"The 1968-1969 Czechoslovak crisis was first and foremost a major crisis of European detente. While the Prague Spring was made possible by the immediate and unchecked consequences of early detente in Europe, its crushing sharply brought out the contradictions of detente as understood by the global Cold War protagonists. In a similar way as the Czecho-slovak crisis reflected the ambivalence at the heart of detente, the West European Communist Parties' responses to it revealed the ambivalence of detente as a context for radical social change, either in the East of the West. The scholarly literature on the PCI and PCF has, often in an unproblematic way, understood the shift from Cold War to detente on the European continent in the mid-1960s as a development essentially positive to these parties. The present study argues against this and demonstrates how the shift from the Cold War of the 1950s to detente in Europe reformulated the impasse of revolution or radical change in the West, rather than putting an end to it." Book jacket.

Taking a thematic approach, Derek Urwin addresses the major political and economic developments in western Europe since World War II, right up to the present day. The book covers issues and developments in national politics, and the movement towards greater unity in Western Europe and the role of Europe in global politics and in the international economy. The text has been revised throughout and updated to take account of the political consequences of the ending of the Cold War and the troubled progress of European integration since Maastricht. The Fifth Edition has lost nothing of its predecessor's clarity and accessibility and in its updated form will win the book a host of new admirers.

Developments of the 1970s suggest the need for a new approach to the analysis of communism in Western Europe. During the early years after World War II, Western observers tended to look upon the West European Communist parties as fundamentally an extension of communism in the USSR-as national only in the narrow, formal sense. With the growing signs

Political Parties in Post-Communist Eastern Europe is the first textbook to survey the course of party developments in eastern Europe as a whole in the post-Communist period. This book relates the specifics of the post-communist situation to the broader picture of the early stages of party development in western Europe and also to contemporary models of party organisation in established democracies. The book includes: · a brief historical introduction to the context of post-communist change · the process of competitive party formation and democratic elections · the development of independent parties; their ideologies, and electoral volatility · the structure and level of organisation developed by new parties · an analysis of stable party systems which have emerged in eastern Europe and the contribution they make to emerging democracies in the region Party Politics in Post-Communist Eastern Europe will be a comprehensive and invaluable resource, accessible to undergraduates of politics and European studies, as well as the non-specialist reader.

Taking a thematic approach, this keenly awaited new edition addresses the major political and economic developments in Western Europe since World War II, right up to the present day. The book covers issues and developments in national politics, the movement towards greater unity in Western Europe, and the role of Europe in global politics and in the international economy. The test has been revised throughout and updated to take account of the political consequences of the ending of the Cold War and the troubled progress of European integration since Maastricht.