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The corporate governance systems of continental Europe have traditionally been quite different to those of the liberal market economies (e.g., the United States and the United Kingdom). Company ownership has been dominated by incumbent blockholders, with a relatively minor role for minority shareholders and institutional investors. However, since the mid‐1990s, European corporations have adopted many of the characteristics of the Anglo‐American shareholder model. Furthermore, such an increased shareholder orientation has coincided with a significant role for the Left in European government. This presents a puzzle, as conventional wisdom does not conceive of the European Left as the natural ally of pro‐shareholder capitalism. This book provides an analysis of this paradox by arguing that the postwar support of the European Left for the prevailing blockholder‐dominated corporate system depended on the willingness of blockholders to share economic rents with employees, both through higher wages and greater employment stability. However, during the 1990s, product markets became more competitive in many European countries. The sharing of rents between social actors became increasingly difficult to sustain. In such an environment, the Left chose to relinquish its traditional social partnership with blockholders and embraced many aspects of the shareholder model. The hypothesis is initially explored through a panel data econometric analysis of fifteen non‐liberal market economies. Subsequent case study chapters examine the political economy of recent corporate governance change in Germany and Italy.

Nationalism is often dismissed today as an irrational political creed with disastrous consequences. Yet most people regard their national identity as a significant aspect of themselves, see themselves as having special obligations to their compatriots, and value their nation's political independence. This book defends these beliefs, and shows that nationality, defined in these terms, serves valuable goals, including social justice, democracy, and the protection of culture. National identities need not be illiberal, and they do not exclude other sources of personal identity, such as ethnicity or religion. An ethics that gives weight to special relationships is more effective in motivating people to pursue justice and other values because it connects peoples’ duties to their identity; but this is consistent with recognizing some universal values, such as human rights. There are strong reasons for making the boundaries of states and nations coincide wherever possible, but in other cases, nations can achieve forms of self‐determination that fall short of full sovereignty. Multicultural arguments in favour of identity politics and special rights for minority groups ignore the benefits that such groups derive from participating in a shared national identity and the kind of democratic politics that such an identity makes possible. Although national identities are often said to be in decline in an increasingly globalized world, they serve such important purposes that our aim should be to rebuild them in a form that makes them more accessible to excluded cultural minorities.

Divided government occurs when the executive fails to enjoy majority support in at least one house of the legislature. To date, the study of divided government has focused almost exclusively on the US. However, divided government occurs much more widely in other presidential systems and is the equivalent of minority government in parliamentary regimes. This book examines the frequency, causes, and management of divided government in a comparative context, identifying the similarities and differences between various countries around the world.

A number of contemporary democracies have introduced measures to ensure a more equitable representation of women and/or ethnic minority citizens within elected assemblies. These measures have included the use of gender quotas in the selection of parliamentary candidates, and the use of ‘race‐conscious’ districting to increase the electoral chances of ethnic minority representatives. Drawing on a distinction between the politics of ideas and the politics of presence, this book explores and defends the case for such measures. The politics of ideas considers accountability in relation to declared polices and programmes, and sees the sex or race of the representative as a matter of relative indifference. In the politics of presence, by contrast, the gender or ethnic composition of elected assemblies becomes a legitimate matter of democratic concern. This book addresses the concern that the case for political presence could encourage essentialist understandings of group identity or group interest. It argues against an either/or alternative between the politics of ideas and the politics of presence and for a new combination of these two models of representation.

Nationality claims are often seen as zero‐sum politics involving incompatible conceptions of the polity. Nationalism and self‐determination are seen as equivalent to separatism. Rethinking the concepts of nationality, self‐determination, and sovereignty and placing them in a historic context allows us to treat them as more tractable and as a form of politics. This is done through a study of the UK, Spain, Belgium, and Canada. Traditions of shared sovereignty are rediscovered. Analysis of the demands of minority nationalisms shows that these do not always entail separate statehood. Public opinion is more open than often assumed. Asymmetrical constitutional arrangements provide a means of accommodating plural national claims. The emerging European polity is a model for a post‐sovereign order in which legal pluralism and constitutional diversity can accommodate multiple nationality claims.

