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Democratic Institutions and Authoritarian Rule in Southeast Europe
The Yugoslavian leader Josip Broz Tito once warned "one should not hold on to the law like a drunken man holds on to a fence." A still-valid piece of popular wisdom, this statement acurately sums up the persistant problem of authoritarian rule and sham law in southeastern Europe. This volume investigates why the postcommunist democratic transition of southeastern Europe fell so short of initial expectations, connecting the failure of democratization to the dominance and interference of authoritarian parties in the processes of regime change. These parties established and implemented practices of nondemocratic governance that continue to subvert the rule of law more than twenty years after communism ended. In a rare move, this text empirically supports the argument that a double movement thwarted the post-socialist transformation of the region, in which nondemocratic practies of rule subverted the advance toward more formal democratic institutions. This conflicting development explains why improvements to formal democratic institutions failed to produce expected democratization outcomes.
Life Scripts
Life Scripts: A Transactional Analysis of Unconscious Relational Patterns is an exciting collection of contemporary writings on Life Script theory and psychotherapeutic methods. Each chapter describes an evolution of Eric Berne's original theory and brings together a stimulating range of international perspectives, theoretical positions, clinical experiences and psychotherapy practices, as well as a psychotherapy story that illustrates the theory. The concept of Life Scripts has frequently been associated with the determinism represented in theoretical scripts, yet, this book offers some new and diverse perspectives. A few contributors address the significance of early childhood experiences ...
Democratic Deficit
Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on 'democratic deficits', reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.
Europe's Balkan Muslims
There are roughly eight million Muslims in south-east Europe, among them Albanians, Bosniaks, Turks and Roma -- descendants of converts or settlers in the Ottoman period. This new history of the social, political and religious transformations that this population experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- a period marked by the collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires and by the creation of the modern Balkan states -- will shed new light on the European Muslim experience. Southeast Europe's Muslims have experienced a slow and complex crystallisation of their respective national identities, which accelerated after 1945 as a result of the authoritarian modern...
Causes of War
Theories on the origins of war are often based on the premise that the rational actor is in pursuit of material satisfaction, such as the quest for power or for wealth. These perspectives disregard the need for homo symbolicus – the preservation of a positive self-image for both emotional and instrumental reasons. A good reputation ensures authority and material resources. Non-recognition can be as much as an explanation of war as that of other explicative 'variables'. Two empirical studies examining the role of non-recognition in great power conflicts and in international crises will demonstrate the value of this symbolic approach.
Judicial corruption in developing countries
Presents "Judicial Corruption in Developing Countries: Its Causes and Economic Consequences," written by Edgardo Buscaglia and published as one of the "Essays in Public Policy" of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California.
The System Made Me Do it
Strike up a conversation with a citizen from the post-communist region and invariably the talk will turn to the topic of corruption - the misuse of public power for private gain. People are sure that corruption is widespread, whether from their own experiences or stories they have heard from others. They feel frustrated that there seems to be nothing they can do about it, that they are helpless, and that they are being played for fools. And many are cynical: they feel that they, too, have to play the game because "the system" compels them to do so. But what system exactly? What are the structures and mechanisms of corruption in post-communist societies? "The System Made Me Do It" is the first comprehensive study of the origin, nature, and consequences of corruption in post-communist societies. While international actors decry corruption as a major impediment to democracy building and economic development, the problem is not well understood. This book fills that gap, and suggests innovative and practical institutional strategies for containing corruption. It achieves a rare and perfect balance of disciplined analysis, practicality, and passion.
The far right in the Balkans
This is the first book to provide comprehensive coverage of the far right political party phenomenon in the Balkans. The author focuses on parties generally described as lying on the far right in academic literature and examines their development from 2000 until 2010. The book provides a detailed analysis of the historical legacy essential in understanding the overall context of nationalism in the region as well as an overview of the far right political parties in each country. It discusses parties individually, detailing their ideological features, strategy, internal organisation and leadership, and compares their political, social, economic, ethno-cultural and international characteristics. It reveals the main factors that were influential in the successes and failures of the far right, and offers a comparison between the typical far right voter living in the Balkans and his counterpart in Western Europe. The implementation and enforcement of legislature such as hate speech laws is also examined, along with other legal issues affecting the extremist parties in the region.
Civil Society in Communist Eastern Europe
As well as promoting debates about liberal democracy, the dramatic events of 1989 also bought forth a powerful revival in the interest of the notion of civil society. This revival was reflected mainly in two broad tracts of literature. The first focused primarily on events surrounding the Solidarity movement in Poland and the tumultuous events of 1980-81. The second was concerned with the Velvet Revolutions more broadly. Following the events of 1989, there appeared a number of works sharing the common central argument that civil society played a key role in the overthrow of these Communist regimes in 1989. Killingsworth's book presents three broad arguments, all of which reject the way civil...
A Theory of Parties and Electoral Systems
Winner, George H. Hallett Award, 1998, Representation and Electoral Systems Organized Section of the American Political Science Association Political parties and elections are the mainsprings of modern democracy. In this classic volume, Richard S. Katz explores the problem of how a given electoral system affects the role of political parties and the way in which party members are elected. He develops and tests a theory of the differences in the cohesion, ideological behavior, and issue orientation of Western parliamentary parties on the basis of the electoral systems under which they compete. A standard in the field of political theory and thought, The Theory of Parties and the Electoral System contributes to a better understanding of parliamentary party structures and demonstrates the wide utility of the rationalistic approach for explaining behavior derived from the self-interest of political actors.
