Download or read book The Legacy of Boyko Borisov and the GERB Party A Study of Press Freedom Violations Corruption Human Rights Abuses and Islamophobia in the Republic of Bulgaria written by Dr. Mark O'Doherty and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Bulgaria's right-wing populist government orchestrating rule of law violations in the EU's backyard - including the violation of democracy, media freedom and refugee rights - Bulgaria's political leaders need to improve and reinvent themselves; especially the leader of the ruling GERB Party, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Otherwise Bulgaria must be expelled from the European Union; which would give Bulgaria's government the privilege of receiving their marching orders from Moscow again; like in the old days, when Bulgaria was part of the Soviet Union. Critical, but also deeply sensitive and humane, this book explores social scientific and ethical approaches, so that public freedoms can be restored in Bulgaria. Social challenges - such as press freedom violations and political corruption - are also explored in this work; as corruption still highlights one of Bulgaria's main problems; Bulgaria being the most corrupt country in the EU, and also having the lowest score on press freedom in the European Union.
Download or read book Freedom in the World 2016 written by Freedom House and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in the World, the Freedom House flagship survey whose findings have been published annually since 1972, is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. The survey ratings and narrative reports on 195 countries and fifteen territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. The Freedom in the World political rights and civil liberties ratings are determined through a multi-layered process of research and evaluation by a team of regional analysts and eminent scholars. The analysts used a broad range of sources of information, including foreign and domestic news reports, academic studies, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, individual professional contacts, and visits to the region, in conducting their research. The methodology of the survey is derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and these standards are applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.
Download or read book Direct Democracy in the EU written by Steven Blockmans and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union is grappling with a democracy problem. The succession of crises which have plagued the increasingly executive EU for years, has led to a rising cacophony of voices calling for fundamental change to the integration project. Yet despite the seismic shock of the Brexit referendum and the electoral upsets by nativist parties across the continent, few of the plans for EU reform include concrete proposals to reduce the age-old democratic deficit. This book is concerned with the two-pronged question of how the relationship between citizens, the state and EU institutions has changed, and how direct democratic participation can be improved in a multi-layered Union. As such, this edited volume focuses not on populism per se, nor does it deeply engage with policy and output legitimacy. Rather, the research is concerned with process and polity. Building on the notion of increasing social, economic and political interdependence across borders, this volume asks how a sense of solidarity and European identity can be rescued from the bottom up by politically empowering citizens to ‘take back control’ of their EU.
Download or read book Authoritarian Contagion written by Luke Cooper and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative book uses examples from around the world to examine the spread of draconian and nationalistic forms of government - ‘authoritarian protectionism’ - which provides new insight into the changing nature of the authoritarian threat to democracy and how it might be overcome.
Download or read book Is Europe on the right Path written by Nora Langenbacher and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Contemporary Populism written by Sergiu Gherghina and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fundamental question uniting the contributions to this volume is: what exactly is populism? This is certainly not a new question, as a large amount of literature has focused on this topic for more than half a century. As little conceptual consensus has been reached so far, this book aims to reduce the level of abstraction. To this end, it approaches the populist phenomenon from a broader theoretical and empirical perspective, making reference to its developments on several continents. The book is divided into two parts: the first is theoretical and discusses various perspectives on populism, while the second is empirical and emphasises the diversity of the forms populism has embraced throughout the world. Without aiming to solve old dilemmas, to cover all the existing forms of populism, or to outline unequivocal conclusions, the contributions to this book fulfil a twofold task. On the one hand, they help to clarify theoretically a concept that is difficult to grasp and use. On the other hand, by way of reflecting these difficulties, they present several forms of populism worldwide. Their main purpose is to highlight the differences between the continents. Each of the chapters in the second section successfully accomplishes this, providing an overview that is useful both in analysing populism and in identifying the populist elements in national and international political actions or discourses.
Download or read book The Rise of the Far Right in Europe written by Gabriella Lazaridis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-04 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The results of the last European Elections of 2014 confirmed the rise of right and far right 'populist' parties across the EU. The success of a range of parties, such as Denmark’s Dansk Folskeparti, Slovenia’s Slovenska demokratska stranka, France’s Front National, Greece’s Golden Dawn, the United Kingdom Independence Party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy and the Austrian FPÖ, has been perceived as a political wave which is transforming the face of the European Parliament, and challenging at some level the hegemony of the 'big four' well-established European political forces that lead the Strasbourg’s assembly: the ALDE, EPP, S&D and Greens/ALE. As 'populism' has become a major issue in many EU countries, this collection aims to provide a critical understanding of related trends and recommend ways in which they can be challenged both in policy and praxis, by using the gender-race-ethnicity-sexual orientation intersectionality approach. This international volume combines extensive transnational comparative data analysis, as well as research at discursive, attitudinal and behavioural levels.
Download or read book Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies written by Enes Bayraklı and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-21 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decade, Islamophobia in Western societies, where Muslims constitute the minority, has been studied extensively. However, Islamophobia is not restricted to the geography of the West, but rather constitutes a global phenomenon. It affects Muslim societies just as much, due to various historical, economic, political, cultural and social reasons. Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies constitutes a first attempt to open a debate about the understudied phenomenon of Islamophobia in Muslim majority societies. An interdisciplinary study, it focuses on socio-political and historical aspects of Islamophobia in Muslim majority societies. This volume will appeal to students, scholars and general readers who are interested in Racism Studies, Islamophobia Studies, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Islam and Politics.
