3. Multilevel Politics in Europe

Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries ◽  
Sara B. Hobolt ◽  
Sven-Oliver Proksch ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin

Thsi chapter considers territory in European politics. The idea is that policy-making in Europe acts like a system of multilevel governance. Here, policy authority which exists at the national level, is increasingly being shared with institutions at the supranational European Union (EU) level and by regional governments at the subnational level. The chapter also looks at concepts such as pooling, delegation of policy authority, federalism, and decentralization. Although we tend to think of nation-states as the building blocks of modern politics, more and more, this chapter agues, we must consider how these so-called building blocks interact with each other and also what they themselves are made up of. This is where the term multilevel governance is relevant. This term characterizes the complex relationship of policy authority between political actors situated at different territorial levels of governance.

Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Light

Uruu patrilineages and genealogical narratives about them are important aspects of Kyrgyz social practice and reflect some tensions and contradictions in contemporary Kyrgyz self-understanding and identities. This article explores the complex relationship of patrilineal kinship to historical knowledge and lived social experience in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. The contrasting situations of men and women within patrilineages are analyzed to reveal the shifting relationships of gender, genealogy and patrilineal kinship. Local meanings and uses of genealogy and history are shown to differ from those developed at the national level as part of Kyrgyz nation-building: Narratives about local lineages and their heroes portray different sacred and social worlds than those about the hierarchical world of elite politics and the military feats of national heroes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 2741
Author(s):  
John Gibson ◽  
Geua Boe-Gibson

Nighttime lights (NTL) are a popular type of data for evaluating economic performance of regions and economic impacts of various shocks and interventions. Several validation studies use traditional statistics on economic activity like national or regional gross domestic product (GDP) as a benchmark to evaluate the usefulness of NTL data. Many of these studies rely on dated and imprecise Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) data and use aggregated units such as nation-states or the first sub-national level. However, applied researchers who draw support from validation studies to justify their use of NTL data as a proxy for economic activity increasingly focus on smaller and lower level spatial units. This study uses a 2001–19 time-series of GDP for over 3100 U.S. counties as a benchmark to examine the performance of the recently released version 2 VIIRS nighttime lights (V.2 VNL) products as proxies for local economic activity. Contrasts were made between cross-sectional predictions for GDP differences between areas and time-series predictions of GDP changes within areas. Disaggregated GDP data for various industries were used to examine the types of economic activity best proxied by NTL data. Comparisons were also made with the predictive performance of earlier NTL data products and at different levels of spatial aggregation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evangelia Petridou ◽  
Pär M. Olausson

AbstractCentral to policies relating to risk governance at the regional and local levels is the interaction between the public and private sectors also referred to as networked governance. At the same time, the role of political actors in general and policy entrepreneurs in particular, in terms of policy change, has gained considerable traction in recent policy scholarship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in governance arrangements resulting in the formation of a coordination network in regional flood risk management-the first of its kind in Sweden. Our research is guided by the following questions: first, would the policy change (the establishment of the networks)have taken place if a policy entrepreneur were not part of the policy transfer process? Second, what is the role of policy entrepreneurship in the implementation of the policy after its nationwide adoption? Third, what other factors played a role in the variation of the results in the implemented policy that is, the enforced networks? We find the role of a policy entrepreneur key in the policy transfer from the regional to the national level. In order to investigate the resultant networks, we draw from B. Guy Peters (1998) and his conceptualization of factors which affect the politics of coordination. In addition to the presence of a policy entrepreneur, we compare: (i) pluriformity of network members;(ii) member interdependence; (iii) redundancy of structures, and (iv) degree of formality (in terms of meetings). Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs contribute to the variation in the functionality of the enforced river groups, though other factors play a significant role as well.Most importantly, perhaps, we did not identify entrepreneurs in any of the river groups which were not functional.


Politics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Major

The article aims to explore the utility of Europeanisation as a concept to grasp the interactions between national and European levels. The article illustrates how the EU impacts on the national level of policy, polity and the politics of Member States and assesses how the role of nation states within the European political system has changed as a result. First, the existing definitions of Europeanisation are critically assessed, contextualised and delimited. Initially developed for communitised policy areas in the first pillar, Europeanisation is defined as an interactive, ongoing and mutually constitutive process of ‘Europeanising’ and ‘Europeanised’ countries, linking national and European levels. Defining Europeanisation as ‘domestic change’, the article then discusses mechanisms, objects and forms, as well as the criteria and conditions of change. The article subsequently seeks to clarify the validity of the Europeanisation concept in capturing the increasing interwovenness of national and European spheres in intergovernmental policy fields situated in the second pillar of the EU, that is, foreign and security policy. Inherent methodological challenges, mainly due to the deficient delimitation of Europeanisation and the intergovernmental character of this policy field are discussed as well as the particularities of its applicability in this unique policy area.


