Research Design Social Sciences

This book introduces a new way of thinking about research designs in the social sciences. Our hope is that this approach will make it easier to develop and to share strong research designs. At the heart of our approach is the MIDA framework, in which a research design is characterized by four elements: a model, an inquiry, a data strategy, and an answer strategy. We have to understand each of the four on their own and also how they interrelate.

See more

Integrated Inferences

This book provides an introduction to fundamental principles of causal inference and Bayesian updating and shows how these tools can be used to implement and justify inferences using within-case (process tracing) evidence, correlational patterns across many cases, or a mix of the two. The authors also demonstrate how causal models can guide research design, informing choices about which cases, observations, and mixes of methods will be most useful for addressing any given question.

See more

Politics in the Republic of Ireland

Politics in the Republic of Ireland provides an authoritative introduction to all aspects of government and politics in this seventh edition. It devotes chapters to every aspect of contemporary Irish government and politics, including the political parties and elections, the constitution, deliberative democracy, referendums, the Taoiseach and the governmental system, women and politics, the position of the Dáil, and Ireland’s place within the European Union.

See more

Bertrand Russell, Public Intellectual

Bertrand Russell, Public Intellectual reflects two diversities of interests. There is Russell’s own, which could be taken from granted; and there is the diversity of the Bertrand Russell Society. The essays in the volume treat topics from education to publishing, from academic freedom to political activism, from his possible adoption of new communication modes (were he alive today) to the representation of his life and ideas in fiction. They reflect the engagement of Bertrand Russell in public affairs over three quarters of a century. They also reflect the diverse interests that bring scholars together in the Russell Society to study his manifold works.

See more

Viruses, Vaccines and Antivirals: Why Politics Matters

This short book brings together novel cross-interdisciplinary investigation from both natural and social science, representing a true hybrid across disciplines examining the ‘politics’ and ‘science’ of COVID-19. Viruses, Vaccines, and Antivirals: Why Politics Matters considers the dynamics surrounding viruses, proposed vaccines, and antiviral therapies, contextualizing what governments have done during the COVID-19 crisis.

See more

How Ireland Voted 2020

This book provides the definitive story of Ireland’s mould-breaking 2020 election. For the first time ever, Sinn Féin won the most votes, the previously dominant parties shrank to a fraction of their former strengths, and the government to emerge was a coalition between previously irreconcilable enemies. For these reasons, the election marks the end of an era in Irish politics. This book analyses the course of the campaign, the parties’ gains and losses, and the impact of issues, especially the role of Brexit.

See more

Political and Sovereignty in International Relations

This book demonstrates the role that domestic politics plays in the formation of international hierarchies, and shows that when there are high levels of rent-seeking and political competition within the subordinate state, elites within this state become more prepared to accept hierarchy. Empirically rich, the book adopts a comparative historical approach with an emphasis on Russian attempts to establish hierarchy in post-Soviet space, particularly in Georgia and Ukraine.

See more

Great Judgements of the European Court of Justice

Great Judgments of the European Court of Justice presents a new approach to understanding the landmark decisions of the European Court of Justice in the 1960s and 1970s. By comparing the Court's doctrines to the enforcement and escape mechanisms employed by more common forms of trade treaty, it demonstrates how the individual rights created by the doctrine of direct effect were connected to the practical challenges of trade politics among the European states and, in particular, to the suppression of unilateral safeguard mechanisms and inter-state retaliation.

See more

Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison 2nd Edition

Governments worldwide are developing sunshine policies that increase transparency in politics, where a key initiative is regulating lobbyists. Building on the pioneering first edition, this book updates its examination of all jurisdictions with regulations, from the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Australia.  Unlike any book, it offers unique insights into how the regulations compare and contrast against each other, offering a revamped theoretical classification of different regulatory environments and situating each political system therein.

See more

A Conservative Revolution

The 2011 general election in the Republic of Ireland, which took place against a backdrop of economic collapse, was one of the most dramatic ever witnessed. The most notable outcome was the collapse of Fianna Fáil, one of the world's most enduring and successful parties. In comparative terms Fianna Fáil's defeat was among the largest experienced by a major party in the history of parliamentary democracy. It went from being the largest party in the state (a position it had held since 1932) to being a bit player in Irish political life. And yet ultimately, there was much that remained the same, perhaps most distinctly of all the fact that no new parties emerged. It was, if anything, a 'conservative revolution'.

