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5955 results in European government, politics and policy

Page 237 of 298

  • EPR volume 1 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  • Journal:
    European Political Science Review / Volume 1 / Issue 3 / November 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 November 2009, pp. f1-f4
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  • Regions, social structure and value orientations: a comparative study of 15 West European countries

  • Oddbjørn Knutsen
  • Journal:
    European Political Science Review / Volume 1 / Issue 3 / November 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 November 2009, pp. 401-434

  • This article is a comparative study of regional differences in social and political value orientations. I identify four central sets of value orientations: two Old Politics orientations – religious–secular and economic left–right; and two New Politics orientations – libertarian/authoritarian and green values. I use the international value studies from 15 West European countries as my empirical base. The article addresses three major research problems: (1) Which of the four value orientations is most strongly anchored in regional differences, and in which countries do we find the largest value differences between the regions? (2) Do we find the same ranking of the regions across the four value orientations, or do the value orientations group the regions in separate ways? (3) Can the other socio-structural variables explain the impact of region on value orientations, or is that impact unique? The average correlations between regions and each of the four value orientations are similar but somewhat larger for religious value and libertarian/authoritarian values. With regard to the second research problem, I hypothesize one-, two-, and three-dimensional solutions based on different spatial configurations. The one-dimensional configurations implied that there exist some (centre) regions that have secular, economic rightist, green, and libertarian regions, and (peripheral) regions with opposite value orientations. This pattern is clearly found in four countries. The expected two-dimensional solution with an Old Politics and a New Politics dimension was found in four countries, whereas the expected three-dimensional solution with two Old Politics and one New Politics dimension was found in three countries. In the multivariate analysis examining the causal impact of region, only a small portion of the correlation between region and value orientations was spurious when controlling for the other (quasi-)ascriptive variables. Furthermore, only a small portion of the impact of region was transmitted via social class variables.

  • The private consequences of public policies: active labor market policies and social ties in Europe

  • Christopher J. Anderson
  • Journal:
    European Political Science Review / Volume 1 / Issue 3 / November 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 November 2009, pp. 341-373

  • Though comparative political economists have examined active labor market policies (ALMPs) by focusing narrowly on how they affect economic outcomes, this paper develops and argues for a broadened conception of how such policies can shape a variety of outcomes beyond the labor market. In particular, I argue that ALMPs have the potential to shape the quality of people’s private lives by enhancing their opportunities and motives to interact with social others. Analyses of data collected in 17 European countries show that individuals in countries with higher spending on ALMPs report more frequent social interactions and a reduced sense of social exclusion. Moreover, I find that the positive influence of labor market policies on social ties is stronger among individuals whose labor market position is more precarious. The results suggest that public policies have important and multifaceted consequences for people’s private lives and countries’ patterns of social cohesion.

Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union
  • Edited by Linda Edmondson
  • Published online:
    22 October 2009
    Print publication:
    20 August 1992
  • Until the late 1960s, most Western scholars studying the history, culture, social and political life and economy of Russia and the Soviet Union, paid scant attention to the participation and experience of women. The multifarious ways in which gender roles and perceptions of gender were influenced by and in turn influenced the heterogeneous cultures of the Soviet empire were largely ignored. However, this neglect has slowly been rectified and now the study of women and gender relations has become one of the most productive fields of research into Russian and Soviet society. This volume demonstrates the originality and diversity of this recent research. Written by leading Western scholars, it spans the last decade of tsarist Russia, the 1917 revolutions and the Soviet period. The essays reflect the interdisciplinary nature of women's work, women and politics, women as soldiers, female prostitution, popular images of women and women's experience of perestroika.

Wounds of Memory
  • The Politics of War in Germany
  • Maja Zehfuss
  • Published online:
    22 October 2009
    Print publication:
    25 October 2007
  • German memories of the Second World War are controversial, and they are used to justify different positions on the use of military force. In this book, Maja Zehfuss studies the articulation of memories in novels in order to discuss and challenge arguments deployed in political and public debate. She explores memories that have generated considerable controversy, such as the flight and expulsion of Germans from the East, the bombing of German cities and the 'liberation' of Germany in 1945. She shows how memory retrospectively produces a past while claiming merely to invoke it, drawing attention to the complexities and contradictions within how truth, ethics, emotion, subjectivity and time are conceptualised. Zehfuss argues that the tensions and uncertainties revealed raise political questions that must be confronted, beyond the safety net of knowledge. This is a compelling book which pursues an original approach in exploring the politics of invocations of memory.

