It has been argued that the emergence of a European collective identity would help overcome growing disparity caused by the increasing diversity of today’s European Union, with 28 member states and more than 500 million people.Research on European integration is facing the pressing question of what holds ‘Europe’ together in times of crisis, growing distributional conflict and instability in its neighbourhood. This book departs from the ideas of group cohesion in the EU, and reflec...

This book shines new light on the political system of the European Union (EU) by focusing on civic resources as a keystone of the EU’s ability to sustain. Less-tangible resources such as trust, solidarity, mutual recognition and citizens’ social and political participation have been, until now, largely ignored in the research on European integration.Due to the fundamental changes to the EU in recent years and the challenges ahead, European citizens have become increasingly...

From the award-winning team behind the International Encyclopaedia of Political Science...Moving beyond mainstream "traditional" approaches to bring you a new advanced-level introduction to political science.A perfect introduction for postgraduates who are new to political science, as well as upper-level undergraduates looking to broaden and deepen their understanding of core topics, this progressive account:Guides you through all key areas of politic...

This book offers a major new theory of global governance, explaining both its rise and what many see as its current crisis. The author suggests that world politics is now embedded in a normative and institutional structure dominated by hierarchies and power inequalities and therefore inherently creates contestation, resistance, and distributional struggles. Within an ambitious and systematic new conceptual framework, the theory makes four key contributions. Firstly, it reconstruc...

Institutional Theory in Political Science provides an in-depth analysis of contemporary institutional theory, an essential tool to understand the world of politics and government.Written by B. Guy Peters, a prominent expert in the field, the book argues that the new institutionalism comprises eight variations on the theme of institutional analysis. Through a series of questions, the author assesses the possibility of a unified theory within institutionalism and its potenti...

This original work explores the increasingly important phenomenon of the formation of transnational identity. Considering the ongoing relevance of the European Union, the contributors ask a series of intriguing questions: Is a European identity possible? How are the various types of European identity formed and maintained? How are these identities linked to the process of European integration? Examining the psychological, institutional, and political mechanisms that encourage or impede ide...

Whether a student, an instructor, a researcher, or just someone interested in understanding the roots of sociology and our social world, The Cambridge Handbook of Sociology, Volume 1 is for you. This first volume of the Handbook focuses on core areas of sociology, such as theory, methods, culture, socialization, social structure, inequality, diversity, social institutions, social problems, deviant behavior, locality, geography, the environment, and social change. It also explains how socio...

This book is a comprehensive guide to theories of International Relations (IR). Given the limitations of a paradigm-based approach, it sheds light on eighteen theories and new theoretical perspectives in IR by examining the work of key reference theorists. The chapters are all written to a common template. The introductory section provides readers with a basic understanding of the theory’s genesis by locating it within an intellectual tradition, paying particular attention to the historica...

Back in 1972, German political sociologist Claus Offe published a book on the Structural Problems of Late Capitalism which, for almost two decades, inspired and stimulated an international and transdisciplinary debate on the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. An academic debate which, paradoxically, began to wane as the issues about which Offe had been writing became even more prominent: the "Contradictions of the Welfare State" (the title of a collection of Offe’s main...

Functional differentiation has long been at the heart of sociological thought, and as such has become a defining feature in the evolution of modern society; one which distinguishes it from pre-modern societies which have instead typically differentiated by means of segmentation, or stratified social systems such as class. Drawing on the latest developments on differentiation theory in international relations and sociology, this book brings together contributions from leading IR scholars an...

The centrality of international migration as a process articulating major transformations of contemporary societies offers an opportunity to make it the shared component of the theoretical and research agendas of the social science disciplines. In this volume a multidisciplinary team of authors presents a stocktaking account of current research on international migration in order to lay the ground for such an interdisciplinary collaboration. The first part of the book scrutinizes the theor...

Exclusion has come to hold a prominent place in the political discourse of all governments in the European Union and in the European Commission itself. As such, it figures importantly in various research agencies’ funding priorities attracting academics to develop and conduct major research programmes. But what does it mean? This book analyzes the different meanings the term exclusion has come to convey and surveys a wide variety of actual applications in different European countries.