The Emergence of the Lithuanian Radical Right Movement, 1922–1927

The article discusses the origins and development of the interwar Lithuanian radical right-wing movement before the coup d’état of December 1926. During the second half of 1922, the first sporadic outbreaks of Lithuanian ultra-patriotism occurred. They were carried out by veterans of the independence wars and students – both representatives of the “tautininkai (patriotic) stream.” In parallel, during the period 1923–1927, another two separate groups started operating as right-wing political parties: the pro-fascist movement coordinated by the Christian Democrats, and the “Secret Officers Union” allied with the “Lithuanian Nationalist Union” (Tautininkai). These three groups and their interrelations comprised the core of the early Lithuanian radical right. By focusing on the destabilizing role of war veterans, the author is explicit about the connection between the war and the radicalization of politics in interwar Lithuania.     

Members of Parliament representing Barcelona during the rise of the Spanish parliamentary system (1834–54)

SUMMARY

The province of Barcelona became one of the major industrial regions at the outset of the first industrial revolution in Spain. The province of Barcelona had a distinctive place in the Spanish monarchy and it was an area where agriculture was the most important economic activity. This situation coincided with the beginning of liberal parliamentarism in Spain and it determined the profile of the Catalan MPs. For this reason, this article explores the profiles of the 85 deputies elected by the province of Barcelona during the period of liberal parliamentarianism (1834–54). The date and place of birth, profession, parliamentary experience and political militancy are examined, as is the development of cursus honorum, the ladder of political career advancement, based on the ‘course of honours/offices’ that operated in ancient Rome for men of senatorial rank and comprised a mixture of administrative and political posts. A quantitative analysis indicates a characteristic profile that is also aligned to a general European pattern. For instance, liberal professionals and public officials were significant in the professional status of the MPs. Besides, this study also considers the issues and questions which attracted the attention of the Catalan MPs and which were also willingly used by the MPs to mobilize public opinion. Furthermore, the MPs chosen by the province of Barcelona during the rise of the parliamentary system acted in an autonomous manner. Important examples of this autonomous political behaviour include the defence of a unitary position concerning industrial issues, military intervention in the province of Barcelona, and with tax policies.     

Guarding the honor of the nation and the prosperity of the state: National Defense of Lithuania ‘Iron Wolf’ (1928-1930)

The radical right, semi-clandestine, and paramilitary organization called the National Defense of Lithuania ‘Iron Wolf’ (1928–1930) is, perhaps, the best known and the only example of an attempt to introduce a fascist form of governance in interwar Lithuania. Established and controlled by the Lithuanian Nationalist Union (Lietuvi? tautinink? s?junga) authorities, its first and foremost task was to protect the new nationalist regime from its political opponents, spread propaganda, as well as report any acts of societal disloyalty and disobedience. The short-lived organization was shut down due to conflict between the highest authorities and the threat that ‘Iron Wolf’ was beginning to pose to President Smetona’s rule.     

Resurgence of post-crisis neoliberalism: labor law reform and the return to “business as usual” in Lithuania

ABSTRACT

The economic crisis of 2008–2010 revealed the extreme vulnerability of Lithuania to global financial shocks. However, instead of reforming Lithuanian capitalism, the domestic political and business elites chose to write off the enormous social and economic costs incurred during the 2008–2010 crisis as an expense of continuing doing business in a way that was typical to the pre-crisis, booming years of ‘the Baltic tigers’ (2000–2007), i.e., relying on the unstable and inequitable growth model based on foreign capital inflows and remittances, suppressing and keeping wages and taxes on capital low and exporting cheap-skilled labour to the core EU countries. We illustrate this return to business as usual in Lithuania by analyzing the political process of contestation and eventual consolidation of neo-liberal consensus among domestic political actors that resulted in the passage of the new Labour Code enabling creation of ‘flexible’ labor markets. Social and political implications of the resurgent neoliberal hegemony in post-crisis Lithuania are discussed.     