The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980
  • The Class Cleavage
  • Stefano Bartolini
  • Published online:
    20 October 2009
    Print publication:
    28 August 2000
  • In an in-depth comparative analysis, Stefano Bartolini studies the history of socialism and working-class politics in Western Europe. While examining the social contexts, organizational structures and political developments of thirteen socialist experiences from the 1880s to the 1980s, he reconstructs the steps through which social conflict was translated and structured into an opposition, as well as how it developed its different organizational and ideological forms, and how it managed more or less successfully to mobilize its reference groups politically. Bartolini provides a comparative framework that structures the wealth of material available on the history of each unit and allows him to assess the relative weight of the complex explanatory factors.

Markets and Moral Regulation
  • Cultural Change in the European Union
  • Paulette Kurzer
  • Published online:
    16 October 2009
    Print publication:
    02 July 2001
  • Does European integration influence national cultures and social policies? Is Europe's fabled cultural diversity diminishing? In this book, Paulette Kurzer examines these important and topical questions by comparing the Irish abortion ban, Finnish and Swedish drinking restrictions, and Dutch drug decriminalization. Employing a synthesis of constructivist and institutionalist theories, Kurzer demonstrates that domestic shifts in values and attitudes, spurred along by the impact of EC/EU market integration, are in fact bringing about a convergence in European morality norms. Alcohol control policies are forced to liberalize, the Irish abortion proscription is being redefined, and Dutch drug toleration is pushed into a more punitive direction. Markets and Moral Regulation argues that a crucial agency is European law and its role as a market regulator: as market forces invade these cultural and moral spheres, protective barriers disintegrate. The result is that cultural and social domains are increasingly exposed to the influence of market competition.

The New Racism in Europe
  • A Sicilian Ethnography
  • Jeffrey Cole
  • Published online:
    12 October 2009
    Print publication:
    27 November 1997
  • In the last twenty years, immigration has become one of the most contested issues in Western Europe. The arrival of Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans and others in Italy has reversed earlier trends of emigration. Debate, political activity and violence have raised questions of rejection and integration, of anti-racism and the new racism. Studies of these issues commonly focus on political activity and the plight of minorities, but this book breaks new ground in its emphasis on the everyday reactions of Italians to immigration and related issues. Drawing on research carried out in Palermo, Jeffrey Cole considers the role of class, culture, local history and political economy in the ambivalent responses of Sicilians to immigrants. He places Italian attitudes in a European context, and investigates why anti-immigrant politics are concentrated in the wealthy Italian North.

State-building in Europe
  • The Revitalization of Western European Integration
  • Edited by Volker Bornschier
  • Published online:
    10 October 2009
    Print publication:
    05 October 2000
  • Why and how was the process of Western European integration relaunched in the 1980s and 1990s? This volume suggests a new framework of analysis of the European statebuilding tradition. Based on qualitative research (including more than 30 interviews with protagonists from EU member states), and detailed case studies and policy analyses (the genesis of the Single Market programme and the Single European Act, ESPRIT technology corporatism, biotechnology, EU regional and social policy) the authors show that new forms of cooperation between political and economic actors have developed, both at transnational and supranational level. The book shows how the European Commission, bureaucratic cabinets, national diplomats, transnational companies, pressure groups and representatives of the regions have set in motion a process that is changing statehood in Europe dramatically. This discussion of the origins of this process is a valuable contribution to the debate on the future of Europe in the world system.

A Union of Diversity
  • Language, Identity and Polity-Building in Europe
  • Peter A. Kraus
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    10 March 2008
  • The European Union's motto 'United in Diversity' contrasts with the cultural standardization entailed in the formation of nation-states and the forging of political identities in Europe. So what does being 'united in diversity' mean? Focusing on language politics and policies, this book offers a thorough assessment of the implications of cultural and linguistic diversity for the process of constructing a European polity. It sheds light on some of the most pressing problems associated with contemporary identity politics. It is often claimed that the recurrent celebration of diversity in Europe's programmatic declarations has an effective political impact. Kraus offers a critical analysis of how the EU has responded to the normative challenge of creating an institutional frame for integration which allows cultural differences to be transcended without ignoring them.

