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A well-functioning bureaucracy is very important, but in Sweden there are clear signs that bureaucratization is taking place - that there are too many personnel who govern, administer and control operations rather than operationally carrying out them. How does that happen? In this book, political scientist Patrik Hall examines the reasons why public bureaucracy in Sweden is increasing. A fundamental reason is that the status of advanced administrative positions in public organizations has become higher than the work within the core business. These administrative positions are also not subject to the same mandatory financial management as the operational activities. More and more politically decided rules also contribute to bureaucratization. Finally, there is a driving force to create the ""modern organization"", which leads to internal ambiguities about what the core mission actually is and how it should be carried out. A special category of staff that is studied in the book is organizational professionals – well-educated administrators with organization as the profession. These work with what Hall calls ""organizational accountability"" both externally – ​​towards politics and other demanders – and internally, towards their own organization. The strengthening of organizational accountabilities is due to an increasingly fragmented public sector. Changing the public sector takes time, but bureaucratization could be reduced by focusing on the democratic mission rather than on constructing the organization. Thus there are measures that the public organizations can take themselves to reduce bureaucracy. The book is based on descriptive statistics, interviews, focus groups and case studies of the Police, the Swedish Transport Administration and Swedish universities. It is written within the project ""Bureaucratization of public organizations? A comparative study of organizational professionals in Sweden and New Zealand"".

In rural development studies there are two mainstream assumptions. One holds that peasants are the victims of state rural development schemes, the other that only planning can ensure change and prosperity in rural regions. It is rarely considered that peasants are architects of their own and local wellbeing – notions which are often in opposition to state plans for agriculture. The Laissez-Faire Peasant explores how rural development emerges on the ground. The concept involves the manifestation of peasant worldviews in which autonomy in decision-making, freedom of action, spontaneity, and flexibility in everyday cooperation play a dominant role. A role in which individual and local values generate a self-regulating system that manages a range of economic, social, and political relationships. The book examines manifestations of peasant autonomy, both in response to and independent of state rural development policies through a multi-sited ethnography of three Serbian villages. It is shown how these factors impede state programs for rural development while enabling the spontaneous flourishing of local communities. By focusing on the agency of rural residents, the book finds that peasants are resilient and competent agents who do not need government plans to thrive. Praise for The Laissez-Faire Peasant ‘Anthropologists and missionaries claim to love their peasants. Economists and planners claim to help them. Both look down. Diković brilliantly proposes a new approach, which might be called “humanomics’’. It gives respect, looking up from where people actually live.’ Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago ‘This is an ethnographically rich and conceptually original study of post-socialist peasantry and rural development in Serbia. Jovana Diković draws a complex picture of the post-socialist peasants as autonomous and resilient subjects motivated by the visions of rural development anchored in their local lifeworlds.’ Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, University of Fribourg ‘In her excellent study Jovana Diković challanges the narrative about Serbian peasants usually viewed as downtrodden and exploited underdogs in need of governmental help. In this careful case study, these peasants represent an entrepreneurial, self -reliant and individualistic social group that can survive and thrive even in the conditions of modern and technologically advanced capitalism.’ Ivan Janković, Institut auf dem Rosenberg

Martin Luther's concept of society as a household, ruled by parents, established a model of social organisation that would become important in the Nordic countries in the 17th and 18th centuries. With the dismantling of the Nordic monasteries in the Lutheran Reformation, households became the new framework for Christian life. The Ten Commandments replaced the rules of the monasteries. Similarly, morning and evening prayers in the households replaced the tidal prayers of the monasteries. At various levels, the household was the given and legitimate form of community and organisation. The relationship between parents and children therefore became normative far beyond what we would today call the biological family. In older Nordic research, the important historical role of the household is usually associated with the Swedish church historian Hilding Pleijel and his thesis about the prevalence of the Household idea. Based on new research, the authors of this anthology confirm Pleijel's basic assumption about the central role of the household. However, this is done in a way that Pleijel himself would hardly have imagined. After two chapters updating the state of research, a number of studies follow in which the historical and at the same time theological roles of the household are analysed at different levels. In the two Nordic kingdoms, the household is analysed in everyday life, in church teaching and as an overall household state. The anthology makes a special contribution by linking research fronts from Denmark and Sweden and offers comparative perspectives on why the household was given such similar but at the same time so different forms.

Too often, observers of globalization take for granted that the common ground across cultures is a thin layer of consumerism and perhaps human rights. If so, then anything deeper and more traditional would be placebound, and probably destined for the dustbin of history. But must this be so? Must we assume--as both liberals and traditionalists now tend to do--that one cannot be a cosmopolitan and take traditions seriously at the same time? This book offers a radically different argument about how traditions and global citizenship can meet, and suggests some important lessons for the contours of globalization in our own time. Adam K. Webb argues that if we look back before modernity, we find a very different line of thinking about what it means to take the whole world as one’s horizon. Digging into some fascinating currents of thought and practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period, across all major civilizations, Webb is able to reveal patterns of ""deep cosmopolitanism"", with its logic quite unlike that of liberal globalization today. In their more cosmopolitan moments, everyone from clerics to pilgrims to empire-builders was inclined to look for deep ethical parallels—points of contact—among civilizations and traditions. Once modernity swept aside the old civilizations, however, that promise was largely forgotten. We now have an impoverished view of what it means to embrace a tradition and even what kinds of conversations across traditions are possible. In part two, Webb draws out the lessons of deep cosmopolitanism for our own time. If revived, it has something to say about everything from the rise of new non-Western powers like China and India and what they offer the world, to religious tolerance, to global civil society, to cross-border migration. Deep Cosmopolis traces an alternative strand of cosmopolitan thinking that cuts across centuries and civilizations. It advances a new perspective on world history, and a distinctive vision of globalization for this century which has the real potential to resonate with us all.

