You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book provides an in-depth account of the politics of the Eurozone crisis in Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Malta, mapping the positions expressed by the governments of Southern EU countries during the Eurozone crisis negotiations, including Greece’s bailout deal, the so-called “Six Pack” and the “Fiscal Compact” and exploring the process of domestic preference formation. The book relies on original data resulting from fieldwork conducted in the context of the EU Commission- funded Horizon 2020 project “The Choice for Europe since Maastricht”.
This comprehensive book analyses the development of the legislatures in the Iberian countries over the past 40 years, since democracy was introduced, to comparatively understand their role in these political systems and in sustaining their democratic systems. Sharing many historical developments and institutional characteristics, Spain and Portugal also present crucial differences, notably Spain’s pure parliamentary system, a King as Head of State and a quasi-federal structure, and Portugal’s semi-presidential democracy. Starting with a historical and institutional contextualization of these two legislatures, the book examines the most important organizational and behavioural features of legislative life in Iberian legislatures in a comparative perspective. It also shows how new legislatures develop resilience capacity to support lasting democratic systems as fully fledged institutionalized bodies. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Spain and Portugal, legislative politics and parliamentarianism, and more broadly to European politics and comparative politics, journalists and practitioners.
Federalism and Social Policy focuses on the crucial question: Is a strong and egalitarian welfare state compatible with federalism? In this carefully curated collection, Scott L. Greer, Heather Elliott, and the contributors explore the relationship between decentralization and the welfare state to determine whether or not decentralization has negative consequences for welfare. The contributors examine a variety of federal countries, including Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom, asking four key questions related to decentralization: (1) Are there regional welfare states (such as Scotland, Minnesota, etc.)? (2) How much variation is there in the structures of federal welfare states? (3) Is federalism bad for welfare? (4) Does austerity recentralize or decentralize welfare states? By focusing on money and policy instead of law and constitutional politics, the volume shows that federalism shapes regional governments and policies even when decentralization exists.
This book studies the challenges to conventional politics posed by new ways of selecting candidates for legislative elections. The recent economic crisis had profound political consequences on politics, generating an upsurge in the demand for more participative ways of decision-making in politics channelled through social movements and individuals in different countries. Some parties have reacted by introducing changes in their internal organization (via intra-party democracy), particularly related to the selection of candidates for public office. This volume explores the trends and challenges of these new methods of selection, analyses how the internet is increasingly being used as a selection tool, and evaluates some of the relevant consequences related to political representation, party cohesion and party centralization, among others.
This book analyses the Spanish parliamentary elites in a comparative perspective within southern Europe. What has been the impact of the Great Recession on the configuration of parliaments and the diversity of legislators? Have new parties delivered better representation of citizens in terms of demographics (gender, age, social class), ideology or political attitudes and beliefs? This original research is based on a 2018 survey on members of two national chambers and 17 regional parliaments. Comparing these data with those of a simultaneous survey carried out on Spanish citizens and with data from previous research a decade ago, the book examines the changes that have occurred in representation during the course of the Great Recession and provides evidence of the growing distance between citizens and parliamentary elites. Additionally, using data from the Comparative Candidates Survey, the book compares the ideological congruence between citizens and their representatives in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.
CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.