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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2008The social context of economic change in Britain
Between policy and performance
by Terrence Casey
This important book, newly available in paperback, examines a period of dramatic economic change in Britain during the Thatcher era. The Conservatives' free market policies generally improved the performance of the economy in Britain, but some parts of the country still did poorly (for example northern England). Casey argues that this was as a result of variations in social contexts - a combination of institutions, interests and economic culture. Southern England, possessing a more individualistic culture and higher levels of entrepreneurialism, has a 'market responsive' social context that can prosper under free market policies. Social context is thus a crucial intervening variable between the policies selected by decision-makers and the performance of economies, the key for enhancing prosperity is the proper match between economic policies and the context in which they are implemented. The social context of economic change in Britain provides an original theoretical framework linking economic growth and civil society and offers a unique insight into the Thatcher era. This book will be of interest to students of British politics and comparative political economy, public policy and political history. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2025The politics of Unbelonging
Understanding and challenging racialisation of Roma in Europe and beyond
by Andreja Zevnik, Andrew Russell
This book offers a comprehensive study of racialisation of Romani communities in Europe (and beyond). Drawing on the idea of unbelonging it demonstrates how Romani communities are placed in a position of visceral visibility by local, national and international institutions as well as public media discourses. It shows how such positionality impacts the ability of Roma to self-represent politically and build capacity for change. From the position of unbelonging the book offers an account of Romani agency which both challenges the mainstream representations of Roma but also develops an alternative none-nation-state sense of belonging. In doing so the book outlines an account of Romani alternative expressions in order to take control of their relationship with their own history, future, knowledge, and identity, and the rest of the society.
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Political structure & processesMay 2007Devolution and constitutional change in Northern Ireland
by Edited by Paul Carmichael, Colin Knox and Robert Osborne
This edited book, written by a collection of scholars with an interest in Northern Ireland, tracks its uneasy experience with devolution following the optimistic political period associated with the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The volume brings together researchers from the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) 'Devolution and Constitutional Change' Programme and other experts to record four key perspectives on Northern Ireland. First, it considers the inextricable link between devolution and constitutional developments. Second, it examines how the main political parties responded to devolution and the major challenges faced by society in moving beyond conflict (such as political symbolism, the role of women, equality and human rights issues). Third, it attempts to assess some of the workings of devolved government in its short-lived form or those seeded in devolution and carried on by direct rule ministers. Finally, Northern Irelands devolved government and associated institutions are located within the wider relationships with Westminster, the Republic of Ireland and Europe. This edited volume will be of interest to students of Irish politics and public policy, but more generally, from a comparative perspective, those with an interest in devolution and constitutional change. It may even assist politicians in Northern Ireland to reflect on the real potential to restore its devolved institutions and draw back from the brink of permanently copper-fastening 'direct rule' from Westminster.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2025Local government and democracy in Britain
by Neil Barnett, J. Chandler
Local government in the UK is in crisis. It is now neither local in terms of the geography and populations of its principle units, nor does it truly govern in these areas. As this book reveals, over the previous 200 years local government has moved from a system in which local interests held governance over localities to one in which central government and national and multi-national agencies such as corporate businesses hold governance over local and community decision-making. These changes seriously undermine the important role that local government can play in liberal democracy in the UK. The book explains the nature of local government today and asks if there is any possibility of change.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2026Critical theory and the political
by Anastasia Marinopoulou
The book addresses what is political in critical theory and which aspects, arguments or notions of critical theory maintain political significance for the 20th and the 21st centuries. The collection of essays comprises itself of a series of clear and critical perspectives that analyze the extent to which critical theory relates political argument to modern societies and, thereby, exerts a critique of the multiple social and political phenomena of late modernity. The contributors focus on a multiplicity of universal phenomena such as globalization, multiple crises, late capitalism and the social role of the sciences, and posit some novel criticism of the contemporary social sphere, as it is situated within the wider system of global capitalism. They also present a plurivalent critique that links arguments in Marxism and Freud to all three generations of critical theory.
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Humanities & Social SciencesDecember 2025Criminality, political power and conflict
Critical perspectives
by José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín
In the aftermath of the greed vs. grievance debate and the new wars paradigm, the focus of conflict studies shifted decisively to understanding "predatory" behaviours as the raison d'etre of contemporary conflict. Conflict was viewed as a continuum in which the more you engage in criminal behaviour, the less political you are.This approach has been robustly criticised over the past 15 years; however, in the process, we have been left with unsuitable concepts to handle the complex interactions between civil war, political power and criminality. The departure point here is the understanding of politics and criminality as two historically differentiated domains of human activity. Different, but interrelated, often co-constitutive and overlapping. Here, we empirically and theoretically explore their interactions, connections, and convergences, not focusing solely on irregular actors, thus bringing back the State and elites into this debate.
