The Social Science Encyclopedia, first published in 1985 to acclaim from social scientists, librarians and students, was thoroughly revised in 1996, when reviewers began to describe it as a classic. This third edition has been radically recast. Over half the entries are new or have been entirely rewritten, and most of the balance have been substantially revised. Written by an international team of contributors, the Encyclopedia offers a global perspective on key issues within the social sciences. Some 500 entries cover a variety of enduring and newly vital areas of study and research methods. Experts review theoretical debates from neo-evolutionism and rational choice theory to poststructuralism, and address the great questions that cut across the social sciences. What is the influence of genes on behaviour? What is the nature of consciousness and cognition? What are the causes of poverty and wealth? What are the roots of conflict, wars, revolutions and genocidal violence? This authoritative reference work is aimed at anyone with a serious interest in contemporary academic thinking about the individual in society.

Developing a theory of political culture as consisting of two dimensions, discourse and practice, the book explains how political culture can both inhibit political change and be a source of it. It explores the nature and dynamics of political culture systematically and comprehensively, and suggests numerous new lines of empirical research.

This is a book about political values - socialist, nationalist, liberal and democratic values - in five former communist countries: Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Based on eleven surveys involving extended interviews with 7350 members of the public and 504 Members of Parliament it provides an authoritative account of the extent to which politicians and the public in East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union have rejected communist ideals and adopted nationalist and/or liberal democratic values.

Are world views once formed during childhood and adolescence stable over life or do they change when they come under pressure from new institutional contexts? This book seeks the answer by revisiting an aged political generation growing up in historically unique interwar Estonia but living their adult lives in exile.

'...erudite, thought-provoking and well-written.'Archie Brown, Professor of Politics, Oxford University. The return to prominence of the concept of political culture offers an opportunity to re-evaluate its contribution to the social sciences. This study casts a broader than usual net, embracing not only political science (with equal emphasis placed on the concept's use in communist studies), but also sociology and history. On this basis a distinctive theory of political culture, and not merely another typology, is developed. Political culture, instead of being a token in the sterile debate between interest- and culture-based explanation, offers the means of transcending that debate.

By examining a sector of the economy that was exposed to increased imports more than four decades ago, Crumley illuminates the economic pressures, resistance, and reform that help to shape Russia's agrarian sector today.

Leaders and leadership continue to dominate Russia's political development. Like his predecessors in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin has made a crucial impact on the substance and style of Russian politics. His efforts to use traditional tools of state power to manage democracy and market capitalism have had mixed effects on both. Leading Russia investigates the ambiguities and contradictions of Putin's rule from four perspectives. The volume first considers his leadership in the context of Russia's convulsive historical cycle of revolutionary transformation, breakdown, consolidation, and stagnation. The study then analyses how normative and institutional components of democracy have fared under Putin's regime of stronger executive control. It proceeds to examine the strengths and weaknesses of presidential power vis-à-vis bureaucratic, regional, and corporate groups. The volume concludes with two assessments of the strategic direction in which Putin is taking Russia. They explore the tensions between bureaucratic-authoritarian trends and Putin's apparent commitment to electoral democracy, market capitalism, and alignment with the West. The book helps to deepen our understanding of the cultural and institutional factors shaping Putin's leadership approach and policy priorities. More widely, it sheds light on the complexity of the relationship between post-communist leadership, democracy, and economic modernization.

This book argues that the liberal concept of rights presupposes and is grounded in an individualistic culture or shared way of relating, and that this particular shared way of relating emerged only in the wake of the Reformation in the modern West.