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EBookClubs

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Book Deforming the Reform

Download or read book Deforming the Reform written by Luana Martin-Russu and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book presents an actor-centered study on Europeanization, based on the assumption that EU-driven reforms are highly dependent on the behavior and interests of the key domestic actors. Whether or not a state pursues a European and democratic agenda depends on domestic lawmakers. Further, political elites are pre-eminent in deciding on the nature, form and content of any law, and on the extent to which the rule of law is actually enforced. Elites can overcome structural or institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving their goals. The empirical study on Romania presented here lends this observation a more profound meaning: it shows how, in contexts where high level corruption is the norm rather than the exception, self-serving political elites cannot be expected to genuinely commit to adopting sound anti-corruption reform. The book is an inquiry into the motivations that drive legislators to make particular decisions, but also into the structural characteristics and dynamics of the elite that invite a selfish rather than responsible and responsive behaviour.

Book Deforming the Reform

Download or read book Deforming the Reform written by Luana Martin-Russu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-09-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book presents an actor-centered study on Europeanization, based on the assumption that EU-driven reforms are highly dependent on the behavior and interests of the key domestic actors. Whether or not a state pursues a European and democratic agenda depends on domestic lawmakers. Further, political elites are pre-eminent in deciding on the nature, form and content of any law, and on the extent to which the rule of law is actually enforced. Elites can overcome structural or institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving their goals. The empirical study on Romania presented here lends this observation a more profound meaning: it shows how, in contexts where high level corruption is the norm rather than the exception, self-serving political elites cannot be expected to genuinely commit to adopting sound anti-corruption reform. The book is an inquiry into the motivations that drive legislators to make particular decisions, but also into the structural characteristics and dynamics of the elite that invite a selfish rather than responsible and responsive behaviour. This publication was supported by funds from the Publication Fund for Open Access Monographs of the Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany.

Book Assessing Democracy Assistance

Download or read book Assessing Democracy Assistance written by Thomas Carothers and published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This book was released on 1996 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, assistance aimed at promoting democracy abroad has become a major component of U.S. foreign aid and of the U.S. government's post-Cold War policy of seeking to enlarge the international community of democratic nations. Despite its rapid growth, however, democracy assistance remains poorly understood in practice and its value is frequently questioned. This landmark study, an examination of U.S. democracy assistance efforts in Romania, is the first comprehensive analysis of the workings--and failings--of U.S. democracy assistance in one country. Based on the author's extensive field research, the study provides widely applicable answers to key questions about the value, strategies, methods, and future of such assistance.

Book Europe s Would be Polity

Download or read book Europe s Would be Polity written by Leon N. Lindberg and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Citizens of Europe

Download or read book Citizens of Europe written by M. Bruter and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-08-11 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows empirically for the first time how a mass European identity has emerged across the EU member states between 1970 and the present day. Beyond this novel approach, it also offers a whole new theory of political identities, based on two 'civic' and 'cultural' components. Michael Bruter shows how multiple identities reinforce - rather than exclude - each other, and studies in depth the unsuspected impact of the media and political institutions on the emergence of new political identities.

Book Public Opinion towards the EU

Download or read book Public Opinion towards the EU written by Flavia Alupei-Durach and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-17 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume investigates the public opinion of the EU in the context of the present economic crisis and other significant challenges currently faced by the Union, the latest being the refugee crisis. Scholarly knowledge in the field of EU attitudes in general and Euroscepticism in particular is thoroughly documented here, and is followed by an analysis of public perceptions of the EU’s crisis management capabilities, proving that the EU’s legitimacy and effectiveness are currently being challenged to the highest degree. The research-based contribution of this book is two-fold, focusing on EU attitudes at a macro-level on one hand, and the opinions of Romanian experts on the other. It provides insights into attitudes towards the EU in Central and Eastern Europe, a region which is still somewhat underexplored by social sciences scholars, and in Romania in particular. On a larger scale, significant differences between clusters of states are identified, suggesting that not even increasing Euroscepticism manages to create a common frame of reference for all Europeans regarding EU-related issues. In terms of Romanian expert opinion, the book provides evidence for a gradual evolution from highly symbolic and sometimes even triumphalist representations of the EU towards mildly critical positions, based on instrumental perceptions. Such changes mark a new stage of Europeanization, in which the EU’s presence has become ordinary. For the Eastern European elite, increased familiarity with the EU accommodates demitization and criticism without denouncing European integration as a doomed project.