Author(s):  
Isra Shengul Chebi ◽  
Dilshat Karimova

Defined both in an individual and in a social or cultural context, identity is a historical phenomenon; a consistent, complete sense of identity develops in the historical process. Social relations created by historical conditions shape Turkish identity, just like other collective identities. Revealed as one of the oldest nations in history, Turkish identity has also been shaped by the amalgamation of the effects created by the rule of law in the collective consciousness. Despite the fact that the length of the historical process makes it difficult to clearly identify the stages of the adventure, when studying Turkish identity it is necessary to look at the Ottoman Empire, which is a prerequisite for the modern Turkish state, and the self-identification of the society that feels belonging to the above state. Indeed, it is not very wrong to associate the phenomenon of identity as a topic of discussion with the relationship of the Ottoman state with the modern nation states of the West. In this context, it would be appropriate to touch upon the perception of identity in the Ottoman Empire.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Wei ◽  
Yuanjun Zhu ◽  
Hao Li ◽  
Kebin Zhang ◽  
Baitian Wang ◽  
...  

The abandonment and cultivation of croplands in the Eurasian Steppe has become the focus of global and regional food security and agricultural policy-making. A large area of cropland in some post-Soviet countries has proven to be abandoned with the disintegration of the Soviet Union; however, it is unclear as to whether Kazakhstan also experienced a similar change as one of the main food providers for the former Soviet Union. In this study, we used the annual land cover dataset (1992–2015) from the European Space Agency, Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI) to detect spatio-temporal characteristics of rainfed and irrigated cropland changes in Kazakhstan. The Mann–Kendall test and regime shift analysis showed that rainfed and irrigated cropland at national level had a significant increasing trend with a significant rising up to 1999 and stagnation during 2000–2015, which was further confirmed with analysis at 14 regions. The greatest contributor to rainfed and irrigated croplands was steppes, followed by shrinkage of water bodies since 2005 to a great extent, rapid urbanization process resulted in losses of a part of irrigated oases. The trend surface analysis indicated that reorganized stable pattern characterized by rainfed cropland in north and irrigated cropland in south was driven by the strategy of the gradual agricultural development of oases. The nonexistence of cycle between the abandonment and recultivation proved that newly-gained cropland from steppe may be less degraded and more productive for sustainable land use in Kazakhstan. In conclusion, this study can provide strong evidence for sustainable land use and a basis for food security policy-making in Kazakhstan, and even all of the Central Asian countries in the future.


Author(s):  
Sumitra Kirtania ◽  
Pintulal Mondal ◽  
Mahesh Sawata Khetmalis

<div><p><em>The aim of this study is to identify the Anthropometric and profiles of sub-Junior National level Boxers and also to find out the relationship of Anthropometric profiles and psychomotor abilities of the sub-Junior National level Boxers.</em><em> </em><em>A total 22 female Boxers (11 medalists and 11 non-medalists) age range between 12<sup>th</sup> to 16<sup>th</sup> years will be select from SAI, SAG, Imphal centers. Selected Anthropometric variables (Body composition) will be taken on each Boxer. Total Psychomotor ability scores (Speed, Agility, Differentiation, Orientation, Balance, Rhythm Ability) will be taken. For interpretation of data a comparative analysis of the selected variable, the “t” test was applied. The data of both groups were collected separately for all the variables. Statistic such as mean and standard deviation was computed. The level of significance was set at 0.05. It was found that in BMI, BMR do not have significant deference between the Manipur and West Bengal female Boxers and significant deference was found on Speed, Agility, Differentiation, Orientation, Balance, Rhythm Ability.</em></p></div>


2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-211
Author(s):  
Emma Anderson ◽  
Marina Zaloznaya

What determines how successful global civil society is in promoting international governance norms within nation-states? Studies attribute the varied effectiveness of civil action to the capacity of non-governmental groups and organizations, the nature of global regimes that generate such norms, domestic political landscapes, or combinations of these factors. Yet, empirical cases, analyzed in this article, suggest that global civil society may lose or gain in domestic effectiveness even when these determinants remain stable. Using primary and secondary data on Kyoto Protocol negotiations in Japan, Canada, and Australia, we argue that changes in the Kyoto stances of these three countries between 2005 and 2012 stemmed from the realignment of domestic political actors engaged in the contestation of the protocol alongside civil society. Our data reveal that exogenous natural and political events led to shifts in the positions of local political elites, media, and the energy industry. As a result, the pro-Kyoto coalition, headed by global civil society, either lost or gained in bargaining power vis-à-vis the counter-coalition. We, therefore, theorize realignment as a mechanism that connects exogenous events to the changing effectiveness of global civil society. Theoretically, our study emphasizes the importance of embedding civil action into its concrete socio-historical contexts and advocates for a process-oriented study of agentic social change.


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