Zeitgeschichte Europas

This book analyses the impact of socio-structural variables, such as social class, religion, urban/rural residence, age and gender, on influencing an individual's voting preferences. There have been major changes in recent decades both to social structure and how social structure determines people's voting behaviour. There has also been a shift in value orientations, for example from religious to secular values and from more authoritarian to libertarian values. The author addresses the questions: How do social structure and value orientations influence party choice in advanced industrial democracies?; To what extent is the impact of social structure on party choice transmitted via value orientations?; To what extent is the impact of value orientations on party choice causal effects when controlled for the prior structural variables? The book will be of use to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, electoral politics and political sociology.

Internetforen sind virtuelle Versammlungsorte, deren kommunikativen Kern - besonders bei politischen Diskursen - Argumentationen und Gegenargumentationen darstellen. Ziel der Studie ist es, die konstitutiven Sprechakte und sprachlichen Mittel des Gegenargumentierens in französischen Internetforumsbeiträgen zu europapolitischen Fragen zu ermitteln. Als Untersuchungskorpus dienen die polylogalen Diskussionen des von der Europäischen Kommission eingerichteten Internetforums «Debate Europe», welches u.a. von frankophonen Internetnutzern zur informellen politischen Deliberation genutzt wird. Für die Arbeit wird eine etymologische, rhetorische und argumentationstheoretische (im Sinne der Pragma-Dialektik) Herangehensweise gewählt.

Au sein des organisations internationales, des États, d¿institutions telles que l¿école ou les administrations, la question du multilinguisme est devenue, par force, incontournable. Les auteurs de la présente monographie ont souhaité apporter une réflexion nouvelle sur ce phénomène en s¿interrogeant sur les manières de tirer parti du multilinguisme ou de surmonter les difficultés qüil peut engendrer. L¿ouvrage confronte les points de vue des chercheurs en linguistique, en histoire, en sciences politiques, en didactique, afin d¿étudier des situations concrètes de multilinguisme et de plurilinguisme, dans le cadre de diverses entités territoriales et de différentes institutions. Il se propose ainsi de retracer, dans une perspective comparative, diverses mises en ¿uvre des politiques d¿aménagement du multilinguisme en Europe.

This book is a first exploratory inquiry into possible educational selectivity effects of the European Social Fund (ESF). It assesses the extent of the gap between the social policy objectives set through regulatory competences in multi-level governance and the structure of incentives it breeds in practice, with a broad range of implications for the capacity of the government to control for an equitable distribution of services at the community level. The chapters emphasize the educational selectivity involved in national policy decisions concerning ESF implementation in the five countries, the role of informal mechanisms in fine-tuning implementation, the negative effects of formalization and failures in accommodating the complexity of goals which characterizes the ESF, as well as the overall fairness of ESF implementation towards the most disadvantaged groups in society. The empirical analysis suggests that social-service delivery contracting as an instrument of governance is no longer regulating against risks for beneficiaries, but fuels increased social division in access to public services. The book is the result of the Educational selectivity effects of the European Social Fund project (July 2012 and December 2013), developed with the support of the Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations.

This book looks both backward and forward with regard to the European Union's political strategies towards its neighbouring countries. By bringing together the perspectives of critical geopolitics, policy studies and border studies, it presents a comprehensive review of the European Neighbourhood Policy and how it impacts the ongoing construction of the EU's external frontiers.Is the EU committed to promoting integration in a 'wider' European space, or is a "fortress Europe" emerging where the strengthening of internal cohesion is coupled with the militarisation of its external borders? The book aims to problematize this question by showing how the EU's external policies are based on a mixture of openness and closure, inclusion and exclusion, cooperation and securitisation. The European Neighbourhood Policy is a controversial strategy where regionalization and bordering, homogenisations and differentiations, centrifugal and centripetal forces proceed side-by-side, in an explicit attempt to construct a selective, mobile and fragmented border.A specific focus is devoted to the diversity of geo-strategies the EU is pursuing in its neighbouring countries and regions, macro-regional strategies and cross-border cooperation initiatives as new scales of cooperation, and the role of other global players.

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der sechziger und fruhen siebziger Jahre bringt je­ doch forschungsstrategisch mehr Nachteile als Vorteile.

,The papers in this collection, written by a cross-regional group of experts, provide insights into the causes of declining levels of citizen participation and other distinct forms of civic activism in Europe and explore a range of factors contributing to apathy and eventually disengagement from vital political processes and institutions. At the same time, this volume examines informal or unconventional types of civic engagement and political participation corresponding to the rapid advances in culture, technology and social networking. The volume is divided into three interrelated parts: Part I consists of critical essays in the form of theoretical approaches to analysing weakening political participation and citizen estrangement; Part II is dedicated to an exploration of the role and deployment of technologically advanced media, such as the internet, as determinants of changing patterns of political participationist behaviour. Finally, Part III presents findings of empirical research on the issue of political participation. Combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, the book contributes towards a better understanding of the disquieting trend of voter apathy and disenchantment with politics in the context of the ongoing process of European integration, and offers a variety of analytical tools for decoding both the emergence of alternative conceptualizations of citizenship and other forms of meaningful civic and political engagement.

In dieser Untersuchung sollen zwei zentrale Themen behandelt werden: 1. Was sind die Bedingung für die soziale Integration einer Gesellschaft? 2. Was sind die Bedingungen für die gesellschaftliche Integration der Europäischen Union? Bei näherer Betrachtung handelt es sich um nur eine Frage, die sich allgemein oder konkret mit Bezug auf die Europäische Union (EU) stellen lässt. Zwei getrennte Fragen sind es aber in der Disziplin, denn beide wurden bisher weitgehend getrennt voneinander und ohne systematische Aufnahme der jeweils anderen Perspektive diskutiert. In der soziologischen Theorie haben Überlegungen zu den Voraussetzungen der sozialen Integration von Gesellschaften eine lange Tradition. Dabei waren die Fra gen zentral, ob Gesellschaften ein gemeinsames Wertefundament brauchen und wie dieses Fundament aussehen muss. Parsons mit seiner These eines Wertekon sens als Bedingung für Gesellschaft und als Gegenspieler die Konflikttheorie sind zu Eckpunkten einer ausdifferenzierten Debatte geworden (vgl. u.a. Friedrichs/ Jagodzinski 1999, Münch 1997). Die Diskussion wurde vor allem theoretisch geführt. Der Grund dafür liegt auf der Hand. Gesellschaften sind uns immer schon als integrierte Gesellschaften gegeben. Es ist sogar nicht eindeutig klar, was eine nicht integrierte Gesellschaft empirisch bedeutet und ob es sie geben kann.

In the 2009 elections, the European centre-right emerged victorious, thus affirming its political domination in contemporary European politics. The aim of this book is not to provide an analysis of the factors that contributed to the EPP's political prevalence. Instead, it is to help this large political family maintain its vigour of political thought and policy prescriptions. The book provides a forum for prominent centre-right thinkers to debate the major European problems of our times, with particular emphasis on the management of the financial crisis and the next institutional steps regarding the European integration project. It assembles the views of politicians, academics and think-tank fellows from different national backgrounds and dissimilar ideological perspectives, who unfold their vision for Europe's future. Overall, the book attempts to both highlight and stimulate the centre-right contribution to the discussion of Europe's main contemporary challenges.