This accessible new textbook situates the European Union in a dramatically changed world order. Resisting a more traditional and abstract introduction to the institutions, structures and policy making processes of the EU, this innovative new text cuts through the jargon to demonstrate how hard the EU must work to retain its international influence. Taking into account the latest empirical developments, including the spread of war and violence in the East with Ukraine and the ongoing turbulent politics of North Africa and the Middle East, Richard Youngs - an expert in the field - introduces us to how the EU has been forced to act differently. The book is unique in offering an outside-in conceptual framework that inverts the way that the EU external action is studied and understood. It unpacks the different international challenges the EU has faced in recent years, including the weakening of global order, the need for more protective security, geo-economic competition, climate change and conflicts to its east and south. In each case the book examines how the EU has responded and how its core international identity has changed as a result, assessing whether the Union still retains strong global influence. This book is the ideal companion for students taking modules on the European Union's foreign policy, global politics, and for students of European Union Politics more broadly at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In recent years serious concerns emerged over the state of European democracy. Many democracy indices are reporting a year-on-year drift towards less liberal politics in the countries of the European Union. Polls regularly suggest that the voters are coming to question democratic norms more seriously than for many decades. Here, Richard Youngs assesses these risks as many analysts, journalists and politicians stressed the danger of Europe descending into an era of conflict, driven by xenophobic nationalism and nativist authoritarians slowly dismantling liberal democratic rights. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified these fears. There is another side of the democratic equation, however. Youngs argues that governments, EU institutions, political parties, citizens and civil society organisations have gradually begun to push back in defence of democracy. With each chapter, Youngs shows how many governmental, political and social actors have developed responses to Europe's democratic malaise at multiple levels. Europe's democracy problems have been grave and far-reaching. Yet, a spirit of democratic resistance has slowly taken shape. This book argues that the pro-democratic fightback may be belated, but it is real and has assumed significant traction with various types of democratic reform underway, including citizen initiatives, political-party changes, digital activism and EU-level responses.

This innovative collection presents original theoretical analyses and previously unpublished empirical research on criminal victimisation. Following an overview of the development and deficiencies of victimology,subsequent chapters present more detailed challenges to stereotypical conceptions of victimisation through their focus on: male victims of domestic violence; victims of male-on-male rape; corporate victims; and the 'victim-offenders' who are the recipients of IRA punishment beatings. The second half of the book considers criminal justice responses to victimisation, focusing in particular on the potential of, and limits to, restorative justice, the social (and gendered) construction of the victim within contested trials and the exclusionary nature of current 'victim-centred' initiatives. This important book will further the debate on how we conceptualise victims as well as their appropriate role within the criminal justice system. New Visions of Crime Victims will be of interest to academics, students, criminal justice practitioners and policy-makers. It has particular implications for scholarship in the fields of victimology, restorative justice and feminist approaches to criminology and criminal justice. The integration of work by established criminologists, such as Carolyn Hoyle, Paul Rock, Andrew Sanders and Richard Young with that of young, previously unpublished scholars, makes for an interesting and stimulating book. As well as being a valuable addition to the literature, it can be used to support undergraduate and postgraduate courses in criminal justice and criminology.

Thoroughly discussing the problems of uniting two independent companies (problems which are commonly underestimated), this book covers a wide range of subjects such as: laws and regulations governing mergers; consideration of financial and material resources; tax views; research and development prospects, as well as the matching and augmenting of skills and equipment of both companies and the adjustments to be made to stock-holders and servicers. The issues of morale, retaining trained personnel and the rearrangement of employee benefits and pensions are also examined.

This book presents a wholly new perspective on the Child Support Agency. The authors were granted privileged access to the CSA's own staff and were thus able to monitor case conduct from both the Agency and the client perspective. In a gripping analysis they compare the accounts of former husbands and wives with those of their respective legal advisers,and, critically, they incorporate the experience and views of the beleaguered CSA staff who attempted to calculate and enforce child maintenance obligations in those same cases. The media picture of the misery visited upon 'absent fathers' is borne out in part, but even more striking is the authors' account of a catastrophic administrative failure which led to the abandonment of many of the basic tenets of administrative justice. The reasons do not lie in the perceived unfairness of the formula but rather in the failure of those drafting the Child Support legislation to appreciate the impact of such change upon the rest of our hugely complex benefit structure. Their failure to grasp that the problems of inadequate disclosure and ineffective enforcement - with which courts had grappled for decades - could not be tackled effectively by a distant bureaucracy.

