Abstract The recent global growth of anti-democratic sentiment has renewed the question when a political party should be barred from electoral arena. In modern democracies, even explicitly militant ones, constitutional mechanisms for banning parties are rarely used. decision by German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) not to ban National Democratic Party, despite its neo-Nazi platform, is a...

Modern societies are increasingly having to cope with profound socio-political transformations. Transformations ignite dynamics, processes, and forces, which induce new challenges for traditional structures and orders because major changes in society and politics are shifting from established manners, customs, and modes of behavior to new norms and values. Transformations cause epistemological ...

New institutionalism is an approach to the study of social events that is becoming increasingly popular. Different lines of new institutional research can be distinguished. In one line of research it is argued that the social sciences should transcend reductionist modes of explanation, in particular the methodological individualism exemplified by the theory of rational choice. In this view, red...

Despite the establishment of the National Health System in Greece in the early 1980s, the institutional framework remained largely unchanged due to opposition from interest groups and large set-up costs, thus allowing the powerful stakeholders to preserve their privileges. Not until almost two decades later was reform attempted in order to rationalise and modernise purchasing and delivery. The ...

This paper attempts to point out the shortcomings of mainstream regional integration theory: neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. The 1999-2001 Mercosur crisis is chosen as a tour de force for regionalist theories. The “redefinition” of South American integration process during the following years shows the necessity to introduce complementary approaches focused on ideational factors –id...