Religion in an Expanding Europe
  • Edited by Timothy A. Byrnes, Peter J. Katzenstein
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    17 March 2006
  • With political controversies raging over issues such as the wearing of headscarves in schools and the mention of Christianity in the European Constitution, religious issues are of growing importance in European politics. In this volume, Byrnes and Katzenstein analyze the effect that enlargement to countries with different and stronger religious traditions may have on the EU as a whole, and in particular on its homogeneity and assumed secular nature. Looking through the lens of the transnational religious communities of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Islam, they argue that religious factors are stumbling blocks rather than stepping stones toward the further integration of Europe. All three religious traditions are advancing notions of European identity and European union that differ substantially from how the European integration process is generally understood by political leaders and scholars. This volume makes an important addition to the fields of European politics, political sociology, and the sociology of religion.

German Unification and the Union of Europe
  • The Domestic Politics of Integration Policy
  • Jeffrey Anderson
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    10 June 1999
  • German Unification and the Union of Europe discusses some of the most interesting questions in the study of comparative politics and international relations. The book studies the sources of continuity and change in German policy toward the European Union, set in the context of the competing pulls of integration into the EU, and unification of East and West Germany. Employing a framework of analysis premised on the interaction of interests, institutions and ideas, the book asks: how has the domestic politics of unification influenced German policy toward Europe? Why has continuity reigned in some areas, whereas in others significant changes, sometimes reversals, have been registered? What are the implications of this checkered pattern of outcomes for Germany and for Europe? Jeffrey Anderson's book focusses on the political economy issues (such as trade, internal market, energy, and industrial policy) which represent key components of both German domestic politics and Germany's relationship with Europe.Awarded the DAAD 2000 Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German Studies: Politics and Foreign Policy.

The European Union Decides
  • Edited by Robert Thomson, Frans N. Stokman, Christopher H. Achen, Thomas König
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    14 September 2006
  • European legislation affects countless aspects of daily life in modern Europe but just how does the European Union make such significant legislative decisions? How important are the formal decision-making procedures in defining decision outcomes and how important is the bargaining that takes place among the actors involved? Using a combination of detailed evidence and theoretical rigour, this volume addresses these questions and others that are central to understanding how the EU works in practice. It focuses on the practice of day-to-day decision-making in Brussels and the interactions that take place among the Member States in the Council and among the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament. A unique data set of actual Commission proposals are examined against which the authors develop, apply and test a range of explanatory models of decision-making, exemplifying how to study decision-making in other political systems using advanced theoretical tools and appropriate research design.

Law and Governance in Postnational Europe
  • Compliance Beyond the Nation-State
  • Edited by Michael Zürn, Christian Joerges
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    03 February 2005
  • This 2005 book argues that Europeanization and globalization have led to ever-more intensive legalization at transnational level. What accounts for compliance beyond the nation-state? The authors tackle this question by comparing compliance with regulations that have been formulated in a very similar way at different levels of governance. They test compliance with rules at the national level, at the regional level (EU), and at a global level (WTO), finding that in fact the EU has higher levels of compliance than both international and national rules. The authors argue that this is because the EU has a higher level of legalization, combined with effective monitoring mechanisms and sanctions. In this respect it seems that the European Union has indeed achieved a high level of legalization and compliance, though the authors add that this achievement does not settle the related queries with the legitimacy of transnational governance and law.

Complying with Europe
  • EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States
  • Gerda Falkner, Oliver Treib, Miriam Hartlapp, Simone Leiber
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    26 May 2005
  • What does EU law truly mean for the member states? Do they abide or don't they? This book presents the first encompassing and in-depth empirical study of the effects of 'voluntaristic' and (partly) 'soft' EU policies in all 15 member states. The authors examine 90 case studies across a range of EU Directives and shed light on burning contemporary issues in political science, integration theory, and social policy. They reveal that there are major implementation failures and that, to date, the European Commission has not been able adequately to perform its control function. While all countries are occasional non-compliers, some quite frequently privilege their domestic political concerns over performance of their EU-related duties. Others neglect these EU obligations as a matter of course. This study answers questions of crucial importance for politics in theory and in practice, and suggests how implementation of EU law can be fostered in the future.

