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This edited collection addresses a paradox at the heart of the European Union: if it is a constantly enlarging empire of governance, how can almost thirty member states design policies as an administrative whole, whilst narrowly approaching all political issues from one economic point of view? The contributors to this collection approach this by studying knowledge production, policy formation and policy implementation in the union. The topics covered include the history of the union, its nature as an empire in the making compared to historical successors as well as current USA and China, formation of union level statistical data and policy documents, paradoxes of fiscal governance, social innovation policy, youth and education policy, energy policy and foreign policy with particular regard to Russia. The concluding chapter outlines five alternative future scenarios for the union extending from collapse and marginalization to the emergence of a federal empire. The book is essential reading for anybody interested in the EU, including students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, international relations, economics, management studies, public and social policy, science and technology studies, and environmental policy.

Euroscepticism, Democracy and the Media will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in European politics, political parties, interest groups, social movements and political sociology.

Right-wing populist parties are thriving throughout Europe. With few exceptions, political systems have seen such parties make significant electoral gains and shape the national political discourse across the continent. In recent years, many populist parties have undergone leadership changes and other evolutionary challenges to which they adapted well, often contrary to expectations. This timely collection is devoted to understanding how Western European right-wing populist parties organize themselves. Without understanding the role of the organizational dynamics, we fail to understand how populist parties adapt over time and thus endure. Providing a systematic and comprehensive analysis of organizational issues of populist parties over time, Understanding Populist Party Organisation explores a range of political parties in Western Europe, examining their internal dynamics and questioning whether it is possible to discern or construct a general ¿populist¿ party typology of organization and representation. The book includes chapters on the Austrian Freedom Party, the Vlaams Belang, the Swiss People¿s Party, the Lega Nord, the Front National, the Norwegian Progress Party, and the Sweden Democrats.

This book explores the European welfare model, arguing that the rollout of European policies for welfare services has led to increased marketization.

Contributors to this book show how the long EU accession process disseminates discursive tools employed in LGBT activist struggles for human rights and equality.

This international collection studies how the financial crisis of 2007 and the ensuing economicand political crises in Europe and North America have triggered a process ofchange in the field of economics, law andpolitics. Contributors to this book argue that both elites and citizens havehad to rethink the nature of the market, the role of the state as a marketregulator and as a provider of welfare, the role of political parties inrepresenting societyΓÇÖs main political and social cleavages, the role of civilsociety in voicing the concerns of citizens, and the role of the citizen as theultimate source of power in a democracy but also as a fundamentally powerlesssubject in a global economy.The book studies the actors, the areas and the processesthat have carried forward the change and proposes the notion of ΓÇÿincompleteparadigm shiftΓÇÖ to analyse this change. Its authors explore the multipledimensions of paradigm shifts and their differentiated evolution, arguing thattoday we witness an incomplete paradigm shift of financial regulations,economic models and welfare systems, but a stillbirth of a new political andeconomic paradigm.

This book focuses on popular struggles in Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1700-2015, and how popular struggle in the form of hunger riots, tax rebellions, petition drives, strikes, demonstrations, public meetings and social movements paved the way for the introduction and development of civil liberties and political rights.

This edited collection addresses a paradox at the heart of the European Union: if it is a constantly enlarging empire of governance, how can almost thirty member states design policies as an administrative whole, whilst narrowly approaching all political issues from one economic point of view? The contributors to this collection approach this by studying knowledge production, policy formation and policy implementation in the union. The topics covered include the history of the union, its nature as an empire in the making compared to historical successors as well as current USA and China, formation of union level statistical data and policy documents, paradoxes of fiscal governance, social innovation policy, youth and education policy, energy policy and foreign policy with particular regard to Russia. The concluding chapter outlines five alternative future scenarios for the union extending from collapse and marginalization to the emergence of a federal empire. The book is essential reading for anybody interested in the EU, including students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, international relations, economics, management studies, public and social policy, science and technology studies, and environmental policy.

This book assesses how much influence social movements have on EU policy and the means through which influence is secured. Using wide-ranging case studies of campaigns from GMOs to water rights and Internet freedom, it elucidates the important differences between technical and political campaigns.

This book is about both the symbolic and the real struggles for the control of the EU's agenda on participatory democracy in the last fifteen years. The book analyzes how civil society organizations contributed to an agenda which has implications for the regulation of interest groups to the institutions and for the democratic legitimacy of the EU.

This volume introduces and compares different concepts of culture in social movement research. It assesses their advantages and shortcomings, drawing links to anthropology, discourse analysis, sociology of emotions, narration, spatial theory, and others. Each contribution's approach is illustrated with recent cases of mobilization.

The European Union clearly matters for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). EU officials and European political entrepreneurs has been crucial in the promotion of funding and access opportunities, but they have been proven to have little capacity to use CSOs for their own purposes.

Going beyond the traditional contextual accounts of political behaviour, which primarily focus on political institutions or the socio-economic climate, this book looks specifically at the impact of public policy on a variety of political behaviours and attitudes.

Examining the interplay between distrust, trust and corruption, this book maps out the social mechanisms that make actors and organizations in the public sphere perform their activities in a civilized manner.

In order to better understand processes of European integration, this book offers a new perspective that compares past experiences of change to current transitional moments at the European level. It addresses key questions about European society, EU integration and social change to reveal the social construction of emergent polities and societies.

This volume explores the variety of forms, strategies and practices of Islamic organizations in Europe and the United States. It focuses on the reactions of organized Muslims at local, national, and transnational levels to the on-going debates on their integration into society and the structures of state-church relations.