This innovative volume of twelve essays by international scholars examines the political uses and misuses of medieval images, objects, and sites in modern times (16th to 20th centuries). In case studies that range from Russia to the US and include catacombs, mosques, cathedrals, feudal castles, museums, and textbooks, it demonstrates how medieval works of art and architecture have been called into action to legitimize modern political agendas.

This book presents the most comprehensive theory of the common good of the European Union (EU) currently available and proposes concrete policies to improve its achievement. It begins with a discussion of EU values, which are seen to provide a basis for identifying a transnational common good. The author discusses the distinctive nature of the EU common good, which he associates with three main conditions: maintaining liberal democracy, enabling decent standards of social welfare, and ensuring a high level of environmental protection. Relying on a constructivist understanding of national interests, the author recommends a set of reforms that would allow the EU common good to be more strongly represented in the process of national interest formation in domestic politics. At the same time, he proposes significant changes in the Brussels institutional apparatus with a view to democratising the pursuit of the common good, including the creation of an EU Citizens’ Assembly and the election of the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council. Furthermore, this book argues that a willingness by EU citizens to recurrently sacrifice their interests for the sake of an EU common good would require stronger bonds of civic friendship among them. The author proposes several policies to achieve this goal, including reducing socioeconomic inequalities in the EU, curtailing barriers against freedom of movement and creating a transnational curriculum on EU citizenship.

In rural development studies there are two mainstream assumptions. One holds that peasants are the victims of state rural development schemes, the other that only planning can ensure change and prosperity in rural regions. It is rarely considered that peasants are architects of their own and local wellbeing – notions which are often in opposition to state plans for agriculture. The Laissez-Faire Peasant explores how rural development emerges on the ground. The concept involves the manifestation of peasant worldviews in which autonomy in decision-making, freedom of action, spontaneity, and flexibility in everyday cooperation play a dominant role. A role in which individual and local values generate a self-regulating system that manages a range of economic, social, and political relationships. The book examines manifestations of peasant autonomy, both in response to and independent of state rural development policies through a multi-sited ethnography of three Serbian villages. It is shown how these factors impede state programs for rural development while enabling the spontaneous flourishing of local communities. By focusing on the agency of rural residents, the book finds that peasants are resilient and competent agents who do not need government plans to thrive. Praise for The Laissez-Faire Peasant ‘Anthropologists and missionaries claim to love their peasants. Economists and planners claim to help them. Both look down. Diković brilliantly proposes a new approach, which might be called “humanomics’’. It gives respect, looking up from where people actually live.’ Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago ‘This is an ethnographically rich and conceptually original study of post-socialist peasantry and rural development in Serbia. Jovana Diković draws a complex picture of the post-socialist peasants as autonomous and resilient subjects motivated by the visions of rural development anchored in their local lifeworlds.’ Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, University of Fribourg ‘In her excellent study Jovana Diković challanges the narrative about Serbian peasants usually viewed as downtrodden and exploited underdogs in need of governmental help. In this careful case study, these peasants represent an entrepreneurial, self -reliant and individualistic social group that can survive and thrive even in the conditions of modern and technologically advanced capitalism.’ Ivan Janković, Institut auf dem Rosenberg

This open access book discusses conditions of conflict resolution over the Russo-Ukrainian War and analyzes requirements for long-term durable peace for Ukraine. What are the impacts of the Russo-Ukrainian War? Do we really know them? The authors examine this question from various perspective including conflict resolution theories, international relations theories, geopolitical theories, domestic and regional politics, regional security system, public opinion and national identity of Ukraine, etc. In so doing, the authors identify the war as a complex crux of many theoretical and practical issues like the merger of the Donbas War from 2014 with the full-scale invasion by Russia in Ukraine as a typical example of “internationalized internal-wars”. The authors also seek to develop their findings to ask a question, what are the agendas for durable peace for Ukraine? The authors argue that the agendas should include ripeness theory, security guarantees, deterrence mechanisms, geopolitical arrangements, domestic national identity formation, etc. The authors do not necessarily address the question about the way the war can be terminated, while the mode of the termination is within the scope of their investigation. In any case, however, the authors seek to highlight the basic framework for durable peace in Ukraine.

Lors des précédentes réformes de l'État, les propositions sur l’avenir de la Belgique ressemblaient à celles d’un couple en instance de divorce – la Flandre et la Wallonie –, statuant sur le partage de leurs biens... mais sans y parvenir pour le cas de Bruxelles.

Life, Earth, Colony explores the ideas, life, and historical significance of German zoologist turned geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), famous for developing the foundations of geopolitical thought. Ratzel produced a remarkable body of work that revolutionized the study of space, movement, colonization, and war. He also served as a source of intellectual inspiration for national socialism, particularly through his Lebensraum (living space) concept, which understood all life as being caught in an eternal struggle for space. This book closely analyzes this radical conservative intellectual, focusing on his often-overlooked ethnography, biogeography, travel, and creative writing, and colonial activism as well as his more widely-known political geography. Life, Earth, Colony finds that there is an as yet unexplored necropolitical impulse at the heart of Ratzel’s entire oeuvre, a preoccupation with death and dying, which had a profound impact on twentieth-century history.

Öffentlich-politische Kommunikation findet zunehmend über Soziale Netzwerke wie Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. statt. Dieses Buch schlägt – mit einem Fokus auf dem Dispositiv Twitter – einen mediatisierungslinguistischen Zugang vor, der die drei medienkulturell relevanten Ebenen Kommunikator, Kommunikat und Aneignung integrativ untersucht. Der Autor zeigt auf, dass mediatisierte politische Kommunikation holistisch zu analysieren ist: Die Identitäts- und Imagebildung von Politiker*innen basiert auf selbstgewählten multimodalen Rollen(-mustern), und sie wird auch interaktiv mit weiteren Akteur*innen wie Bürger*innen und Journalist*innen ausgehandelt.

