The EU and Asia Within an Evolving Global Order: What is Europe? Where is Asia?

The papers in this special edition are a very small selection from those presented at the EU-NESCA (Network of European Studies Centres in Asia) conference on "the EU and East Asia within an Evolving Global Order: Ideas, Actors and Processes" in November 2008 in Brussels. The conference was the culmination of three years of research activity involving workshops and conferences bringing together scholars from both regions primarily to discuss relations between Europe and Asia, perceptions of Europe in Asia, and the relationship between the European regional project and emerging regional forms in Asia. But although this was the last of the three major conferences organised by the consortium, it in many ways represented a starting point rather than the end; an opportunity to reflect on the conclusions of the first phase of collaboration and point towards new and continuing research agendas for the future.     

Cuba Just Yesterday and Today: Negotiating Toward What,Exactly?

Elise Andaya, Conceiving Cuba: Reproduction, Women, and the State in the Post‐Soviet Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Notes, bibliography, index, 169 pp.; hardcover $80, paperback $26.95, ebook. Carmelo Mesa‐Lago and Jorge Pérez‐López, Cuba Under Raúl Castro: Assessing the Reforms. Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2013. Notes, tables, bibliography, index, 310 pp.; hardcover $65, ebook $65. Archibald R. M. Ritter and Ted A. Henken, Entrepreneurial Cuba: The Changing Policy Landscape. Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2015. Notes, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index, 384 pp.; hardcover $79.95, ebook $79.95. Paolo Spadoni, Cuba's Socialist Economy Today: Navigating Challenges and Change. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2014. Notes, tables, bibliography, index, 252 pp.; hardcover $65.     

Having Your Cake and Eating It,Too: Can Regulatory Agencies Be Both Independent and Accountable?

Independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) were created in various sectors and on different governmental levels to implement liberalization policies. This paper investigates the link between IRAs' independence, which is said to promote regulatory credibility and the use of technical expertise, and their accountability, which is related to the need for controlling and legitimizing independent regulators. The literature on the regulatory state anticipates a positive relation between the independence and accountability of IRAs, but systematic empirical evidence is still lacking. To tackle this question, this paper measures and compares the independence and the accountability of IRAs in three differentially liberalized sectors in Switzerland (telecommunications, electricity and railways). With the application of Social Network Analysis, this piece of research shows that IRAs can be de facto independent and accountable at the same time, but the two features do not necessarily co‐evolve in the same direction.     

The Birth of Cultural Autonomy in Estonia: How,Why, and for Whom?

The 1925 law on cultural autonomy of minorities guaranteed Estonia's most significant minorities the right to independently decide how they wanted to arrange their own national-cultural matters. In this article I will focus on why Estonia decided to pass a law that was exceptional in the atmosphere of that time. To find an answer, it is necessary also to analyze how (through what process) the law was shaped and for whom the law was ultimately intended. In summary, it can be said that there were about ten factors, which were different, yet interconnected and similar in their impact, and only together did they provide sufficient impetus to make it possible to approve autonomy.     

“What Shall We Do With It Now?”: The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the Difficult Heritage of Fascism

This article uses the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (PdCI) in the Rome suburb of EUR as a case study to explore how Italians have negotiated the “difficult heritage” of Fascism since 1945. Following Sharon Macdonald, the paper understands the term difficult heritage to refer to a historically significant past that remains materially visible through sites, buildings, artworks, monuments and other artefacts, but which is difficult to reconcile with “a positive, self-affirming contemporary identity”. The paper employs a biographical approach to reveal and analyse the post-Fascist “lives” of the PdCI, one of the most recognisable — and, in recent decades, most admired — examples of Fascist monumental architecture in Italy. With reference also to other examples of difficult Fascist heritage in Italy, and to sites associated with the difficult heritage of Nazism in Germany, the paper offers new insights into how Italy has confronted its Fascist past and places the Italian experience of difficult heritage within the broader international context.     

Climbing to the Rooftop,Falling off,yet Landing on One’s Feet (and Finding a Wallet on the Pavement?): The Electoral Fate of the Greek Ecogreens (2004–15)

After a prolonged period of feeble electoral success, the Ecologists Greens (Ecogreens) managed to break into the Greek political landscape by electing one MEP in the 2009 European election. However, that electoral success proved to be quite short-lived, since in the years to follow the Greek Greens faded away. They were divided and faced the threat of political extinction, only to be resuscitated at the national election of 2015 by allying themselves with the winning leftist Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). This article draws on archival and survey data to recount the electoral fate of the Ecologists Greens from their creation to their current place in the Greek parliament and government.     

Dissolution and Reintegration in Finland, 1914–1932: How did a Disarmed Country Become Absorbed into Brutalization?

Finland avoided participation in the Great War, but in 1918 fell into a short civil war that culminated in a cycle of vicious terror. The focus of this article is to explain the high incidence of terror during that civil war in comparison with other civil wars that took place in the Baltic region. The violent polarization of Finnish society was triggered as reform expectations skyrocketed at the moment when the country’s institutions were in chaos and its economy in a free fall. Mutual distrust, armed mobilizations, and a sense that time was running out in the arms race were key factors that drove both warring parties to the violent conflict. The author concludes with a discussion of the reintegration of the dissolved state. He frames the conflict within various psychological theories and group behavior in the context of economic possibilities and expectations. The article is based on his own empirical research and on the studies of other scholars on the history of the Finnish Civil War.     

‘What did the winning candidate have that I don’t have?’: gender,politics and elections in Solomon Islands

Women’s political under-representation is a concern for both emerging and established democracies. In Solomon Islands, only four women were elected to Parliament in the 40 years from independence in 1978 to 2018. This article analyses the barriers to success for female candidates in Solomon Islands elections, focusing on the impact of informal institutions related to kinship, clientelism and leadership. It argues that in a context such as Solomon Islands, an emerging democracy with a weakly institutionalised party system, informal institutions play a highly influential, and highly gendered, role.