Despite its modest size, Portugal has played a major part in the development of Europe and the modern world. In Portugal in European and World History Malyn Newitt offers a fresh appraisal of Portuguese history and its role in the world—from early Moorish times to the English Alliance of 1650–1900 and through the country’s liberal revolution in 1974. Newitt specifically examines episodes where Portugal was a key player or innovator in history. Chapters focus on such topics as Moorish Portugal, describing the cultural impact of contact with the Moors—one of the oldest points of contact between Western Europe and Islam; the opening up of trade with western Africa; and the explorations of Vasco de Gama and the evolution of Portugal as the first commercial empire of modern times. Newitt also examines Portugal’s role in the Counter-reformation, in Spain’s wars in Europe, and in the Anglo-Portuguese alliance. Finally, Newitt analyzes the fall of fascism and the Portuguese decolonization within the context of larger global empires and movements. This new account of a country with a rich historyshows how Portugal has moved from being the last colonial power to one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the modern European ideal.

"After decades of isolation and a turbulent transition to democracy, Portugal's integration into the European Union has given political, economic, social, and cultural stability to a country that had to overcome the trauma of losing an empire. This volume clearly is a major contribution to the study of how Portugal became part of the European Union as a political system and its development towards Europeanization and domestication.Magone first lays a theoretical framework for the study of Europeanization and discusses political parties, the political system, and Portuguese society in terms of Europeanization. He then examines public administration, how the European Union and the OECD impacted on the modernization agenda, and includes a discussion of the national EU policy coordination. Magone also considers the Portuguese Euro-elite and how they interacted with the Portuguese presidency and the processes of decision-making going on among the different levels of the governance system of the European Union. He highlights a case study of the Portuguese presidency of the European Union, which took place in the first half of 2003. In addition, Magone discusses the impact of the EU structural funds on Portugal, and scrutinizes Portuguese foreign and defense policies, in particular its reconstructed foreign policy, which was clearly instrumental in achieving the independence of East Timor. He reviews the growing integration of Portugal into the emerging structures of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), concluding with the challenges that Portugal will face in the future in the education, health, and business sectors.An interesting finding is the growing alienation of the population from the political class, who clearly make all the decisions in relation to the European Union without proper consultation of the population through referenda. In sum, this book is vital to understand one of the oldest nation-states of the world.JosÚ M. Magone is senior lecturer"

To participate in the multi-level system of government in which Portugal is now embedded (Teixeira and Pinto, 2012) requires European political capital as well as national political capital. European political capital is the knowledge required to deal effectively with the complex institutions that make the decisions of European Union. It consists of a mixture of the political skills, knowledge and experience that individuals can acquire by working in Brussels. For Portuguese it requires working with foreigners in a foreign language. It is an asset that qualifies people to be part of the EU decision making game. European political capital does not guarantee influence, but without it people will be on the sidelines rather than players in the Brussels policy community. To ensure that decisions that Portuguese agree to in Brussels will be accepted by the Portuguese government requires national as well as European political capital.^While all politics is about expressing different points of view and negotiating to arrive at mutually agreed decisions, EU politics is different in that bargaining takes place among multi-national groups. Three Brussels institutions are critical in giving Portuguese the opportunity to acquire and make use of European political capital: the European Commission, the Brussels office of the Permanent Representative (PERMREP) of the Portuguese state; and the European Parliament. The first of these institutions has a de-nationalizing effect, since Commission staff are meant to give their first loyalty to the goals and priority of the European Union itself. The PERMREP's Office and the European Parliament have a multi-nationalizing effect, since agreements made with the participation of Portuguese must also have the approval of representatives of more than a score of member states. As EU citizens, Portuguese are eligible to become supra-national civil servants in the European Commission.^Its staff is often described as faceless bureaucrats; while they are usually anonymous they are not bureaucrats. Commission officials are active participants in the policy process with the exclusive right to initiate the legislative proposals and directives that go to the European Parliament and the Council for approval. They also monitor how member states implement decisions taken at the EU level.

