You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The book analyses how political parties compete and strategise on the issue of territorial reform using case-studies that include countries from both Western (Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain) and Central-Eastern Europe (Poland, Slovakia and Romania). Each case-study considers different drivers of decentralization, such as territorial identities and the demands of regionalist parties for territorial autonomy or independence, efficiency concerns related to issues of uneven economic development and economic competitiveness, the pressure from supra-national organizations (especially the EU), as well as different combinations of these drivers. They also consider how the ideology and organisation of state-wide parties and the institutional context in which they compete shape their responses to these drivers and their strategy towards the question of territorial reform. This collection investigates the logic of the actions that guide political parties’ strategy to highlight trends that are apparent across the case-studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.
In Germany, Grand Coalitions of the two major parties - the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) - generally have a bad reputation. Hence, the CDU/CSU-SPD government under Angela Merkel (2005-2009) was neither the parties' nor the citizens' preferred choice, its performance was seen quite critical from the outset, and it was finished without further ado after the 2009 federal election. Has the Grand Coalition 2005-2009 been a single episode or rather a turning point for German politics? This book provides a retrospective of the first Merkel government, an analysis of the 2009 election and an account of its prospective consequences.
This work examines the extent to which German foreign policy and European policy has changed since German unification. Despite significant changes on specific issues, most notably on the deployment of military force outside of the NATO area, there is greater continuity than change in post-unification German policy.
This book explores the theoretical issues, empirical evidence, and normative debates elicited by the concept of multi-level governance (MLG). The concept is a useful descriptor of decision-making processes that involve the simultaneous mobilization of public authorities at different jurisdictional levels as well as that of non-governmental organizations and social movements. It has become increasingly relevant with the weakening of territorial state power and effectiveness and the increase in international interdependencies which serve to undermine conventional governmental processes. This book moves towards the construction of a theory of multi-level governance by defining the analytical co...
With the passage of the Cold War, political parties in nearly every corner of the globe have undergone a vast upheaval. Old ideas have become obsolete, electoral maps have been redrawn, party structures have been rebuilt, and new leaders have emerged. Political Parties and the Collapse of the Old Orders describes these changes using several countries as laboratories: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, and Russia. While the nature and extent of the political upheavals vary from place to place, the transformations in each nation's party system have been extraordinary. In this "new world order," the old political arrangements and old ways of doing things have disappeared. The altered states of political parties in the post-Cold War world pose a central question: what does change look like? The answers given here illuminate our understanding of why the world has changed and how political parties are attempting to cope with it.
Devolution : A decade on, fifth report of session 2008-09, Vol. 2: Oral and written Evidence
Though these countries vary significantly in both their federal institutions and labour market policies, they all seek to define a relatively coherent approach for federal and sub-unit governments in a policy field where collaboration and coordination appear unavoidable. In some cases, such as Germany, collaboration is highly developed and policies are ambitious and integrated; in others, such as Switzerland, diversity and decentralization are privileged and policies remain fragmented. Finally, there are countries such as the United States that do not grant much importance to labour market policies. these five federations and so help us understand how political institutions and public policies are inter-related. Federalism and labour market policies certainly influence each other, but there is no simple relationship between them. Comparing different governance and employment strategies is nevertheless very instructive because it shows the range of approaches and policies that are possible in federal countries.
An interesting study of the German higher Education system, examining the development of higher education policies from the post-war years, to the post-unification period.
Almost all states are either federal or regionalized in some sense. It is difficult to find a state that is entirely unitary and the Routledge Handbook of Regionalism and Federalism necessarily takes in almost the entire world. Both federalism and regionalism have been subjects of a vast academic literature mainly from political science but sometimes also from history, economics, and geography. This cutting edge examination seeks to evaluate the two types of state organization from the perspective of political science producing a work that is analytical rather than simply descriptive. The Handbook presents some of the latest theoretical reflections on regionalism and federalism and then move...
This is a comprehensive and rounded thematic study of the EU-member states. The text provides detailed coverage of the principal member states and comparative studies of the smaller states, as well as discussing the issue of enlargement and covering empirical themes.