Reconfiguring European States in Crisis offers a ground-breaking analysis by some of Europe's leading political scientists, examining how the European national state and the European Union state have dealt with two sorts of changes in the last two decades. Firstly, the volume analyses the growth of performance measurement in government, the rise of new sorts of policy delivery agencies, the devolution of power to regions and cities, and the spread of neoliberal ideas in economic policy. The volume demonstrates how the rise of non-state controlled organizations and norms combine with Europeanization to reconfigure European states. Secondly, the volume focuses on how the current crises in fiscal policy, Brexit, security and terrorism, and migration through a borderless European Union have had dramatic effects on European states and will continue to do so.

This work offers a ground-breaking analysis by some of Europe's leading political scientists, examining how the European national state and the European Union state have dealt with two sorts of changes in the last two decades.

The European Union beyond the Polycrisis? explores the political dynamics of multiple crises faced by the EU, both at European level and within the member states. In so doing, it provides a state-of-the-art overview of current research on the relationship between politicization and European integration. The book proposes that the EU’s multi-dimensional crisis can be seen as a multi-level ‘politics trap’, from which the Union is struggling to escape. The individual contributions analyze the mechanisms of this trap, its relationship to the multiple crises currently faced by the EU, and the strategies pursued by a plurality of actors (the Commission, the European Parliament, national governments) to cope with its constraints. Overall, the book suggests that comprehensive, ‘grand’ bargains are for the moment out of reach, although national and supranational actors can find ways of ‘relaxing’ the politics trap and in so doing perhaps lay the foundations for more ambitious future solutions. This book, dedicated to the exploration of the political dynamics of multiple, simultaneous crises, offers an empirical and theoretical assessment of the existing political constraints on European integration. Analysing domestic and European political reactions to the EU’s polycrisis and assessing how EU institutions, national governments and broader publics have responded to a new era of politicization, The European Union beyond the Polycrisis? will be of great interest to scholars of European politics and the EU, as well as professionals working in EU institutions, national administrations and European advocacy groups. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Against the backdrop of combating the financial and economic crisis in the European Union for the past decade, this volume strives to explore the manifold impacts the prevailing crisis management has on the further alignment of European Integration. The efforts targeted at overcoming the financial and economic crisis evoked far-reaching consequences on the societal, economic, and political level within European member states, which in turn challenge the institutional alignment, democratic legitimacy and economic coherence of the European Union. Taking into account current developments in the EU, the contributions presented in this volume focus on the ‘fault lines’ in the integration process, i.e. questions of policy coherence, democratic accountability, financialization, militarization, migration, gendered social and economic asymmetries as well as the rise of populist and extreme right-wing parties. The volume focuses on how these different developments come together by relating aspects of transdisciplinary research to uncover the fault lines in the European integration project in the subsequent chapters. ContentEconomic and Democratic Governance • Right Wing Populism and Right Extreme Parties • Financialization and Militarization • Social Exclusion, Welfare and Migration Policies EditorsProf. (FH) Dr. Stefanie Wöhl, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna. Prof. (FH) Dr. Elisabeth Springler, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna. Mag. Martin Pachel, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna. Dr. Bernhard Zeilinger, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna.

This is a book about how 21st-century capitalism really works. Modern economics strips away social, historical, and political context from analysis of 'the economic', but the economy is far too important to leave exclusively to the economists. Comparative Political Economy (CPE) is a much broader, richer intellectual undertaking which 're-embeds' the analysis of the economic within the social and political realm. This is at the heart of how to think like a political economist. This text maps the terrain and evolution of CPE, providing the analytical tools to explore the many variants of capitalism, unearthing their roots in competing visions of the desirable distribution of the fruits of growth. Connecting CPE systematically to the subfield of International Political Economy (IPE), the book explains how these visions generate ongoing political struggles over how to regulate and manage capitalism. This is the perfect introduction to the field for all students of CPE and IPE. New to this Edition: - Fully revised and updated throughout to take into account the latest empirical and theoretical developments in this fast-moving field - A brand New chapter on the political economy of inequality, populism, Trump & Brexit - New expanded 'how to use this book' aimed at student readers - More coverage of the types of economies covered, to move from an exclusively Western focus to cover developing and emerging global economies

This book primarily explores the welfare-policy responses to the Great Recession, reform trajectories that swept across Europe over the last decade, with a final chapter that focuses on Covid-19 welfare management. The 2008 crash marked a critical stress test for European welfare states with dramatic repercussions, including a massive surge in unemployment, a widening in wage and income disparities, and rising poverty. Hikes in fiscal deficits and public debt, required to pre-empt an economic meltdown, forced policymakers to make painful cuts in welfare services to shore up public finances, thereby jeopardizing welfare support for vulnerable groups. The overall scope of welfare-policy responses is heterogeneous, disparate, and uneven. In some cases, the response to the Great Recession was accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in others unpopular crisis-management measures received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions, and employer organizations. Alongside serious retrenchments, there have been assertive attempts to rebuild social programmes and institutions, to accommodate policy repertoires-not merely domestically but also at the EU level-to the new realities of the knowledge economy and an ageing society. Overall, the long 2010s showed that the future of work and welfare is in our hands: it is perfectly possible to shape this future in such a way as to provide inclusive social security, achieve high employment, advance and maintain human capabilities across the life-course, and fight poverty and inequality.

A unique overview of Europeanization which combines a thematic and country-by-country approach to understanding the relationship between member states and the EU.