Peter Mair Książki

A classic account of democracy's crisis of legitimacy The age of party democracy has passed, argues Peter Mair in Ruling the Void. The major parties have become so disconnected from society that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form. First published in 2013, Ruling the Void presciently observed that the widening gap between citizens and their political leaders posed a crisis of legitimacy for the governing class, and was fuelling populist mobilizations against it. Europe’s political elites had remodelled themselves as a homogeneous professional class, withdrawing into state institutions that offer relative stability in a world of fickle voters. Meanwhile, non-democratic agencies and practices proliferated – not least among them the European Union itself. Mair weighs the impact of these changes, and offers an authoritative assessment of the prospects for popular political representation today, not only in the varied democracies of Britain and the EU but throughout the developed world. With a new Introduction by Chris Bickerton, author of The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide.

The fourth edition of this text continues to unite the theoretical analysis of representative government and its application to the real world of politics--with a unique focus on the core features of representative government as they manifest themselves across the whole of modern Europe. The book identifies and examines broad themes and patterns in the politics of the whole of “modern Europe†--not, as some other books do, only with regard to a handful of often atypical countries. Europe has been transformed by the dramatic democratization of many of the former Communist states of central and eastern Europe; reflecting this change, the fourth edition has also been transformed: country coverage has been extended to include all of the eight post-communist states that are now members of the EU, and discussion of politics in these countries has been integrated into the main body of text and tables. The “modern Europe†discussed in this book is thus the Europe that came into being in May 2004, and the text reflects the ways in which thinking about representative government has changed as a result of these dramatic developments.

By the late 1970s, the stability of Western party systems and the volatility of electorates had become pivotal in modern European studies. Much of the contemporary literature suggested that Western Europe was undergoing a phase of party breakdown and dealignment, indicating a transformation in traditional mass politics. In their first comprehensive analysis, Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair challenged this prevailing narrative, arguing that the focus on change was largely misguided. Their work uniquely integrates the study of electoral change with the persistence of social cleavages, particularly class, and has become a foundational text in electoral politics in Europe. The authors explore electoral patterns from 1885 to 1985, assessing how these patterns reflect the enduring nature of traditional cleavages while also varying across political, institutional, and social contexts. They analyze electoral competition across different European nations and historical periods, illustrating how cleavages can endure and re-emerge despite significant social shifts. Their sophisticated model of aggregate electoral change posits that national electorates navigate between stability from cultural identities and organizational structures and the pressures for change from party competition and institutional evolution. This work was awarded the Stein Rokkan Prize and is now available in paperback for the first time.

Holz ist im Garten ein vielseitig einsetzbarer und ein natürlicher Baustoff, der bei der Gartengestaltung traditionell eine entscheidende Rolle spielt. Er eignet sich für die unterschiedlichsten Bereiche im Garten – als Bodenbelag ebenso wie für Spielgeräte, für Lärmschutzwände, Zäune oder Pergolen, gleichfalls für Gartenmöbel oder Carports. Das Buch erläutert verschiedene Einsatzmöglichkeiten und stellt den Baustoff Holz mit seinen Eigenschaften und Verarbeitungsmöglichkeiten dar. Sie erhalten Anleitungen für eine fachgerechte Holzverarbeitung, den Schutz gegen Witterungseinflüsse und Tipps und Anregungen für den Bau von Holzbauwerken im Freien.