Search

The Routledge Handbook of Parliamentary Administrations brings together an international, multidisciplinary group of contributors providing a systematic and comprehensive analysis of parliamentary administrations. Including chapters on the administrations of national parliaments in every member state of the European Union, in most of the EU candidate countries and in key liberal democracies around the world, this book represents a uniquely broad-ranging resource. Each national system is treated in a consistent manner, with authors providing relevant facts, figures and critical analysis according to a common framework. Additionally, it provides coverage of transnational parliamentary administrations in different regions around the globe and includes a number of cross-cutting chapters, addressing key issues of relevance for a better understanding of parliamentary administrations such as the potential for politicisation, professionalisation, digitalisation or Europeanisation with the comparative analysis of different national experiences. This handbook will enable readers to better comprehend the role and influence of parliamentary administrations and in doing so will enhance our understanding of their importance for the effective functioning of representative democracy more generally. The Routledge Handbook of Parliamentary Administrations constitutes a unique tool and prime reference for any researcher, scholar or practitioner working in the area of parliamentary and legislative studies, governance, democracy, public policy and administration, as well as more widely to European studies, general political science and comparative politics.

This book reviews a variety of approaches to the study of the European Union's foreign policy. Much analysis of EU foreign policy contains implicit theoretical assumptions about the nature of the EU and its member states, their inter-relationships, the international system in which they operate and the nature and direction of European integration. In many instances such assumptions - not being discussed openly - limit, rather than facilitate debate. The purpose of this book is to open up this field of enquiry so that students, observers and analysts of EU foreign policy can review a broad range of tools and theoretical templates from which the development and the trajectory of the EU's foreign policy can be studied. Situated as it is at the interface between European Studies and International Relations, the book also seeks to engage the attention of readers who are anxious to understand how the European Union relates to the rest of the world and to explain the efforts of the EU and its member states towards the creation of a credible, effective and principled foreign, security and defence policy.