A fully revised fourth edition of a popular introduction to the comparative politics of Europe, written by a highly respected authority on the subject. This lively and thematically organised text provides an accessible guide to the institutions and the issues that matter in a continent where the boundaries between East and West, and between domestic and European affairs are increasingly breaking down. Covering a wide array of countries it is a concise yet comprehensive overview of one of the world's most important and fascinating regions. Written in an approachable style and packed with up-to-date, real-world examples and information, this is the ideal place for students to begin and to deepen their understanding of Europe's politics. It can be adapted as a standalone text on modules on Comparative European Politics and will be of use as a key reading on undergraduate courses on Comparative Politics more broadly, as well as European Union Politics. New to this Edition: - Updated throughout to provide coverage of developments such as the Eurozone crisis, the growth of left and right-wing populism, the rise of nationalism and Europe's on-going immigration challenge - Includes a short concluding chapter, rounding up and considering the future of the book's core themes of Europeanization and multilevel governance - Additional country profiles on Croatia and Greece to ensure representative treatment of the key countries in Europe today

This volume looks at the process of enlargment which the European Union is currently undertaking, focusing on both the economic and political dimensions of the subject. The volume examines how enlargment has evolved and looks at the roles and relations of the different actors - member states, applicant states and EU institutions. With contributors coming from different disciplinary backgrounds, the volume offers an unusually rich array of perspectives on one of the most significant political developments of recent years.

'A dense narrative and a wealth of examples' Literary Review 'Reid-Henry narrates this story with elegance and gusto' Washington Post '[Reid-Henry] conveys an important message: Individual political action must become accountable to society's interests' Kirkus 'Reid-Henry's scholarship is impressive, gathering a wide range of historical anecdotes and referencing a diverse set of thinkers' Publishers Weekly The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day: Empire of Democracy is the story for those asking how we got to where we are. In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, was profoundly re-imagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth-century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the C old War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times. The present crisis of liberalism enjoins us to revisit these as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this panoramic history poignantly reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to come to terms with where we have been.

Constructing a Policy-Making State? is a guide to how the European Union really works, in which 12 policy sectors are analysed by some of the leading EU scholars in the world. Its considers how policy is made at the EU level, who is involved, which are the key institutions, and if they are pro-integration.

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have become increasingly contentious in the European public debate. This book provides an accessible introduction to international investment policy and seeks to explain how the EU became an actor in the global investment regime. It offers a detailed analysis of the EU’s participation in all major trade and investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal competence debates to identify the causes behind the EU’s growing role in this policy domain. Building on principal-agent and historical institutionalist models of incremental institutional change, the book shows that Commission entrepreneurship was instrumental in the emergence of the EU as a key actor in the global investment regime. It refutes business-centred liberal intergovernmental explanations, which suggest that business lobbying made the Member States accept the EU’s growing role and competence in this domain. The book lends support to supranational and challenges intergovernmental thinking on European Integration. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European and regional integration, EU foreign relations, EU trade and international investment law, business lobbying, and more broadly of international political economy.

Wealth and power characterize elites, yet despite the strong cultural influences they exert, their study remains underdeveloped. Partly because of complications resulting from access, scholars have tended to focus on groups affected by elite governance rather than on elites themselves. It is often overlooked that, in order to continue through time, elites have toempower new members. Choice has to be exercised over who achieves leadership, both by reference to the elite group itself and to the wider group over which it holds power. This book fills a gap in the current literature by providing the first rigorous interrogation of the choice and succession strategies of elites in various cultural contexts - from the transmission and preservation of financial power in urban contexts to the complex relation between subjectivity and the transmission of leadership positions in places as varied as the United States, Northern Italy and Lisbon. Various elite succession types are discussed, from self-avowedly 'traditional' leaders to the aristocracy, where choice is practically non-existent, to situations where leaders are elected from among a group of peers. The relationship between familial property and choice of successor in landholding families, small business enterprises, and peasant communities is also examined, as are ethnic monopolies.

This book discusses the domestic politics of treaty reform in the European Union, from the failed referendums on the Constitutional Treaty held in France and the Netherlands in May-June 2005 to the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in December 2009. The chapters, written by some of the finest scholars in the field of EU/European politics, show how European integration has increasingly become a contested issue in a majority of Member States. Going beyond the view that national governments are the main, if not the sole, driving force in the process of European integration, this book shows that other actors and factors have played a central role in preference formation and inter-state bargaining. These include: political parties, public opinion, the media, presidents, constitutional courts and, more broadly, political systems, ratification hurdles and the general negotiation context. National Politics and European Integration combines empirical analysis and theoretical explanations for one of the most controversial periods in the history of the European Union. This important book will be of great interest for advanced students in EU studies, comparative politics and public policy.