Politics in Europe - Brossura

“In substantive terms, the book offers thorough and comprehensive coverage of the major issues. It covers basic institutional patterns particularly well and places them usefully in a broader context, both in terms of a country’s historical development and in terms of its political economy and predominant policy approaches. The book is clearly written and quite accessible to students, pitched at the right level in terms of theoretical sophistication and difficulty.”

“I teach a large first year comparative politics module which focuses on European states. This book is perfect for my module. It provides comparative analysis of political systems of key European states looking at factors which affect balances of power. Each chapter includes in-depth analysis of key cleavages, political parties, electoral systems, policy-making processes, multilevel governance, civil service, executive agencies, and interest group participation in each state written by leading experts in the field. It assesses how changing patterns of governance are affecting traditional models of governance. The book is up-to-date, gives sound theoretical overviews in introductory chapters, is empirically rich and easily accessible for undergraduates.”

M. Donald Hancock is professor emeritus of political science at Vanderbilt University. He has previously taught at Columbia University, the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, and the universities of Bielefeld and Mannheim in Germany. Hancock is the founding director of two centers for European Studies―the first at UT Austin and the second, founded in 1981, at Vanderbilt. The latter is now designated the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies (which Hancock has also served as associate director for outreach activities). He is the coauthor (with Henry Krisch) of Politics in Germany (2009), and co-editor and coauthor of Transitions to Capitalism and Democracy in Russia and Central Europe (2000), German Unification: Process and Outcomes (1994), and Managing Modern Capitalism: Industrial Renewal and Workplace Democracy in the United States and Western Europe (1991). Hancock has served as co-chair of the Council for European Studies and as president of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies and the Conference Group on German Politics. He is currently working on a collaborative study of economic, societal, and military security in the Baltic region.