Download or read book Multiple Democracies in Europe written by Paul Blokker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of democracy in Europe, with a focus on the new EU member states, and makes an important and original contribution to the debate on the future of European democracy. Author Paul Blokker seeks to provide a critical reconceptualization of the notion of democratic political culture by developing a ‘multiple democracies’ theoretical approach. He draws on debates in democratization theory and normative political theory, and presents a cultural-sociological approach for the analysis of democratization and democratic regimes. This approach emphasizes the historical and cultural embedment of democracy, identifies a potential variety of ‘ethics of democracy’ that underpin democratic political cultures, and points to the significance of democratic imagination in the interpretation and recombination of such ethics. The book explores the relevance of this approach by analysing multiple political cultures and their role in the emergence of democratic regimes in three new member states - Hungary, Poland, and Romania - providing a detailed description and analysis of political cultures by means of the analysis of constitutional politics, constitutional texts, and political elite discourses, and the identification of distinct politico-cultural elements that distinguish these societies from each other. It will be of interest to students and scholars of democracy, European studies, post-communist studies, political theory and comparative politics.
Download or read book Democracy in Europe written by Vivien A. Schmidt and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-10-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in Europe is about the impact of European integration on national democracies. It argues that the oft-cited democratic deficit is indeed a problem, but not so much at the level of the European Union per se as at the national level. This is because national leaders and publics have yet to come to terms with the institutional impact of the EU on the traditional workings of their national democracies. The book begins with a discussion of what the EU is-a new form of 'regional state' in which sovereignty is shared, boundaries are variable, identity composite, and democracy fragmented. It then goes on to examine the effects of this on EU member-states' institutions and ideas about democracy, finding that institutional 'fit' matters. The 'compound' EU, in which governing activity is highly dispersed among multiple authorities, is more disruptive to 'simple' polities like Britain and France, where governing activity has traditionally been more concentrated in a single authority, than to similarly 'compound' polities like Germany and Italy. But the book concludes that the real problem for member-states is not so much that their practices have changed as that national ideas and discourse about democracy have not. The failure has been one of the 'communicative' discourse to the general public-which again has been more pronounced for simple polities, despite their potentially greater capacity to communicate through a single voice, than for compound polities, where the 'coordinative' discourse among policy actors predominates.
Download or read book Democracy in Europe written by Vivien A. Schmidt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eagerly awaited volume, from a leading scholar on Europeanization, explores the impact of European integration on national democracies. Focusing on the case studies of France, Britain, Italy, and Germany, this is an exciting contribution to work on the implications of European integration for democratic government.
Download or read book Party System Change the European Crisis and the State of Democracy written by Marco Lisi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Party systems are crucial elements for the functioning of political systems and representative democracies. With several European countries experiencing significant changes recently, it is necessary to update our knowledge. This volume analyses party system changes in Europe in the 21st century by considering several dimensions such as interparty competition, the cleavage structure, electoral volatility and the emergence of new actors. The book describes the principal continuities and changes in party systems in Europe; analyzes the main explanations for these trends; and assesses the impact of the crisis on the patterns observed. By considering a wide range of Western and Eastern European countries, and focusing on the ‘parameters’ of party system change, this book seeks to fill an important gap in the literature through a comparative analysis of the evolution of party systems in Europe over the last decades. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties, party systems and politics, electoral behavior as well as more broadly to European politics, comparative politics. political representation and the quality of democracies.
Download or read book Rebuilding European Democracy written by Richard Youngs and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book European Disunion written by Stefan Auer and published by Hurst Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Democracy in Europe written by Vivien Ann Schmidt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in Europe is about the impact of European integration on national democracies. It argues that the oft-cited democratic deficit is indeed a problem, but not so much at the level of the European Union per se as at the national level. This is because national leaders and publics have yet to come to terms with the institutional impact of the EU on the traditional workings of their national democracies. The book begins with a discussion of what the EU is-a new form of 'regional state' in which sovereignty is shared, boundaries are variable, identity composite, and democracy fragmented. It then goes on to examine the effects of this on EU member-states' institutions and ideas about democracy, finding that institutional 'fit' matters. The 'compound' EU, in which governing activity is highly dispersed among multiple authorities, is more disruptive to 'simple' polities like Britain and France, where governing activity has traditionally been more concentrated in a single authority, than to similarly 'compound' polities like Germany and Italy. But the book concludes that the real problem for member-states is not so much that their practices have changed as that national ideas and discourse about democracy have not. The failure has been one of the 'communicative' discourse to the general public-which again has been more pronounced for simple polities, despite their potentially greater capacity to communicate through a single voice, than for compound polities, where the 'coordinative' discourse among policy actors predominates.
Download or read book Comparative European Politics written by Rory (Associate Professor of Politics Costello, Associate Professor of Politics University of Limerick) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Democratic Representation in Multi level Systems written by Thomas Däubler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive volume studies the vices and virtues of regionalisation in comparative perspective, including countries such as Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK, and discusses conditions that might facilitate or hamper responsiveness in regional democracies. It follows the entire chain of democratic responsiveness, starting from the translation of citizen preferences into voting behaviour, up to patterns of decision-making and policy implementation. Many European democracies have experienced considerable decentralisation over the past few decades. This book explores the key virtues which may accompany this trend, such as regional-level political authorities performing better in understanding and implementing citizens’ preferences. It also examines how, on the other hand, decentralisation can come at a price, especially since the resulting multi-level structures may create several new obstacles to democratic representation, including information, responsibility and accountability problems. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal West European Politics.
