Social structure may historically have been of primary importance in accounting for the attitudes and behaviour of many citizens, but now changes in social structure have diminished the role played by class and religious affiliation, whilst the significance of personality in political leadership has increased. This volume explores, both theoretically and empirically, the increasingly important role played by the personalisation of leadership. Acknowledging the part played by social cleavages, it focuses on the personal relationships and psychological dimension between citizens and political leaders. It begins by examining the changes which have taken place in the relationship among citizens, the parties which they support and the leaders of these parties in a European context. The authors then assess how far the phenomena of ‘personalised leadership’ differ from country to country, and the forms which these differences take. The book includes comparative case studies on Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Poland, Japan and Thailand; it concentrates on eleven prominent leaders epitomising personalised political leadership: Thatcher, Blair, Mitterand, Chirac, Le Pen, Berlusconi, Bossi, Walesa, Lepper, Koizumi and Thaksin. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics and political leadership.

This definitive book examines and engages with the work of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, along with the Bloomington School of Political Economy more generally. The contributors emphasize the continuing relevance of the Ostroms’ work on collective action, self-governance, and institutional diversity for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities. This book’s wide array of topics and approaches will be a valuable resource to readers in a variety of fields, including: political science, economics, philosophy, sociology, public administration, environmental studies, and political economy.

This volume addresses several core questions regarding the nature of law in China and its future development. In particular, these articles shed light on whether the rule of law ideal is commensurable with government based on the Chinese Communist Party. Beginning virtually from scratch, China has established a comprehensive legal system that boasts a constitution, primary and secondary legislation and plentiful regulations covering most areas of public and private life. Yet, as these articles discuss, its courts are enmeshed in Party and state hierarchies and are not empowered to directly apply constitutional principles or rights, ensuring that the law is subordinate to national public policy goals. Legal and extra-legal methods for punishing wrongdoing and resolving disputes also raise questions of due process of law. Ultimately, the question is therefore whether China's legal system, if eschewing formalised human rights, is developing a capacity to protect fundamental human dignity.

The decline of citizen involvement affects two key elements of democratic government: elections and political parties. Activating the Citizen examines the reasons underlying citizen withdrawal and explores and assesses innovative approaches on both sides of the Atlantic to try to counter these phenomena.

The Handbook of Party Politics is the first book to comprehensively map the state-of-the-art in contemporary party politics scholarship. This major new work brings together the world's leading party theorists to provide an unrivalled resource on the role of parties in the pressing contemporary problems of institutional design and democratic governance today.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asian states have developed liberal-constitutional formal institutions. However, at the same time, political phenomena in Central Asia are shaped by informal political behaviour and relations. This relationship is now a critical issue affecting democratization and regime consolidation processes in former Soviet Central Asia, and this book provides an account of the interactive and dynamic relationship between informal and formal politics through the case of party-system formation in Kazakhstan. Based on extensive interviews with political actors and a wide range of historical and contemporary documentary sources, the book utilises and develops neopatrimonialism as an analytical concept for studying post-Soviet authoritarian consolidation and failed democratisation. It illustrates how personalism of political office, patronage and patron-client networks and factional elite conflict have influenced and shaped the institutional constraints affecting party development, the type of emerging parties and parties’ relationship with society. The case of Kazakhstan, however, also demonstrates how in the former Soviet space political parties emerge as central to the legitimization of informal political behavior, the structuring of factional competition and the consolidation of authoritarianism. The book represents an important contribution to the study of Central Asian Politics.

This book studies party leaders from selection to post-presidency. Based on data covering a large set of Western countries, and focusing on the trends of personalisation of politics, the volume is one of the first empirical investigations into how party leaders are elected, how long they stay in office, and whether they enter and guide democratic governments. It also provides novel data on how leaders end their career in a broad and diverse range of business activities. Topics covered include political leaders’ increasing autonomy, their reinforcement of popular legitimation, often through the introduction of direct election by party rank and file, and their grip on party organization. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in political parties, political leadership, the transformation of democracy, and comparative politics.

Drawing on recent theories of interactive governance and political leadership, this book develops a concept of interactive political leadership that aims to capture what political leadership looks like in a society of active, anti-authoritarian, and politically competent citizens.

From unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud claims and the storming of the US Capitol to the rampage of COVID-19 and racial injustice, this book covers the foundations, institutions, and processes of "the great American experiment" with a clear and resonant theme: Democracy cannot be taken for granted, whether at home or internationally, and eternal vigilance (along with civic intelligence) is required to protect it. Approaching Democracy provides students with a framework to analyze the structure, process, and action of US government, institutions, and social movements. It also invites comparison with other countries. This globalizing perspective gives students an understanding of issues of governance and challenges to democracy here and elsewhere. At a moment of growing domestic terrorism, political hyper-partisanship, populism, identity politics, and governmental dysfunction, there is no better time to bring Approaching Democracy--a textbook based on Vaclav Havel’s powerful metaphor of democracy as an ideal and the American experiment as the closest approach to it--to a new generation of political science undergraduate students. NEW TO THE NINTH EDITION Two new authors, Nadia E. Brown and Sarah Allen Gershon, who bring refreshing intellectual and diverse perspectives to the text. Includes the tumultuous political context surrounding the Trump presidency, the 2020 elections, the 116th Congress, the Supreme Court, the COVID-19 crisis, and the fight for social and racial justice. Figures and tables reflect the latest available data and surveys. Two new features--Diversity and Democracy, highlighting the experiences of America’s diverse social groups and the role of identity politics—and Discussion Questions at the end of each chapter, assessing critical thinking skills. Critical contemporary events are explored throughout the book, including the attempted coup following the 2020 elections, the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter, protests in American cities that come to the epicenter of America’s approach to democracy, the changes in the Supreme Court and the federal court system, the growth of LGBTQ+ legal rights, and the alteration in American Federalism. New and updated data on public attitudes toward police brutality, DACA, voter suppression, healthcare, and the global climate movement are also covered.