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Europe and Civil Society provides an in-depth examination of how public interest groups and social movements seek to influence the European policy-making process. The book is based on a comparison of the role of networks of activists and their allies--broadly defined as Movement Advocacy Coalitions--in influencing decision-making at the European Union level in three specific areas of policy-making: environmentalism, anti-racism and ethno-nationalist regionalism. It draws on systematic documentary analysis and an extensive series of interviews with activists and institutional actors to examine the role of public interest organizations in these three areas. This focus reflects topical societal concerns and facilitates new insights into the study of European policy-making, political sociology, and social movement research.
Following his third election victory in 2008, the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was the most controversial head of government in the EU. This is a cogent examination of the Berlusconi phenomenon, exploring the success and development of the new populist right-wing coalition in Italy since the collapse of the post-war party system in the early 1990s. Carlo Ruzza and Stefano Fella provide a comprehensive discussion of the three main parties of the Italian right: Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, the xenophobic and regionalist populist Northern League and the post-fascist National Alliance. The book assesses the implications of this controversial right for the Italian democratic system an...
The last two decades have seen the emergence of new radical right-wing populist parties in Western democracies. The electoral breakthrough of the French Front National in 1984 was the starting point for the rise of parties combining anti-establishment populism and anti-immigrant politics based on ethno-nationalist ideology, and today radical right-wing populist parties are well represented in national politics in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the Netherlands in Western Europe, as well as in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. By bringing together some of the foremost experts within this area of research, this book gives a comprehensive image of different aspects of radical right-wing populism: its causes, ideology, and impact.
What is the impact of populism on the EU? How did the EU institutions and civil society react to the recent rise of populist parties? To answer such relevant questions and understand populism in terms of ideas, political outcomes, and social dynamics, academia needs to engage with institutional actors, civil society organizations, and policy makers. By bringing together academics, members of European institutions and agencies, and leaders of civil society organizations, this edited volume bridges the gap between research and practice. It explores how populism impacted on European institutions and civil society and investigates their reactions and strategies to overcome the challenges posed by populists. This collection is organized into three main sections, i.e., general European governance; European Parliament and Commission; European organized civil society. Overall, the volume unveils how the populist threat was perceived within the EU institutions and NGOs and discusses the strategies they devised to react and how these were implemented in institutional and public communication.
Integrating newcomers and minorities into the social fabric of receiving countries has become one of the crucial challenges of contemporary Western societies. This volume seeks to understand patterns of changing institutional practices and public policies where the challenges of including cultural diversity into the social fabric are most pronounced: namely the health care system. In recent years, pro-migrant organizations and anti-racist activists have repeatedly voiced and politicized demands to improve migrants' access to the health-care system giving rise to a lively debate about migrants' access to health-care and responsiveness of institutions to their needs. In a nutshell the book ach...
Throughout Europe longstanding ideas of what it means to be a citizen are being challenged. The sense of belonging to a nation has never been more in flux. Simultaneously, nationalistic and racist movements are gaining ground and barriers are being erected against immigration. This volume examines how concepts of citizenship have evolved in different countries and varying contexts. It explores the interconnection between ideas of the nation, modes of citizenship and the treatment of migrants. Adopting a multi-disciplinary and international approach, this collection brings together experts from several fields including political studies, history, law and sociology. By juxtaposing four European countries - Britain, France, Germany and Italy - and setting current trends against a historical background, it highlights important differences and exposes similarities in the urgent questions surrounding citizenship and the treatment of minorities in Europe today.
This volume aims to generate a dialogue between scholarship on populism and social and political theory. It focuses on citizenship, class, gender, cleavages, sovereignty, accountability, participation, leadership, and parties. The volume explores how classical and current theorists developed these categories, how they were used by scholars of populism, and what populism tells us about their heuristic advantages and limitations. The authors of this book have studied populism in Europe, the US, and Latin America from distinct perspectives. The chapters thus focus on experiences in both the Global North and South. Contributors are: Cecilia Biancalana, Paula Diehl, Reinhard Heinisch, Klaudia Koxha, Alfio Mastropaolo, Oscar Mazzoleni, Enrique Peruzzotti, Kenneth M. Roberts, Luis Roniger, and Carlos de la Torre. Populism and Key Concepts in Social and Political Theory is now available in paperback for individual customers.
This book examines the increasing territorialisation of party competition and the relaxation of unitarian rule through devolution, presenting a long-term analysis of electoral developments in the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War. Subsequently, the book looks into the undermining of the traditional majoritarian mode of British government as a result. It analyzes the significant role of these long-term developments and their detrimental effect on the parliament’s ability to resolve issues like the Scottish Independence Referendum or the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, and it addresses their underlying causes. The author additionally reconnects these electoral dev...
This book provides the first systematic and comparative analysis of the intersections of populism and science in Europe, from the perspective of political sociology. Populism is the object of rich scholarly debate over its definition and the best way to approach its study. But until now, little attention has been paid to the relationships between populism and science. Recently, the Covid-19 crisis has exposed the contradictions in this relationship, and this book combines an analysis of the theoretical aspects of the relationship between populism and science with rigorous empirical research. The theoretical perspectives show populism as a thin-ideology, as discourse and performance, and as a political logic, consider both right-wing and left-wing populism, and focus on leaders as well as citizens. The book also offers an overview of controversies within different fields of ‘science’, including case studies on food science, climate change, vaccination, gender theory, COVID-19, and environmental issues. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of a number of social science disciplines, including political sociology, political science and political psychology.
This book investigates the historical roots of the Italian Republic’s oldest surviving political party, the populist far right Lega (Nord), tracing its origins to post-war Italy. The author examines two main case studies: the Movements for Regional Autonomy (MRAs), the Piedmontese Movement for Regional Autonomy (the MARP) and the Bergamascan Movement for Autonomy (the MAB), both of which formed a first wave of post-war populist regionalism from 1955 until 1960. The regionalist leagues which later emerged in both Piedmont and Lombardy in the 1980s – and which would later form part of the Lega Nord – represented in many ways a revival of the MRAs’ populist regionalist discourse and ide...