The Historical Dictionary of Latin American Literature and Theater provides users with an accessible single-volume reference tool covering Portuguese-speaking Brazil and the 16 Spanish-speaking countries of continental Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Entries for authors, ranging from the early colonial period to the present, give succinct biographical data and an account of the author's literary production, with particular attention to their most prominent works and where they belong in literary history. The introduction provides a review of Latin American literature and theater as a whole while separate dictionary entries for each country offer insight into the history of national literatures. Entries for literary terms, movements, and genres serve to complement these commentaries, and an extensive bibliography points the way for further reading. The comprehensive view and detailed information obtained from all these elements will make this book of use to the general-interest reader, Latin American studies students, and the academic specialist.

The creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995 was seen, at the time, as a forward-thinking foreign policy which would strengthen ties between Europe and the Mediterranean Arab states. Since that time, however, almost none of this initial ambition has been translated into positive, successful policy. Twenty years on from the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (now the Union for the Mediterranean), this book collects some of the most influential articles published in the Mediterranean Politics journal since 1995 - and suggests what these articles tell us about the state of relations between Europe and the Middle East. The selection of articles gives a sense of the way in which analytical debate has changed in the journal's lifetime, a lifetime which has seen the journal at the forefront of academic study on a variety of issues in the Mediterranean region. As such, the selection is naturally a reflection of the different periods from which the articles are taken, and, taken together, they paint a picture of how the Euro-Mediterranean partnership has been reshaped over time.

This updated and expanded edition of Persuasive Communication offers a comprehensive introduction to persuasion and real-world decision making. Drawing on empirical research from social psychology, neuroscience, business communication research, cognitive science, and behavioral economics, Young reveals the thought processes of many different audiences-from investors to CEOs-to help students better understand why audiences make the decisions they make and how to influence them. The book covers a broad range of communication techniques, richly illustrated with compelling examples, including resumes, speeches, and slide presentations, to help students recognize persuasive methods that do, and do not, work. A detailed analysis of the emotions and biases that go into decision making arms students with perceptive insights into human behavior and helps them apply this understanding with various decision-making aids. Students will learn how to impact potential employers, clients, and other audiences essential to their success. This book will prove fascinating to many, and especially useful for students of persuasion, rhetoric, and business communication.

This updated and expanded edition of Persuasive Communication offers a comprehensive introduction to persuasion and real-world decision making. Drawing on empirical research from social psychology, neuroscience, business communication research, cognitive science, and behavioral economics, Young reveals the thought processes of many different audiences-from investors to CEOs-to help students better understand why audiences make the decisions they make and how to influence them. The book covers a broad range of communication techniques, richly illustrated with compelling examples, including resumes, speeches, and slide presentations, to help students recognize persuasive methods that do, and do not, work. A detailed analysis of the emotions and biases that go into decision making arms students with perceptive insights into human behavior and helps them apply this understanding with various decision-making aids. Students will learn how to impact potential employers, clients, and other audiences essential to their success. This book will prove fascinating to many, and especially useful for students of persuasion, rhetoric, and business communication.

The creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership in 1995 was seen, at the time, as a forward-thinking foreign policy which would strengthen ties between Europe and the Mediterranean Arab states. Since that time, however, almost none of this initial ambition has been translated into positive, successful policy. Twenty years on from the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (now the Union for the Mediterranean), this book collects some of the most influential articles published in the Mediterranean Politics journal since 1995 - and suggests what these articles tell us about the state of relations between Europe and the Middle East. The selection of articles gives a sense of the way in which analytical debate has changed in the journal's lifetime, a lifetime which has seen the journal at the forefront of academic study on a variety of issues in the Mediterranean region. As such, the selection is naturally a reflection of the different periods from which the articles are taken, and, taken together, they paint a picture of how the Euro-Mediterranean partnership has been reshaped over time.

