This Handbook will comprise of 29 original pieces from key contributors to the field of European social policy. It is intended to capture the ‘state of the art’ in European social policy and to generate and contribute to debates on the the future of European social policy in the 21st Century. It will be a comprehensive and authoritative resource for research and teaching covering themes and policy areas including social exclusion, pensions, education, children and family, as well as mobility and migration, multiculturalism, and climate change.
The sixteenth edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play has a triple ambition. First, it provides easily accessible information to a wide audience about recent developments in both EU and domestic social policymaking. Second, the volume provides a more analytical reading, embedding the key developments of the year 2014 in the most recent academic discourses. Third, the forward-looking perspective of the book aims to provide stakeholders and policymakers with specific tools that allow them to discern new opportunities to influence policymaking. In this 2015 edition of Social policy in the European Union: state of play, the authors tackle the topics of the state of EU politics after the parliamentary elections, the socialisation of the European Semester, methods of political protest, the Juncker investment plan, the EU’s contradictory education investment, the EU’s contested influence on national healthcare reforms, and the neoliberal Trojan Horse of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
This book focuses on social transformations as one of the central topics in the social sciences. The study of European social transformations is very valuable in the context of universal discussions within social sciences: explaining invariable, universal attributes of societies and examining changing attributes. The book consists of 20 chapters on European social transformations, written from the perspectives of distinguished scholars from such disciplines as economics, political science, educational science, geography, media and communication studies, public management and administration, social psychology and sociology. The temporal and spatial range of the book is wide, including such global changes as time-space compression, focusing particularly on change processes in Europe during the last two decades. The book consists of four main parts, beginning with an overview of the theoretical and methodological approaches, and then focusing separately on post-communist transformations, institutional drivers of social transformations in the European Union, and European transformations in the context of global processes. The book presents current theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches that complement the scientific literature on social transformations. This book is both an invaluable resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom and will be of interest to students, academics, and policy-makers studying how this diverse region has changed over recent years.
During the last two decades the study of European foreign policy has experienced remarkable growth, presumably reflecting a more significant international role of the European Union. The Union has significantly expanded its policy portfolio and though empty symbolic politics still exists, the Union’s international relations have become more substantial and its foreign policy more focused. European foreign policy has become a dynamic policy area, being adapted to changing challenges and environments, such as the Arab Spring, new emerging economies/powers; the crisis of multilateralism and much more. The SAGE Handbook of European Foreign Policy, Two-Volume set, is a major reference work for Foreign Policy Programmes around the world. The Handbook is designed to be accessible to graduate and postgraduate students in a wide variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. Both volumes are structured to address areas of critical concern to scholars at the cutting edge of all major dimensions of foreign policy. The volumes are composed of original chapters written specifically to the following themes: · Research traditions and historical experience · Theoretical perspectives · EU actors · State actors · Societal actors · The politics of European foreign policy · Bilateral relations · Relations with multilateral institutions · Individual policies · Transnational challenges The Handbook will be an essential reference for both advanced students and scholars.
This definitive Handbook addresses the current lack of research into European policymaking and development using an interpretive perspective. Questioning areas that mainstream approaches tend to neglect, contributors target the ways in which ideas, arguments and discourses shape policies in the institutional context of the EU.
Since the Treaty of the European Union was ratified in 1993, the European Union has become an important factor in an ever-increasing number of regimes of pooled sovereignty. This Handbook seeks to present a valuable guide to this new and unique system in the twenty-first century, allowing readers to obtain a better understanding of the emerging multilevel European governance system that links national polities to Europe and the global community. Adopting a pan-European approach, this Handbook brings together the work of leading international academics to cover a wide range of topics such as: the historical and theoretical background the political systems and institutions of both the EU and its individual member nations political parties and party systems political elites civil society and social movements in European politics the political economy of Europe public administration and policy-making external policies of the EU. This is an invaluable and comprehensive resource for students, scholars, researchers and practitioners of the European Union, European politics and comparative politics.
The Routledge Handbook of European Public Policy provides an in-depth and systematic understanding of EU policies. It covers theoretical approaches on the policy process and the various stages of public policy-formulation and decision making; and discusses key questions of contemporary European governance. The handbook introduces major concepts, trends, and methodologies in a variety of comparative settings thereby providing the first systematic effort to include theoretical and substantive analyses of European public policies in a single volume. The handbook is divided into four sections: Concepts and approaches in EU policymaking; Substantive policies of the EU, including economic and social, fiscal and monetary, areas of freedom, security and justice, and external policies; Elements of the policy cycle; Themes ranging from crisis and resistance to controversies in education. This handbook will be an essential reference for students and scholars of the European Union, public policy, social policy and more broadly for European and comparative politics.
This innovative publication maps out the broad and interdisciplinary field of contemporary European social theory. It covers sociological theory, the wider theoretical traditions in the social sciences including cultural and political theory, anthropological theory, social philosophy and social thought in the broadest sense of the term. This volume surveys the classical heritage, the major national traditions and the fate of social theory in a post-national and post-disciplinary era. It also identifies what is distinctive about European social theory in terms of themes and traditions. It is divided into five parts: disciplinary traditions, national traditions, major schools, key themes and the reception of European social theory in American and Asia. Thirty-five contributors from nineteen countries across Europe, Russia, the Americas and Asian Pacific have been commissioned to utilize the most up-to-date research available to provide a critical, international analysis of their area of expertise. Overall, this is an indispensable book for students, teachers and researchers in sociology, cultural studies, politics, philosophy and human geography and will set the tone for future research in the social sciences.
Providing a state of the art overview, this comprehensive Handbook is an essential introduction to the subject of Gender and Social Policy. Bringing together original contributions and research from leading researchers it covers the theoretical perspectives of the field, the central policy terrain of gender inequalities of income, employment and care, and family policy. Examining gender and social policy at both the regional and national level, the Handbook is an excellent resource for advanced students and scholars of sociology, political science, women’s studies, policy studies as well as practitioners seeking to understand how gender shapes the contours of social policy and politics.
European integration is one of the most ambitious and socially far-reaching developments in world politics and in world economics. Against growing opposition and despite increasing social heterogeneity, the European Union continues to expand and to acquire new competences. But to what extent is the self-proclaimed "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe" a social reality? In which ways is the political European project anchored in social developments? How does social change impinge upon political integration? Societal trends in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and socially diverse Europe have never been studied systematically. Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century sets to rectify this neglect of societal developments in Europe, providing a groundwork for the sociology of European integration. The book portrays social life and social relations in the enlarged Europe, and gives a perspective on the European Union as an evolving social entity. Handbook of European Societies is a pioneering source book analyzing the current social patterns on the continent. It covers a representative selection of major topics of social concern and sociological relevance, such as Collective Action, Consumption, Identity, Power Structure, Sexuality, Stratification and Well-being. Each contribution probes key developments in a strictly comparative manner. The Handbook thus offers a detailed look into the intricacies of the national societies of Europe and into the prospect of an emerging European society. The Editors have enlisted leading researchers to synthesize existing knowledge and to make use of many different data sources in a straight-forward style. The contributions stay away from jargon, simple labeling and sweeping assertions. Instead, they provide solid and accessible information on a wide variety of social trends and processes within and across European societies
