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Bulgaria's Democratic Institutions at Thirty
Thirty years after Bulgaria’s democratic breakthrough, this book provides a “balance sheet” of the country’s democratic institutions through a number of interdisciplinary contributions. The volume is organized around three themes—democratic institutions, civil society, and European Union (EU) processes—and examines such topics such as voting, political parties, populism, media, civil society organizations, identity, and the rule of law. While the contributors argue that Bulgaria’s democracy is successful in terms of the procedural norms of democracy, civic participation, and compliance with EU rules, they also identify serious problem areas. Bulgaria’s democratic institutions struggle with obstacles such as populist Euroscepticism, political elitism, corruption, and a lack of political accountability, though this volume fully acknowledges the historical development of Bulgarian democracy, including its achievements and continuing setbacks.
The Thinkers
"Increasing, political parties have adopted not only different policies, but different sets of facts. Information Wars examines the role of partisan think tanks in creating these alternate realities. Partisan think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and Center for American Progress have become de facto formal party organizations, serving as close advisors and staff for the Republican and Democratic parties. It examines their impact on the policy process, polarization, and democracy. It also traces their development during American history, finding a close link between their activities and the growth of polarization in Congress. The book mixes historical analysis, qualitative case studies, and large-n quantitative analysis to examine the causes and consequences of the growth of partisan think tanks and their impact on American party politics"--
Comparative European Politics
This essential guide to comparative European politics provides the broadest range of coverage on Europe, illustrated via the widest range of examples, applied to contemporary events.
Party Mandates and Democracy
When people discuss politics, they often mention the promises politicians make during election campaigns. Promises raise hopes that positive policy changes are possible, but people are generally skeptical of these promises. Party Mandates and Democracy reveals the extent to and conditions under which governments fulfill party promises during election campaigns. Contrary to conventional wisdom a majority of pledges—sometimes a large majority—are acted upon in most countries, most of the time. The fulfillment of parties’ election pledges is an essential part of the democratic process. This book is the first major, genuinely comparative study of promises across a broad range of countries and elections, including the United States, Canada, nine Western European countries, and Bulgaria. The book thus adds to the body of literature on the variety of outcomes stemming from alternative democratic institutions.
The EU Anti-Corruption Report
This book analyses the development of anti-corruption as a policy field in the European Union with a particular focus on the EU Anti-Corruption Report. It reconstructs the origins of anti-corruption policy in the 1990s when the EU started to recognise corruption as a serious crime with a cross-border dimension. It also analyses the processes surrounding the downfall of the Santer Commission on charges of corruption in 1999 and the enlargement of the EU. This incorporation of transitional new Member States was accompanied by a number of specific measures, instruments and monitoring mechanisms to combat corruption at the supranational level, finally leading to the introduction of the EU-wide A...
Coalition Governance in Western Europe
Coalition government is the most frequent form of government in Western Europe, but we have relatively little systematic knowledge about how that form of government has developed in recent decades. This book studies such governments, covering the full life-cycle of coalitions from the formation of party alliances before elections to coalition formation after elections (or in the sitting parliament), portfolio distribution among the coalition parties, governing and policy-making when parties work together in office, and the stages that eventually lead to government termination. A particular emphasis is on the study of how coalitions govern together even when they have different agendas. Do in...
The Partisan Politics of Law and Order
Whereas some Western democracies have turned toward substantially tougher law and order policies, others have not. How can we account for this discrepancy? In The Partisan Politics of Law and Order, Georg Wenzelburger argues that partisan politics have shaped the development of law and order policies in Western countries over the past twenty-five years. Wenzelburger establishes an integrated framework based on issue competition, institutional context, and policy feedback as the driving factors shaping penal policy. Using a large-scale quantitative analysis of twenty Western industrialized countries covering the period from 1995 to 2012, supplemented by case studies in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Sweden, Wenzelburger presents robust empirical evidence for the central role of political parties in law-and-order policy-making. By demonstrating how the configuration of party systems and institutional context affect law and order policies, this book addresses an understudied but key dynamic in penal legislation. The argument and evidence presented here will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, criminologists, and criminal justice scholars.
Representation, Achieved and Astray
Traces, explains and evaluates processes of democratic ideological representation from voter choices, through election laws, to the formation of parliamentary governments.
Relative Authority of Judicial and Extra-Judicial Review
Do independent boards of appeal set up in some EU agencies and the European Ombudsman compensate for the shortcomings of EU Courts? This book examines the operation of EU judicial and extra-judicial review mechanisms. It confronts the formal legal rules with evolving practices, relying on rich statistical data and internal documents. It covers detailed institutional arrangements, the standard of review, the types of cases and litigants, and the activity of the parties in the process. It makes visible the diverse but complementary ways in which the mechanisms enhance the authority of EU legal acts and processes. It also reveals that scarce resources and imprecise rules restrict the scope of review and hinder independent empirical investigations. Finally, it casts light on how a differentiated system of judicial and extra-judicial review can accommodate various kinds of technical and political discretion exercised by EU institutions and bodies.
Repertoires of Terrorism
Why do armed groups employ terrorism in markedly different ways during civil wars? Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, Andreas E. Feldmann examines the disparate behavior of actors including guerrilla groups, state security forces, and paramilitaries during Colombia’s long and bloody civil war. Analyzing the varieties of violence in this conflict, he develops a new theory of the dynamics of terrorism in civil wars. Feldmann argues that armed groups’ distinct uses—repertoires—of terrorism arise from their particular organizational identities, the central and enduring attributes that distinguish one faction from other warring parties. He investigates a range of groups that took...
