states to expand collective bargaining rights to public employees, and the conditions under which public employee labor unions can defend against unfavorable state legislation. He presents case studies and coalition strategies from Ohio and Wisconsin to demonstrate how labor unions failed to protect their rights in one state and succeeded in another.  From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging also provides a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the economic, political, and cultural factors that both led states to adopt policies that reduced the obstacles to unionization and also led other states to adopt policies that increased the difficulty to form and maintain a labor union. In his conclusion, Wells suggests the path forward for public sector labor unions and what policies need to be implemented to improve employee labor relations.

The level of government responsible for implementing policies affects intent, services provided, and ultimate outcomes. The decision about where to locate such responsibility is the federal design dilemma faced by Congress. Taking a new approach to this delegation and decentralization, The Federal Design Dilemma focuses on individual members of Congress. Not only are these legislators elected by constituents from their states, they also consider the outcomes that will result from state-level versus national executive branch implementation of policies. Here, Pamela J. Clouser McCann documents congressional intergovernmental delegation between 1973 and 2010, and how individual legislators voted on decentralization and centralization choices. Clouser McCann traces the path of the Affordable Care Act from legislative proposals in each chamber to its final enactment, focusing on how legislators wrestled with their own intergovernmental context and the federal design of health insurance reform in the face of political challenges.

The search for a robust balance of power is a continuous challenge for multilevel political system. Institutions like parliaments or courts can protect the existing order. However, necessary adjustments to economic, social, or international challenges or policies determined to improve ineffective structures or to prevent disintegration require constitutional amendments. Whereas constitutional policy appears as essential to maintain balance, changing a constitution is rather difficult in multilevel governments. Due to the veto power of many actors pursuing divergent interests, policies aiming to redistribute power or fiscal resources risk to end in the joint decision trap. Hence, multilevel government is confronted by a fundamental dilemma. Constitutional Policy in Multilevel Government compares processes of constitutional reform in federal and regionalized states. Based on a theoretical framework emphasizing the relevance of negotiations in parliamentary, intergovernmental, and societal arenas, it identifies conditions for successful reforms and explains the consequences of failed reforms. Moreover, it highlights the interplay of reform processes and constitutional evolution as essential to maintaining a robust balance of power. The book demonstrates that an appropriate arrangement of multiple arenas of negotiation including executives, members of parliament and civil society organizations, and sequential order of reform processes proves fundamental to prevent federal or regionalized governments from becoming either instable or ending with rigid constitutions. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the VU Amsterdam, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

Die 15. Entwicklungspolitischen Hochschulwochen, die Sudwind Salzburg in Kooperation mit der Universitat Salzburg durchfuhrte, nahmen das "Europaische Jahr fur Entwicklung" (2015) zum Anlass, die Herausforderung "Entwicklung" aufzugreifen und einer interdisziplinaren Analyse zu unterziehen. Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter entwicklungspolitischer Organisationen und Initiativen, der Universitat Salzburg sowie weiterer wissenschaftlicher Einrichtungen, die bei den Entwicklungspolitischen Hochschulwochen mitwirkten, setzen sich in ihren Beitragen mit verschiedenen Fragestellungen (Klimawandel, Migration, Globalisierung, Freihandelsabkommen, Krisen und Konflikte) auseinander. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes wollen zu einer kritischen Bewusstseinsbildung beitragen und Wege aufzeigen, die angesichts drangender globaler Probleme "Zukunft entwickeln".

The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government is an historic undertaking. It contains a wide range of essays that define the important questions in the field, evaluate where we are in answering them, and set the direction and terms of discourse for future work. The Handbook will have a substantial influence in defining the field for years to come. The chapters critically assess both the key works of state and local politics literature and the ways in which the sub-field has developed. It covers the main areas of study in subnational politics by exploring the central contributions to the comparative study of institutions, behavior, and policy in the American context. Each chapter outlines an agenda for future research.

Ist der Islamische Staat (IS) ein Terrornetzwerk, eine Guerillaorganisation oder doch ein Staat? Dieses Buch beantwortet die Frage, indem es hinter die Fassade des Kalifats blickt: Es zeigt auf, wer die Entscheidungstrager des IS sind und nach welcher Ideologie und Strategie sie denken und handeln. Zudem betrachtet es den Aufbau der Organisationsstruktur und der transnationalen Vernetzung. Auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse diskutiert diese Studie am Ende ebenfalls potentielle Gegenmassnahmen. Durch eine systematisch-kritische Analyse und Auswertung der wichtigsten Fachliteratur zum IS filtert dieses Werk die zuverlassigen Informationen uber den Akteur heraus, sodass am Ende ein umfangreiches Gesamtbild prasentiert wird. Vor dem Hintergrund der Terrorismusforschung verortet die Studie den IS als einen Hybrid aus Terror-und Guerillaorganisation.