Download or read book The Gender Agenda written by Dale O'Leary and published by Vital Issue Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ammunition-filled, whistle-blowing book on feminists. The author is widely quoted as an expert on the subject of feminism and has been attacked by feminist activists for opposing their plans. She has been a guest on the Today show, on Dr. James Dobson's radio show and on Mother Angelica Live. She also has her own weekly radio commentary show, Heartbeat News.
Download or read book Modern Bulgaria written by Todor Zhivkov and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book At Night All Blood Is Black written by David Diop and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE* *ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021* Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction Shortlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award "Astonishingly good." —Lily Meyer, NPR "So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever forget it." —Ali Smith, The Guardian | Best Books of 2020 One of The Wall Street Journal's 11 best books of the fall | One of The A.V. Club's fifteen best books of 2020 |A Sunday Times best book of the year Selected by students across France to win the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, David Diop’s English-language, historical fiction debut At Night All Blood is Black is a “powerful, hypnotic, and dark novel” (Livres Hebdo) of terror and transformation in the trenches of the First World War. Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called “Chocolat” soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man’s Land. Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa’s mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German’s severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa’s deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn’t a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? Peppered with bullets and black magic, this remarkable novel fills in a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. Blending oral storytelling traditions with the gritty, day-to-day, journalistic horror of life in the trenches, David Diop's At Night All Blood is Black is a dazzling tale of a man’s descent into madness.
Download or read book The Legacy of Division written by Ferenc Laczó and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the legacy of the East–West divide since the implosion of the communist regimes in Europe. The ideals of 1989 have largely been frustrated by the crises and turmoil of the past decade. The liberal consensus was first challenged as early as the mid-2000s. In Eastern Europe, grievances were directed against the prevailing narratives of transition and ever sharper ethnic-racial antipathies surfaced in opposition to a supposedly postnational and multicultural West. In Western Europe, voices regretting the European Union's supposedly careless and premature expansion eastward began to appear on both sides of the left–right and liberal–conservative divides. The possibility of convergence between Europe's two halves has been reconceived as a threat to the European project. In a series of original essays and conversations, thirty-three contributors from the fields of European and global history, politics and culture address questions fundamental to our understanding of Europe today: How have perceptions and misperceptions between the two halves of the continent changed over the last three decades? Can one speak of a new East–West split? If so, what characterizes it and why has it reemerged? The contributions demonstrate a great variety of approaches, perspectives, emphases, and arguments in addressing the daunting dilemma of Europe's assumed East–West divide.
Download or read book Anti System Politics written by Jonathan Hopkin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent elections in the advanced western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges -- from both the left and the right. The election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. In Anti-System Politics, Jonathan Hopkin traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the post-war model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, Hopkin explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, he discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence. A historically-grounded analysis of arguably the most important global political phenomenon at present, Anti-System Politics illuminates how and why the world seems upside down.
Download or read book Understanding the Populist Shift written by Gabriella Lazaridis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the European elections of 2014, one of the main issues raised by the media was the electoral performance of so called ‘populist parties’. The electorate confirmed its deep dissatisfaction with mainstream political parties, voting for far right parties in parliamentary elections in Northern Europe (Austria, Denmark, Sweden), Eastern Europe (Hungary, where the deeply anti-Semitic Jobbik party gained votes) and in France (where the French National Front won about a quarter of the vote), while in the Southern European countries, battered by austerity policies, it was the radical right and left in Greece (Golden Dawn and Syriza) and the radical left in Spain (Podemos) that obtained excellent scores. This book examines the growing trend towards far and extreme right populism that has emerged prominently in Northern (Finland), Western (Austria, Denmark, France, the UK), Southern (Greece, Italy) and Central/Eastern Europe (Slovenia, Bulgaria) since the 1990s. Providing a critical understanding of current European trends and analysing the complex phenomena covered by the notion of populism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching right-wing politics, as well as European politics more generally.
Download or read book Fresh from the Farm 6pk written by Rigby and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Democracy Without Nations written by Pierre Manent and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can Europe survive after abandoning the national loyalties--and religious traditions--that provided meaning? And what will happen to the United States as it goes down a similar path? The eminent French political philosopher Pierre Manent addresses these questions in his brilliant meditation on Europe's experiment in maximizing individual and social rights. By seeking to escape from the "national form," he shows, the European Union has weakened the very institutions that made possible liberty and self-government in the first place. Worse still, the "spiritual vacuity" that characterizes today's secular Europe--and, increasingly, the United States--is ultimately untenable.
Download or read book Reactionary Democracy written by Aurelien Mondon and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call 'reactionary democracy' is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands as we are often told. It is rather the logical conclusion of the more or less conscious manipulation by the elite of the concept of 'the people' and the working class to push reactionary ideas. These narratives place racism as a popular demand, rather than as something encouraged and perpetuated by elites, thus exonerating those with the means to influence and control public discourse through the media in particular. This in turn has legitimised the far right, strengthened its hand and compounded inequalities. These actions diverts us away from real concerns and radical alternatives to the current system. Through a careful and thorough deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse currently preventing us from thinking beyond the liberal vs populist dichotomy, this book develops a better understanding of the systemic forces underpinning our current model and its exploitative and discriminatory basis. The book shows us that the far right would not have been able to achieve such success, either electorally or ideologically, were it not for the help of elite actors (the media, politicians and academics). While the far right is a real threat and should not be left off the hook, the authors argue that we need to shift the responsibility of the situation towards those who too often claim to be objective, and even powerless, bystanders despite their powerful standpoint and clear capacity to influence the agenda, public discourse, and narratives, particularly when they platform and legitimise racist and far right ideas and actors.
