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The British, German, and French states have recently stepped up their actions against racist violence. There are significant policy similarities across the countries, but equally meaningful differences. In relative terms, Britain has focused more of its energies on reforming the police and the judicial process for prosecuting racially aggravated offences; Germany has delegated power and resources to civil society groups for developing programs against right-wing activities; and France has taken high-profile symbolic actions and has begun adapting its educational policies to address racist violence. This paper maps the policy terrain within each country. It also assesses the effectiveness of different policy approaches. It demonstrates that raw statistics on racist violence are inadequate measures of success, and argues that policies must be judged by how societal groups perceive them and therefore by the extent to which they foster national cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the political mobilization of Muslims in Britain and France on two major issues: state funding of Islamic schools and the wearing of the hijab by Muslim schoolgirls in state schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all EU member-states, which have in turn clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. These changes in practices and challenges to ideas have profoundly affected all EU member states, but some more so than others, largely as a question of ?institutional fit.? The EU, as a ?compound? supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to ?simple? national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to ?compound? national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member-states, however, is not so much that practices have changed and that ideas have been challenged than that national leaders have generally failed to come up with new ideas and discourse that reflect the new Europeanized realities. But here, too, institutional differences matter, although to differing effect. Simple polities have greater potential for speaking to changes in practices and challenges to ideas, were they to so choose, because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate ?communicative? discourse to the general public, in which they are better able to speak in one voice and to convey a single message than more compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]