This book explores sub-municipal units’ (SMU) role in decision making, decentralized institutional innovation, social innovation and, in rural areas, service delivery. Focusing on fourteen European countries, the book examines the impact of political cultures, administrative traditions and local government systems on the functioning of the SMUs. An under-explored topic in the literature, this book provides a comprehensive, comparative European, thematically broad, descriptive book on sub-m...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting, E-Vote-ID 2017, held in Bregenz, Austria, in October 2017.The 16 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. In addition the book contains 3 keynote talks. The papers deal with security, usability and technical issues; administrative, legal, political and social issued; and election and practical experiences.

Worldwide processes of transnationalization are accompanied by new chal lenges for the democracies of the Western world. On the one hand these proc esses ask for more efficient and effective ways of policy-making. On the other hand the legitimacy of the political systems is also challenged by growing dif ficulties of bringing the citizens (back) to politics. This gets more and more difficult with the increasing transfer of formerly national political competen cies to supra-national institu...

The Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe analyses the state of play of democracy at the subnational level in the 27 member states of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland. It places subnational democracy in the context of the distinctive Anglo, the French, the German and Scandinavian state traditions in Europe asking to what extent these are still relevant today. The Handbook adapts Lijphart's theory of democracy and applies it to the subnational levels ...

The third edition of this major work provides a systematic, comparative assessment of the efforts of a selection of major countries, including the U.S., to deal with immigration and immigrant issues— paying particular attention to the ever-widening gap between their migration policy goals and outcomes.Retaining its comprehensive coverage of nations built by immigrants and those with a more recent history of immigration, the new edition pays particular attention to the tensions crea...

By focusing on the wider process of negotiations, this novel volume presents the first systematic analysis of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The authors include outstanding scholars and relevant practitioners from across disciplines and various academic institutions around Europe and North America, but also from outside of the transatlantic basin. While presenting a thorough examination of the process of TTIP negotiations, the volume is divided into four parts w...

European governments have re-discovered labour migration, but are eager to be perceived as controlling unsolicited forms of migration, especially through asylum and family reunion. The emerging paradigm of managed migration combines the construction of more permissive channels for desirable and actively recruited labour migrants with ever more restrictive approaches towards asylum seekers. Non-state actors, especially employer organizations, trade unions, and humanitarian non-governmental ...

This book explores the structural tensions and conflicts that arise with the abolition of border controls between the EU's member states and how this conflict ridden relationship affects and is affected by the institutional shape of the EU's external borders.

This book presents a comparative perspective to the study of European politics, focusing on the unique and transformative effect of European Union on the politics of its member states - in effect, the Europeanization of European politics. For no other world region is there a similar intensity of Treaty and other obligations on a set of neighboring states, nor a comparable depth of of supranational governance. The concept of Europeanism as an evaluative theme is used to explore this unique,...

This is a collection of works which considers the many different facets of the EU’s increasingly important engagement with the world beyond its borders. The Treaty of Lisbon marked a change in the powers and competences endowed on the EU - the contributions to this collection consider both the direct and indirect impact of the Treaty on the contemporary state of EU external relations. The authors are drawn from legal, political science and international relations disciplines and consider i...

This is a detailed exploration of how national political parties have responded to the increasing relevance of European governance.The Europeanization of National Political Parties is the first empirical study to examine the effects of the European Union on the internal organizational dynamics of national political parties. It draws on the results of a major, cross-national project and is based on documentary analysis and some 150 interviews with senior party actors in six...

The past quarter of a century has seen extensive change throughout Europe. There have been significant changes in local government, and the European Union has come to play an increasing role in relation to municipal government.This book offers a comparative analysis of recent developments in intergovernmental relations in twelve countries across Europe. Using the framework for analysis from Page and Goldsmith’s 1987 Central and Local Government Relations, each chapter exam...