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Everyday life in the East German Socialist Unity Party revolved heavily around maintaining the “party line” in all areas of society, whether through direct authority or corruption. Spanning a long period of the GDR’s history, from 1946 through 1989, Rüdiger Bergien presents the first study that examines the complexities of the central party’s communist apparatus. He focuses on their role as ideological watchdogs, as they fostered an underbelly and “inner life” for their employees to integrate the party’s pillars throughout East German society. Inside Party Headquarters reviews not only the party’s modes power and state interaction, but also the processes of negotiation and disputation preceding formal Politburo decisions, advancing the available detail and discourse surrounding this formative and volatile stretch of German history.
This collective volume - with contributions from experts on these regions - examines broader questions about the current crises (The Great Recession and The Commodity Crisis) and the associated changes in political representation in both regions. It provides a general overview of political representation studies in Southern Europe and Latin America and builds bridges between the two traditions of political representation studies, affording greater understanding of developments in each region and promote future research collaboration between Southern Europe and Latin America. Finally, the book addresses questions of continuity and change in patterns of political representation after the onset...
"Assuming a historico-political-science approach, the author argues that Orbánism can be understood not from Viktor Orbán himself but an analysis of the longer processes of Hungarian political development. Understanding is not acquiescence but a more complex interpretation than mainstream approaches afford"--
Recent years have witnessed major changes to the workplace across Europe. The speed of these changes requires constant monitoring and reappraisal. In this book, recent trends are analyzed and their consequences discussed, within a socio-historical context which also reveals underlying patterns of continuity. The trends analyzed include: the presence of high rates of endemic unemployment and underemployment, particularly amongst the young the growth of insecure and precarious employment sweeping changes to the regulation of and organization of work the diminution in the availability of manual work and the growth of white-collar service-sector jobs the growing participation of women in paid em...
The dissolution of the communist system led to the creation of new states and the formation of new concepts of citizenship in the post-Soviet states of Central and Eastern Europe. The formation of national identity also occurred in the context of the process of increasing economic and political globalisation, particularly the widening of the European Union to include the central European post-socialist and Baltic States. Internationally, Russia sought to establish a new identity either as a European or as a Eurasian society and had to accommodate the interests of a wider Russian Diaspora in the ‘near abroad’. This book addresses how domestic elites (regional, political and economic) infl...
This book offers the first comprehensive, comparative and coherent perspective on parliamentary candidates in contemporary representative democracy. Based on the unique database of the ‘Comparative Candidate Survey' project which interrogated parliamentary candidates in more than 30 countries, it fills a significant lacuna by focusing on the thousands of ordinary candidates that participate in national elections. It examines who the candidates are in terms of their socio-demographic background and political career patterns, how they were selected by their parties, what their policy preference are and whether these are congruent to those held by their voters, who they seek to represent and ...
This book represents the first comprehensive study of how technocracy currently challenges representative democracy and asks how technocratic politics undermines democratic legitimacy. How strong is its challenge to democratic institutions? The book offers a solid theory and conceptualization of technocratic politics and the technocratic challenge is analyzed empirically at all levels of the national and supra-national institutions and actors, such as cabinets, parties, the EU, independent bodies, central banks and direct democratic campaigns in a comparative and policy perspective. It takes an in-depth analysis addressing elitism, meritocracy, de-politicization, efficiency, neutrality, reli...
The Democracy Manifesto is about how to recreate democracy by replacing elections with government that is truly of, by and for the people. Written in engaging and accessible dialogue form, the book argues that the only truly democratic system of government is one in which decision-makers are selected randomly (by sortition) from the population at large, operating much the way trial juries do today, but 100% online, enabling people to govern together even across great distances. Sortition has a storied history but what sets The Democracy Manifesto apart is its comprehensive account of how it can be implemented not only across all sectors and levels of government, but throughout society as wel...
At a time when political representation can be said to be facing its ultimate crisis, this crucial work clarifies the terms of the debate, providing an up-to date analysis of the main conceptual and institutional controversies that have arisen surrounding this topic. Written by leading scholars in the field, contributions focus on how representation is conceptualised and its relation to democracy.
Tangled Transformations presents a historical analysis of the interplay between German unification and European integration from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Building on freshly released documents, the book’s sixteen chapters explore constellations in which the two processes accelerated and informed one another. The book highlights the role of Germany’s neighbours to the east, with chapters discussing the cotransformation between East and West as well as chapters dedicated to Poland, Romania, and Hungary. It sheds new light on the two interrelated processes by examining the role of Germany’s most important Western neighbours and partners: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. The book pays particular attention to the role of the European Commission as well as to monetary and industrial policy. It also moves beyond the economic sphere by discussing foreign and security policy issues, justice and home affairs, German debates about European integration at the time, and the significance of the German federal states. Ultimately, Tangled Transformations demonstrates the strong interlinkages between German unification and European integration.