Rafał Riedel - Böcker

This book examines organized interests in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), providing incisive analyses in three critically important policy areas - healthcare, higher education and energy. The four countries surveyed – Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – afford rich diversity offering broad empirical material available for cross-country and cross-policy comparative analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, the book draws together recent developments in the evolution of post-communist advocacy organizations, their population ecology dynamics, interest intermediation, the influence of organized interests and their (bottom-up and top-down) Europeanization. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, interest groups and lobbying, post-communism, transition and consolidation studies, and more broadly to European studies/politics.The Open Access version of this book, available at: http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003049562, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book examines organized interests in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), providing incisive analyses in three critically important policy areas - healthcare, higher education and energy. The four countries surveyed – Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – afford rich diversity offering broad empirical material available for cross-country and cross-policy comparative analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, the book draws together recent developments in the evolution of post-communist advocacy organizations, their population ecology dynamics, interest intermediation, the influence of organized interests and their (bottom-up and top-down) Europeanization. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, interest groups and lobbying, post-communism, transition and consolidation studies, and more broadly to European studies/politics.The Open Access version of this book, available at: http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003049562, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book examines differentiated integration in Europe, providing incisive analyses of domestic politics determinants – political conflict, party responses, citizens’ preferences and other supply and demand side elements.The four countries compared – Germany, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – afford rich diversity and offer broad empirical material available for cross-country analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, this book draws together recent developments in the evolution of European integration differentiation – its dynamics and determinants.This monograph will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, comparative politics, political psychology, international relations, and more broadly to European (area) studies.Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.

This book examines differentiated integration in Europe, providing incisive analyses of domestic politics determinants – political conflict, party responses, citizens’ preferences and other supply and demand side elements.The four countries compared – Germany, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom – afford rich diversity and offer broad empirical material available for cross-country analyses. Featuring interdisciplinary research, this book draws together recent developments in the evolution of European integration differentiation – its dynamics and determinants.This monograph will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, comparative politics, political psychology, international relations, and more broadly to European (area) studies.Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 license.

In this forward-thinking book, Rafał Riedel and Jakub Anusik explore the dynamics and determinants of one of the most salient issues facing contemporary Europe: differentiated integration. Going beyond static models of differentiated integration in Europe built on legal-institutional criteria, Riedel and Anusik capture the dynamism of the system by employing both a political economy perspective and the varieties of capitalism framework.Comparative in approach, the book brings together a wide range of scholarship on differentiated integration and varieties of capitalism to explore the diversities across Germany, Poland, Switzerland and the UK. Riedel and Anusik explain the correlations and causality between the level, scope, and depth of differentiation in the European integration process, as well as the socio-economic parameters that define the varieties of capitalism in specific EU Member States. Ultimately, they find that these inter-dependencies are dynamic and reveal a wealth of interesting features, especially in the post-Brexit era.Interdisciplinary in scope, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of political economy, European politics and policy, international relations, and evolutionary economics. A deep dive into the variety and complexity of differentiation in European integration, it is also of value to policymakers across Europe working in integration.

Drawing on deeply interdisciplinary theoretical insights and rich empirical data, this study of illiberal market economies (IMEs) in Central and Eastern Europe brings the full complexity and broader geopolitical implications of state-captured capitalism to light.Focusing especially on recent developments in Hungary and Poland, Rafal Riedel and Jakub Anusik critically examine the shifting dynamics between state and market under illiberal regimes, thereby challenging the mainstream “varieties of capitalism” framework by highlighting the emergence of a distinct economic model characterized by state intervention and market manipulation by political actors, including mainstream political parties. Through detailed case studies, the book illuminates how nations operating under this model have deviated from expected democratic and free-market trajectories and how this affects regional development, democracy, and integration into the global economy.Through these discussions, Riedel and Anusik not only provide a comprehensive overview of the political and economic reforms that have contributed to the rise of IMEs, but also uncover some of the broader roots and implications of state capitalism in the 21st century. For as they show, the same shifts that led to Brexit, Trump, and other instances of “democratic backsliding” in the US and Western Europe have led to the capitalist backsliding occurring in Central and Eastern Europe, and the future development of both may be closely interlinked.