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"Democracy theories and comparative political science have been challenged within the last decade by an unexpected democratic deficit and the rise of populism in the new EU-member states. This volume written by German and Czech scholars gives some food for thought for solving these research problems by means of thorough analyses of the polity, the politics and selected policies of the Czech Republic since 1990."Dieter Segert, retired Professor of Political Science (Area Studies on Eastern Europe), University of Vienna, Austria "Czech Democracy in Crisis is a long-overdue comprehensive study of the Czech political system. Using institutional approaches to change, it explores crucial policy ou...
Transforming the transformation? The East European Radical Right in the Political Process examines the significance of radical right parties, along with other organizations, in terms of their involvement in the political process of new democracies. This groundbreaking study highlights firstly the radical right’s interaction with other political actors, such as parties, governments and interest groups, in their respective countries. Secondly, the contributors analyze the effects of such interaction with regard to agenda setting and policies in "loaded" policy fields, namely minorities and immigration, law and order, religion, territorial issues and democratization. Through an examination of...
The European project has recently reached a critical point, where a discussion on the fundamental objectives of the European Union has entered public debate. There are considerable concerns about a new Euroscepticism arising in response to recent developments, especially the Eurozone crisis, and a general feeling of malaise towards the European project from both national elites and ordinary citizens of Member States. This paper looks at how Euroscepticism can be defined, the reasons behind its development in Western and Eastern Europe and the EPPÕs perspective on this phenomenon.Ê
This book is a comparative analysis of the post-communist East European radical right, both in party and non-party formation, using the West European radical right as a baseline. Minkenberg offers insights into the political field of the radical right since the onset of democracy in the region and elicits region-wide and country-specific characteristics. The book argues that due to the nature of the transition process from Soviet hegemony to national independence and from communist to democratic societies, and the unfinished process of nation-building in the region, the radical right in Eastern Europe is a phenomenon sui generis, both organizationally more fluid and ideologically more extreme than the Western counterpart. The issues covered include trends in party system and electoral developments, patterns of movement mobilization and racist activism, and the impact of the radical right on their countries’ politics and policies.
Civil Democracy Protection is an overview of attempts by organisations to oppose groups that are perceived to threaten democracy. The book traces the history of civil democracy protection actors from the establishment of democratic constitutional states up to the present day and develops a set of systematic and comparative approaches. The central question it explores is: What significance do civil actors have for the establishment and consolidation of democratic constitutional states, especially in relation to the protection of democracy by state institutions? The volume includes contributions from historians and social scientists, who combine idiographic approaches that focus on the specifi...
Literatur, die sich in gesellschaftlichen und politischen Prozessen kritisch zu Wort meldet, ist seit 1989 auch in Deutschland wieder deutlicher zu vernehmen. Sie nimmt Stellung zu den dringend anstehenden Problemen wie (Im)Migration, Re-Nationalisierung, Rassismus, Globalisierung, Überwachungsstaat, Neoliberalismus. Die Formen und Weisen der literarischen Stellungnahmen sind Gegenstand der in diesem Band versammelten Untersuchungen. AutorInnen wie Ulrich Peltzer, Juli Zeh, Kerstin Hensel, Navid Kermani, Uwe Tellkamp, Antje Rávic-Strubel, Ilija Trojanow, aber auch neue und neu inszenierte Erzählgenres wie Dorfgeschichte, Reisebericht oder Kriminalroman werden in eingehenden Analysen auf ihr kritisches Potential hin untersucht.
This collection represents a tool to broaden and deepen our geographical, institutional, and historical understanding of the term totalitarianism. Is totalitarianism only found in ‘other’ societies? How come, then, it emerged historically in ‘ours’ first? How come it developed in so many countries either in Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) or under implicit Western forms of coercion (Latin America)? How do relations between individual(s), mass and the visual arts relate to totalitarian trends? These are among the questions this book asks about totalitarianism. The volume does not impose a ‘one size fits all’ interpretation, but opens new spaces for debate on t...
Politische Ideen können politisches Handeln prägen oder bis hin zum »Etikettenschwindel« rechtfertigen. Sie sind wesentliche Erkenntnisobjekte der Politikwissenschaft. Das Buch stellt das antike und frühneuzeitliche politische Denken sowie die Theorien vom »Gesellschaftsvertrag« vor. Es erläutert die modernen Politikverständnisse in ihrer emanzipatorischen und gegenemanzipatorischen Ausgestaltung. Dann wird nach der Bedeutung politischer Ideen im Populismus, im Extremismus und im Terrorismus gefragt. Mit der Totalitarismuskonzeption und dem Systemansatz werden zwei wichtige politische Theorien in ihrem ideengeprägten Kontext vorgestellt. Schließlich gibt das Buch nützliche Anleitungen und Hinweise für das Arbeiten in der politischen Theorie und Ideengeschichte.