In einem neuen postmodernen und transdisziplinären Verständnis von Public Health versteht sich die bisherige Außengrenze der Disziplin als eine, die proliferiert, zum Überschreiten einlädt und ihren Verlauf ständig mit einem neuen Verfallsdatum versieht. Der enge Rahmen, der künstlich um das derzeit sehr bescheidene Fächerspektrum gezogen wird, engt den Blick auf Gesundheit unnötig ein. So behindert er sogar die 1986 von der WHO eingeforderte gesamtgesellschaftlich getragene Sorge um die Gesundheit der Bevölkerung. In einem innovativen Vorhaben versammeln die Beiträger*innen diejenigen Fachdisziplinen, die bislang nicht ausreichend in gesundheitswissenschaftlichen Diskussionen berücksichtigt wurden. Damit öffnen sie den akademischen Diskurs und geben einen Ausblick auf eine Gesundheitswissenschaft ohne Grenzen.

This volume explores activism, research and critique in the age of digital subjects and objects and Big Data capitalism after a digital turn said to have radically transformed our political futures. Optimists assert that the ‘digital’ promises: new forms of community and ways of knowing and sensing, innovation, participatory culture, networked activism, and distributed democracy. Pessimists argue that digital technologies have extended domination via new forms of control, networked authoritarianism and exploitation, dehumanization and the surveillance society. Leading international scholars present varied interdisciplinary assessments of such claims – in theory and via dialogue – and of the digital’s impact on society and the potentials, pitfalls, limits and ideologies, of digital activism. They reflect on whether computational social science, digital humanities and ubiquitous datafication lead to digital positivism that threatens critical research or lead to new horizons in theory and society. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. More information about the initiative and details about KU’s Open Access programme can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.

This open access book approaches the history of tribes and their role in the formation of the modern states of Kuwait and Qatar by blending historical, political, and sociological perspectives. Traditionally, this subject has been approached from single perspective, often picturing the tribe as a political and social entity that is opposed to the modern state. In the Gulf context, presenting and discussing the case studies of Kuwait and Qatar aims at revealing that the tribe played a salient role in the formation of the modern state in these two countries as well as in nation building, both before the oil era and even after independence. Moreover, the book bridges an important gap that is often overlooked in GCC studies which explains how the tribe suddenly became a controversial factor in Gulf states and societies. The book elaborates on tracing the roots of this transformation and in evaluating the role played by the state as it attempted to manipulate tribes to achieve political and other advantages, only to trigger the rise of tribalism as a social and at times political force that undermines the legitimacy of the state. The book also highlights the impacts of this transformation, not only on the state, but also on society as a whole, with special emphasis on women in Kuwait and Qatar. It is relevant to scholars and advanced students in areas of political sociology, identify and gender, comparative politics, and for social scientists more broadly with a specific interest in the Middle East.

This open access book offers a new approach to understandings of welfare in modern Britain. Foregrounding the agency individuals and groups claimed through experiential expertise, it traces deep connections between personal experience, welfare, and activism across diverse settings in modern Britain. The experiential experts studied in this collection include women, students, children, women who have sex with women, bereaved families, community groups, individuals living in poverty, adults whose status sits outside professional categories, health service users, and people of faith. Chapters trace how these groups have used their experiences to assert an expert witness status and have sought out new spaces to expand the scope, inclusivity, and applicability of welfare services.

This volume presents three important themes for the study of Indonesian politics, cultures, and urban space: 1) urban regeneration and collective memory, 2) marginality and the other archives, 3) mood, medium, and media. Readers will find in the collection elements of urban imaginary and practices as represented in essays on community archiving, heritage, spatial experiments, gangsters and hooligans, sex work and sexual violence, youth subcultures, marketplaces, museums, and elite subdivisions. With this, the book offers readers a way to look at how the contributors approach the ever- shifting urban space as a cultural and political arena: how space is represented, produced and contested and how they are implicated in identity formations today and in the past; how individual and collective memories are fixated, disrupted, or catapulted forward by mobility and spatial transformation; how people, landscapes, buildings, movements join forces in transforming self and space, resulting in significant reconfiguration of politics, culture, and memory. This is an open access book.

Global governance is tightening and foreshadows that world state formation will become a live political issue in this century. Some observers treat it as inevitable amid the urgency of global issues. They foresee a technocratic scaling up of the model of state authority that has prevailed at the national level for over two hundred years. Many critics and members of the public around the world look askance at that prospect. They rightly fear a moral vacuum of authority disconnected from the world’s traditions, and a concentration of power that would be damaging to liberty or even dystopian in its upshot. Still, they often merely aim to stand athwart the scaling up of political institutions, rather than actively trying to shape an alternative that can seize the global horizon. The World’s Constitution: Spheres of Liberty in the Future Global Order offers a radically different vision of future world order that could work in a global space while shifting the balance of power from state back to society. It draws on older resources in political thought, both Western and non-Western, to upend mainstream notions of statehood and sovereignty that have been taken for granted for too long in the modern era. It offers an original ‘sphere pluralist’ framework that can reconcile liberty, tradition, and cosmopolitanism. As a book rooted in the past but mindful of future constitutional and policy challenges, it bridges ideas and real-world implications, with insights that cut across a wide range of topics from migration and social welfare to personal law systems and channels of representation. It opens an exciting debate about global constitutional futures that is likely to become more salient over the next couple of generations. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Présent dans toute politique environnementale et pourtant s'en distinguant précisément parce qu’il n’est pas ce qui nous entoure mais ce qui existe pour et par lui-même, le vivant ne se laisse pas enfermer par les humains – pas si facilement, dirait-on avec nuance – et c’est cet acte de résistance qui le rend politique.

Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe remain an important hub for migration, with significant implications for both the societies in the region and migrants themselves. Migration can affect illiberal practices by contributing to political polarization, the adoption of restrictive immigration policies, the spread of xenophobia and discrimination, and economic competition. Global Migration and Illiberalism in Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe analyses how illiberal states manage migration to absorb resistance and how migration impacts the illiberal political agenda. With this dual perspective, the contributions provide an understanding of how migration becomes a pivotal factor in shaping political discourse, policies, and governance practices within the context of illiberal states. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the studies on Russia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine show how illiberalism shapes, influences, and enables states to take advantage of migration to secure and advance political goals. Simultaneously, migration processes can challenge authoritarianism and illiberal political goals by fostering diversity, networking, democracy promotion, and political empowerment. Finally, the volume aims to make the conceptualization of illiberalism more relevant for the study of political and administrative practices and ways of thinking in this region. Political decisions are made in structures which are not only shaped by domestic considerations but are also deeply entwined with the globalized markets and the shadow economy that transcend national borders economically and culturally. Furthermore, the examination of illiberalism vis-à-vis migration in Russia, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe illustrates the global socio-political tendencies in many other parts of the world.

Global governance is tightening and foreshadows that world state formation will become a live political issue in this century. Some observers treat it as inevitable amid the urgency of global issues. They foresee a technocratic scaling up of the model of state authority that has prevailed at the national level for over two hundred years. Many critics and members of the public around the world look askance at that prospect. They rightly fear a moral vacuum of authority disconnected from the world’s traditions, and a concentration of power that would be damaging to liberty or even dystopian in its upshot. Still, they often merely aim to stand athwart the scaling up of political institutions, rather than actively trying to shape an alternative that can seize the global horizon. The World’s Constitution: Spheres of Liberty in the Future Global Order offers a radically different vision of future world order that could work in a global space while shifting the balance of power from state back to society. It draws on older resources in political thought, both Western and non-Western, to upend mainstream notions of statehood and sovereignty that have been taken for granted for too long in the modern era. It offers an original ‘sphere pluralist’ framework that can reconcile liberty, tradition, and cosmopolitanism. As a book rooted in the past but mindful of future constitutional and policy challenges, it bridges ideas and real-world implications, with insights that cut across a wide range of topics from migration and social welfare to personal law systems and channels of representation. It opens an exciting debate about global constitutional futures that is likely to become more salient over the next couple of generations. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Religion, Law, and COVID-19 in Europe investigates how the pandemic and the subsequent legal restrictions on collective activities influenced religious life in the region. The 19 in-depth country case studies combine legal and sociological analyses and reflect the plurality of religious and secular contexts. They detail how the pandemic curbed the collective aspects of religion and how the religious communities adapted, especially via innovations in online religion and new forms of religious leadership. The volume looks at how ordinary devotees’ religious behaviours changed during the pandemic and reveals shifts in religion–state interactions. In so doing, it shows how the pandemic challenged both religions and societies and how this was influenced by varying religious landscapes, political histories and legal cultures. More broadly, this volume makes three important contributions to the extant literature. First, it presents a novel analytical framing for making sense of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected religion. Second, it provides an empirical account of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted religious groups across Europe. Third, it reveals the importance of sudden, large-scale events in understanding religious change in the modern world.

Over the last twenty-five years, the Member States of the EU and the UK have introduced freedom of information acts, various types of Ombudsman, impact assessment of legislative proposals, and stakeholders consultation procedures. The aim of regulatory reform is both to improve on substantive regulatory quality and to impact on final governance outcomes. This book explains when and how the design of regulatory procedures has effects on the quality of the business environment, perception of corruption, and environmental performance. The findings shatter predominant views on policy change in Europe, and offer a varied, detailed, granular account of the efficacy of regulatory design.

Das vorliegende Open-Access-Buch ist an der Schnittstelle der Didaktik der Politischen Bildung, der Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung und der empirischen Bildungsforschung verortet. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie eine politische Urteilsbildung von Jugendlichen zu komplexen Problemstellungen einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung didaktisch unterstützt werden kann. Es wurde ein problem-, konflikt- sowie erfahrungsorientierter didaktischer Zugang, bei dem schulisches und außerschulisches Lernen miteinander kombiniert wurden, im Politikunterricht der gymnasialen Oberstufe im Rahmen einer Interventions- und Interviewstudie untersucht. Die Arbeit bietet Erkenntnisse zu didaktischen Anregungspotenzialen einer politischen Nachhaltigkeitsbildung in der Schule.

Als Folge des Holocausts flohen viele deutsche Jüd*innen nach Chile, wo bereits seit Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts eine deutsche Gemeinschaft lebte, die sich später größtenteils weiter mit ihrem Ursprungsland und dem Nationalsozialismus identifizierte. Ana María Troncoso Salazar versteht die Selbstbehauptung emigrierter deutscher Jüd*innen angesichts verschiedener Rassismen und deren Positionierungen zur chilenischen Sozialpolitik als Bürger*innenwerdungsstrategien und betrachtet sie in Bezug auf die strukturellen Bedingungen in Deutschland und in Chile. Im Fokus steht dabei auch die Dokumentation der ethnographischen Forschung mit der Kamera, die das Zusammenspiel der komplexen historischen Verflechtungen aus anderem Blickwinkel einfängt.

The 17 essays in this volume investigate potentials for democratizing democracies. From finding faith to reclaiming the commons, each essay aims to plant a seed, which carries the promise of democratic potentials. Dealing with topics like planetary change, AI, and plural knowledge systems, the book acts as an inspiration, calling for unorthodox, compassionate, and experimental approaches. It is an invitation to cultivate democratic futures that are as diverse, resilient, and vibrant as the societies they aim to serve.

