Max Steuer – författare

Emergencies are ubiquitous in 21st-century societal discourses. From the rise of emergency pronouncements in the United States since 9/11 accompanied by the associated violations of fundamental rights, through talks of ‘crises’ in the EU in relation to the economy, Putin’s occupation of Crimea (as recently amplified by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine) or refugees, to the long-neglected looming climate catastrophe, emergency discourses have been catapulted to the centre of attention by the critical juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic.This volume presents and compares the existing regulations and practices of emergencies and human rights protection in the Visegrad (V4) countries. As such, the analysis covers Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Although these European countries share a common historical experience and are now members of the EU and NATO, they differ in some of their constitutional traditions and, also, in the dynamics of their political regimes. Divided into three parts, the first two comprehensively discuss the constitutional models of emergency and human rights protection in each of the V4 countries, while the third part illustrates how these models and the general framework of rights protection materialised in the limitations of the selected human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic.The volume provides a compass for more in-depth, comparative, and interdisciplinary inquiries into the forms and practices of emergencies in one of the EU regions that faces illiberalisation and the consequences of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on its eastern borders. It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of Constitutional Law and Politics.The Introduction, Chapter 7 and Chapter 10 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Emergencies are ubiquitous in 21st-century societal discourses. From the rise of emergency pronouncements in the United States since 9/11 accompanied by the associated violations of fundamental rights, through talks of ‘crises’ in the EU in relation to the economy, Putin’s occupation of Crimea (as recently amplified by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine) or refugees, to the long-neglected looming climate catastrophe, emergency discourses have been catapulted to the centre of attention by the critical juncture of the COVID-19 pandemic.This volume presents and compares the existing regulations and practices of emergencies and human rights protection in the Visegrad (V4) countries. As such, the analysis covers Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Although these European countries share a common historical experience and are now members of the EU and NATO, they differ in some of their constitutional traditions and, also, in the dynamics of their political regimes. Divided into three parts, the first two comprehensively discuss the constitutional models of emergency and human rights protection in each of the V4 countries, while the third part illustrates how these models and the general framework of rights protection materialised in the limitations of the selected human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic.The volume provides a compass for more in-depth, comparative, and interdisciplinary inquiries into the forms and practices of emergencies in one of the EU regions that faces illiberalisation and the consequences of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on its eastern borders. It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policymakers working in the areas of Constitutional Law and Politics.The Introduction, Chapter 7 and Chapter 10 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

There has always been some scepticism about social science. In certain quarters today there is much more doubt about the possibility of drawing on scientific information when addressing public policy issues. Attacks on social science, not always well informed, often go hand-in-hand with activity that claims to be social science, yet bears little resemblance to anything scientific. This book makes the case for the scientific study of society by reviewing what social scientists actually do. This is not an abstract discussion. Recent journal literature on several topics such as crime, migration and religion, as studied by anthropology, economics, political science, social psychology and sociology, demonstrate the achievements of social science. The book argues that modest achievements are to be preferred to the immodest claims of social poets and social prophets.

This book presents an abstract discussion of social science, in a period when science in all forms is under attack, does little to inform the debate on its role and progress. Moreover, there is a strong and growing tendency for work that is far from scientific to go under the label of social sciences. The Scientific Study of Society undertakes the novel approach of reviewing the journal literature on six different topics by each of the five social sciences, and so highlights the contrasting approaches of each of the disciplines. Recent work by anthropologists, economists, political scientists, social psychologists and sociologists on crime, migration, the family, housing, money and religion is examined. The topics are of concern to policy makers and the book argues that policy makers should make wider use of scientific knowledge in addressing these and other social issues.