Some recent books published by IASGP members
Parteien und Parteiensysteme in den deutschen Ländern
Uwe Jun, Melanie Haas and Oskar Niedermayer (2008)
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Dieser Band liefert für alle 16 Bundesländer eine systematische Einführung in die Entstehung, Struktur und Entwicklung ihrer Parteien und Parteiensysteme. Er bietet sowohl vergleichende Betrachtungen von Wahlen und Parteien in den Bundesländern wie auch eine umfassende Analyse der Besonderheiten, der Geschichte und der bundespolitischen Bedeutung eines jeden Parteiensystems auf Länderebene. Damit liegt zum ersten Mal ein Gesamtüberblick über die bundesdeutschen regionalen Parteiensysteme vor, der sich sowohl als Grundlage für weitere vergleichende Untersuchungen wie auch als Nachschlagewerk bestens eignet.
Parteien in Berlin/ Parties in Berlin
Christian Junge/ Jakob Lempp (Eds.) (2007)
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Die Parteien in Berlin haben ganz besondere Herausforderungen zu meistern. Sie sind gleichzeitig Parteien der größten deutschen Stadt, eines Bundeslandes und der Hauptstadt der Bundesrepublik. Mit diesem Band liegt erstmals eine systematische Darstellung von Rolle, Organisation und Programmatik der Berliner Parteien vor. Neben einer einführenden Übersicht über das politische System des Landes Berlin werden CDU, SPD, die Linke, Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen, FDP sowie die rechtsradikalen und rechtsextremen Parteien in eigenen Kapiteln untersucht. Dabei beleuchten die Autoren Entwicklung, derzeitige Situation sowie Organisation, Programmatik und gesellschaftliche Verankerung der Berliner Parteien.
Climate Change Politics in Europe: Germany and the International Relations of the Environment
Lyn Jaggard (2007)
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In the 21st century the climate change debate is increasingly moving up the agenda. In this topical book Lyn Jaggard evaluates the role of ideas in the evolution of the politics of climate change. She investigates the evolution of climate change policy in the European Union and specifically Germany's role in the international relations of climate change. Jaggard argues that Germany’s federal system has facilitated the political mainstreaming of popular environmental concerns which has led to the development of effective environmental domestic and foreign policy-making, influencing both European and wider climate change policy.
Views from Abroad: British Research on East Germany (Ubeblick über die britische Forschung zur DDR)
eds Peter Barker, Marc-Dietrich Ohse, Dennis Tate (2007), W. Bertelsmann Verlag
Book Flyer (Deutsche Zusammenfassung)
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This book presents the broad spectrum of the British GDR research. The contributions are the result of a conference at the University of Reading in the summer 2006, The conference was organised by the Centre for East German Studies at Reading and the University of Bath and was financed by the German government foundation in Berlin.
The first part generally brings up for discussion controversies about the GDR research, about the history surrounding the GDR literature. In the second part, political developments in the Soviet zone of occupation and/or the GDR are examined and reflected in different contributions also on the foil of British policy. The third part dedicates itself to examining the relationship of the East German cinemas to literature and film and the relations between the SEDStaat and cultural production, the autobiographic Prosa. Thus the anthology offers a comprehensive overview of the British research to the GDR in the science of history and the social sciences as well as in the Germanistik and to the culture sciences.
Britain, Germany and the Future of the European Union
Christian Schweiger (2007)
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Britain, Germany and the Future of the European Union outlines the changes in British and German European policies which have been characteristic of a process of normalisation in both countries. Schweiger examines possible areas for cooperation between Britain and Germany on major European issues (institutional and procedural reform, EMU, economic reform, CFSP and enlargement) and the potential significance that such a working partnership could have within the enlarged European Union.
Learning from the West? Policy Transfer and Programmatic Change in the Communist Successor Parties of East Central Europe
Edited by: Dan Hough, William E. Paterson, James Sloam (2005)
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Learning from the West" brings insight into political life after the collapse of communism and the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s. For Communist parties and their successors (CSPs), the challenge was perhaps the greatest - to redefine themselves within new, 'westernised' political systems. As these parties sought to adapt their programmatic appeals to their new environments, they searched for policies from abroad that could fit these new political structures. The political parties of Western Europe provided a rich range of programmes from which policies could be drawn. This book analyses how, to what extent and under what conditions external influences came to bear on the programmatic development of CSPs. It argues that while some parties remain neo-communist in orientation, growling about the evils of capitalism on the far-left of their respective political systems, others have developed into social democratic actors, embracing programmatic
ideals that often bear a strong resemblance to those of centre-left actors in Western Europe. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.
Party Politics in Germany: A comparative politics approach
Charlie Lees (2005)
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Party Politics in Germany is the only English-language study of its kind and examines the phenomenon of party politics in the Federal Republic through comparison across time and space. It draws upon new data from the 2002 Federal elections and recent Land elections, as well as on a far more explicitly comparative literature than is generally found in single-country studies. The book not only sheds new light on political phenomena in Germany but also allows students of the comparative method to apply some of the key concepts, models and approaches with which they are familiar to the rich context of a single country study.