States and Regions in the European Union
  • Institutional Adaptation in Germany and Spain
  • Tanja A. Börzel
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    29 November 2001
  • Tanja Börzel argues that the effect of Europeanization on the politics and institutions of the EU's member states depends on the degree of conflict between European and domestic norms and rules. This book examines the relationship between the central state and regions in Germany and Spain, showing how Europeanization has served to weaken the powers of the regions. In both countries, the regions were forced to cooperate more closely with the centre, but the institutional impact in the two countries has been strikingly different. In Germany the existing cooperative Federal system was reinforced, but in Spain the traditional competitive relationship between the levels of government could not continue. Europeanization has led to a significant change in the pattern of Spanish politics, turning rivalry into cooperation. This book thus presents an important analysis of the impact of Europeanization on domestic politics, and on the relationship between states and regions in particular.

The Europeanisation of National Administrations
  • Patterns of Institutional Change and Persistence
  • Christoph Knill
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    09 August 2001
  • Christoph Knill's book analyses the impact of European policies on national administrations. Under which conditions can we expect domestic change, particularly the convergence of administrative styles and structures? How can we explain national patterns of administrative transformation in the context of Europeanisation? Knill's study is a comparative assessment of the factors influencing administrative adjustment to European policy demands in the member states. It addresses the topic from an innovative theoretical perspective, combining institution-based and agency-based approaches, and includes a detailed account of the administrative impact of EU environmental policy in Britain and Germany. The Europeanisation of National Administrations will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of European studies, public administration and public policy, environmental politics, and European and administrative law.

The EU, NATO and the Integration of Europe
  • Rules and Rhetoric
  • Frank Schimmelfennig
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    18 December 2003
  • Why did Western European states agree to the enlargement of the EU and NATO? Frank Schimmelfennig analyzes the history of the enlargement process and develops a theoretical approach of 'rhetorical action' to explain why it occurred. While rationalist theory explains the willingness of East European states to join the NATO and EU, it does not explain why member states decided to admit them. Using original data, Schimmelfennig shows that expansion to the East can be understood in terms of liberal democratic community building. Drawing on the works of Jon Elster and Erving Goffman, he demonstrates that the decision to expand was the result of rhetorical action. Candidates and their supporters used arguments based on collective identity, norms and values of the Western community to shame opponents into acquiescing to enlargement. This landmark book makes an enormous contribution to theory in international relations and to the study of European politics.

Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union
  • Jonas Tallberg
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    24 August 2006
  • In this 2006 book, Jonas Tallberg offers a novel perspective on some of the most fundamental questions about international cooperation and European Union politics. Offering the first systematic theoretical and empirical exploration of the influence wielded by chairmen of multilateral negotiations, Tallberg develops a rationalist theory of formal leadership and demonstrates its explanatory power through carefully selected case studies of EU negotiations. He shows that the rotating Presidency of the EU constitutes a power platform that grants governments unique opportunities to shape the outcomes of negotiations. His provocative analysis establishes that Presidencies, while performing vital functions for the EU, simultaneously exploit their privileged political position to favour national interests. Extending the scope of the analysis to international negotiations on trade, security and the environment, Tallberg further demonstrates that the influence of the EU Presidency is not an isolated occurrence but the expression of a general phenomenon in world politics - the power of the chair.

The Shape of the New Europe
  • Edited by Ralf Rogowski, Charles Turner
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    23 November 2006
  • The European Union and European identity were until recently the objects of separate branches of scholarship and inquiry. With the entry of Central and Eastern European members into the EU, it has become clear that the future of the European Union can no longer be considered in isolation from the future of European identity. Taking Jürgen Habermas's plea for a European constitution and a normative foundation for the European Union as its starting point, this volume brings together the ideas of distinguished scholars in philosophy, political science, sociology, history, law and theology in order to address the shifting relationship between constitutionality, political culture, history and collective identity. The book argues that the future shape of Europe will not only result from external processes of globalisation but from the interaction between these social spheres within Europe.

Page 237 of 298