Social Democracy and the Challenge of European Union


Book Description

He also explores what this new form of political activity means for European politics, arguing that the traditional positions of left and right may be becoming increasingly significant within the EU's evolving, transnational political culture.




Europeanizing Social Democracy?


Book Description

Presenting a detailed explanation of party politics in the European Union, this new book uses the Party of European Socialists (PES) as a key case study, and tests the relevance of existing theoretical work on the meaning, significance, and prospects for realising other ‘Europarties’. This analysis operates from the assumption that the PES’s main goal is to influence the outcome of EU public policy, rather than the more traditional party goals of vote maximisation or office seeking. Secondly, by subjecting the PES to careful scrutiny in two specific policy areas (employment and environment) and for specific treaties (in particular the Treaty of Amsterdam), it tests the PES’s ability to construct policy to influence actual policy outcomes. Finally, it shows that whilst the PES was able to play a role in co-ordinating policy amongst the member parties since its formation in 1992, its influence has been exaggerated and the strength of the factors that limit its effectiveness have been underestimated. It argues that domestic policy imperatives and ideological differences between the member parties have hindered the development of the PES, thereby advancing our knowledge of Europarties and contributing to the literature on the Europeanization of political parties. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the European Union and party politics in general.




The Europeanization of Portuguese Democracy


Book Description

Driven primarily by political concerns to secure democracy, Portugal's accession to the EU in 1986 also served as a catalyst for dynamic economic development following a complex process of democratization and the decolonization of Europe's last empire. This book analyses how the European Union has helped shape the political process in Portugal on key institutions, elites, and its citizen's attitudes.




Anti-liberal Europe


Book Description

The history of modern Europe is often presented with the hindsight of present-day European integration, which was a genuinely liberal project based on political and economic freedom. Many other visions for Europe developed in the 20th century, however, were based on an idea of community rooted in pre-modern religious ideas, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, or even in coercion and violence. They frequently rejected the idea of modernity or reinterpreted it in an antiliberal manner. Anti-liberal Europe examines these visions, including those of anti-modernist Catholics, conservatives, extreme rightists as well as communists, arguing that antiliberal concepts in 20th-century Europe were not the counterpart to, but instead part of the process of European integration.




The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History


Book Description

The postwar period is no longer current affairs but is becoming the recent past. As such, it is increasingly attracting the attentions of historians. Whilst the Cold War has long been a mainstay of political science and contemporary history, recent research approaches postwar Europe in many different ways, all of which are represented in the 35 chapters of this book. As well as diplomatic, political, institutional, economic, and social history, the The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History contains chapters which approach the past through the lenses of gender, espionage, art and architecture, technology, agriculture, heritage, postcolonialism, memory, and generational change, and shows how the history of postwar Europe can be enriched by looking to disciplines such as anthropology and philosophy. The Handbook covers all of Europe, with a notable focus on Eastern Europe. Including subjects as diverse as the meaning of 'Europe' and European identity, southern Europe after dictatorship, the cultural meanings of the bomb, the 1968 student uprisings, immigration, Americanization, welfare, leisure, decolonization, the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, and coming to terms with the Nazi past, the thirty five essays in this Handbook offer an unparalleled coverage of postwar European history that offers far more than the standard Cold War framework. Readers will find self-contained, state-of-the-art analyses of major subjects, each written by acknowledged experts, as well as stimulating and novel approaches to newer topics. Combining empirical rigour and adventurous conceptual analysis, this Handbook offers in one substantial volume a guide to the numerous ways in which historians are now rewriting the history of postwar Europe.




