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Bureaucracy and Society in Transition
Despite criticism of inefficiencies and unlimited growth, bureaucracies still fill crucial positions in modern societies. This volume examines ‘varieties in bureaucracies’ across Europe, with a specific focus on the Nordic region.
Democratic Elitism
Joseph Schumpeter's “competitive theory of democracy” – often labeled democratic elitism - has struck many as an apt and insightful description of how representative democracy works, even though convinced democrats detect an elitist thrust they find disturbing. But neither Schumpeter nor subsequent defenders of democratic elitism have paid enough attention to actual behaviors of leaders and elites. Attention has been riveted on how adequately democratic elitism captures the relationship between governors and governed in its insistence that competitive elections prevent the relationship from being one-way, that is, leaders and elites largely unaccountable to passive and submissive voters. Why and how leaders and elites create and sustain competitive elections, what happens if their competitions become excessively stage-managed or belligerent – how, in short, leaders and elites really act - are some of the issues this book addresses. Contributors are Heinrich Best, Jens Borchert, Michael Edinger, Fredrik Engelstad, Trygve Gulbrandsen, John Higley, Gabriella Ilonszki, András Körösényi, Mindaugas Kuklys, Gyorgy Lengyel, Anton Steen, and Jacek Wasilewski.
Contesting Religion
As Scandinavian societies experience increased ethno-religious diversity, their Christian-Lutheran heritage and strong traditions of welfare and solidarity are being challenged and contested. This book explores conflicts related to religion as they play out in public broadcasting, social media, local civic settings, and schools. It examines how the mediatization of these controversies influences people’s engagement with contested issues about religion, and redraws the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion. FEATURED CONTRIBUTORSLynn Schofield Clark, Professor of Media, Film, and Journalism at the University of Denver, Colorado, USAMarie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology at the Open University, UKBirgit Meyer, Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Sortition and Democracy
After two centuries during which it had nearly disappeared in Western countries, sortition is used again as a method of selecting people who could speak for, and in certain cases decide for, all the citizenry. What is the meaning of this comeback? To answer this question, this book offers a historical analysis. It brings together a number of the best specialists on political sortition from antiquity to contemporary experiments, in Europe but also in the Ancient Middle East and in imperial China. With a transdisciplinary perspective, this volume demonstrates that sortition has been a crucial device in political history; that the instruments and places where sortition was practised matter for the understanding of the social and political logics at stake; and that these logics have been quite different, random selection being sometimes an instrument of radical democracy and in other contexts a tool for solving conflicts among elites. Will sortition in politics helps to democratize democracy in the twenty-first century?
The SAGE Handbook of Power
Power is arguably one of the key concepts within the social sciences. The SAGE Handbook of Power is the first touchstone for any student or researcher wishing to initiate themselves in the state of the art. Internationally acclaimed, Stewart R Clegg and Mark Haugaard have joined forces to select a collection of papers written by scholars with global reputations for excellence. These papers bridge different conceptual and theoretical positions and draw on many disciplines, including politics, sociology and cultural studies. The sweep and richness of the resulting handbook will help readers contextualise and grow their understanding of this dynamic and important subject area.
Ibsen and Degeneration
Henrik Ibsen’s plays were written at a critical juncture in late-19th-century European culture. Appearing at a time when notions of evolution and heredity were commonplace themes in literature and the arts, Ibsenian drama highlights the creative potential offered by contemporary evolutionary thought. In his plays, Ibsen explores variations on the theme of degeneration, imagining how families can become affected by ill-health or other forms of “weakness” that lead to the extinction of the family line. Ibsen and Degeneration looks at the recurrence of ideas of degeneration in three of Ibsen’s plays: In Ghosts, it is the motif of syphilis, highly shocking to Ibsen’s contemporaries, wh...
Time Matters
What do variables really tell us? When exactly do inventions occur? Why do we always miss turning points as they transpire? When does what doesn't happen mean as much, if not more, than what does? Andrew Abbott considers these fascinating questions in Time Matters, a diverse series of essays that constitutes the most extensive analysis of temporality in social science today. Ranging from abstract theoretical reflection to pointed methodological critique, Abbott demonstrates the inevitably theoretical character of any methodology. Time Matters focuses particularly on questions of time, events, and causality. Abbott grounds each essay in straightforward examinations of actual social scientific...
Transforming Gender Citizenship
Explains the adoption, diffusion of, and resistance to gender quotas in politics, corporate boards and public administration across Europe.
Elites in an Egalitarian Society
Based on two unique survey studies of elites in Norway, this book examines whether elite attitudes towards central national issues have changed in the wake of international and national events and developments since 2000. The chapters examine elite integration and relations between elites and citizens in Norway as a means to discuss the continued viability of the Nordic welfare state model. This insight into how elites relate to central issues in Norwegian society and how they look upon citizens’ political interest and competence in general, will be of interest to academics within sociology and political science, as well as journalists and commentators and policy makers.
The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe
Jonathan Swift has had a profound impact on almost all the national literatures of Continental Europe. The celebrated author of acknowledged masterpieces like A Tale of a Tub (1704), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729), the Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin, was courted by innumerable translators, adaptors, and retellers, admired and challenged by shoals of critics, and creatively imitated by both novelists and playwrights, not only in Central Europe (Germany and Switzerland) but also in its northern (Denmark and Sweden) and southern (Italy, Spain, and Portugal) outposts, as well as its eastern (Poland and Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) and Western parts - from the beginning of the 18th century to the present day.