Das Verhältnis der Corona-Politik zur Demokratie erscheint uneindeutig und ambivalent: Entweder wird sie als Tendenz zum Ausnahmezustand und Gefahr für demokratische Prozesse begriffen oder sie gilt als routinierte demokratisch-rechtsstaatliche Problembearbeitung. Jenseits dieser Dichotomie integrieren André Brodocz und Hagen Schölzel das Exzeptionelle der Pandemie sowie die genuin demokratischen Kontroversen und Entscheidungsprozesse in eine Theorie der »demokratischen Auszeit«. Damit reflektieren sie öffentliche Diskussionen über grundlegende Wertorientierungen und eröffnen Perspektiven für eine Neubegründung der Demokratie im Angesicht ihrer Gefährdungen.

Auf den Ersten Weltkrieg folgte in Mitteleuropa ein grundlegender politischer Umbruch. Albert Dikovich arbeitet die Folgen dieser demokratischen Zeitenwende für die deutschsprachige Philosophie umfassend auf. Dabei wird zum einen untersucht, wie nach dem katastrophalen Gewaltereignis des Krieges und angesichts der akuten Eskalation im Inneren die Grenzen der moralisch legitimen Mittel politischer Konfliktaustragung neu gezogen wurden. Zum anderen wird der Zusammenhang zwischen rechts- und erkenntnistheoretischen Annahmen und Positionierungen innerhalb eines Spannungsfeldes konkurrierender politischer Neuordnungsentwürfe beleuchtet. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die damals geführten philosophischen Kämpfe um die Demokratie mit unserer Gegenwart mehr zu tun haben, als es der geschichtliche Abstand vermuten lässt. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In recent times Australia has developed into one of the world’s leading liberal democracies. Its governments have delivered continuous economic growth for more than three decades, even against the turmoil of a global pandemic. And the country’s highly competitive elections and strong political institutions operate within a stable and balanced federal system. In Australia’s Evolving Democracy a team of leading academic authors use an audit approach to critically explore national government institutions, as well as state- and territory-level politics, and to examine how each has contributed to or held back Australian political life as it has changed and diversified. For instance, the top two parties’ monopoly of governance has only begun to adjust to a modern transition to multi-party politics, although balanced voting systems for two-house legislatures have allowed for some adaptation. To date, the country has successfully avoided both rancorous populist politics (as in the USA) and serious governance decline (as in the UK). Each of the book’s 28 chapters tackles one institution or issue, outlining recent developments along with an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, to fully evaluate the state of Australian democracy in the 21st century. In doing so, the authors draw key lessons for other democracies, showing in detail how robust major and micro-institutions can guard against democratic ‘backsliding’ and policy failures. This comprehensive audit also highlights scope for potential democratic improvements. Australia continues to confront the challenges of partisan political barriers to addressing climate change and improving the situation of First Nations peoples, redressing modern social inequalities, and responding to popular mistrust of government and politicians. By taking an in-depth, nuanced approach to multiple democratic issues across the whole of the country’s distinctive political system, this book provides analysis that is accessible for students new to Australian politics, along with many insights for political scientists studying comparative democratic politics and Australian institutions.

Afghanistan is still here. After the “Fall of Kabul” there has been a call for strategic introspection in the US and its Allies, producing numerous 'War Commissions, 'Afghan War Evaluations,' and other forms of "lessons learned" inquiries. While these lessons are vital for future Western or NATO engagements in fragile states, they treat Afghanistan as a concluded chapter. This anthology does not dwell on the past but explore the contemporary dilemmas confronting Afghanistan and the international community's role post-August 2021, with the perspective that this carries global implications. To mend what this anthology calls an ‘information vacuum’ shrouding Afghanistan, hindering the global, and especially Western, understanding of the country, this anthology focuses on issues of security, economics, humanitarian situation, the human rights situation of women and girls, intelligence, international law and diplomacy towards Afghanistan, internal peace building processes, Taliban governance and state-building, as well as the regional dynamics. The topics have deliberately been chosen based on our aim of providing knowledge on different aspects of the society in combination with experts wanting to contribute, and we have engaged the leading international experts on Afghanistan to write about them.

First published in 2001, Achille Mbembe’s landmark book, On the Postcolony, continues to renew our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. This edition has been updated with a foreword by professor of African Literature, Isabel Hofmeyr, and a preface by the author. In a series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests diehard Africanist and nativist perspectives as well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory. Through his provocation, the ‘banality of power’, Mbembe reinterprets the meanings of death, utopia and the divine libido as part of the new theoretical perspectives he offers on the constitution of power in Africa. He works with the complex registers of bodily subjectivity — violence, wonder and laughter — to contest categories of oppression and resistance, autonomy and subjection, and state and civil society that marked the social theory of the late twentieth century. On the Postcolony, like Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks, will remain a text of profound importance in the discourse of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles.; First published in 2001, Achille Mbembe’s landmark book, On the Postcolony, continues to renew our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. This edition has been updated with a foreword by professor of African Literature, Isabel Hofmeyr, and a preface by the author. In a series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests diehard Africanist and nativist perspectives as well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory. Through his provocation, the ‘banality of power’, Mbembe reinterprets the meanings of death, utopia and the divine libido as part of the new theoretical perspectives he offers on the constitution of power in Africa. He works with the complex registers of bodily subjectivity — violence, wonder and laughter — to contest categories of oppression and resistance, autonomy and subjection, and state and civil society that marked the social theory of the late twentieth century. On the Postcolony, like Frantz Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks, will remain a text of profound importance in the discourse of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles.

This edited volume traces the tragic history of state collapse and statebuilding, radicalisation and conflict in Chechnya, focusing on the contested and contesting role of historical memory. The time frame covered ranges from the beginning of civil mobilisation during Perestroika in the mid-1980s to the period of increasing authoritarianism, repression and militarisation in the run-up to the Russian-Ukrainian war in the early 2020s. The book’s eleven contributions are divided into five sub-periods and are illustrated by a rich selection of primary materials..