See more

Bertrand Russell, Life and Legacy

Almost five decades after his death, there is still ample reason to pay attention to the life and legacy of Bertrand Russell. This is true not only because of his role as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, but also because of his important place in twentieth-century history as an educator, public intellectual, critic of organized religion, humanist, and peace activist. The papers in this anthology explore Russell’s life and legacy from a wide variety of perspectives. This is altogether fitting, given the many-sided nature of Russell, his life, and his work.

See more

Life After Privatization

Life After Privatization offers a refreshing and original theoretical conceptualization of what happened to stateowned enterprises after they were privatized from the late 1970s onwards.
Some privatized firms have become today's European and global giants, Alphas, merging with or acquiring other firms, whereas other firms, Betas, have been taken over by Alphas or other sectoral leaders. The book raises questions such as which privatized firms in the airline, automobile, and the electricity sectors in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are Alphas and Betas today? And why?

See more

Inter-State Retaliation

Unlike many other international trade regimes, the European Union forbids the use of inter-state retaliation to enforce its obligations, and rules out the use of common “escape” mechanisms-such as anti-dumping-between its member states. How, then, is the European legal order, with the European Court of Justice at its center, able to be so much more binding and intrusive than the legal obligations of other trade regimes? This book puts forward a new argument for these remarkable outcomes.

See more

Hard Questions for Democracy

The recent financial and economic crisis has forced governments and people from around the globe to ask some hard questions about how democracy has evolved. Some of these are old questions; others are new.

This represents the first book of its kind to ask and answer a broad range of hard questions that need to be addressed in times of both flux and calls for democratic change throughout the world. It is essential reading for students of comparative and international politics, political philosophy, gender studies and economics.

See more

Lotteries in Public Life

Lotteries have been used to make all kinds of public decisions ever since the days of Ancient Greece. They can contribute to some of our most important values, such as rationality, justice, and democracy. But until recently, there was no theory to make sense of lotteries and what they can do. The past few decades have changed that with a veritable renaissance of studies on lotteries. This book collects fourteen of the most important of these papers, and offers a critical introduction tying them together.

See more

The Luck of the Draw - The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making

From the earliest times, people have used lotteries to make decisions--by drawing straws, tossing coins, picking names out of hats, and so on. We use lotteries to place citizens on juries, draft men into armies, assign students to schools, and even on very rare occasions, select lifeboat survivors to be eaten. Lotteries make a great deal of sense in all of these cases, and yet there is something absurd about them. Largely, this is because lottery-based decisions are not based upon reasons. In fact, lotteries actively prevent reason from playing a role in decision making at all.

See more

The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland

Based on extensive original research, including interviews with key participants, this book investigates the sudden and unforeseen collapse of communist power in Poland in 1989. It sets out the sequence of events, and examines the strategies of the various political groupings prior to the partially free election of June 1989. This volume argues that the specific negotiating strategies adopted by the communist party representatives in the Round Table discussions before the elections was a key factor in communism’s collapse.

See more

Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison

In an age of corruption, sleaze and scandal associated with financial crisis and economic downturn across the globe, citizens want more transparency and accountability in politics. This book examines a principal means by which this can be achieved: the regulation of lobbyists. 'Using qualitative and quantitative analyses, the book compares and contrasts regulatory laws in the US, Canada, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, the EU, Taiwan and Australia. It examines how politicians, lobbyists and civil servants regard the legislation in place in different jurisdictions. It also considers what lessons and different 'models of regulation' can be considered and adopted by those states without lobbying rules.

See more

Understanding EU Policy Making

EU policy shapes all areas of our lives -- from our money, to our food, to our welfare. Yet we know little about how EU decisions are made, and who benefits from them. This book is a critical guide to the policies of the EU. Raj Chari and Sylvia Kritzinger argue that there is an agenda that underlies EU policy making. Some policies -- those that aim to create a competitive economy -- are prioritized, while others are effectively ignored. Setting the EU in a proper economic and theoretical context, the authors provide a chapter-by-chapter analysis of each of the EU's major policy areas. Arguing that traditional accounts of EU integration are inadequate, the authors develop an innovative new perspective. Written with clarity and precision, this book is ideal for students of the EU and anyone looking for an incisive critique of the role of corporate capital in the development of EU policy.

See more

Poles Apart

In Poles Apart the author is trying to tell the story of Poland's democratic transition through the personal stories of the men and women that she first met in 1980. She hopes that by focusing on the experience of some of the key players she can expose aspects of the complex arguments surrounding controversial issues such as the imposition of martial law in 1981, the Round Table agreement between Solidarity and the Communist Party (which resulted in the first semi-free election in 1989) as well as examine the factors which precipitated the defeat of the post-Solidarity parties in the September 1993 election.

See more