This text examines the history, organisation and continuing worldwide influence of the International Christian Democratic movement, which currently has nearly 70 parties on five continents. It demonstrates how a religious political movement has acquired such wide political influence.

Specially written for an American audience, this accessible encyclopedic survey covers politics in every individual European nation and in the European Union. The two-volume Europe, A Political Profile: An American Companion to European Politics is the first encyclopedic survey of politics in Europe especially written for a wide American public, including high school students. The first volume places national developments and institutions in a Europe-wide context and includes tables comparing European politics with U.S. politics. The second volume discusses the individual European nations by regional group, facilitating comparison of a country with neighboring nations. All European countries are covered, including Turkey, Russia, and the Caucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Each country profile includes an introduction to the land, the people, the economy, and the culture, as well as a timeline of historic highlights. The nation's political system is discussed, as are public policies and the major political parties. Each entry also provides tables listing heads of state, the composition of the legislative body, and the political leaders.

Largely due to the cultural and political shift of the Enlightenment, Western societies in the eighteenth century emerged from sectarian conflict and embraced a more religiously moderate path. In nine original essays, leading scholars ask whether exporting the Enlightenment solution is possible or even desirable today. Contributors begin by revisiting the Enlightenment's restructuring of the West, examining its ongoing encounters with Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. While acknowledging the necessity of the Enlightenment emphasis on toleration and peaceful religious coexistence, these scholars nevertheless have grave misgivings about the Enlightenment's spiritually thin secularism. The authors ultimately upend both the claim that the West's experience offers a ready-made template for the world to follow and the belief that the West's achievements are to be ignored, despised, or discarded.

A close examination of the constitutional relationship between legislature and executive in parliamentary regimes.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Democracy is often described in two opposite ways, as either wonderfully resilient or dangerously fragile. Both characterizations can be correct, depending on the context. When Democracy Breaks aims to deepen our understanding of what separates democratic resilience from democratic fragility by focusing on the latter. The volume's collaborators--experts in the history and politics of the societies covered in their chapters--explore eleven episodes of democratic breakdown, from ancient Athens to Weimar Germany to present-day Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Strikingly, in every case, various forms of democratic erosion long preceded the final democratic breakdown. Although no single causal factor emerges as decisive, linking together all of the episodes, some important commonalities--including extreme political polarization, explicitly anti-democratic political actors, and significant political violence--stand out across the cases. Moreover, the notion of democratic culture, while admittedly difficult to define and even more difficult to measure, may play a role in all of them. Throughout the volume, the contributors show again and again that the written rules of democracy are insufficient to protect against tyranny. While each case of democratic decay is unique, the patterns that emerge shed much light on the continuing struggle to sustain modern democracies and to assess and respond to the threats they face.

This is the first volume of a four-volume encyclopaedia which combines public administration and policy and contains approximately 900 articles by over 300 specialists. This Volume covers entries from A to C. It covers all of the core concepts, terms and processes of applied behavioural science, budgeting, comparative public administration, develo

The Politics of Inflation: A Comparative Analysis is a collection of papers that covers the inflation trend of various countries. The emphasis of this title is on the domestic and international causes of each country's level and duration of inflation. The text first covers the aspects of the interplay among economic and political systems and processes, and then proceeds to tackling the politics of inflation in historical perspective. Next, the selection talks about the transatlantic aspects of inflation, along with the inflation fighting in Britain, Italy, and Portugal. The book also details the politics of inflation in the U.S. and the inflation policy in Germany. Chapter 7 tackles the inflation and politics in U.K., while Chapter 8 covers the political causes and effects of Argentine inflammation. The last chapter deals with inflation and democratic transition in Spain. The book will be of great use to economists, political scientists, and individuals concerned with the global economy.

The first of the Yugoslav successor states to successfully build a democratic system and to enter the European Union, Slovenia stands as a model for democratic transition. This ground-breaking volume analyzes the challenges confronting the post-Communist government and evaluates the strategies adopted in refashioning its value system. Sabrina P. Ramet and Danica Fink-Hafner have assembled a team of outstanding specialists to analyze various aspects of the country’s transformation from socialism to democracy. The editors note that while a great deal has been written on political and economic questions, relatively little attention has been paid to the transformation and transmission of values and norms in Eastern Europe over the past fifteen years. Slovenia’s experience, reflected in these pages, demonstrates how a small country has created the preconditions necessary to the construction of a civic, democratic culture. Six values are emphasized as central to this project: tolerance, equality, church-state separation, respect for democratic procedure and the rule of law, human rights, and civic-mindedness. The volume editors join the other contributors in discussing the way in which Slovenia has set out to build democracy, the ways in which values are transmitted, the role of the media in a free society, the structure of educational systems, and other questions which are of concern not just to Slovenes, but to everyone who aspires to live in an open, democratic society.

A Companion to Europe Since 1945 provides a stimulating guide to numerous important developments which have influenced the political, economic, social, and cultural character of Europe during and since the Cold War. Includes 22 original essays by an international team of expert scholars Examines the social, intellectual, economic, cultural, and political changes that took place throughout Europe in the Cold War and Post Cold War periods Discusses a wide range of topics including the Single Market, European-American relations, family life and employment, globalization, consumption, political parties, European decolonization, European identity, security and defence policies, and Europe's fight against international terrorism Presents Europe in a broad geographical conception, to give equal weighting to developments in the Eastern and Western European states