Explaining Electoral Reforms in Lithuania

This paper examines the numerous changes made to Lithuanian electoral laws between 1992 and 2010. It argues that the two dominant political blocs sought to avoid competition from smaller ‘challenger’ parties by reducing the proportionality of the mixed electoral system between 1992 and 2000. Despite such efforts, the number of effective parties increased and the parliamentary elections in 2000 resulted in a shift from a two-party system to a multiparty system. This created incentives for parties to ensure against future electoral exclusion by maintaining the vote aggregation rules, which had proven to allow for multipartism. This resulted in the relative stability of electoral rules between 2000 and 2010.     

Learning to laugh: satire and political thought in the Latvian ‘National Age’

ABSTRACT

Satiric publications are often recognized as an important part of the political communication of the nineteenth century. Their role, however, in the national ‘awakenings’ in central eastern Europe has been rarely addressed. This paper argues that satirical publications provide useful material for the research of the political ideology of early Latvian nationalism. The development of the ‘ethnic Other’ in the figure of the Bizmanis or ‘Plaitman,’ the invention of the ‘dumb minority,’ the Malenians, as well as the representation of imperial and provincial forces in animal fables illustrate the development of the political thinking of the emerging national movement.     

Party patronage and merit-based bureaucratic reform in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

How do ruling political parties accommodate their members’ demand for access to state patronage with a push for merit-based bureaucratic reform? I argue that political commitment to reform is contingent on electoral calculations within the party. Therefore, distortions in reform implementation reveal not only dynamics within the party itself, but also the significance of appointing the right bureaucrats to the right posts to regulate access to patronage. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Punjab, I contextualise political commitment to bureaucratic reform to provide an explanation for their unsustainability and for persistently low state capacity in countries with weak, patronage-reliant parties.     

A transnational political culture? The Alpine region and its relationship to European integration

This article deals with the political culture of the Alpine region, its expression in the strategies of regionalist and populist parties, and how this affects the relationship to European integration. The Alpine culture is a specific set of attitudes and values overlapping with religious, rural–urban and centre–periphery (ethno-linguistic) dimensions. These cultural elements are expressed in similar ways across national borders and are most visible in the Lega Nord in Italy, the Christlich-Soziale Union in Bavaria, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs in Austria, and the Schweizerische Volkspartei in Switzerland. The Alpine political culture includes strong anti-modern features, emphasises issues such as ‘nature’ and Heimat in the political discourse, and incorporates religious and traditional attitudes. This type of political culture is particularly relevant as it may represent a crucial dimension in the emerging European-wide party system, presenting an alternative ‘image of Europe’ and European integration.     

Political Parties and Women’s Rights in Turkey

Abstract

Political parties are important political actors, but they are seldom studied in relation to human rights. This article examines the human rights discourse of political parties in Turkey by focusing on women’s rights. The content analysis of party programmes issued by major political parties between 1923 and 2007 reveals significant differences and changes in parties’ approach to women, ranging from no mentioning of women to addressing women’s issues from a feminist perspective. Women’s rights and issues, once neglected practically by all political parties, have gained attention during the last few decades, largely due to women’s activism. While conservative, religious, and Turkish nationalist parties started to display a dualist approach that combines traditionalism with gender equality, social democrat, socialist, and pro-Kurdish parties increasingly employ feminist terminology and analysis.     

Islam,ethnicity and the state: contested spaces of legitimacy and power in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere

ABSTRACT

The pro-Kurdish nationalist mobilization in Turkey was mostly built on the right to self-determination aligned with the Marxist-Leninist ideology for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the early 1980s and ethnic minority rights for the secular-leftist pro-Kurdish legal parties in the 1990s. The Turkish state mostly framed the legal and illegal pro-Kurdish mobilization as ‘the enemy of the state’ and ‘the enemy of Islam’ in its counter-insurgency efforts. However, in the 2000s, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish legal parties became more tolerant and inclusive toward Islamic Kurdish identity by mobilizing their sympathizers in events such as ‘Civic Friday Prayers’ and a ‘Democratic Islamic Congress’. This move aimed to function as an antidote to the rising popularity of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurdish Hizbullah in the early 2000s. In other words, Islam and pious Muslim identity has increasingly become contested among Turkish Islamists, Kurdish Islamists, and the secular Kurdish nationalists. This article seeks to unpack why, how, and under what conditions such competing actors and mechanisms shape the discursive and power relationships in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere.     

