Countries in the European Union's neighborhood, such as those in the Eastern Partnership (EaP), have a particular interest in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) because investment inflows can guarantee them a number of advantages needed for accession. This paper proposes a comparative...

India seems to qualify as a soft power by default with her democratic tradition, Mahatma Gandhi with his concept of non-violence and peaceful conflict mediation as national hero and Bollywood as a quasiglobal dream fabric. The high economic growth rates since the liberalisation in 1991 have...

Abstract Recent decades have seen a major political shift in many nations, manifested in democratic regression, rise of populist non-liberal democracies, resurgence of extreme right, infractions against democratic watchdogs, and increasing nationalism and unilateralism. A central manifestation...

Abstract In this introductory essay for the special issue on contested spaces in liberal democracies, we review how and to what extent the closing or shrinking space debate that has influenced the civil society discourse in authoritarian contexts presents an appropriate mode of analysis for...

Zahlreiche sozialwissenschaftliche Studien beschreiben den Zustand zeitgenössischer liberaler Demokratien als beängstigend und werfen somit die Frage auf, ob deren Bestand gefährdet sei. Diese Diagnosen aufnehmend fragt die vorliegende Untersuchung nach den Bestandsbedingungen der liberalen...

Despite a growing literature on the determinants of corruption, existing studies are sparse on the channels through which social media curbs corruption using panel data. Social media is captured by the percentages of the population and elites that use social media for offline political actions...

This book is neither the first nor last word on the role of organised civil society in democratic life inthe European Union. However, it does present a number of fascinating illustrations about the way civilsociety organisations provide avenues of expression for the European citizen.Above all,...

This report accordingly presents the findings of the 2010 Country Level Evaluation of the European Union’s support for Zambia. The purpose of the evaluation is to provide meaningful feedback to the Commission, the Member States and the public on the achievements of EU cooperation with Zambia...

I examine decentralization through the lens of the local dynamics it unleashed in the much-noted case of Bolivia and the less-noted case of Bangladesh. I argue that the national effects of decentralization are largely the sum of its local-level effects. Hence to understand decentralization we...

While some Latin American countries remain in the middle of the pandemic and their governments have been either unable or unwilling to do anything about it, civil society has begun to initiate a considerable number of digital democratic innovations.