Suchergebnisse

This book provides a comprehensive overview over the models of contemporary democracy, its social, cultural, economic and political prerequisites, empirically existing varieties, and the two major challenges - globalization and mediatization - confronting established democracies today. As the boundaries of the national political communities increasingly dissolve, democracy as we know it is put into question. Similarly, as the role of the media in politics increases, the way established democracies function is being transformed. The book covers the transformation of established democracies, dem

What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved

The contributors to this volume analyze the communication processes in Swiss direct democratic campaigns and their effect on the information processing and opinion formation of the citizen public. The book adopts an integrated approach to the study of political communication that combines a demand side with a supply side vision of democracy. The key question it tries to answer is whether, in direct democratic campaigns, the political elites are capable of manipulating the voters in such a way as to impose their policy goals without taking the voters' preferences into account. Based on a detailed analysis of the politicians' strategies, media coverage, and the opinion formation of the public, the authors arrive at the optimistic conclusion that direct democratic campaigns are rather more enlightening than manipulating. The voters learn considerably in the course of the campaigns and based on their enhanced knowledge the overwhelming majority make choices consistent with their preferences.

Over the past three decades the effects of globalisation and denationalisation have created a division between 'winners' and 'losers' in Western Europe. This study examines the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK) using opinion surveys