Cultures of the City explores the cultural mediation of relationships between people and urban spaces in Latin/o America and how these mediations shape the identities of cities and their residents.Addressing a broad spectrum of phenomena and disciplinary approaches, the contributors to this volume analyze lived urban experiences and their symbolic representation in cultural texts. Individual chapters explore Havana in popular music; Mexico City in art; Buenos Aires, Recife, and Salvador in film; and Asuncion and Buenos Aires in literature. Others focus on particular events, conditions, and practices of urban life including the Havana book fair, mass transit in Bogot\u00e1, the restaurant industry in Los Angeles, the media in Detroit, Andean festivals in Lima, and the photographic record of a visit by members of the Zapatista Liberation Army to Mexico City. The contributors examine identity and the sense of place and belonging that connect people to urban environments, relating these to considerations of ethnicity, social and economic class, gender, everyday life, and cultural practices. They also consider history and memory and the making of places through the iterative performance of social practices. As such, places are works in progress, a condition that is particularly evident in contemporary Latin/o American cities where the opposition between local and global influences is a prominent facet of daily life.These core issues are theorized further in an afterword by Abril Trigo, who takes the chapters as a point of departure for a discussion of the dialectics of identity in the Latin/o American global city.

Thoroughly discussing the problems of uniting two independent companies (problems which are commonly underestimated), this book covers a wide range of subjects such as: laws and regulations governing mergers; consideration of financial and material resources; tax views; research and development prospects, as well as the matching and augmenting of skills and equipment of both companies and the adjustments to be made to stock-holders and servicers. The issues of morale, retaining trained personnel, and the rearrangement of employee benefits and pensions are also examined. Check lists, tabulated examples, a hypothetical case history and a comprehensive bibliography made up the extensive appendices.

This book adds to debates over the international dimensions of democratic change by studying the policies and actions of three sets of Western actors: namely, governments, multinational companies, and international NGOs. This actor-based triangular approach responds to observations that the strategic, economic, and social aspects of international democracy have rarely been studied in a combined, holistic fashion. During the 1990s, Western governments, multinational companies, and civil society organizations all came to engage more notably in debates over democratic trends. But were they genuine when they professed a concern with democracy in developing countries? Which of these dynamics - governmental, commercial, or social - was the most influential in propelling efforts to encourage democratization and which helped explain the limits to democracy's international reach? Did political, economic, and social actors form a broad network of international democratic momentum, or did their respective perspectives increasingly diverge? Exploring these questions, the book presents extensive empirical material relating to Western policies in a number of developing regions, covering the period from the mid-1990s to 2003.
Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

This volume assesses the evolution of Spain's external relations during the 1990s, within and beyond Europe, and assesses the principal challenges facing the country at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The coincidence of several crucial global and European developments has had a profound effect on Spain. Adjustment of the economy and changes in foreign policy perspectives have become unavoidable. In turn, Spain, as an increasingly self-confident member of the EU, has itself become a significant actor in European-level developments. Spain's relationship with Europe and the wider world is increasingly balanced between new constraints and new opportunities for international influence.

Completely revised for the American market.

This book assesses European Union policies aimed at encouraging democratization in East Asia and the North African and Middle Eastern States within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership - these two regions being the source of some of the strongest conceptual challenges to 'Western' liberal democracy since the end of the cold war. The book addresses theoretical debates over the international dimensions of political change and the EU's characteristics as an international actor. The factors both driving and inhibiting European democracy promotion policies are explored. The book outlines the EU's distinctive bottom-up philosophy, aimed at constructing the socio-economic and ideational foundations for political liberalization, but argues that the EU has in practice failed to develop a fully comprehensive and coherent democracy promotion strategy.

This book assesses European Union policies aimed at encouraging democratization in East Asia and the Mediterranean, addressing theoretical debates over the international dimensions of political change and the EU's characteristics as an international actor. The factors driving and inhibiting European democracy promotion policies are explored, and the EU's distinctive 'bottom-up' approach to political change is outlined. The book notes an evolution in European policies, while arguing that the EU has failed to develop a fully comprehensive and coherent democracy promotion strategy.