Download or read book Media and Politics in New Democracies written by Jan Zielonka and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the relationship between the media and politics in new democracies in Europe and other parts of the world. It does so from both theoretical and empirical angles. How is power being mediated in new democracies? Can media function independently in the unstable and polarised political environment experienced after the fall of autocracy? Do major shifts in economic and ownership structures help or hinder the quality of the media? How much can new media laws alter old journalistic habits and political cultures? And how do new technologies impact the media and democracy? The book examines these questions, drawing on a vast set of data assembled by a large international project. Media and Politics in New Democracies focuses chiefly on new democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, but chapters analysing new democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are also included. These new democracies represent a variety of what sociologists call 'glocalism': homogenisation and heterogenisation coexist, revealing hybrid models and multiple modernities. It is local culture that assigns meaning to global and regional influences. 'Ideal' liberal models and best practices are being promoted and aspired to, but these models and practices are often being adopted in opaque ways generating results opposite to those intended. The book finds many new democracies to be fragile if not deficient, and tries to show what is really going on in these countries, how they compare to each other, and what they can learn from each other.
Download or read book Rebuilding European Democracy written by Richard Youngs and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book EU Law in Populist Times written by Francesca Bignami and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-02 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A state-of-the-art analysis of the contentious areas of EU law that have been put in the spotlight by populism.
Download or read book European Democracy as Demoi cracy written by Francis Cheneval and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whereas ‘democracy’ assumes a single demos or people, ‘demoi-cracy’ refers to democratic government and governance in a polity constituted by separate peoples. Since the European Union consists of many demoi with different collective identities, largely separate public spheres, and a predominantly national political infrastructure, demoi-cracy is an appropriate standard for the analysis and evaluation of democracy in the EU. In its vertical dimension, demoi-cracy is based on the equality and interaction of citizens’ and statespeoples’ representatives in the making of common policies. Horizontally, it seeks to balance equal transnational rights of citizens with national policy-making autonomy. This volume offers exemplary studies exploring the potential for and the workings of demoi-cracy in the EU across a broad range of institutions and issues in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions. In particular, the contributions address the following questions: Is demoi-cracy relevant to citizen attitudes and public discourse on the EU’s legitimacy? How do national and supranational democratic institutions interact? Do the EU’s modes of governance, such as regulation through agencies, mutual recognition, and the open method of coordination, meet demoi-cratic expectations? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.
Download or read book Europe in Search of Political Order written by Johan P. Olsen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-02-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with ongoing processes of European cooperation and integration, processes that may have a potential to change the political organization of Europe. Based on ideas from 'the new institutionalism' the book offers a systematic perspective on institutional change and in particular the role of institutions in relation to four central and durable issues in the study of political life. These are: (1) the mediation between unity and diversity: what ties a society together and what keeps it apart. (2) The relations between citizens and their helpers: why the democratic deficit in the European Union can not be eliminated solely by making mechanisms of direct citizens participation and representation more efficient. Needed are also institutions that make direct participation redundant because they routinely work with integrity, generating expected and desired outcomes. (3) The relation between democratic design and historical drift: To what degree democracies are able to design and reform key institutions of governance so that their structures reflect popular will, understanding and control. (4) The co-existence of old and new political orders: How elements of a new order may supplement rather than replace elements of the old order, generating a 'mixed order' based on partly inconsistent principles and rules.
Download or read book Representative Government in Modern Europe written by Michael Gallagher and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages. This book was released on 2001 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uniting theory and application, the third edition of Representative Government in Modern Europe continues the tradition of previous editions by first examining the themes, debates, developments and structures driving European politics, and then investigating the way in which the theories behind them are manifested, comparing the historical development, distinct interpretations and present condition of several major European governments. A thematically arranged text which introduces readers to current debates among those who analyze European politics, the 3rd edition of Representation Government in Modern Europe delves into the evolution of European politics as we embark on the 21st century. Since the last edition, astonishing changes have occurred on the political scene in Europe. Democratic transformations have taken place throughout the East, along with the emergence of a strong European Union. These two topics, as well as the state of economics in the region, have dominated the previous decade in Europe and are discussed throughout the 3rd edition.
Download or read book Compound Democracies written by Sergio Fabbrini and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major and broad-ranging new comparison of the American and European political systems that argues provocatively that they are growing increasingly similar and offers a compelling new model for understanding them.
Download or read book Party Transformations in European Democracies written by André Krouwel and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political parties regularly change and adapt in response to ever-changing circumstances. Until now these changes have frequently prompted both scholars and the media to suggest a whole new type of political party, and over time the number of models and types has proliferated to the point of confusion, contradiction, and a loss of explanatory power. In this sophisticated yet accessible study, André Krouwel rejects this mélange of models as inadequate. He utilizes a wide range of data sources to analyze the ideological, organizational, and electoral change undergone by more than one hundred European parties in fifteen different countries, from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula, between 1945 and 2010. The result is one of the most comprehensive empirically grounded studies to date of the genesis, development, and transformation of political parties in advanced democratic states.
