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"Political leaders are the most universal, recognized, and talked about element of political life. However, the general analysis of political leadership has been little advanced. In this book Professor Blondel provides a general framework for the systematic study of leadership to make possible future empirical study and comparative analysis of political leadership. After examining the current state of political leadership studies, Professor Blondel categorizes the leaders of the world taking into account both their goals and the constraints and opportunities resulting from the environment. Important features and influences on leadership are identified: the sources of personal power, the role of leaders' own psychology and perspective, the instruments of power available to leaders, their relationship with subordinates and citizens, the influence of institutions on leadership and the impact of leaders"--Provided by publisher.
This book is about a variety of national arrangements and practices, whose common characteristics are to constitute 'presidential republics' and which as such have become the main form of government in the contemporary world.
Social structure may historically have been of primary importance in accounting for the attitudes and behaviour of many citizens, but now changes in social structure have diminished the role played by class and religious affiliation, whilst the significance of personality in political leadership has increased. This volume explores, both theoretically and empirically, the increasingly important role played by the personalisation of leadership. Acknowledging the part played by social cleavages, it focuses on the personal relationships and psychological dimension between citizens and political leaders. It begins by examining the changes which have taken place in the relationship among citizens,...
First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Party and Government is an eleven-country study of the relationship between the governments of liberal democracies, mainly from Western Europe, but also including the United States and India, and the parties which support these governments. It examines this relationship at the three levels at which governments and parties connect: appointments, policy-making, and patronage. The emphasis is on a two-way relationship: parties influence governments but governments also influence parties. The extent and the direction of this influence varies from country to country. In some cases, governments and parties are almost autonomous from each other, as in the United States; in other cases, on the contrary, there is considerable power of one over the other: sometimes the party dominates, sometimes the government.
Governments have grown in scope, and spread geographically, to the point where a new phenomenon has emerged -- rule by a political class of ministers regarded as the main instruments of change. Yet ministerial careers and the structure of ministerial careers have been largely neglected areas of study in political science. Jean Blondel's new book is a major, comparative study of the world's government ministers since 1945, which examines both their similarities and differences. Party structures, legislative behaviour, even bureaucratic arrangements vary from country to country, but the nature of the job and the status of ministers is largely uniform, making it possible to study and tackle fundamental questions and assumptions of ministerial government. This volume builds an analytical framework in order to probe the very foundation of the 'ministerial profession' and explore important questions concerning political executives. Do social, economic, cultural or institutional factors contribute to the making of good or bad ministers? Are we justified in complaining about bad government? And, does high ministerial turnover contribute to bad government?
The power of the European Parliament has been steadily and visibly increasing in recent years. This arises from EU treaty changes and from the fact that more and more decisions are being made at the European level. At the same time, however, the already low rate of turnout in European elections has actually been declining. This powerful new study examines a seemingly paradoxical situation which has raised deep concern about the democratic deficit in the European Union. The authors analyse the concepts of participation, democracy, and legitimacy and their applicability at the European level and develop a typology of voter participation and abstention in the European context. Combining extensi...
This book is a study of the attitudes to political and social life among the citizens of eighteen countries in Western Europe, East and Southeast Asia. Drawing on data from the largest cross-national survey on political culture for the last half a century, this book assesses how political culture differs across the two regions and whether this can be drawn back to a profound difference in basic societal values, or ‘Asian values’. Examining geographical, religious and socio-economic factors, the authors discuss whether there genuinely is a common political value in the two regions or a profound difference as these countries move towards modernity. This original and comprehensive study of the values, norms and beliefs held by citizens of the East and West will appeal to students and scholars of political culture and comparative politics, as well as Asian and European politics.
After decades, former lovers come face to face in a novel filled with a “suspenseful dread that makes you want to turn every page at locomotive pace” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Cécile, a stylish forty-seven-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful, and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation almost thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express ...
Governing New European Democracies is a fully comparative study of decision-making processes in the cabinets of ten post-communist countries of East-Central and South-Eastern Europe. It is based on interviews collected from over 300 ministers. This book provides the first comprehensive panorama of life in cabinet governments.