Youth in Regime Crisis
Youth in Regime Crisis

Author: Félix Krawatzek

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0192561553

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How do political regimes respond to the challenges emanating from youth mobilization? This book seeks to understand regime resilience and breakdown by analysing the public meaning of youth, as well as the physical mobilization of young people. Mobilization carried by young people is a key component in understanding the stabilisation of the authoritarian regime structures in contemporary Russia, but the Russian experience makes only sense if placed in its broader historical context.Three comparative cases, the breakdown of the authoritarian Soviet Union, the breakdown of the democratic Weimar Republic, and the crisis of the democratic regime in France around 1968 highlight how regimes which lacked popular support have compensated for their insufficient legitimacy by trying to mobilize youth symbolically and politically. This book illustrates the symbolic significance of youth and its role in regime crisis by analysing a new data set of newspaper articles with a new method of discourse analysis. The combination of qualitative interpretation and quantitative network analysis enables a deeper and more systematic understanding of discursive structures about youth. Through this methodological innovation the book contributes to the way we define the categories of youth, generation, and crisis. It makes the case that our conceptualisation should reflect the way terms are being used - usages that can be captured in a systematic way with new methods of discourse analysis. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

State of Crisis
State of Crisis

Author: Zygmunt Bauman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-07-17

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 0745685293

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Today we hear much talk of crisis and comparisons are often made with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but there is a crucial difference that sets our current malaise apart from the 1930s: today we no longer trust in the capacity of the state to resolve the crisis and to chart a new way forward. In our increasingly globalized world, states have been stripped of much of their power to shape the course of events. Many of our problems are globally produced but the volume of power at the disposal of individual nation-states is simply not sufficient to cope with the problems they face. This divorce between power and politics produces a new kind of paralysis. It undermines the political agency that is needed to tackle the crisis and it saps citizens’ belief that governments can deliver on their promises. The impotence of governments goes hand in hand with the growing cynicism and distrust of citizens. Hence the current crisis is at once a crisis of agency, a crisis of representative democracy and a crisis of the sovereignty of the state. In this book the world-renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and fellow traveller Carlo Bordoni explore the social and political dimensions of the current crisis. While this crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the turmoil following the financial crisis of 2007-8, Bauman and Bordoni argue that the crisis facing Western societies is rooted in a much more profound series of transformations that stretch back further in time and are producing long-lasting effects. This highly original analysis of our current predicament by two of the world’s leading social thinkers will be of interest to a wide readership.

The Georgian Regime Crisis of 2003-2004
The Georgian Regime Crisis of 2003-2004

Author: Rebecca S Katz

Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press

Published: 2006-04-03

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 3838254139

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The Republic of Georgia remains characterized by an unstable socio-political economy and by gross levels of economic inequality, corruption, ineffective policing, a weak judiciary, and a limited free and independent press. Currently, sixty-five percent of the population continue to live under the poverty level thus facilitating participation in crime and corruption to survive economically. Following initial independence from the Soviet Union separatist and nationalistic movements, resulting in the secession of several regions and the creation of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Georgians. Georgia’s post-soviet history included violent political purges, including inter-political party violence, bomb attacks, and murders. Official corruption remains problematic and includes individuals at all levels of government. This exploratory narrative analysis of media coverage of crime, corruption, and politics in post-Soviet Georgia illuminates the early development of a free press while reflecting Georgian attitudes about politics and corruption. The analysis includes preelection newspaper coverage of the November 2003 parliamentary poll beginning in late August 2003, the Rose Revolution in November 2003, resulting in the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze, and the socio-economic and socio-political events preceding and following the election of new President Mikhail Saakashvili from January 2004 through the end of March 2004.

State Crisis in Fragile Democracies
State Crisis in Fragile Democracies

Author: Samuel Handlin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-07-26

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1108415423

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This book develops a new political-institutional explanation of South America's 'two lefts' and the divergent fates of the region's democratic regimes.

The Mediterranean Welfare Regime and the Economic Crisis
The Mediterranean Welfare Regime and the Economic Crisis

Author: Francisco Javier Moreno-Fuentes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-08

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1317661230

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This book examines the recent evolution of the Mediterranean Welfare regime, and how the economic crisis may be contributing to redefine its basic traits. Moving from the macro comparative analysis of long-term socio-demographic trends to the study of specific welfare programs, the chapters included in this book employ a variety of methods and approaches to review the specificities of the Mediterranean Welfare model. All chapters aim to analyze the role that the recent transformations experienced by Southern European societies (ageing, increasing women labour market participation, decreasing expectations for care within the family, immigration) have had over this model. The basic characteristics of this regime type are supposed to be strongly grounded in the values shared by these societies (familistic tendencies, clientelism, lack of generalized trust), but the modernization which these countries experienced in recent years have contributed, with a different speed and to a different degree, to a significant transformation in their axiological foundations. The impact of the current fiscal and economic crisis on the Mediterranean Welfare regimes may be contributing to the growing de-legitimatisation of political systems of these countries, something particularly important in a region that established democratic regimes only (relatively) recently. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Societies.