Social Democracy in Europe


Book Description

Socialist and Social Democratic parties leave few political observers and citizens indifferent. For several years, a certain number of actors on the political scene have presented it as a political family in crisis, lacking in imagination and dynamism, incapable of renewal and doomed to fade into insignificance. Others, on the contrary, describe it as a grouping with a promising, even brilliant future.This book does not set out to confirm either of those two visions. Its aim is to analyse in-depth the transformations which are affecting, at the current time, the different aspects of Social Democracy: new organisational models, changes in political and electoral performance, changing relations with the trade unions and civil society associations, reactions to the emergence of new political rivais and new values, new ideological trends and political programmes, etc. For the first time, the analysis does not concern exclusively Western Europe, but also deals with the Social Democratic parties of the consolidated democracies and the organisations that claim to be part of democratic socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, and highlights the specific characteristics and points in common. At the dawn of the 21st century, it is therefore the challenges and the different responses to those challenges that are analysed by several of the leading European specialists in Social Democratic parties in Europe.




European Socialism


Book Description

This accessible text offers a concise but comprehensive introduction to European socialism, which arose in the maelstrom of the industrial and democratic revolutions launched in the eighteenth century. Striving for sweeping social, economic, cultural, and political change, socialists were a diverse lot. However, they were united by principles asserting the social and political equality of all people, ideas that won the adherence of millions and struck fear in the hearts of their numerous opponents. William Smaldone shows how, over the course of 200 years, socialists successfully promoted the democratization of European society and a more equitable division of wealth. At the same time, he illustrates how conflicts over the means of achieving their aims divided them into rival “socialist” and “communist” currents, a rift that undercut the struggle against fascism and helped lay the groundwork for Europe’s division during the Cold War. Although many predicted the demise of socialism as a potent force after the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s dissolution, and the rise of neo-liberal ideology, recent developments show that such a judgment was premature. The author argues that the growth of new socialist parties across Europe indicates that socialist ideas remain vibrant in the face of capitalism’s failure to solve chronic social and economic problems, especially following the deep global crisis that began in 2008. Combining an analytical narrative with a selection of primary texts and visual images, this book provides undergraduate students with a brief, readable history, including an overview of how socialist political movements have evolved over time and stressing the rich diversity that has characterized socialism’s foundations from its beginning. This new edition brings this text up to date and examines the European socialist movement in the face of 21st century challenges. It includes a new preface, including the 2017 American election, updated bibliographies, two new chapters and an afterword.




The European Social Model under Pressure


Book Description

The European Social Model is at a crossroad. Although from the 1990s onwards, the threat of an imminent crisis shaped much of the rhetoric surrounding the future of the welfare state, disagreement within the academic community remains. What is however increasingly clear is that with the global financial crisis and the Euro crisis that followed it, the challenges the European Social Model faces have become more acute and demand action. This volume launches a multifaceted inquiry into these challenges. Each contribution, written by renowned scholars in their fields, represents an in-depth exploration of issues that cut to the core of current political, economic and social processes. They are an invitation to the seasoned scholars as well as to the beginning students of social sciences, public administration or journalism to engage with, by now, a large body of scholarship, to accompany the authors in their endeavours to seek an explanation to burning questions and start their own inquiries.




Democratic Governance and European Integration


Book Description

As the power and scope of the European Union moves further, beyond traditional forms of international cooperation between sovereign states, it is important to analyse how these developments are impacting upon national institutions and processes of democratic representation and legitimacy in the member countries. The authors in this book identify four core processes of democratic governance present in any democratic political system that link societal and state processes of decision-making: opinion formation, interest intermediation, national executive decision-making and national parliamentary scrutiny. From a normative perspective they discuss what impacts this process of Europeanization has on democracy in the evolving system. They conclude that more changes are seen within the state-centric than in the societal-centred processes of democracy, thus the public seems to have been 'left behind' in the process of constructing Europe. The empirical research and normative discussion presented in this book are designed to further our knowledge concerning the Europeanization of social and state processes of democracy and to contribute to the continuing dialogue on democracy in the European Union. This book will be of great interest to academics and researchers of political science, public policy and international relations, as well as those interested in European studies and comparative politics.




Democratisation in the European Neighbourhood


Book Description

Approaches democratization of the European neighbourhood from two sides, first exploring developments in the states themselves and then examining what the European Union has been doing to promote the process.