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The Political Sociology of the Welfare State
A comparative analysis of the political attitudes, values, aspirations, and identities of citizens in advanced industrial societies, this book focusses on the different ways in which social policies and national politics affect personal opinions on justice, political responsibility, and the overall trustworthiness of politicians.
Quality of Democracy at Regional Level in the V4 Countries
This book systematically examines regional-level qualities of democracy – representation, participation, and competition – in four countries of Central and Eastern Europe between 1994 and 2022, from the establishment of regional self-government to the present day. Focusing on their common EU accession as representing a critical juncture in their processes of consolidation and/or destabilization of liberal democratic patterns of government on both national and subnational levels, the book applies a conceptual framework on the quality of subnational democracy. It provides a clear methodological approach to observing quality and the variability in quality of democracy across various regions and its transformation through long-term comparisons. As such, the book contributes to understanding some of the processes of more than 30 years of Central and Eastern European regional politics, offering conceptual clarifications applicable to research conducted in other contexts. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of democracy, electoral politics, Central and East European politics, local politics, representation, and more broadly, comparative politics.
Managing Fragility and Promoting Resilience to Advance Peace, Security, and Sustainable Development
“Fragility”—the combination of poor governance, limited institutional capability, low social cohesion, and weak legitimacy—leads to erosion of the social contract and diminished resilience, with significant implications for peace, security, and sustainable development. This study reviews how the international community has responded to this challenge and offers new ideas on how that response can be improved. Based on that examination, the author seeks to convey the importance of addressing this phenomenon as a high priority for the international community. Chapters explore the nature of these obstacles to sustainable development, peace, and security; how the international community has defined, measured, and responded to the phenomenon of fragility; how the international response might be made more effective; and implications for the United States.
Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics
Is it self-interest or public interest that dominates Western politics? This question has been debated in many fields, and through the 1980s a consensus developed, supported by extensive research, that in their political decisions and actions people are largely motivated by self-interest, not by common good. In this book, combining in a novel way insights from different fields, including rational choice theory, political philosophy, and electoral research, Leif Lewin examines more than two hundred studies of democracy in action from seventeen countries. He looks at the behaviour and attitudes of voters, bureaucrats, and politicians in turn, and challenges the accepted wisdom. In his wide-ranging review of the literature he shows that people are in fact actuated by broader considerations than their own short-sighted interests: that they act politically 'in the shadow of the future'; that they find there are overwhelming reasons to try to contribute to the long-term common good. Professor Lewin shows, in short, that the plausible and prevalent theory that egoism rules simply don't match the facts."
Electoral Engineering
From Kosovo to Kabul, the last decade witnessed growing interest in ?electoral engineering?. Reformers have sought to achieve either greater government accountability through majoritarian arrangements or wider parliamentary diversity through proportional formula. Underlying the normative debates are important claims about the impact and consequences of electoral reform for political representation and voting behavior. The study compares and evaluates two broad schools of thought, each offering contracting expectations. One popular approach claims that formal rules define electoral incentives facing parties, politicians and citizens. By changing these rules, rational choice institutionalism claims that we have the capacity to shape political behavior. Alternative cultural modernization theories differ in their emphasis on the primary motors driving human behavior, their expectations about the pace of change, and also their assumptions about the ability of formal institutional rules to alter, rather than adapt to, deeply embedded and habitual social norms and patterns of human behavior.
Promising Democracy
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Daily Report
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