Governance in Contemporary Germany. The Semisovereign State Revisited
Simon Green and William E. Paterson (2005)
Read a review of this book from Handelsblatt
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Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, West Germany was considered to be one of the world’s most successful economic and political systems. In his seminal 1987 analysis of West Germany’s ‘semisovereign’ system of governance, Peter Katzenstein attributed this success to a combination of a fragmented polity, consensus politics and incremental policy changes. However, unification in 1990 has both changed Germany’s institutional configuration and created economic and social challenges on a huge scale. This volume herefore asks whether semisovereignty still exists in contemporary Germany and, crucially, whether it remains an asset in terms of addressing these challenges. By shadowing and building on the original study, an eminent team of British, German and American scholars analyses institutional changes and the resulting policy developments in key sectors, with Peter Katzenstein himself providing the conclusion. Together, the chapters provide a landmark assessment of the outcomes produced by one of the world’s most important countries.
The Presidentialization of Politics. A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies
Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (2005)
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The Presidentialization of Politics shows how democratic political systems are coming to operate according to an essentially presidential logic, irrespective of their formal constitutional make-up. The logic of presidentialization is revealed in the growing power and autonomy of political leaders within political executives and political parties, and in the emergence of increasingly leadership-centred electoral processes. While these developments to some extent reflect the fluctuating contingencies of particular personalities and short-term political contexts, they are more fundamentally explained by processes of long-term structural change affecting state and society. Such processes include the internationalization of political decision-making, the executive's search for enhanced steering capacity over the state, the changing structure of mass communications, and the erosion of traditional political cleavages.
The book presents evidence confirming the existence of the presidentialization phenomenon across a heterogeneous mix of established democracies. While there are significant cross-national differences, the overall thesis holds: Modern democracies increasingly follow a presidential logic which renders leaders both more central and more vulnerable, their power and their susceptibility each rooted in the capacity to sustain a personal appeal to mass publics.
How Political Parties Respond. Interest Aggregation Revisited
Kay Lawson, Thomas Poguntke (2004)
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How Political Parties Respond to Voters focuses specifically on the question of interest aggregation. Do parties today perform that function? If so, how? If not, in what different ways do they seek to show themselves responsive to the electorate?
This fascinating book studies the question with reference to Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Canada. A chapter on Russia demonstrates how newly powerful private interest groups and modern techniques of persuasion can work together to prevent effective party response to popular interests in systems where the authoritarian tradition remains strong.
The Crisis of the German Left: The Collapse of Communism, The Global Economy and the Second Great Transformation
Peter Thompson, University of Sheffield (2004)
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Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and critical history, the author examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic" (Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers’ movement.
European Policy of the German Social Democrats. Interpreting a Changing World.
James Sloam, King's College London (2004)
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This book examines the EU policy of the German Social Democrats (SPD) after German unification, following their rise to power in 1998 and their record in office under Chancellor Schröder. The study deals with policy formation in the SPD through an analysis of the opportunity structures for policy-making in the EU, Germany and the party itself. Across this time period, the SPD recalibrated its European policy to absorb the impact of German unification, deeper European integration and globalization, seeking to interpret a changing world.
The Politics of Exclusion. Institutions and Immigration policy in contemporary Germany
Simon Green, University of Birmingham (2004)
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Immigration is one of the most sensitive issues of modern European politics. Nowhere is this more the case than in Germany, as a result of its history and the sheer scale of immigration it has experienced since 1945. Yet despite this background, Germany's immigration, residence and citizenship policy has been more restrictive when compared to that of many other countries; indeed, official policy long maintained that Germany was not a 'country of immigration'. But why has this been the case? The politics of exclusion provides a new analytical perspective on immigration in Germany, tracing the country's immigration and citizenship policy since the Second World War. The book argues that institutional politics are central to understanding why Germany's policy structures have experienced only incremental change over the past 20 years, and have remained comparatively restrictive. With its lively and accessible style, the book will appeal to advanced scholars and students of immigration and Germany.
Germany, Poland and Europe: Conflict, Co-operation and Europeanisation
Marcin Zaborowski (2004)
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This book provides a valuable and highly innovative insight into the past, present and future of Polish-German relations, considered against a broader European backdrop. Developing the concept of ‘Europeanization’ as a conceptual prism, the study tracks the development of bilateral relations from the second world war through to 2001. It takes into account the role played by dissident movements, West Germany’s Ostpolitik and Poland’s post-1989 ‘return to Europe’ in shaping the substance of relations between Bonn/Berlin and Warsaw. The book argues that this troubled relationship has moved from a state of severe ‘structural conflict’ to a new phase of co-operation manifest in Poland’s membership of NATO and the EU.
Postindustrial Germany: Services, technological transformation and knowledge in unified Germany
Claire Annesley, University of Manchester (2004)
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This book examines the state of theGerman model of capitalism today. It is the first book to offer an integrated analysis of the political economy of unified Germany. Challenging the traditional view that Germany is lagging behind other capitalist states in the transition to a postindustrial economy, it looks in detail at the expansion of the service sector, the transformation of the industrial sector and the development of the knowledge economy in unified Germany.
Annesley finds that Germany is indeed becoming postindustrial, but that it is not developing in any single direction. She suggests that some regions perform well in services or the production of knowledge, while others have successfully transformed industrial production. This variation, it is argued, is the consequence of unification as well as older economic traditions which pre-date the industrial revolution.
The German Electoral System
Peter James, Northumbria University (2003)
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This precise and well-structured book focuses on the mechanics (its evolution and the debates it generates) of the German electoral system. Briefly outlining the past German electoral systems and the influence they exerted on the political systems of the time, it differs from existing literature by being the first volume in the English language which gives in-depth treatment to local and regional electoral systems in Germany, as well as the federal system. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of German electoral systems and their role and contribution within the party and political systems, it is particularly relevant at a time when other European countries' electoral systems are under review.
Students and academics concerned with German politics in particular and German or European studies more generally, will find this book valuable.
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