Demokratie ist eine sich immer wieder neu und aus sich selbst heraus entwickelnde Praxis. Was aber könnte handlungsorientierendes Wissen für eine solche demokratische Praxis bieten? Christian Leonhardt gibt hierauf eine radikaldemokratische Antwort: Er schlägt vor, radikale Demokratie nicht liberal, sondern anarchistisch zu denken. Sein Buch entwickelt mithilfe aktivistischer Theorieproduktionen Ansätze einer lokal-situativen Theorie radikaldemokratischen Handelns, mit Exkursen von den römischen Plebejern bis hin zum Maler Zinnober. So entstehen Szenen des Politischen, die kritische Deutungen demokratischer Aushandlungen des Gemeinsamen ermöglichen und neue Horizonte einer Poetologie Politischer Theorie eröffnen. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

This open access book examines disenfranchisement and voting barriers in ten self-governing and aspiring liberal democracies worldwide, before and after the introduction of so-called universal suffrage. Focusing on economic voting restrictions implemented through constitutional provisions and laws, it explores the various disqualifications that prevent people from voting. The notions of economic independence underpinning these restrictions have built and reinforced societal structures and power relations, particularly concerning class, gender, race, civil status, age, and education. Historically, voting rights have been celebrated as a symbol of inclusivity and equal citizenship. Yet, as contributors in this collection highlight, recent centennial celebrations of universal suffrage often depict it as a distinct milestone, overshadowing the voting restrictions that persisted post women’s suffrage. As democracy now faces new, concerted challenges, there is a compelling reason to revisit and question the narrative of the progression of democratic ideals.

This open access book explains why southern European countries with significant Muslim communities have experienced few religiously inspired violent attacks – or have avoided the kind of securitised response to such attacks seen in many other Western states. The authors provide a unique contribution to the literature on violent extremism – which has traditionally focused on countries such as France, the US and the UK – by studying the causes of relatively low rates of radicalisation in Greece, Italy and Spain. The book explores many of the dynamics between (non) radicalisation and issues such as socioeconomic inequality, experiences of conflict, and systemic racism and other forms of discrimination. It establishes a new analytical framework for the development of, and resilience against, violent radicalisation in the region and beyond.

Libraries on the Agenda shows how to engage in lobbying and advocating for libraries. The book analyzes political elements of power, policy making and human values. Political decision makers from local communities up to the international level need to be convinced, why libraries need their support. This title has an international approach to advocacy and shows many international examples. It presents tips and tools for successful advocating.

This book examines women’s experiences in African politics as aspirants to public office, as candidates in election campaigns, and as elected representatives. Part I evaluates women’s efforts to become party candidates in four African countries: Benin, Ghana, Malawi, and Zambia. The chapters draw on a variety of methods, including extensive interviews with women candidates, to describe and assess the barriers confronted when women seek to enter politics. The chapters help explain why women remain underrepresented as candidates for office, particularly in countries without gender-based quotas, by emphasizing the impact of financial constraints, fears of violence, and resistance among party leaders. Part II turns to women’s experiences as candidates during elections in Kenya and Ghana. One chapter provides an in-depth account of a woman’s presidential bid in Kenya, demonstrating how gendered ethnicity undermined her candidacy, and another chapter presents a novel evaluation of the media’s coverage of women candidates in Ghana. Part III turns to women as legislators in Namibia, Uganda, and Burkina Faso, asking whether women engage in substantive representation on gendered policy issues once in office. The chapters challenge the assumption that a critical mass of women is necessary or sufficient to achieve substantive representation. Taken together, the book’s chapters problematize existing hypotheses regarding women in political power, drawing on understudied countries and a variety of empirical methods. By following political pathways from entry to governance, the book uncovers how gendered experiences early in the political process shape what is possible for women once they attain political power.

Over the past twenty years, the causes and consequences of post-election disputes have become one of the most compelling topics of research in political science. Between 2012 and 2022, political parties challenged the results of more than 25 percent of elections. When democratic transitions are dependent on the willingness of participants to accept defeat, political parties can undermine election-based democracy by rejecting the outcome. As the world enters the fourth decade since the start of the third wave of democratization, the question of whether election losers will comply or reject election outcomes is more and more pressing. The Dilemma of Compliance analyzes this phenomenon at the level of political parties, raising three important questions: Why do some political parties refuse to comply with election results? What determines the strategies they use to contest the outcomes? What consequences do post-election disputes have for the political parties that initiate them? To answer these questions, this book draws on an original dataset of post-election responses encompassing over 300 political parties, which participated in 270 elections held in twenty-two countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union over a period of more than two decades. In doing so, it offers a new theoretical framework for studying electoral compliance in comparative perspective and advances research on democratic transition, democracy promotion, post-election protests, and party politics.

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced. Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, the book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past. With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies.

Second volume in the Homo Mimeticus mini-series, which advances the emerging transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies After the linguistic and the affective turns, the new materialist and the performative turns, the cognitive and the posthuman turns, it is now time to re-turn to the ancient, yet also modern and still contemporary realization that humans are mimetic creatures. In this second installment of the Homo Mimeticus series, international scholars working in philosophy, literary theory, classics, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and the neurosciences engage creatively with Nidesh Lawtoo's Homo Mimeticus: A New Theory of Imitation to further the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies. Agonistic critical engagements with precursors like Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Bataille, Irigaray and Girard, involving contributions by leading international thinkers such as Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, William E. Connolly, Henry Staten and Vittorio Gallese among many others, reveal the urgency to rethink mimesis beyond realism. From imitation to identification, mimicry to affective contagion, techne to simulation, mirror neurons to biomimicry, homo mimeticus casts a shadow—but also a light—on the present and future, from social media to the Anthropocene.

