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The Laboratory of Progress: Switzerland in the 19th Century tells the improbable story of how a small, backward, mountainous agricultural country with almost no raw materials became an industrial powerhouse, a hub of innovation, a touristic mecca and a pioneer in transportation – all in the course of a single century. That a tiny landlocked country should become a dominant steamship builder for the rest of the world; that a country that had never seen a cotton plant should become the world’s second-largest textile producer; that a country with hardly any level terrain should come to boast the world’s most highly developed railway network; and that a country whose main export was impove...
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi transformed education theory and practice worldwide. Daniel Tröhler connects Pestalozzi's work to its context in Europe's late 18th- and early 19th-century republican movement, offering readers a way to understand the sociopolitical significance of education and its central role in the development of modern societies.
Switzerland is facing critical foreign policy challenges. Its relationship with the EU is still unsettled, the geopolitical landscape is changing rapidly, and technological innovation brings additional dynamics into play. This book provides a forward-looking guide for all those concerned with Swiss foreign policy issues, and an overview of Swiss foreign policy along its key areas. It deals, for example, with foreign trade, international financial markets, migration, environmental policy, humanitarian cooperation, and peace promotion and security policy. The contributions are written by academics and practicioners. They shed light on the respective global or regional context in which Switzerl...
Interdisciplinary essays on early modern Germany that address orthodoxy and its challenges in religion, politics, and the arts. Confronting the transformation of normative canons after the Reformation, the essays investigate authority and knowledge in an era of shifting cultural foundations.
This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the many different facets of the Swiss political system and of the major developments in modern Swiss politics. It brings together a diverse set of more than 50 leading experts in their respective areas, who explore Switzerland's distinctive and sometimes intriguing politics at all levels and across multiple themes. In placing the topics in an international and comparative context and in conversation with the broader scholarly literature, the contributors provide a much-needed counterpoint to the rather idealized and sometimes outdated perception of Swiss politics. The work is divided into thematic sections that represent the inherent diversit...
This book provides a history of Swiss banking not confined to stereotypical opinions about secret numbered accounts. Instead, the presented history covers other intriguing events and developments beyond the famous issue of banking secrecy and the corresponding scandals. Topics covered in the book include the early financial innovations by banks in Geneva to handle the sovereign risk on bonds issued in pre-revolutionary France, the monetary chaos that led to the creation of the Swiss franc, the rather peculiar banknote competition and free-banking system in Switzerland during most of the nineteenth century, how the country and its currency became a financial safe haven after World War I, the ...
This comprehensive Handbook examines public policy evaluation in democracies. Focusing on the political dimension of the evaluation process, it argues that policy evaluation can be an emancipatory tool, reducing social inequalities and exclusion, and offers novel suggestions on how evaluations can be used to improve democratic policymaking.
Legislative debates make democracy and representation work. Political actors engage in legislative debates to make their voice heard to voters. Parties use debates to shore up their brand. This book makes the most comprehensive study of legislative debates thus far, looking at the politics of legislative debates in 33 liberal democracies in Europe, North America and Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The book begins with theoretical chapters focused on the key concepts in the study of legislative debates. Michael Laver, Slapin and Proksch, and Taylor examine the politics of legislative debates in parliamentary and presidential democracies. Subsequently, Goplerud makes a critical revie...
In ten years 80 per cent of the legislation related to economics, maybe also to taxes and social aff airs, will be of Community origin.” This declaration has been largely quoted, paraphrased and deformed by different authors, creating a persistent myth according to which 80% of the legislative activity of the national legislatures would soon be reduced to the simple transposition of European norms”. This book addresses the topic of the scope and impact of Europeanization on national legislation, as a part of the Europeanization debate which raises normative concerns linked to the “democratic deficit” debate. The state of the art shows that there are many assumptions and claims on how...