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Business, Economics & LawMay 2023
Oil and the political economy in the Middle East
by Martin Beck, Thomas Richter
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Business, Economics & LawFebruary 2025The political economy of Turkey’s integration to Europe
Uneven development and hegemony
by Elif Uzgören
This book examines Turkey's integration with Europe within structural dynamics of globalisation from a critical political economy perspective. Critical approaches have been sidelined within European Studies. Turkish enlargement is not an exemption. The analyses are based on original data generated by 109 interviews conducted in 2010, 2017 and 2023 with five categories of actors: representatives of capital and labour, political parties, state officials, and struggles around ecology, patriarchy and migration. It argues that the pro-membership was hegemonic in the 2000s which was contested by two rival class strategies, Ha-vet and neo-mercantilism. In the 2010s, pro-membership is no longer hegemonic within rising critical tone of social forces supporting rival class strategies. Unevenness of Turkey's trajectory of integration to Europe is likely to be consolidated through market integration and management of migration through transactional approach.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2011Irish Environmental Politics After the Communicative Turn
by Patrick O'Mahony
This book applies social and political theory to the field of environmental politics in Ireland. It offers both a substantive contribution to understanding environmental politics in this country and a test case of the application of theory within the field of environmental scholarship more generally. The essays are integrated by a concern for analysing the relationship between culture, discourse and action in this political field, hence the emphasis on the communicative turn. The book is innovative in offering a sustained application of social and political theory within environmental scholarship as well as in combining theoretical and empirical approaches to advancing environmental scholarship in a particular case. This synergy of theory and substantive analysis is a key feature of the book and offers an important contribution to the environmental literature in the social sciences. The authors apply key developments in the modern social sciences and offer compelling evidence of their value for clarifying the cultural foundations of political action and for its evaluation and critique. Academics in the social sciences and in philosophy, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate, both in Ireland and beyond, will find this book highly rewarding for its multi-faceted application of social and political theories and associated methodologies to the environmental field. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesDecember 2023Transitional justice in process
Plans and politics in Tunisia
by Mariam Salehi
After the fall of the Ben Ali regime in 2011, Tunisia swiftly began dealing with its authoritarian past and initiated a comprehensive transitional justice process, with the Truth and Dignity Commission as its central institution. However, instead of bringing about peace and justice, transitional justice soon became an arena of contention. Through a process lens, the book explores why and how the process evolved, and explains how it relates to the country's political transition. Based on extensive field research in Tunisia and the US, and interviews with a broad range of international stakeholders and decision-makers, this is the first book to comprehensively study the Tunisian transitional justice process. It provides an in-depth analysis of a crucial period, examining the role of justice professionals in different stages, as well as the alliances and frictions between different actor groups that cut across the often-assumed local-international divide.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2011Constitutions and political theory
Second edition
by Jan-Erik Lane
Since constitutional arrangements are what make politics work, they are a central concern of political theory. This book, now completely updated, was the first comprehensive exploration of the political theory of constitutions. Jan-Erik Lane begins by examining the origins and history of constitutionalism and answers key questions such as: what is a constitution? Why are there constitutions? From where does constitutionalism originate? How is the constitutional state related to democracy and justice? Constitutions play a major role in domestic and international politics in the early 21st century and an updated version of this classic textbook will introduce students to a number of different areas - theoretical, empirical and moral - which will aid their understanding of this important topic. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2018The political materialities of borders
by Olga Demetriou, Rozita Dimova, Hastings Donnan, Sarah Green
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Humanities & Social SciencesMay 2012Racism and social change in the Republic of Ireland
Second edition
by Bryan Fanning
Now in its second edition, Racism and Social Change in the Republic of Ireland provides an original and challenging account of racism in twenty-first century Irish society and locates this in its historical, political, sociological and policy contexts. It includes specific case studies of the experiences of racism in twenty-first century Ireland alongside a number of historical case studies that examine how modern Ireland came to marginalize ethnic minorities. Various chapters examine responses by the Irish state to Jewish refugees before, during and after the Holocaust, asylum seekers and Travellers. Other chapters examine policy responses to and academic debates on racism in Ireland. A key focus of the various case studies is upon the mechanics of exclusion experienced by black and ethnic minorities within institutional processes and of the linked challenge of taking racism seriously in twenty-first century Ireland. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2025
