How do today's political parties relate to other organisations? Do they prefer rather distant relationships with a wide range of interest groups - or have they virtually detached themselves from civil society altogether? Scholars seem to agree that traditionally close relationships - such as those between social democratic parties and trade unions - have grown weaker since the 1960s. But to date only limited systematic research has been conducted. While parties and interest groups attract a great deal of attention from political scientists, the links between them have been largely overlooked....

As well as promoting debates about liberal democracy, the dramatic events of 1989 also bought forth a powerful revival in the interest of the notion of civil society. This revival was reflected mainly in two broad tracts of literature. The first focused primarily on events surrounding the Solidarity movement in Poland and the tumultuous events of 1980-81. The second was concerned with the Velvet Revolutions more broadly. Following the events of 1989, there appeared a number of works sharing the common central argument that civil society played a key role in the overthrow of these Communist...

The recent empowerment of the European Parliament makes this a timely study of the impact of its internal organisation on legislative politics, interest representation and democracy within the Union. Using data on all legislators and legislative proposals in the sixth parliamentary term, the book confronts alternative theories of legislative organisation in rigorous statistical analyses supported by rich interview information. The findings indicate that the internal setup and legislative output of the parliamentary committees serve the policy goals of parties in the European Parliament, and...

Hans Kelsen and the Case for Democracy is a contextual analysis of this famous jurist's political thought. Kelsen's works are usually reduced to his theory of law, and his reflections on democracy are often ignored. The great strength of Kelsen's political thinking lies in the largely original arguments that it musters against the critics who condemn or debunk the institutions of parliamentary democracies. This study assesses Kelsenian democratic theory by exploring three questions: first, how is Kelsen's political theory intertwined with his legal theory? Second, how does Kelsen combine his...

Clientelism in public employment - the practice of offering jobs in return for political favours to a party or politician - is a problem from the perspectives of equality, democratic accountability and economic efficiency. Focusing on intra-party competition, this book presents an original explanation of why some politicians and parties engage more extensively in such practices than others. Examining Argentina and Turkey in a period of economic restructuring, the author argues that patronage jobs are distributed hierarchically to the politicians' circle. Consequently, the distribution of...

This book develops and applies an inventive theoretical approach to the comparative study of the neglected aspect of the real (or "de facto") independence of regulatory agencies. The book begins with an examination of the organisational and institutional factors shaping the de facto independence of regulatory agencies in Western Europe. There follows an analysis of the role of independent regulatory agencies in the policy-making process, using de facto independence as an explanatory variable. The final section is devoted to the relationship between regulatory agencies and the news media. In...

Have European citizens become increasingly Eurosceptic over the last two decades, turning their backs on European integration? Though many journalists, politicians and academics argue that they have, this book suggests that reactions to European integration cannot be reduced uniquely to a rise in Euroscepticism, but that indifference and ambivalence need also to be brought into the picture when studying EU legitimacy and its politicisation. Drawing on new evidence from survey data from eight founding member states, and focus groups conducted in francophone Belgium, France and Great Britain,...

Why Aren't They There? is a comprehensive study of political representation in a cross-national format. It examines the representation of women, ethnic groups, and policy positions in a cross-country comparison. Using new data on ethnic groups in legislatures, the book is a significant step forward in the analysis of political representation. The systematic approach of the book allows a ground-breaking examination of how different forms of representation - women, ethnic groups, issue positions - are interlinked. "An excellent piece of work that jointly discusses two dimensions and two groups...