Associations Between Psychosocial Well-Being,Stressful Life Events and Emotion-Driven Impulsiveness in European Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Knowing the extent to which mental well-being and stressful life events during adolescence contribute to personality characteristics related to risk-taking...     

Governing Health and Social Security in the Twenty-First Century: Active Citizenship Through the Right to Participate

This article discusses the role of individual rights in the production of active citizenship. In recent years, the notion of ‘active citizenship’ has become an object of research in both political and social science. Studies that draw on the Foucaultian governmentality tradition have been particularly interested in various societal discourses and practices through which active citizenship is being produced. However, the role of law and rights has been neglected or even rejected in these studies. The aim of this article is thus to show that certain procedural rights, the right to participate in particular, constitute an important legal technology in the production of active citizenship. The analysis is based on the recent developments in Finnish social and health care law. It will also be argued that despite the apparently convergent subject-matter, Jürgen Habermas’s normative theory of the ‘procedural paradigm of law’ does not offer a meaningful framework in which to address the relationship between active citizenship and procedural rights since it is based on an overly narrow conception of subjectivity.     

The Pleiades Join the Stars: Transatlanticism and Eastern Enlargement

EU enlargement and the inclusion of countries previously under communist domination led many West Europeans as well as Americans to think these countries would play the role of a ‘Trojan Horse’. These new EU members indeed have tended to approach the US with greater understanding, but these attitudes differ little from those of Western Europe after the end of World War II. East European pro-Americanism may turn out, however, to be short-lived. This paper argues that the real tension within Europe comes not from the East Europeans' attitudes toward transatlanticism or the Iraq War but rather from their dramatically different experiences under Soviet rule. Based on their empirical experience with Moscow and vital national interests in the democratisation of the EU's neighbourhood, the new members are unlikely to challenge old members over the US; when it comes to Russia, the prospects are quite different.