The Handbook of Legislative Research, a comprehensive summary of the results of research on nineteenth and twentieth-century legislatures, is itself a landmark in the evolution of legislative studies. Gathered here are surveys by leading scholars in the field, each providing inventory of an important subfield, an extensive bibliography, and a systematic assessment of what has been accomplished and what directions future research must take.

The complications of using similar concepts in different situations are well known to everyone in comparative politics. This volume faces the problems of comparability and equivalence head on and indicates practical ways they can be tackled. Each contribution focuses on a theoretically relevant theme, such as tolerance, political values, religious orientation, gender roles, voluntary associations, party organisations, party positions, democratic regimes, and the mass media. Chapters cover different approaches, methods, data and countries, making use of widely available empirical research to illustrate the gains of finding equivalent measures in realistic research settings. Many of the strategies show how the complicated search for comparability and equivalence uncovers substantial additional information in comparative politics. Dealing with these problems can enhance the quality and reliability of any research. This edition includes a new introduction from Jan W van Deth, examining developments in the field over the last twenty years.

This book tackles the issues involved and explores strategies to deal with many of the problems of establishing equivalence. Each contribution focuses on a theoretically relevant theme, such as: tolerance; political values; religious orientations; gender roles; voluntary associations; party organizations and party positions; democratic regimes, and the mass media. Each chapter covers different topics, methods, data and countries, making use of research to show the problems of finding similar or identical indicators in realistic research settings.

Confronted with the alienation of political theory from the practice of politics, prominent theorists respond in this book to the growing question: What should political theory be now? New and original contributions by such thinkers as Charles Anderson, John Gunnell, Terence Ball, Paul Kress, Ira Strauber, and William Connolly analyze the current malaise in the field and offer remedies for it. Each contribution is at once an argument about what is to be done in political theory and an exemplar of how to do it. Spurred by the Shambaugh Conference on Political Theory, this cross-disciplinary effort addresses two major issues: What is the proper stance for theorizing about politics? What are the priority projects for current political theory? The contributions encompass many of the major themes concerning political theorists today, including criticism as a project for current political theory, dangers in the latter-day disengagement of political theory from politics, theorists' perplexity within and about history, issues of reason, and the relationships among science, theory, and politics. The viewpoints presented are diverse, yet the contributors to this volume are typical of political theorists generally. Almost all share inklings of actual or incipient disasters reaching from politics into theory and vice versa.

The SAGE Handbook of Comparative Politics presents in one volume an authoritative overview of the theoretical, methodological, and substantive elements of comparative political science. The 28 specially commissioned chapters, written by renowned comparative scholars, guide the reader through the central issues and debates, presenting a state-of-the-art guide to the past, present, and possible futures of the field.

Comparative Judicial Systems: Challenging Frontiers in Conceptual and Empirical Analysis is a comprehensive and cohesive collection of investigative essays written by significant contributors in the field of comparative judicial institutions and politics. These essays seek to explain the judicial systems of different nations and analyze their implications. The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the integration of courts into the study of politics and conceptual frameworks in comparative cross-national legal and judicial research. Part II covers analyses of the judicial systems of a certain nation, while Part III compares and analyzes judicial systems of different nations as well as their judicial background in relation to their subculture. The text is recommended for lawyers as well as those in the field of political science and in the judicial branch, especially those who are looking to countries as examples for the improvement of their local systems.