Misleading the German public: The new bundestag law on parliamentarians

This article outlines the history of several attempts to increase salaries and pensions of members of the German Bundestag in the early 1990s. It shows the unethical tactics used by parliamentarians and the way in which public information was in part consciously designed to mislead. It is argued that Bundestag members tend to form a political cartel when decisions concerning their salaries and pensions are made. Similiar tendencies can be observed in all parliamentary decisions involving party finance, providing support for Katz and Mair's thesis that ‘catch‐all’ parties are generally being replaced by ‘cartel parties’. Having analysed the issues involved, the article calls for greater accountability and responsibility on the part of German politicians when their own personal advantage is at issue.     

Civil and civic death in the new authoritarianisms: punishment of dissidents through juridical destruction,ethical ruin,and necropolitics in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since the Turkish government’s recent turn to authoritarianism, tens of thousands of public dissidents and government critics have been subjected to dismissals and revocation of civic rights via emergency decrees. The victims call this process ‘civil death’. We aim to understand the logic behind this form of punishment in Turkey by examining the differential genealogy of civil death in the work of Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Ogilvie, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe. We demonstrate that a later form of civil death was used by totalitarian regimes in a process leading to the reduction of targeted individuals as ‘superfluous’ and as ‘living corpses’ in concentration camps. In these contexts, death became an instrument of biopolitical and necropolitical powers. We propose that although contemporary punishment of public dissidents in Turkey shares some similarities with these forms of civil death, it may more fittingly be identified as civic death. We argue that while civil death is based on the classical political right of the sovereign to ‘make die’ after first reducing targeted individuals to little more than living corpses, civic death is linked to the power of the sovereign to ‘let die’ through the exclusion of public dissidents from economic, social, and political life.     

Portuguese Citizens’ Support for Democracy: 40 Years after the Carnation Revolution

Abstract

Forty years after the Carnation Revolution, the relatively young Portuguese democracy is experiencing dramatically low levels of public specific support for democracy. This article tests the leverage of demand-side and supply-side accounts to explain differentials in public satisfaction with democracy. Through ordinary least squares regression analyses that draw on the unique data of the ‘Barometer 40 Years of Democracy in Portugal (2014)’, this articles shows that age cohort, identification with extreme parties, evaluation of the country’s political past, and economic performance are strong correlates of citizens’ specific support for democracy.     

‘No Allies’: The Lithuanian Taryba and The National Minorities 1916–1918

The call for ‘national self-determination’ exercised enormous moral attraction during and after the First World War but at the same time also caused tensions between individual national groups, especially in ethnically mixed East Central Europe. This article examines the function and importance that the Lithuanian Taryba attached to national minorities during its existence. It illustrates the problematic attitude of the Taryba concerning the minorities from the onset. The Lithuanian example obviously cannot be seen as unique in Eastern Europe. In that respect the founding fathers of the modern Lithuanian state hardly differed from the trend of their era.     

Protest in Italy in Times of Crisis: A Cross-Government Comparison

Abstract

Using protest event analysis methodology and conceptual and theoretical toolkits developed in social movement studies, this article analyses protest mobilisation during the period of the height of the economic crisis in Italy (2009–2014) by comparing the protest trends in diachronic and comparative perspectives over a period of four different governments. Data show that the Italian anti-austerity protest arena was dominated by ‘old actors’ (the traditional trade unions) and was not able to produce the strong social and political coalitions that emerged in other South European countries. This was due to the specific relationship that developed between civil society and political parties that shaped the forms of anti-austerity mobilisation in this period.     

