Moving from a social movement perspective, this timely volume examines narratives on Euroscepticism and frames on Europe from below, at the party and social movement levels. Revealing perspectives from both the Right and the Left, it unpacks the emergence, re-emergence and increase in critical ‘voices’ and opposition towards Europe.Based on extensive fieldwork in two candidate countries for accession to the EU and three member states, it offers insight from analysis of focus groups...

This book engages in the controversies of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms, demonstrating how these are reiterated by mainstream theoretical approaches in the field.The reforms that the European Union’s CAP underwent during the last three decades were intended to make it less trade-distorting, more taxpayer-friendly and more able to meet the new challenges of environmental concerns and rural development/territorial cohesion. The outcome of the reforms h...

Contemporary China appears both deceptively familiar and inexplicably different. China is a cauldron of forms of entrepreneurship, social organization, ways of life and governance that are at once new and unique, recognizably Chinese and generically modern. In analyzing and interpreting these developments, Frank N. Pieke adopts a China-centric perspective to move beyond western preoccupations, desires, or fears. Each chapter starts with a key question about China, showing that such questio...

Using new research and considering a multidisciplinary set of factors, Contemporary China offers a comprehensive exploration of the making of contemporary China.Provides a unique perspective on China, incorporating newly published materials from within and outside China, in English and Chinese. Discusses both the societal and economic aspects of China’s development, and how these factors have affected Chinese elite politicsIncludes coverage of recent politi...

The fast-developing relationship between China and Europe has become one of the most important in international affairs. China-Europe Relations takes an innovative and insightful look at this phenomenon, examining:the state of Chinese studies in Europe and European studies in Chinathe decision-making behind the EU’s China policy, and what the Chinese perceptions and assessments are of Europe that shape China’s Europe policy

This open access book focuses on the nexus between “party system stability” and “democratic consolidation”, using Slovenia as a case study. Its findings are presented from a comparative perspective to illustrate the commonalities and differences found in research on Central European post-socialist countries and former Yugoslav countries. On the one hand, Slovenia’s characteristics (including the characteristics of its transition to democracy) are far more similar to those of Central Europe...

This book explores China's place in the ‘new international order’, from both the international perspective and from the perspective within China.It discusses how far the new international order, as outlined by George Bush in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Kuwait in the Gulf War, with its notions of ‘international order’, as viewed by the United States, and with the United States seeing itself as the single dominant power, applies to China. The con...

Over the past two decades, China’s political reforms, open-door policy, dramatic economic growth, and increasingly assertive foreign policy have had an unprecedented regional and global impact. This introductory textbook provides students with a fundamental understanding of government and politics in China as well as the conceptual ability to explore the general patterns, impacts, and nature of continuities and changes in Chinese politics. Further, it equips students with analytical framew...

Despite growing scholarly interest in the EU’s flagship policy towards its Eastern and Southern neighbours, serious attempts at theory-building on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have been largely absent from the academic debate.This book aims at contributing to fill this research gap in a three-fold manner: first and foremost it aims at theorizing the ENP as such, explaining the origins, development and effectiveness of this policy. Building on this effort, it also pursues...

What makes a government legitimate? Why do people voluntarily comply with laws, even when no one is watching? The idea of political legitimacy captures the fact that people obey when they think governments' actions accord with valid principles. For some, what matters most is the government's performance on security and the economy. For others, only a government that follows democratic principles can be legitimate. Political legitimacy is therefore a two-sided reality that scholars studying...

Do external factors facilitate or hamper domestic democratic development? Do international actors influence the development of greater civil and political freedom, democratic accountability, equality, responsiveness and the rule of law in domestic systems? How should we conceptualize, identify and evaluate the extent and nature of international influence?These are some of the complex questions that this volume approaches. Using new theoretical insights and empirical data, the contr...

The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Migration in Europe provides a rigorous and critical examination of what is exceptional about the European politics of migration and the study of it.Crucially, this book goes beyond the study of the politics of migration in the handful of Western European countries to showcase a European approach to the study of migration politics, inclusive of tendencies in all geographical parts of Europe (including Eastern Europe, the Western Ba...