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Civil Society in an Age of Uncertainty
This book explores how the uncertainties of the 21st century present existential challenges to civil society. Presenting original empirical findings, it highlights transferable lessons that will inform policy and practice in today’s age of uncertainty.
In the King's Shadow
It is commonly assumed that the rise of modern democracies put an end to the spectacular and ceremonial aspects of political rule that were so characteristic of monarchies and other earlier regimes. The medieval idea that the king had two bodies - a mortal physical body and an eternal political body - strikes us today as alien and remote from our understanding of politics: with the transition from monarchy to modern representative democracy, the idea of the body politic was abandoned. Or was it? In this remarkable and highly original book Philip Manow shows that the body politic, though so often pronounced dead, remains alive in modern democracies. It is just one of the many ideas that we ha...
Local Civil Society
Epdf and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Drawing on place-based field investigations and new empirical analysis, this original book investigates civil society at local level. The concept of civil society is contested and multifaceted, and this text offers assessment and clarification of debates concerning the intertwining of civil society, the state and local community relations. Analysing two Welsh villages, the authors examine the importance of identity, connection with place and the impact of social and spatial boundaries on the everyday production of civil society. Bringing into focus questions of biography and temporality, the book provides an innovative account of continuities and changes within local civil society during social and economic transformation.
On Track Or Off The Rails?
In order to achieve a transition from a transport system centred on the individual car to one centred on (electrified) rail a new focus in infrastructure planning is needed. The preparation of project proposals for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030 on the sub-national level in Germany provides an opportunity to study decision-making processes in ministries and compare their respective results in this respect. Using document analysis, expert interviews, qualitative content analysis as well as QCA, this thesis in political science analyses how decision-making processes within bureaucracies impact the decision output in transport infrastructure planning. It contributes to the discussion on bureaucracy-politics interactions that is relevant beyond the German case. One result is that ministries tend to use complex decision-making processes for topics deemed salient as long as the available capacity permits it. Consequently, in order to conduct legitimacy-enhancing steps – such as public participation – a well-funded bureaucracy is indispensable.
Policy Change and Innovation in Multilevel Governance
Multilevel governance divides powers, includes many veto players and requires extensive policy coordination among different jurisdictions. Under these conditions, innovative policies or institutional reforms seem difficult to achieve. However, while multilevel systems establish obstructive barriers to change, they also provide spaces for creative and experimental policies, incentives for learning, and ways to circumvent resistance against change. As the book explains, appropriate patterns of multilevel governance linking diverse policy arenas to a loosely coupled structure are conducive to policy innovation.
Constitutional Politics in Central and Eastern Europe
The contributions to this edited volume discuss constitutional politics in 20 Central and Eastern European countries. The country chapters describe all constitutional amendments and new constitutions after the first post-communist constitution-making, all failed amendment attempts, and the political discourses about constitutional politics. Framed by a broad comparative chapter, the country studies are embedded in the established literature on constitutional politics. The book thus provides a better understanding of constitutional politics in the region and beyond.
Federal Democracies at Work
Applying an innovative approach to capture varieties and dynamics of federal democracies, this collection examines the conditions, mechanisms and practices that make federal democracies work.
Identities, Trust, and Cohesion in Federal Systems
To what extent do federal systems promote multiple identities and attachments? How do their identities affect the trust that is assigned to various orders of government and contribute to cohesion in federalist systems? Do cohesive federations depend on public trust and strong attachment to the national or central government? Are attachments and identification with the various orders of government in conflict or are they compatible? Identities, Trust, and Cohesion in Federal Systems offers eight comparative essays that provide key insights into identity debates in federalist countries. The findings are drawn from extensive analyses of public opinion data in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany...
The Palgrave Handbook of Decentralisation in Europe
This handbook provides an authoritative study of European decentralisation, taking into account, from a territorial perspective, the different political and administrative traditions in Europe (Continental, Anglo-Saxon and Ex-communist States) and the cleavages North-South and East-West. While in recent decades most European countries have implemented devolution policies trying to tackle different political, social or bureaucratic problems, some others have instead regionalised their territory, applied federal or pseudo-federal reforms and strengthened the role of subnational governments. This volume analyses decentralisation in these countries using different variables including history, territorial organisation, civil service and financing, and reveals how this phenomenon leads to complex intergovernmental linkages. The evolution of territorial decentralisation, the political tensions between centre and periphery, the autonomy of the subnational governments and their functions and competences, the tools of co-ordination and co-operation, and the features and role of civil service are the main issues studied here with an interdisciplinary approach.
The Multilevel Politics of Trade
The Multilevel Politics of Trade presents a timely comparative analysis of eight federations (plus the European Union) to explore why some sub-federal actors have become more active in trade politics in recent years. As the contributing authors find, there is considerable variation in the intensity and modes of sub-federal participation. This they attribute to three key factors: the distinctive institutional features of federal systems; the nature and scope of trade policy and trade agreements; and the extent of social mobilization that accompanies a particular trade policy conversation. As a whole, The Multilevel Politics of Trade argues that sub-federal actors' interests (jurisdictional, p...
