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The Dynamics of European Integration
In Europe’s recent history, there have been several challenges to the strength of the European Union—Brexit, COVID, financial crises, and global tensions—bringing an increased need to understand the ways that the European Union (EU) could successfully stay together or fall apart. In examining how the European Union has changed since 1993, important puzzles have emerged, including how national government functions are transferred to the EU without reforming the EU, how increased transparency is announced while decisions are approved in informal meetings, and how the effects of the polarizing rise of Euroscepticism can be managed to still promote the formation of solidarity and trust amo...
Resolving Controversy in the European Union
How does the EU resolve controversy when making laws that affect citizens? How has the EU been affected by the recent enlargements that brought its membership to a diverse group of twenty-seven countries? This book answers these questions with analyses of the EU's legislative system that include the roles played by the European Commission, European Parliament and member states' national governments in the Council of Ministers. Robert Thomson examines more than 300 controversial issues in the EU from the past decade and describes many cases of controversial decision-making as well as rigorous comparative analyses. The analyses test competing expectations regarding key aspects of the political system, including the policy demands made by different institutions and member states, the distributions of power among the institutions and member states, and the contents of decision outcomes. These analyses are also highly relevant to the EU's democratic deficit and various reform proposals.
Reforming the European Union
For decades the European Union tried changing its institutions, but achieved only unsatisfying political compromises and modest, incremental treaty revisions. In late 2009, however, the EU was successfully reformed through the Treaty of Lisbon. Reforming the European Union examines how political leaders ratified this treaty against all odds and shows how this victory involved all stages of treaty reform negotiations--from the initial proposal to referendums in several European countries. The authors emphasize the strategic role of political leadership and domestic politics, and they use state-of-the-art methodology, applying a comprehensive data set for actors' reform preferences. They look ...
Parliaments and Legislative Activity
Martin Brunner aims at solving the puzzle of why opposition parties or government backbenchers propose legislation even though the chance to influence policy outcomes in this manner is almost nil. He argues that instead of influencing policies directly most parliamentary bills serve different purposes: They are used in order to signal own policy positions and to show alternatives to government policies. Or they point at topics that rank high on the public agenda but low on the government agenda. They can also be a means for individual Members of Parliament to build up an independent personal profile. Using formal models and comparative empirical evidence from Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom the author shows that parliamentary initiatives of opposition and backbenchers are not simply “much ado about nothing”, but the result of vote-seeking motivations.
Remaking the Republic
Citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States was an ever-moving target. The Constitution did not specify its exact meaning, leaving lawmakers and other Americans to struggle over the fundamental questions of who could be a citizen, how a person attained the status, and the particular privileges citizenship afforded. Indeed, as late as 1862, U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates observed that citizenship was "now as little understood in its details and elements, and the question as open to argument and speculative criticism as it was at the founding of the Government." Black people suffered under this ambiguity, but also seized on it in efforts to transform their nominal freedom. By claim...
Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery
In this groundbreaking work, Cara Rogers Stevens examines the fascinating life of Thomas Jefferson’s book, Notes on the State of Virginia, from its innocuous composition in the early 1780s to its use as a political weapon by both pro- and antislavery forces in the early nineteenth century. Initially written as a brief statistical introduction to Virginia for French readers, Jefferson’s book evolved to become his comprehensive statement on almost all facets of the state’s natural and political realms. As part of an antislavery education strategy, Jefferson also decided to include a treatise on the nature of racial difference, as well as a manifesto on the corrupting power of slavery in ...
Constitutionalism and American Culture
Cultural history and themendment : New York Times v. Sullivan and its times / Kermit L. Hall -- New directions in American constitutional history -- Words as hard as cannon-balls : women's rights agitation -- And liberty of speech in nineteenth-century America / Sandra F. VanBurkleo -- Race, state, market, and civil society in constitutional history / Mark Tushnet -- Constitutional history and the "cultural turn" : cross -- Examining the legal-reelist narratives of Henry Fonda / Norman L. Rosenberg -- Contributors
Understanding the Founding
Over the course of the last century, scholars have furiously debated four questions concerning the Founders and their act of creation. Were the Framers motivated by their economic interests? How democratic was the Framers' Constitution? Should we interpret the Founding using philosophical or strictly historical approaches? What traditions of political thought were most important to the Framers? In Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions, Alan Gibson examines the preconceptions that scholars bring to these questions, explores the deepest sources of scholars' disagreements over them, and suggests new and thoughtful lines of interpretation and inquiry. Building on his previous work, Interpreting the Founding, which offers a synoptic overview of the competing perspectives that have informed modern scholarship on the Founders...