In this Open Access book, Katharina Merian discusses memories of Marielle Franco from the perspective of the concept of dangerous memory introduced by the political theologian Johann Baptist Metz. Franco was an Afro-Brazilian human-rights activist and city councilor of Rio de Janeiro who was assassinated on March 14, 2018. Her murder elicited worldwide protest and empathy. Today she is considered an international symbol in the fight for human, women, and LGBTQ+ rights. Based on the memories of people from Franco’s inner circle, the study explores Franco’s life, what it meant to the people around her, and how her image was transformed following her murder. By critically engaging with Metz’s concept of dangerous memory, which concerns memories of suffering and unfulfilled hopes that challenge the present, Merian demonstrates that the memories of Franco represent a decolonial dangerous memory that sparks individual and collective self-empowerment among Black women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and favela residents. This work not only contributes to a critical reappraisal of Franco’s story and the meaning of her memory in the Brazilian and international context but also proposes a differentiated understanding of dangerous memory that highlights the relationship between solidarity and self-empowerment in a moment of existential danger and threat.

This book argues that the received view of the distinction between freedom and power must be rejected because it rests on an untenable account of the discursive cognition that endows individuals with the capacity for autonomy and self-governed rationality. In liberal and Kantian approaches alike, the autonomous subject is a self-standing starting point whose freedom is constrained by relations of power only contingently because they are external to the subject’s constitution. Thus, the received view defines the distinction between freedom and power as a dichotomy. Michel Foucault is arguably the most important critic of that dichotomy. However, it is widely agreed that Foucault falls short of justifying the alternative view he develops, where power and freedom are essentially entangled instead. The book fills out the gap by investigating the social preconditions of discursive cognition. Drawing on pragmatist-inferentialist resources from the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Brandom), it presents a new interpretation of Foucault’s philosophy that is unified by his overlooked idea of “the archaeology of knowledge.” As a result, the book not only explains why and how power and freedom must be entangled but also what it means ethically to pursue and gain autonomy with respect to one’s own understanding. Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, critical theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and the history of 20th-century philosophy. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license. Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder. This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/COE3]. For open access purposes, the author has applied a CC BY-NC public copyright license to any author-accepted manuscript version arising from this submission. Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): 10.55776/PUB1157

The health crisis the world is going through is arguably the first contemporary “global crisis” that threatens the world with generalized anomy and its new economic option, globalization. It has struck China, settles in Europe, strikes heavily in the United States and Latin America, and is spreading rapidly in other continents. The same problem has to be faced by different States and it addresses fascinating questions to social and political sciences. To understand, we must compare said political scientist Giovanni Sartori. Comparing the way in which States are managing this crisis can allow us to understand the global crisis and the national specificities. The first reaction of the States is a considerable predilection for sanitary methods of quarantine and containment. The aim is to understand the effects of this crisis on every political system and every legal system. How were the actions taken, received, approved or challenged? How do different national political cultures adapt to new situations? What does this tell us about each of the societies, about each of the political regimes and, ultimately, about the place of the State in contemporary societies? Are the legal instruments one of the means to manage the crisis? Is the organization of the State reinforced or weakened in the context of the health emergency? What do these levers tell us about the metamorphoses of the contemporary State in a period of unprecedented health crisis? Since April 2020, a new research network in political science, discourse analysis and law has been established on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the States (Posoc19, Pouvoirs et Sociétés Face à la Crise du COVID-19). The objective of the current project is to focus on the axis of expertise in order to empower the network and be able to compare the ways in which political systems are based on scientific expertise. To what extent is political power based on scientific expertise? Is the expertise autonomous? What is the effect of expertise on public opinion? How does it help to fight against the spread of fake news? A research group inside the network Posoc19 has been established in May 2020 and focuses on the comparison of experts' profiles and discourses. During the spring of 2020 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, new expert figures emerged in connection with public health issues. In some countries, official expert figures have even imposed themselves in order to be able to legitimize the decisions taken by the political authorities, while in other countries, there has been more visibility of conflicts of expertise involving experts appointed by political power (sacralization of the expert who in this case assumes a political function, with or without political responsibility to bear) versus university experts and researchers. In addition, the media have sometimes selected certain experts for other reasons (proximity to lobbies, in particular pharmaceuticals, political and / or partisan positions, relations with a cabinet or a company, etc.), which made the situation even more complex. In some cases ""super experts"" have emerged, in others more collegial formats have been chosen. Some countries opted for mixed strategies with a combination of superexperts and committees. In addition to the fundamental question of the choice of experts (on a political, scientific, media, etc. basis) there has also been the question of political responsibility for the choices made, both in the short and in the long term. The gradual shift to a slower time frame (after the first few weeks in an emergency) makes it possible to ask questions and offer an analysis of different national cases, especially when economic imperatives seem to be taking over. It is also important to know if the experts influenced incumbent politicians on the choice of a strategy or if it was the strategy that made politicians choose the experts. The analysis of public policies is relevant here in order to compare the actors (experts / committees / government / administration /politicians), the agenda and the nature of the decision. The final aim of the research is to produce an accurate typology of systems of expertise due to the comparative approach.

Citizens’ assemblies bring the shared wisdom of ordinary people into political decision making on the climate and ecological crisis. They are increasingly being used at local, national and even global levels. But with what impact? Can they take us beyond the shortcomings of electoral and partisan politics? Can they make a real difference? This book explains why climate assemblies have captured the imagination of governments and activists alike, exploring the ways they can have a meaningful impact on climate politics. This book charts the development of climate assemblies across Europe and beyond. It explores what ordinary people want, highlighting the ways in which assembly recommendations take us beyond current government policies and offer new visions and directions for change. It shows that not all assemblies are the same and that the context and design of climate assemblies have differed quite profoundly – as have their impacts on policy and public discourse. The book also lays out the key elements needed for climate assemblies to have sustained impact, providing essential insights for anyone wanting to run or advocate for them, and concludes with reflections on what we can expect from assemblies as they evolve. The transition to net zero and climate resilient societies requires deep social and economic transformations that will have significant impacts on citizens’ choices and behaviours. Such a transition needs to engage the public directly and this book shows how climate assemblies can achieve this, allowing us to address the issues we all face together.