One of the signal events in global politics in the last decade has been the transformation of political and civic activism. Not only is the new activism qualitatively different in character from what it was in 2000; its intensity and frequency have dramatically increased. Activists are developing a new type of civic movement, applying innovative forms of direct action against governments and often operating without leaders or even any well-defined set of aims. In Civic Activism Unleashed, Carnegie scholar Richard Youngs examines the changing shape of contemporary civic activism. He shows how the emerging civic activism has important implications for the whole concept of civil society-and for the relationship between citizens, political institutions, and states. Youngs contends that the rise and spread of these new forms of direct-action civic activism, and the way the trend has driven the dramatic events in global politics in recent years, requires us to update our understanding of what civil society actually is and which types of organizations are in its vanguard. He further looks at the global impact of recent civic activism and offers a set of variables to help explain cases of success and failure. Youngs' larger aim is to explore in depth the new forms of civic activism that are emerging around the world and assess how they differ from more established practices of civil society activity. Theoretically ambitious and global in scope, Civic Activism Unleashed forces us to reconsider the nature of contemporary social and civic activism and how it is reshaping contentious politics in countries across the world.

This accessible new textbook situates the European Union in a dramatically changed world order. Resisting a more traditional and abstract introduction to the institutions, structures and policy making processes of the EU, this innovative new text cuts through the jargon to demonstrate how hard the EU must work to retain its international influence. Taking into account the latest empirical developments, including the spread of war and violence in the East with Ukraine and the ongoing turbulent politics of North Africa and the Middle East, Richard Youngs - an expert in the field - introduces us to how the EU has been forced to act differently. The book is unique in offering an outside-in conceptual framework that inverts the way that the EU external action is studied and understood. It unpacks the different international challenges the EU has faced in recent years, including the weakening of global order, the need for more protective security, geo-economic competition, climate change and conflicts to its east and south. In each case the book examines how the EU has responded and how its core international identity has changed as a result, assessing whether the Union still retains strong global influence. This book is the ideal companion for students taking modules on the European Union's foreign policy, global politics, and for students of European Union Politics more broadly at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Changing geopolitical realities have seen the Gulf region turning to Asia and Africa to build new economic links, while strengthening old ones. This proactive internationalism is visible not just in economics and energy, but also in politics and security where a host of new agreements has been developed. This work provides an overview of the ways in which the GCC states now need to move ahead with reforms. The work brings together state-of-the-art analysis by international scholars who participated in a major joint initiative by the EU and the GCC, the al-Jisr Gulf-Europe Research Program.

In recent years serious concerns emerged over the state of European democracy. Many democracy indices are reporting a year-on-year drift towards less liberal politics in the countries of the European Union. Polls regularly suggest that the voters are coming to question democratic norms more seriously than for many decades. Here, Richard Youngs assesses these risks as many analysts, journalists and politicians stressed the danger of Europe descending into an era of conflict, driven by xenophobic nationalism and nativist authoritarians slowly dismantling liberal democratic rights. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified these fears. There is another side of the democratic equation, however. Youngs argues that governments, EU institutions, political parties, citizens and civil society organisations have gradually begun to push back in defence of democracy. With each chapter, Youngs shows how many governmental, political and social actors have developed responses to Europe's democratic malaise at multiple levels. Europe's democracy problems have been grave and far-reaching. Yet, a spirit of democratic resistance has slowly taken shape. This book argues that the pro-democratic fightback may be belated, but it is real and has assumed significant traction with various types of democratic reform underway, including citizen initiatives, political-party changes, digital activism and EU-level responses.

This book examines the European Union's response to the Arab spring, from late 2010 to the beginning of 2014. It investigates how far the EU changed its policies towards the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the aftermath of the Arab spring, and what impact European policies had in either helping or hindering democratization reforms during this period. It also explores what impact the Arab spring had on European security and economic interests. Analytically the book unpacks the factors that best explain EU policy choices in the Middle East since 2010. It highlights how the responses to the Arab spring have changed the governance dynamics of the EU-Middle East relationship. The book assesses how far the EU foreign policy has succeeded in meeting the challenge of the Arab spring. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

The European Union is mired in the worst crisis it has seen for many decades. And the crisis does not stop at Europe's edge. It threatens to undercut the EU's ambitions to develop a coherent and active foreign policy, but it is also forcing European states to reevaluate their approach to security and defense. Richard Youngs examines the legacy of the crisis and what it will mean for the EU's international role. The fallout undermines the EU's foreign policy capacity and tarnishes its normative brand, compelling some member states to focus on realpolitik and their own national-level policies. But there are also signs of enhanced European cooperation, greater international ambition, and deepened commitment to the values of a liberal world order. Youngs details how the EU can craft an effective foreign policy strategy while confronting an internal economic crisis and a reshaped global order.