Although women are severely under-represented in national politics in Europe, in the European Parliament they are better represented than they are in the national parliaments of the EEC member states. This book examines why this is so. Based largely on their detailed interviews with women MEPs, the authors describe the latter's backgrounds, attitudes and political experience. They also explain the history, structure and organisation of the European Parliament and outline the complexities of the European legal system. A particular concern of (...) the book is the contribution that women MEPs have made to legislation and policy, expecially in the context of recent Community legislation on sex equality, and what impact their presence has had on issues relating to women's interests. (shrink)

Suggests that because life course narratives change over time, they generate competing accounts of the same events. The attempt to adjudicate between accounts is an empirical hermeneutic enterprise that parallels current issues in the social sciences. The problem of retrospective reevaluation is explored from the perspective of cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis. Insights gained from them are applied to the problem as conceptualized by philosophy, drawing on the similarity of retrospective reevaluation to conceptions of time. This approach is used to understand (...) a life history. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

While most of Political Theory’s 50th anniversary issue looks forward to imagining political theory in the future, the Book Review section looks backward to consider those books and schools of political theory not reviewed on the pages of the journal—but which went on to shape the field nonetheless. The aim of this section is not to constitute a new and newly virtuous canon, but rather to goad readers to reflect anew on knowledge production and the institutional and circulatory practices that (...) compose it, reaching from journal readers, to classrooms and conferences, and on to late night conversations and confabulations. (shrink)