This book provides comprehensive coverage of the models of contemporary democracy; its social, cultural, economic and political prerequisites; its empirically existing varieties and its two major challenges - globalization and mediatization. The book also covers the global spread of democracy and its spread into supranational democracies.

The first book-long analysis of the 'mediatization of politics', this volume aims to understand the transformations of the relationship between media and politics in recent decades, and explores how growing media autonomy, journalistic framing, media populism and new media technologies affect democratic processes.

Why do politicians and civil servants commission research and what use do they make of it in policymaking? The received wisdom is that research contributes to improving government policy. Christina Boswell challenges this view, arguing that policymakers are just as likely to value expert knowledge for two alternative reasons: as a way of lending authority to their preferences; or to signal their capacity to make sound decisions. Boswell develops a compelling new theory of the role of knowl...

Despite a substantial legacy of literature on EU interest representation, there is no systematic analysis available on whether a European model of interest representation in EU governance is detectable across functional, and territorial, categories of actors. ‘Functional’ actors include associations for business interests, the professions, and trade unions, as well as ‘NGOs’ and social movements; territorial based entities include public actors (such as regional and local government), as w...

Democracies are transforming worldwide, but at the same time political inequality is increasing. This development threatens to leave growing portions of mass publics effectively ‘outside’ the political process.This volume brings together leading authorities in the field of democratic citizenship and participation to address pertinent questions concerning the quality of the democratic political process at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Analysing causes and consequences o...

This new study revisits the work of the late Ernst Haas, assessing his relevance for contemporary European integration and its disparities.With his seminal book, The Uniting of Europe Haas laid the foundations for one of the most prominent paradigms of European integration – neofunctionalism. He engaged in inductive reasoning to theorize the dynamics of the European integration process that led from the Treaty of Paris in 1951 to the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The Treaty of R...

This book investigates an important source of the European Union's recent legitimacy problems. It shows how European integration is debated in mass media, and how this affects democratic inclusiveness. Advancing integration implies a shift in power between governments, parliaments, and civil society. Behind debates over Europe's 'democratic deficit' is a deeper concern: whether democratic politics can perform effectively under conditions of Europeanization and globalization. This study is ...

Are the dynamics of contention changing? This is the question confronted by the contributors of this volume, among the most influential scholars in the field of social movements. The answers, arriving at a time of extraordinary worldwide turmoil, not only provide a wide-ranging and varied understanding of how social movements arise and persist, but also engender unanswered questions, pointing to new theoretical strands and fields of research.The Future of Social Movement Resear...

The authors propose a new theory of political behavior that re-invigorates the role of institutions—from laws and bureaucracy to rituals and symbols—as essential to understanding the modern political and economic systems that guide contemporary life.

The Oxford Handbook of Governance presents an authoritative and accessible state-of-the-art analysis of the social science literature on governance. The volume presents the core concepts and knowledge that have evolved in the study of governance in different levels and arenas of politics and policymaking. In doing so it establishes itself as the essential point of reference for all those studying politics, society, and economics from a governance perspective. The volume comprises ...

Increasing interconnections between nation-states across borders have rendered the transnational a key tool for understanding our world. It has made particularly strong contributions to immigration studies and holds great promise for deepening insights into international migration.This is the first book to provide an accessible yet rigorous overview of transnational migration, as experienced by family and kinship groups, networks of entrepreneurs, diasporas and immigrant associatio...

Building on the success of the previous two editions, this book provides students with an exemplary overview of the theory and practice of public policy implementation and how it relates to contemporary public management. In doing so, this new edition makes use of more illustrative examples, delves further into researching implementation and explores issues about the relationship between policy formulation and implementation in greater depth.Written for an international audience, t...