TY - GEN A1 - Hlepas, Nikos A1 - Kersting, Norbert A1 - Kuhlmann, Sabine A1 - Swianiewicz, Pawel A1 - Teles, Filipe T1 - Introduction: Decentralization beyond the municipal tier T2 - Sub-Municipal Governance in Europe N2 - In Europe, different countries developed a rich variety of sub-municipal institutions. Out of the plethora of intra- and sub-municipal decentralization forms (reaching from local outposts of city administration to “quasi-federal” structures), this book focuses on territorial sub-municipal units (SMUs) which combine multipurpose territorial responsibility with democratic legitimacy and can be seen as institutions promoting the articulation and realization of collective choices at a sub-municipal level. Country chapters follow a common pattern that is facilitating systematic comparisons, while at the same time leaving enough space for national peculiarities and priorities chosen and highlighted by the authors, who also take advantage of the eventually existing empirical surveys and case studies. Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-64725-8 SN - 978-3-319-64724-1 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64725-8_1 SP - 1 EP - 24 PB - Palgrave CY - Basingstoke ER - TY - GEN A1 - Schmidt-Wellenburg, Christian A1 - Lebaron, Frederic T1 - There is no such thing as "the Economy" BT - Economic phenomena analysed from a field-theoretical perspective BT - Zur Analyse ökonomischer Phänomene aus feldtheoretischer Perspektive T2 - Historical Social Research N2 - This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu’s thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third, we focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue. T2 - 'Die Ökonomie‘ gibt es nicht! KW - Economic sociology KW - field KW - Bourdieu KW - methodology KW - discourse KW - domination KW - state KW - economy Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.43.2018.3.7-38 SN - 0172-6404 VL - 43 IS - 3 SP - 7 EP - 38 PB - GESIS, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences CY - Cologne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Giebler, Heiko A1 - Ruth, Saskia P. A1 - Tanneberg, Dag T1 - Why choice matters BT - revisiting and comparing measures of democracy T2 - Politics and Governance N2 - Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized by three recurrent topics of debate: (1) what is democracy, (2) what is a good measure of democracy, and (3) do our measurements of democracy register real-world developments? As the answers to those questions have been changing over time, the field of democracy measurement has adapted and reached higher levels of theoretical and methodological sophistication. In effect, the challenges facing contemporary social scientists are not only limited to the challenge of constructing a sound index of democracy. Today, they also need a profound understanding of the differences between various measures of democracy and their implications for empirical applications. The introduction outlines how the contributions to this thematic issue help scholars cope with the recurrent issues of conceptualization, measurement, and application, and concludes by identifying avenues for future research. KW - application KW - conceptualization KW - democracy KW - democratic quality KW - measurement Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i1.1428 SN - 2183-2463 VL - 6 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Cogitatio Press CY - Lisbon ER -