Book Politics  Power and the Struggle for Democracy in South East Europe

Download or read book Politics Power and the Struggle for Democracy in South East Europe written by Karen Dawisha and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-06-13 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edited by two of the world's leading analysts of post communist politics, this book brings together distinguished specialists on Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia/Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania. The authors analyse the challenge of building democracy in the countries of the former Yugoslavia riven by conflict, and in neighboring states. They focus on oppositional activity, political cultures that often favour strong presidentialism, the role of nationalism, and basic socioeconomic trends. Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott provide theoretical and comparative chapters on post communist political development across the region. This book will provide students and scholars with detailed analysis by leading authorities, plus the latest research data on recent political and economic developments in each country.

Book Innovation in Sustainable Management and Entrepreneurship

Download or read book Innovation in Sustainable Management and Entrepreneurship written by Gabriela Prostean and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses state-of-the-art techniques in business process management as drivers of advanced entrepreneurship, financial management, supply chain management, and sustainability management. The role of management in a rapidly-changing environment and the use of innovative methods and techniques to address and solve key management problems are also explored.

Book The Politics of European Union Enlargement

Download or read book The Politics of European Union Enlargement written by Frank Schimmelfennig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-11-16 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a key reference text presenting the latest first-rate approaches to the study of European enlargement. Developed and significantly expanded from a special issue of the leading Journal of European Public Policy, this new volume draws on the insights from the recently emerging theoretically-informed literature on the EU's eastern enlargement and complements these studies with original articles that combine a theoretical approach with comparative analyses. These expert contributors focus on the broader theoretical debates and their implications for the enlargement of the EU, as well as placing the enlargement of the EU within the broader context of the expansion of international organisations and the study of institutions in international relations.

Book The Weakness of Civil Society in Post Communist Europe

Download or read book The Weakness of Civil Society in Post Communist Europe written by Marc Morjé Howard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeks to explain the weakness of civil society in the countries of post-Communist Europe.

Book Runaway State Building

Download or read book Runaway State Building written by Conor O'Dwyer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-09-14 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, Conor O'Dwyer introduces the phenomenon of runaway state-building as a consequence of patronage politics in underdeveloped, noncompetitive party systems. Analyzing the cases of three newly democratized nations in Eastern Europe—Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia—O’Dwyer argues that competition among political parties constrains patronage-led state expansion. O’Dwyer uses democratization as a starting point, examining its effects on other aspects of political development. Focusing on the link between electoral competition and state-building, he is able to draw parallels between the problems faced by these three nations and broader historical and contemporary problems of patronage politics—such as urban machines in nineteenth-century America and the Philippines after Marcos. This timely study provides political scientists and political reformers with insights into points in the democratization process where appropriate intervention can minimize runaway state-building and cultivate efficient bureaucracy within a robust and competitive democratic system.

Book Post Communist Romania

Download or read book Post Communist Romania written by D. Light and published by Springer. This book was released on 2001-02-02 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on contributions from various disciplines, this up to date collection analyses Romania's experiences of the transition from the harsh realities of the Ceausescu dictatorship to the uncertainties of the efforts to consolidate democracy and introduce a market economy. With its focus 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, the volume will be key reading for academics, students and practitioners interested in transition and Romania.

Book Party Government

Download or read book Party Government written by E. Schattschneider and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we need to know about political parties in order to understand them? In his classic study E. E. Schattschneider delineates six crucial points: A political party is an organized attempt to get control of the government. Parties live in a highly competitive world. The major parties manage to maintain their supremacy over the minor parties. The internal processes of the parties have not generally received the attention they deserve in treatises on American politics. The party is a process that has grown up about elections. And perhaps most important of all is the distribution of power within the party organization. But Party Government is not just about political parties. At its heart is the theory and practice of modern democracy, and it is the most cited, controversial, and probably single most influential study of political parties ever written, Schattschneider questions the purpose of government, who rules, and how government should be organized consistent with its fundamental purpose, which are the enduring fault lines of American democracy. He takes the reader through a thorough and penetrating examination of political parties and the American government. Starting with a historical overview and defense of parties, Schattschneider offers a searing analysis of politics itself, with special focus on the number of interest groups both affecting and affected by government. He describes the various types of political organizations--major parties, pressure groups, and minor parties--and offers a study of the two-party character of the American system. Sidney A. Pearson, Jr. offers a strikingly original new introduction about E. E. Schattschneider and his contribution to political science. Gracefully and wittily written, Party Government is mandatory reading for students and scholars of political science, government, and American political theory.

