International Studies - Books by Region

This volume examines the political engagement of religious associations in the post-socialist countries of Central and Southeastern Europe, with a focus on revelations about the collaboration of clergy with the communist-era secret police, intolerance, and controversies about the inclusion of religious instruction in the schools.

This open access book provides an updated and fully revised 4th edition of this authoritative analysis of Swiss democracy. It particularly explains the institutions of federalism and consensus government through political power sharing. In this new edition, the authors also address several important changes and challenges that have affected Swiss democracy, including the country's relationship with the EU, fiscal equalisation, direct democracy and the legitimacy of national referendums, territorial conflict, as well as the polarisation of party politics. 

Thisbook analyses Switzerland's European policies using the concept ofdifferentiated European integration, providing a new and original perspectiveon the country. This analytical approach focuses on the similarities betweenSwitzerland's EU policies and the integration of EU member states. The latterhave often been the focus of research as Switzerland is the last WesternEuropean country not to have become a member of the European Union (EU) or theEuropean Economic Area (EEA). The book claims that Switzerland's position onthe European integration map is different in terms of degree from many EUmember states, but not different in kind. The cornerstone of the book is newempirical data quantitatively measuring Switzerland's differentiatedintegration during the period 1990 - 2010. The data rely on the sectoralagreements Switzerland concluded with the EU and the voluntary incorporation ofEU law into domestic legislation. The book shows, among other findings, thatover time Swiss European policies have begun to resemble integration policiesand that the more they did so, the more dynamically they evolved.

This book provides a systematic overview of the prevalence, causes, and stability of left-wing and right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany between 1994 and 2017. It shows that there are many similarities between left-wing and right-wing extremists, both in terms of their ideologies and their individual experiences. Overall, these causes can be traced back to three factors: unmet individual needs (e.g., deprivation or disenchantment with politics), access to ideological narratives that promise simplified solutions to individual problems, and the larger social circumstances of life (e.g., transformation processes, unemployment, or immigration). Although extremist attitudes are relatively rare, they are also shown to be highly stable: once acquired, individuals are difficult to bring back onto the democratic path. This book is the first to systematically compare left-wing and right-wing extremist attitudes, to provide an intensive methodological contribution to the measurability of such attitudes, and to relate their causes and stability.

This book aims to present a coherent picture of Germany's European policy during Merkel's chancellorship. At the same time, it traces the development of the EU in the period 2005-2021. Accordingly, the European crises and the internal and external threats to the integration community are addressed, as well as the jointly developed solutions. Thus, on the one hand, the book shows what Germany was willing to do for Europe; on the other, it reveals how the EU was able to develop further as the most important point of reference for German politics and power.

Europe is in a permanent state of crisis: nationalisms, brexit and seemingly insurmountable differences on issues of migration, reforming the euro zone and improving its global competitiveness are threatening the cohesion of the Union. At the same time, external pressure from Russia and China, developments on the southern periphery, and not least in the United States, is growing. Trump's election not only disintegrates Germany's foreign policy coordinate system, but also turns the liberal international order upside down. Against this background, Stefan Fröhlich argues for a reassessment of Germany's role in Europe and the world in this political essay: Germany's foreign policy is better than its reputation. In recent years, the country has long since broken with numerous taboos and assumed leadership in Europe. This is one of the reasons why the accusations of those who continue to lament German complacency but at the same time evade global leadership and responsibility themselves sound downright cynical.

Hungary was once a frontrunner of democratization. However, since Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010, the country has been the subject of critical media coverage and concerns due to illiberal policies and anti-EU rhetoric. The book helps to analyze and evaluate the developments by providing relevant case knowledge. It provides sound insights into Hungary's system of government, society, parties and media, as well as selected policy areas. It focuses on how different policy areas have been influenced by the EU, traces important lines of development over the past decades, and compares the findings with other states of the region. The authors' professional expertise and broad knowledge of the political systems of Hungary and Europe provide a well-founded analysis of the developments in the region.

The first in-depth ethnographic monograph on the New Right in Central and Eastern Europe, The Revolt of the Provinces explores the making of right-wing hegemony in Hungary over the last decade. It explains the spread of racist sensibilities in depressed rural areas, shows how activists, intellectuals and politicians took advantage of popular racism to empower right-wing agendas and examines the new ruling party's success in stabilizing an 'illiberal regime'. To illuminate these important dynamics, the author proposes an innovative multi-scalar and relational framework, focusing on interaction between social antagonisms emerging on the local level and struggles waged within the political public sphere.

This book studies how the pursuit of becoming an established 'insider' in international community shapes a state's foreign policy. It looks at Poland's response to three international crises that called for joint action of the EU and its members: the Iraq war of 2003, the Russo-Georgian war of 2008, and the Ukraine crisis beginning in 2013. The book develops the concept of strategic culture as a collection of historically informed narratives that guide a state's pursuit of ontological security, a basic sense of certainty about the state's role and place in the international environment. Building on this concept the author argues that Poland's behavior reflects the awareness of its stigma as a 'late arrival' in the EU and more generally in the'West' as an identity community. The study thus provides insight into how stigmatization and struggle for recognition shape international dynamics.

This book explores attitudes towards migrants and refugees from North Africa and the Middle East during the so-called migration crisis in 2015-2016 in Poland. Beginning with an examination of Polish government policy and the discursive construction of refugees in the media, politics and popular culture, it argues that they identified refugees with Muslims, who were deemed to pose a threat to the Polish nation. This analysis establishes the Islamophobic public discourse which is shown to be variously reproduced, negotiated and contested in the nuanced study of Polish attitudes which follows. Drawing on original qualitative research and constructivist theory, the book examines differing stances towards refugees in the context of the lay understanding of the Polish nation and its boundaries. In doing so it demonstrates the influence of discourses that draw on an exclusionary concept of national identity and the potential for them to be mobilised against immigrants. This timely, theory-based case study will provide a valuable resource for students and scholars of Central and Eastern European politics, nationalism, race, migration and refugee studies.