Historical Sociology and Eastern European Development

Historical Sociology and Eastern European Development
Author: Arne Kommisrud
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2009-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0739136348

An innovator in theoretical approaches in the social sciences, Stein Rokkan developed general models, developmental models, and conceptual maps that specified the main variables and important relationships in European political history. In Historical Sociology, Arne Kommisrud tests these general hypotheses against specific historical and regional contexts. He uses the case of Eastern Europe after the downfall of the Berlin Wall to extend the geography of the model's range, and introduces possibilities for theoretical modification through an analysis of sequential interactions. Covering a period from the Middle Ages through the 1990s, and addressing phenomena overlooked by Rokkan such as statebuilding and nationalism, this book demonstrates that Rokkan's models continue to be relevant to modern political science and sociology. Kommisrud's study is a valuable contribution to Rokkanian approaches and the understanding of Eastern European development within the historical and geographic context of Europe as a whole.

Explaining Economic Backwardness

Explaining Economic Backwardness
Author: Anna Sosnowska
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789633862919

This monograph is about an exciting episode in the intellectual history of Europe: the vigorous debate among leading Polish historians on the sources of the economic development and non-development, including the origins of economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years of this debate between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. Anna Sosnowska provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the notions of post-1945 Polish historians about Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate influenced Western historical sociology, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and the image of Eastern Europe in Western, Marxist-inspired social science. Although created under the adverse conditions of state socialism and censorship, this body of scholarship had an important repercussion in international social science of the post-war period, contributing an emphasis on international comparisons, as well as a stress on social theory and explanations. Sosnowska's analysis also helps to understand current differences that lead to conflicts between Europe's richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries. The historians she studies also investigated analogies between paths in Eastern Europe and regions of West Africa, Latin America and East Asia.

Explaining Economic Backwardness

Explaining Economic Backwardness
Author: Anna Sosnowska
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2019-06-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9637326316

This monograph is about an exciting episode in the intellectual history of Europe: the vigorous debate among leading Polish historians on the sources of the economic development and non-development, including the origins of economic divisions within Europe. The work covers nearly fifty years of this debate between the publication of two pivotal works in 1947 and 1994. Anna Sosnowska provides an insightful interpretation of how local and generational experience shaped the notions of post-1945 Polish historians about Eastern European backwardness, and how their debate influenced Western historical sociology, social theories of development and dependency in peripheral areas, and the image of Eastern Europe in Western, Marxist-inspired social science. Although created under the adverse conditions of state socialism and censorship, this body of scholarship had an important repercussion in international social science of the post-war period, contributing an emphasis on international comparisons, as well as a stress on social theory and explanations. Sosnowska's analysis also helps to understand current differences that lead to conflicts between Europe’s richest and economically most developed core and its southern and eastern peripheries. The historians she studies also investigated analogies between paths in Eastern Europe and regions of West Africa, Latin America and East Asia.

Sociology of Europeanization

Sociology of Europeanization
Author: Sebastian M. Büttner
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2022-02-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3110673835

The numerous and far-reaching socio-political transformations that have taken place on the European continent since the mid-20th century have stipulated the emergence of new approaches and research fields in the social sciences. One of these is the development of a Sociology of Europeanization. This textbook provides an overview of its major topics, concepts, and research approaches. Each of the 14 chapters of this textbook introduces one particular topic of the Sociology of Europeanization – ranging from major conceptual considerations to an exploration of the numerous spatial, cultural, economic, political, judicial, and socio-structural implications of Europeanization. Hence, this book is very suitable as a fundamental introductory reading and for teaching in European studies and related study programs. It is also recommended to everyone who is interested in more recent European history and current sociological studies of transnationalization. Events around the book Link to a De Gruyter Online Event in which renowned scholars and experts discuss what is necessary for the teaching of European Studies today and what future directions European Studies should take in light of current challenges and crises. The event was moderated by Sebastian Büttner and Susann Worschech, two co-editors of this textbook: https://youtu.be/Deh13FJ1ctE During the annual colloqium of the European General Studies Programme of the College of Europe (Bruges), Sebastian Büttner discussed and presented his co-edited book: https://youtu.be/GLheIHQOEv4

Contemporary European Politics

Contemporary European Politics
Author: José M. Magone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 667
Release: 2019-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351717146

Revised throughout, the second edition of this comprehensive and highly respected textbook continues to provide a thorough introduction to European and European Union politics. Pairing a genuinely comparative approach with in-depth analysis of the national, supranational, local and regional political systems of large and small countries across Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, this accessible book covers history, theory, institutions, parties and party systems, and interest groups, among others. Key topics and features of this book: Examines the European Union multilevel governance system and uses a regional cluster approach to highlight differences across Europe. Contextualises European politics in a theoretical framework explaining the major political, social and economic transformations taking place in the information age. A new chapter on the comparative political systems and cultures of wider Europe, particularly Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and Turkey. Engages with the latest challenges and crises facing Europe, including new streamlined chapters on parties, elections, politics and policy-making of the European Union. Extended coverage of hot topics such as finance and the Eurocrisis, immigration, populism and xenophobia. Uses a wide range of pedagogical features including further readings and revision questions. Includes a fully updated companion website containing rich reference data, chapter summaries and weblinks. Richly illustrated throughout, this work is an indispensable resource for all students and scholars of European politics.