Parliament,printed petitions and the political imaginary in seventeenth-century England

ABSTRACT

Building on recent scholarship relating to the emergence of printed petitions in Britain in the seventeenth century, this article concentrates on those printed petitions that were designed for more or less discreet or limited circulation in order to lobby parliament. It draws on two collections of such material gathered by the MPs Bulstrode Whitelocke (in the 1650s) and Sir Michael Wentworth (in the 1680s and 1690s). Because print facilitated novel ways of engaging with parliament – not least as problems went unresolved and cases dragged on – printed petitions provide a useful window into the aspirations and frustrations of supplicants, and indeed into their political thinking, however rudimentary this may have been. In tracing what might be called the ‘political imaginary’ of contemporary petitioners, this study recovers evidence of radicalization, but also suggests that the art of petitioning could involve the deliberate avoidance of ideological issues that nevertheless underpinned specific interventions.     

The Disappearance of Political Cultures in Italy

Abstract

Following the collapse of the Italian party system in 1994, post-war Italian political cultures have all but exhausted themselves, if not disappeared completely. First, the Ulivo (Olive Tree) in 1996–1998, then, the Partito Democratico in 2007–2008, attempted without much conviction to formulate a new political culture combining several traditions and heritages. This article will explore how and why the PD failed in its attempts. It will also look at the status of other political cultures, especially the federalist and the liberal, supposedly relaunched by Berlusconi in 1994. It will conclude with some reflections on the appearance of personalist parties and leaders’ narratives and provide an assessment of the present situation with specific reference to the attempt by the PD leader, Matteo Renzi, to give birth to a so-called ‘Partito della Nazione’. Is there any future for new political cultures in the Italian political system? Will the Italian party system ever be revived?     

The implementation of domestic policy in Poland under the last two Jagellonian Kings 1506–1572

Summary

This paper explores the extent to which MPs from different areas of the British Isles represented the interests of their constituents in parliament before the Second Reform Act. Although it considers MPs from all areas, the focus is on Members from Wales. Select Committees offer the opportunity of examining MPs’ involvement with a broad range of issues in an environment where the imperatives of party attachment were at a minimum. Membership was voluntary, but Committees were composed of those whose experience or knowledge was deemed pertinent to the subject of inquiry. Since MPs were often closely associated with the material interests of their constituents it seems reasonable to suggest that those involved with a large number of Committees represented their constituents’ interests well. Examination of the records of Commons’ Select Committees during two complete parliaments (1852–7 and 1859–65) suggests that MPs from Ireland, Scotland and, particularly, Wales generally paid attention to a broader range of ‘local interest’ issues than did those representing English county and borough seats. The evidence also suggests that Welsh MPs were not as unmindful of the real interests of the Principality as contemporary radicals (and some modern historians) have claimed.     

CDU refugee policies and the landesverband oder/neiße: Electoral tool or instrument of integration?

Despite the recognition that the integration of refugees and expellees into west Germany has been one of the success stories of the post‐war period, little light has been shed on the process of political integration of this group into the political system of the nascent Federal Republic. As the ‘newcomers’ were prevented from organising themselves in political or cultural organisations, the only legitimate way of exercising political influence was the way through the licensed parties. The CDU/CSU as a conglomerate of liberal and conservative traditions made use of its historic opportunity to adapt its flexible party apparatus and encourage refugee participation. Thereby, it made an important contribution to the political representation of refugee demands as well as attracting a large proportion of the newcomers’ votes.     

Shi’i division over the Iraqi state: decentralization and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq

ABSTRACT

This article traces the evolving political platform of one of Iraq’s oldest and most powerful Shi’i political parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). Drawing on an analysis of 15 years of primary materials produced by ISCI, it focuses principally on their promotion of decentralization as a path towards peace and stability in Iraq. However, the article also traces the origins of a deep schism that emerged within ISCI between the movement’s old guard who were beholden to the Iranian regime and their model of vilāyat-i faqīh, and the youth-led Iraqi nationalist faction who wanted to see the instalment of a civil government without religious oversight. The article demonstrates that this division is indicative of a theological debate between Shi’i religious scholars over differing interpretations of the role of Shi’ism in politics. The article concludes by arguing that understanding the extent to which such esoteric religious debates manifest themselves politically is crucial to interpreting divisions within Shi’ism not just in Iraq, but across the broader Middle East.