Book Rebuilding Leviathan

Download or read book Rebuilding Leviathan written by Anna Grzymala-Busse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-09 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some governing parties limit their opportunistic behaviour and constrain the extraction of private gains from the state? This analysis of post-communist state reconstruction provides surprising answers to this fundamental question of party politics. Across the post-communist democracies, governing parties have opportunistically reconstructed the state - simultaneously exploiting it by extracting state resources and building new institutions that further such extraction. They enfeebled or delayed formal state institutions of monitoring and oversight, established new discretionary structures of state administration, and extracted enormous informal profits from the privatization of the communist economy. By examining how post-communist political parties rebuilt the state in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Grzymala-Busse explains how even opportunistic political parties will limit their corrupt behaviour and abuse of state resources when faced with strong political competition.

Book Economics of the Food Processing Industry

Download or read book Economics of the Food Processing Industry written by Debdatta Saha and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a wealth of perspectives on studying the manufacturing end of food processing industries, with a special focus on regions with a low industrial base and multiple missing markets, institutional finance being the most prominent example. Positioning food processing within the industrial ecosystem, which includes entrepreneurs, policymakers, business consultants and associations, the study first considers three different trajectories: for developed economies, for national territories like India, and for sub-national regions like Bihar. In turn, it shows how these trajectories intertwine in two dimensions: the region and the sub-sector. Successfully completing food-processing projects in any of these trajectories requires the identification and development of appropriate product networks that link basic processed items with advanced ones through a chain of value addition. Moreover, the supply-side narrative presented here identifies two types of costs: physical and non-physical costs of operation. For trajectories with skewed firm sizes (“missing middle”) and missing markets, which can be found in Bihar, the latter costs matter just as much as the former in terms of entrepreneurship. While efficiency in operations is studied for selected sub-sectors in Bihar’s food processing to assess the main sources of inefficiency in minimizing the physical costs of operations, non-physical costs are studied using the construct of region-based counterfactual thinking (rCFT) and its relationship with the perception of risk for entrepreneurs. rCFT offers a new concept for understanding the mindset of the entrepreneur, in which the regional identity plays a significant role. The empirical content is based on a primary survey of food processing in Bihar. Additional policy questions, such as the choice between spatial collocation of food parks or cluster-based development of unique sub-sectors, are explored through an analysis of the policy network that supports entrepreneurship. Issues arising from the government’s policy choices, particularly vertically targeted industrial policies, can influence industrial outcomes and are particularly relevant for regions like Bihar. While policy evaluation for Bihar’s processed food industry yields insights on policy targeting for decision-makers in the government, examples of parallel narratives from global experiences in comparable regions shed new light on industrial development in processed food, which should be of interest to business practitioners, academic researchers and policymakers alike.

Book Political Parties  Growth and Equality

Download or read book Political Parties Growth and Equality written by Carles Boix and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-13 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the increased openness of countries to international trade and financial flows, the general public and the scholarly literature have grown skeptical about the capacity of policy-makers to affect economic performance. Challenging this view, Political Parties, Growth, and Equality shows that the increasingly interdependent world economy and recent technological shocks have actually exacerbated the dilemmas faced by governments in choosing among various policy objectives, such as generating jobs and reducing income inequality, thereby granting political parties and electoral politics a fundamental and growing role in the economy. To make growth and equality compatible, social democrats employ the public sector to raise the productivity of capital and labor. By contrast, conservatives rely on the private provision of investment. Based on analysis of the economic policies of all OECD countries since the 1960s and in-depth examination of Britain and Spain in the 1980s, this book offers a new understanding of how contemporary democracies work.