Youth and Memory in Europe
Youth and Memory in Europe

Author: Félix Krawatzek

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-06-06

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 3110733501

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This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country’s history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves.

Global Health and International Relations
Global Health and International Relations

Author: Colin McInnes

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0745663079

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The long separation of health and International Relations, as distinct academic fields and policy arenas, has now dramatically changed. Health, concerned with the body, mind and spirit, has traditionally focused on disease and infirmity, whilst International Relations has been dominated by concerns of war, peace and security. Since the 1990s, however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped. How can we explain this shift and what are the implications for the future development of both fields? Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee examine four key intersections between health and International Relations today - foreign policy and health diplomacy, health and the global political economy, global health governance and global health security. The explosion of interest in these subjects has, in large part, been due to "real world" concerns - disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, counterfeit drugs and other risks to human health amid the spread of globalisation. Yet the authors contend that it is also important to understand how global health has been socially constructed, shaped in theory and practice by particular interests and normative frameworks. This groundbreaking book encourages readers to step back from problem-solving to ask how global health is being problematized in the first place, why certain agendas and issue areas are prioritised, and what determines the potential solutions put forth to address them? The palpable struggle to better understand the health risks facing a globalized world, and to strengthen collective action to deal with them effectively, begins - they argue - with a more reflexive and critical approach to this rapidly emerging subject.

Young People's Development and the Great Recession
Young People's Development and the Great Recession

Author: Ingrid Schoon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-11-02

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 1316802345

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The 2007–8 financial crisis and subsequent 'Great Recession' particularly affected young people trying to make their way from education into the labour market at a time of economic uncertainty and upheaval. This is the first volume to examine the impact of the Great Recession on the developmental stage of young adulthood, a critical phase of the life course that has great significance in the foundations of adult identity. Using evidence from longitudinal data sets spanning three major OECD countries, these essays examine the recession's effects on education and employment outcomes, and consider the wider psycho-social consequences, including living arrangements, family relations, political engagement, and health and well-being. While the recession intensified the impact of pre-existing trends towards a prolonged dependence on parents and, for many, the precaritization of life chances, the findings also point to manifestations of resilience, where young people countered adversity by forging positive expectations of the future.

Crisis and Inequality
Crisis and Inequality

Author: Mattias Vermeiren

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-02-11

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1509537708

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Spiralling inequality since the 1970s and the global financial crisis of 2008 have been the two most important challenges to democratic capitalism since the Great Depression. To understand the political economy of contemporary Europe and America we must, therefore, put inequality and crisis at the heart of the picture. In this innovative new textbook Mattias Vermeiren does just this, demonstrating that both the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis resulted from a mutually reinforcing but ultimately unsustainable relationship between countries with debt-led and export-led growth models, models fundamentally shaped by soaring income and wealth inequality. He traces the emergence of these two growth models by giving a comprehensive overview, deeply informed by the comparative and international political economy literature, of recent developments in the four key domains that have shaped the dynamics of crisis and inequality: macroeconomic policy, social policy, corporate governance and financial policy. He goes on to assess the prospects for the emergence of a more egalitarian and sustainable form of democratic capitalism. This fresh and insightful overview of contemporary Western capitalism will be essential reading for all students and scholars of international and comparative political economy.

Children of the Crisis
Children of the Crisis

Author: Annika Lems

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1000460789

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Every year, thousands of young people on the run from war and persecution, or escaping poverty and chronic instability, make their way to Europe without their parents. Embarking on long and often dangerous journeys, they have either become separated from their families on the way or set out on their own. In recent years, the number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Europe has risen drastically. It has led to a major shift in perception in European countries, initiating a wealth of policies and infrastructures targeted specifically at unaccompanied child refugees. This book investigates the emergence of the unaccompanied child refugee as a ‘crisis figure’. It shows how the sense of exceptionality attached to this figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth. By bringing together ethnographically driven research on unaccompanied minors in some of the core arrival and transit countries in or into Europe, it shows the divergent ways ideas on childhood, deservingness and vulnerability are interpreted, lived, and grappled with on the ground. By laying the focus on young people’s own experiences and perspectives, it establishes a deeper understanding of the ways unaccompanied asylum seekers live and make sense of shifting social terrains. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.