Towards A New Christian Political Realism presents a new theoretical approach to understanding the role of religion in international relations, considering the strengths of Christian realism, classical realism, and neorealism, as well as the literature about the relevance of religion for IR. The book discusses the resurgence of religion and how it has become ‘public’ in the world since around the 1960s. It extensively describes the role religion plays in Hans Morgenthau’s classical realism and Kenneth Waltz’s neorealism and how both thinkers are indebted to an Augustinian way of thinking that has influenced political realism through Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian realism. The book presents an alternative approach inspired by the Amsterdam School of Philosophy: a new Christian political realism. It incorporates the theological inspiration of political realism and the necessity of theorizing while doing justice to the relevance and manifold manifestations of religion in international relations. This book will be of interest to scholars and higher-level students of International Relations, the Amsterdam School of Philosophy, Classical Realism, Neorealism, Christian Realism, and Religious Studies, as well as practitioners working in the field of International Relations.

Die Sozialpolitik in Deutschland steht angesichts multipler und miteinander verflochtener Krisen vor einer Vielzahl neuer und alter Herausforderungen. Wissenschaftliche Befunde können helfen, diese Herausforderungen zu bewältigen. Damit dies gelingt, muss Sozialpolitikforschung jedoch der Komplexität gesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen Rechnung tragen. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersuchen die Autor:innen, wie es um die interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit und den Wissenschaft-Praxis-Transfer in der deutschen Sozialpolitik(-Forschung) bestellt ist und leiten daraus Implikationen für die grundlegenden gesellschaftlichen Rollen der Sozialpolitikforschung ab. Die empirische Basis der Untersuchung bilden rund 50 Interviews mit Sozialpolitik-Expert:innen aus Wissenschaft, Politik und Praxis. creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Over the last 25 years, South Korea has witnessed growing inequality due to the proliferation of non-standard employment, ballooning household debt, deepening export-dependency, and the growth of super-conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai. Combined with declining rates of economic growth and turbulent political events, these processes mark a departure from Korea’s past recognition as a high growth “developmental state.” The Postdevelopmental State radically reframes research into the South Korean economy by foregrounding the efforts of pro-democratic reformers and social movements in South Korea to create an alternative economic model—one that can address Korea’s legacy of authoritarian economic development during the Cold War and neoliberal restructuring since the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. Understanding these attempts offers insight into the types of economic reforms that have been enacted since the late 1990s as well as the continued legacy of dictatorship-era politics within the Korean political and legal system. By examining the dilemmas economic democracy has encountered over the past 25 years, from the IMF Crisis to the aftermath of the Candlelight Revolution, the book reveals the enormous and comprehensive challenges involved in addressing the legacy of authoritarian economic models and their neoliberal transformations.

The overarching aim of the book is to provide the first comprehensive account of Sweden’s feminist foreign policy and its dissemination through digital diplomacy. In contrast to other scholarly studies of digital diplomacy that tend to view it as a technological and apolitical device for online diplomatic communication, this book examines the specific political dynamics of digital diplomacy. It posits that digital diplomacy is a highly political practice and form of communication. The book offers an in-depth examination of the interdependent relationship between digital diplomacy and feminist foreign policy, with an empirical focus on Sweden. Additionally, it introduces a novel theoretical framework to analyse the political characteristics of digital diplomacy, emphasising the oscillation between antagonism and agonism at the intersection of feminist foreign policy and digital diplomacy. In sum, the book provides new theoretical and empirical knowledge of why, how, and in what ways power-political dynamics are produced, sustained, and transformed within the contexts of feminist foreign policy and digital diplomacy. While the focus centres on Sweden, the authors contend that their novel approach to examining the political dynamics of digital diplomacy and feminist foreign policy applies to other country case studies as well. This is an open access book.

This open access book provides fascinating insights into the incredible changes that Vietnam underwent in the long twentieth century as it transformed from an early modern kingdom to a European colony, to a divided land with opposing ideologies, and to a unified country in a globalized world. At each stage in this long century of changes, there were Vietnamese who sought to mold their society into some vision of “modernity.” The book looks at multiple, rather than one form of modernity, and links those forms with the different political moments that Vietnam experienced, in tandem with the outside interlocutors that were maintained during those periods. As such, this book provides a holistic view of the many forms of modernity and their global links that can be found in Vietnam over the course of the long twentieth century. These multiple modernities are documented in this book, and the authors do so by bringing together the strengths of “traditional” language-based area studies scholarship with the insights that an awareness of trans-national and global perspectives provides. Relevant to historians and researchers in the broader arena of Southeast Asian studies with a particular interest in Vietnam—its journey from past to present—this book is a must-read engagement with a country that has undergone and continues to experience, rapid transformation.

This open-access book is an exceptional contribution to the burgeoning fields of higher education development and higher education internationalization as it empirically examines the impact of the study abroad experiences of faculty members on individual and institutional development. The research and its outcomes presented here utilize results from a large-scale survey and interviews of faculty at ten leading universities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The analyses show that the study abroad experiences of faculty members impact not only improvements in research quality and development of educational programs but also serve as the foundation for international activities at the university, crucially important in today’s higher education landscape. On the other hand, the research reveals the rapid development of higher education at the local and regional levels including the development of graduate programs for faculty training in the home country leading to increasing rates of study abroad within Southeast Asia. Through the analyses presented, this book offers a new understanding of higher education development and internationalization in Southeast Asia by examining the impact of study abroad on the academic profession, higher education institutions and the higher education sector.

Ecologies of truth in a post-truth era.