New Directions in Uneven and Combined Development

New Directions in Uneven and Combined Development
Author: Justin Rosenberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2021-11-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000507823

This book introduces Uneven and Combined Development as an approach in international studies and showcases some of the latest and most innovative research in this field. The theory of Uneven and Combined Development originated in the writings of Leon Trotsky. However, in recent years it has become the subject of flourishing literature in the discipline of International Relations, due to its unique ability to reintegrate social and international theory. The first and second generations of this literature were focused upon retrieving the idea, expanding it into a social theory of ‘the international’, and applying it to numerous empirical cases – such as the rise of political Islam, the causes of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, and even the origins of capitalism as a world system. In the present volume, a third generation has arrived which further extends the reach of UCD, connecting it in new and exciting ways to such subjects as ecology, macro-economic policy, culture, Science and Technology Studies, Comparative Literature and even science-fiction. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, the Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

The Migration Turn and Eastern Europe

The Migration Turn and Eastern Europe
Author: Attila Melegh
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2023-02-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3031142942

Using Marxist and Polanyian frameworks, this book examines the structural and discursive transformation that can explain the polarization of migration debates and within the rise of nationalist anti-migrant discourses in Europe with a special attention to Eastern Europe and Hungary. It goes beyond the mainstream explanations of these phenomena that uses nationalist propaganda as causal factors and instead argues that the rise of anti-immigration currents cannot be understood without a dialectical and historical analysis of the material and discursive transformations, most importantly marketization and related reification. Drawing from thinkers such as Lukács, Polanyi, and Gramsci as well as diverse empirical sources including demographic studies, historical modelling, and discourse analyses, Migration Turn and Eastern Europe is a unique and rigorous study of one of the most pressing and puzzling political and sociological questions of our time.

The Europeanization of Politics

The Europeanization of Politics
Author: Daniele Caramani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2015-09-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316425436

In a broadly comparative, historical and quantitative analysis, this study reveals the unity of European electorates and party systems. Investigating thirty countries in Western and Central-Eastern Europe over 150 years of electoral history, the author shows the existence of common alignments and parallel waves of electoral change across the continent. Europeanization appears through an array of indicators including cross-country deviation measures, uniform swings of votes, the correspondence between national arenas and European Parliament, as well as in the ideological convergence among parties of the same families. Based on a painstaking analysis of a large wealth of data, the study identifies the supra-national, domestic and diffusion factors at the origin of Europeanization. Building on previous work on the nationalization of politics, this new study makes the case for Europeanization in historical and electoral perspective, and points to the role of left-right in structuring the European party system along ideological rather than territorial lines. In the classical tradition of electoral and party literature, this book sheds a new light on Europe's democracy.

The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe

The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe
Author: Arnd Bauerkämper
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 570
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9633860482

This book explores the interrelated campaigns of agricultural collectivization in the USSR and in the communist dictatorships established in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. Despite the profound, long-term societal impact of collectivization, the subject has remained relatively underresearched. The volume combines detailed studies of collectivization in individual Eastern European states with issueoriented comparative perspectives at regional level. Based on novel primarysources, it proposes a reappraisal of the theoretical underpinnings and research agenda of studies on collectivization in Eastern Europe.The contributions provide up-to-date overviews of recent research in the field and promote new approaches to the topic, combining historical comparisons with studies of transnational transfers and entanglements.

Maestri of Political Science

Maestri of Political Science
Author: Donatella Campus
Publisher: ECPR Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1910259020

This book continues the editors' work (started in the volume “Masters of Political Science”) of highlighting and re-evaluating the contributions of the most important political scientists who have gone before. Its basis is the belief that the future development and sophistication of the discipline will benefit from a critical understanding of the works of early political “giants” whose contributions are presented and analysed: Gabriel A. Almond, Raymond Aron, Philip Converse, Maurice Duverger, Stanley Hoffmann, Paul Lazarsfeld, Arend Lijphart, Elinor Ostrom, William H. Riker, Stein Rokkan and Susan Strange. The editors review and consider the contributions of these maestri to the study of contemporary democracy, political culture, electoral systems, political communication, the transformation of capitalism and state formation in Europe. Maestri of Political Science is aimed not only at a new generation of political scientists but is a valuable opportunity for established scholars to see new light through old windows.