Crisis and change in European Union foreign policy
by Nikki Ikani
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Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2025Humanitarian mobilisation in Central and Eastern Europe
Local, national, and international perspectives
by Doina Anca Cretu, Michal Frankl
By focusing on aid Central and Eastern Europe, the volume adds to the existent scholarly explorations of modern humanitarianism, its actors and practices. In the twentieth century, aid workers assisted victims of war and earthquakes, delivered food, supported health care, provided childcare, or sheltered refugees. The contributors not only reconstruct these diverse histories and their protagonists, but also bring international, national, and local actors together: from grassroots activists to private associations to state-driven "socialist humanitarians" to large Western aid organizations. In doing so, they challenge the often unidirectional, from West-to-East, and asymmetrical perspective on donor-recipient relationships in humanitarian processes.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJanuary 2019These Englands
A conversation on national identity
by Arthur Aughey
The term 'conversation' is one of today's jargon terms. This book explores in depth what conversation means in national terms. Its premise is that to be English is to participate in a conversation about the country's history, politics, culture and society. The conversation changes, of course, but there is also continuity which illustrates a distinct tradition. It is a conversation, the book argues, which requires the plural notion of these Englands rather than the singularity of this England. Englishness, then, is the tone, register and idiom of it subject matters, its anxieties and certainties, differences and commonalities. The book explores the English conversation through historical, political, literary and popular voices and tries to identify the character of contemporary Englishness.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2010Towards a regional political class?
Professional politicians and regional institutions in Catalonia and Scotland
by Klaus Stolz
Focussing on professional politicians Klaus Stolz investigates the interrelationship between political career patterns and political institutions in two of the most widely discussed cases of regionalism: Catalonia and Scotland. The study deals with two different yet closely related sets of questions: Firstly, how do professional politicians pursue their careers in the regional context. And secondly, how do they shape and reshape the political institutions in which they pursue these careers. The monograph is based on extensive empirical research including a comprehensive data set on the careers of Catalan and Scottish parliamentarians, systematic surveys of regional representatives as well as in-depth interviews of a wide range of politicians and experts in both regions. Exploring the effects of political professionalisation on regional democracy, Stolz goes way beyond traditional studies of regionalism and decentralization, while his focus on the regional career arena introduces a much needed territorial dimension to the study of political careers. Rich original data, innovative theoretical concepts and a strictly comparative approach are the basis for a study that considerably deepens and enhances our understanding of the tremendous political changes both Catalonia and Scotland are undergoing. Thus, the book is of interest to the still growing number of scholars concerned with devolution in the UK, the Spanish autonomous communities as well as to those interested in regional politics and regionalisation in general. Furthermore, its theoretical focus makes it highly relevant for scholars working on political careers, political professionalisation and democratic theory. ;
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Political science & theoryJuly 2015The political theory of the Irish Constitution
Republicanism and the basic law
by Eoin Daly, Tom Hickey
The political theory of the Irish Constitution considers Irish constitutional law and the Irish constitutional tradition from the perspective of Republican theory. It analyses the central devices and doctrines of the Irish Constitution - popular sovereignty, constitutional rights and judicial review - in light of Republican concepts of citizenship and civic virtue. The Constitution, it will argue, can be understood as a framework for promoting popular participation in government as much as a mechanism for protecting individual liberties. It will be of interest to students and researchers in Irish politics, political theory and constitutional law, and to all those interested in political reform and public philosophy in Ireland.
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Political partiesAugust 2008Political marketing and British political parties (2nd Edition)
by Jennifer Lees-Marshment
The first edition of this book demonstrated that British political parties now attempt to offer a complete product that will appeal to a majority of voters, rather than being influenced by a political ideology and firm belief system. This new edition provides an updated and more in-depth exploration of the political marketing approach, including analysis of the 2001 and 2005 elections. It re-presents the influential theory of market, sales and product-oriented parties, discussing the potential and the limits of consumerism, and the need to blend business concepts with a traditional understanding of politics. Lee-Marshment examines Blair's New Labour government in order to draw out lessons on delivery, maintaining market intelligence and the effect of changing to a leadership approach that goes against country and party. Analysis of the Conservatives in opposition shows how the best intentions of party leaders to implement a market-orientation can be thwarted by internal resistance and traditional party elites. Providing a more reflective and critical analysis, the second edition offers a more nuanced discussion on how political parties can not only win elections but govern successfully.
