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There are many theories as to why women remain severely underrepresented in democratic governments. Perhaps voters do not consider women to be capable leaders, or maybe party elites obstruct women's paths to office because they don't believe that they are electable. But if these attitudes are hurdles standing in the way of women being elected to office, where did they develop? In The Image of Gender and Political Leadership, Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson and Nehemia Geva bring together parallel experiments conducted in countries around the world to compare the ways in which young adults view gender and leadership. Together, the chapters in this book present findings from on-site experiments co...
Governing cabinets are composed of ministers who come and go even as governments march on. They work for the chief executive, the prime minister or the president, for their parties and for the constituent groups from which they come. They are chosen for their role and dismissed from it for all sorts of reasons that vary across time and country. This book examines the process of selection, shuffling and removal of ministers in national cabinets around the world. Drawing on original data over several decades, it offers a series of case studies of countries from around the world with differing institutional and cultural structures including presidential and semi-presidential systems, and parliamentary, unitary and federal systems, some of which have experienced periods under authoritarian regimes. Featuring 14 case studies on North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, this book complements the earlier volume The Selection of Ministers in Europe (Routledge, 2009). This volume will be an important reference for students and scholars of political science, government, executives, comparative politics and political parties.
This open access book offers an updated examination of the institutionalisation of political science in sixteen latecomer or peripheral countries in Europe. Its main theme is how political science as a science of democracy is influenced and how it responds to the challenges of the new millennium. The chapters, built upon a common theoretical framework of institutionalisation, are evidence-based and comparative. Overall, the book diagnoses diversity among the country cases due to their take-off points and varied political and economic trajectories.
In the context of the global decline of democracy, The Authoritarian Divide analyzes the tactics that populist leaders in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ecuador have used to polarize their countries. Political polarization is traditionally viewed as the result of competing left/right ideologies. In The Authoritarian Divide, Orçun Selçuk argues that, regardless of ideology, polarization is driven by dominant populist leaders who deliberately divide constituents by cultivating a dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion. This practice, known as affective leader polarization, stymies compromise and undermines the democratic process. Drawing on multiple qualitative and quantitative methodologies for support, as well as content from propaganda media such as public speeches, Muhtar Meetings, Aló Presidente, and Enlace Ciudadano, Selçuk details and analyzes the tactics used by three well-known populist leaders to fuel affective leader polarization: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Selçuk’s work provides a rubric for a better understanding of—and potential defense against—the rise in polarizing populism across the globe.
This book provides an in-depth analysis of the ‘technocratic shift’ in ministerial recruitment, measuring its extent and variations over time in fourteen European countries. It addresses the question: who governs in European democratic regimes? Just a few decades ago, the answer would have been straightforward: party-men and (fewer) party-women. More recently, however, and in varying degrees across Europe, a greater proportion of non-politicians or experts have been recruited to government, as exemplified by the 2017 election of Emmanuel Macron to the French Presidency. These experts, frequently labelled “technocrats”, increasingly occupy key executive positions and have emerged as powerful actors in the decision-making process. This edited collection explores the contemporary debates surrounding the relationship between technocracy, democracy and political leadership, and will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in these fields.
Historically, men have been more likely to be appointed to governing cabinets, but gendered patterns of appointment vary cross-nationally, and women's inclusion in cabinets has grown significantly over time. This book breaks new theoretical ground by conceiving of cabinet formation as a gendered, iterative process governed by rules that empower and constrain presidents and prime ministers in the criteria they use to make appointments. Political actors use their agency to interpret and exploit ambiguity in rules to deviate from past practices of appointing mostly men. When they do so, they create different opportunities for men and women to be selected, explaining why some democracies have ap...
Examining 36 democracies from 1945 to 2010, this text arrives at conclusions about what type of democracy works best. It demonstrates that consensual systems stimulate economic growth, control inflation and unemployment, and limit budget deficits.
Portuguese democracy is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Portugal joined the European Union (EU) in 1986, but the enduring legacies of the country’s transition process from authoritarianism to democracy became apparent during the European sovereign debt crisis, when Portugal experienced its third bailout since the institutionalization of democratic government. Although the first decade after EU accession was one of slight growth and investment, Portugal’s economy has, in effect, been performing poorly since the beginning of the 21st century. Among the major changes in Portuga - as in much of Southern Europe - as a result of the ‘great recession’, was the emergence of important n...
This book develops an analysis of ministerial recruitment in the process of government formation, the process of dismissal, and survival of cabinet ministers in Chile and Uruguay. The two cases are countries that, generally, score the highest democracy indexes in Latin America, but also, they are considered as the most stable presidential systems in the Southern Cone of the region, allowing readers to compare within and between cases. The cases analyzed in this book are small countries with a similar history of democratic breakdowns which, in temporal terms, enable comparison. Additionally, given the reasons that triggered those processes, both cases are normally studied together. For pre-co...
Portfolio allocation in presidential systems is a central tool that presidents use to deal with changes in the political and economic environment. Yet, we still have much to learn about the process through which ministers are selected and the reasons why they are replaced in presidential systems. This book offers the most comprehensive, cross-national analysis of portfolio allocation in the Americas to date. In doing so, it contributes to the development of theories about portfolio allocation in presidential systems. Looking specifically at how presidents use portfolio allocation as part of their wider political strategy, it examines eight country case studies, within a carefully developed analytical framework and cross-national comparative analysis from a common dataset. The book includes cases studies of portfolio allocation in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the United States, Peru and Uruguay, and covers the period between the transition to democracy in each country up until 2014. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, executive politics, Latin American politics and more broadly comparative politics.