In many Western democracies, ethnic and racial minorities have demanded, and sometimes achieved, greater recognition and accommodation of their identities. This is reflected in the adoption of multiculturalism policies for immigrant groups, the acceptance of territorial autonomy and language rights for national minorities, and the recognition of land claims and self-government rights for indigenous peoples. These claims for recognition have been controversial, in part because of fears that they make it more difficult to sustain a robust welfare state by eroding the interpersonal trust, social solidarity and political coalitions that sustain redistribution. Are these fears of a conflict between a ‘politics of recognition’ and a ‘politics of redistribution’ valid? This book aims to test this question empirically, using both cross-national statistical analyses of the relationships among diversity policies, public attitudes and the welfare state, and case studies of the recognition/redistribution linkage in the political coalitions in particular countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and in Latin America. These studies suggest that that there is no general or inherent tendency for recognition to undermine redistribution, and that the relationship between these two forms of politics can be supportive as well as competitive, depending on the context. These findings shed light, not only on the nature and effects of multiculturalism, but also on wider debates about the social and political foundations of the welfare state, and indeed about our most basic concepts of citizenship and national identity.

The Sibe are an immigrant group, Qing dynasty bannermen who made a three-year ‘long march’ from Manchuria in the 18th century to serve as a border garrison in the newly conquered Western Regions of the Qing Chinese empire. They preserved their military structure and a discrete identity in the multi-ethnic region of Xinjiang and are now officially recognised as an ethnic minority nationality under the People's Republic. They are known in China today as the last speakers of the Manchu language, and as preservers of their ancient traditions. This study of their music culture reveals not fossilised tradition but a shifting web of borrowings, assimilation, and retention. It is an informed account of culture and performance in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. The book approaches musical and ritual life in this ethnically diverse region through an understanding of society in terms of negotiation, practice, and performance. It explores the relations between shamanism, song, and notions of externality and danger, bringing recent theories on shamanism to bear on questions of the structural and affective powers of ritual music. The book focuses on the historical demands of identity, boundary maintenance, and creation among the Sibe, and on the role of musical performance in maintaining popular memory, and it discusses the impact of state policies of the Chinese Communist Party on village musical and ritual life. It draws on a wide range of Chinese, Sibe-Manchu language sources, and oral sources including musical recordings and interviews gathered in the course of fieldwork in Xinjiang.

The purpose of the book is to provide researchers with a framework to conduct research in a culturally sensitive manner with individuals, families, and communities in diverse cultural settings in the United States, as well as in a global context within the context of three aims: (1) To understand and describe the nature and extent to which a particular problem occurs; (2) To understand the etiology or potential factors associated with the occurrence of a particular problem; (3) To evaluate programs or interventions designed to ameliorate or eliminate a problem. For each of these three aims, applications of different research methods with various population groups are discussed with considerable detail. The work presented falls into different sides of the emic–etic continuum, with some studies taking a more emic perspective (i.e., Chapter 2, a mixed methods study with American Indian populations), others presenting more of an etic approach (i.e., Chapter 3, a multicountry study of drug use in Central America), and yet others presenting an emic–etic distinction that is less salient (i.e., Chapters 4–6, a longitudinal studies of ecological factors and drug use in Santiago, Chile; a longitudinal study of ecological factors and PTSD in the City of Detroit; and a randomized clinical trial and community-based participatory research project both also conducted in Detroit). Two central themes that guided this work are that culture is not static, rather it is fluid and changing, and that cross-cultural researchers should avoid making sweeping generalizations that risk taking on essentialist characteristics. The book concludes with a call for anyone conducting cross-cultural research to include an intersectionality lens, one that encompasses a broader range of multiple identities, into their work.

Storable Votes are a simple voting scheme that allows the minority to win occasionally, while treating every voter equally. Because the minority wins when it cares strongly about a decision while the majority does not, minority victories occur with little cost, in fact typically with gains, for the community as a whole. The idea is simple: Consider a group of voters faced with a series of proposals, each of which can either pass or fail. Decisions are taken according to the majority of votes cast, but each voter is endowed with a budget of votes to distribute freely over the multiple decisions. Because voters cast more votes on decisions that matter to them more, they reveal the intensity of their preferences and increase their probability of winning exactly when it matters to them most. Thus Storable Votes elicit and reward voters’ intensity of preferences without the need for any external knowledge of voters’ preferences. By treating everyone equally and ruling out interpersonal vote trades, they are in line with common ethical priors and are robust to criticisms, both normative and positive, that affect vote markets. The book complements the theoretical discussion with several experiments, showing that the idea is supported by the data: experimental outcomes match the predictions of the theory. Because the intuition behind Storable Votes is so simple—“vote more when you care more”—the results are robust across different scenarios, even when subtle strategic effects are not identified by the subjects, suggesting real potential for practical applications.