Regional Mobilization in the ‘New Europe’: A Research Agenda

This Special Issue re-assesses regional mobilization in the ‘New Europe’. We anticipate that enlargement to Central Europe, the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the largest economic and financial crisis since the birth of the European Community have affected how regional governments respond to Europeanization along three different dimensions: (1) the position they take vis-à-vis the process of EU integration more generally, (2) the strategies they adopt in response to Europeanization pressures and (3) their internal structures and dynamics of the EU member states as multi-level states. The article introduces a framework and formulates hypotheses to examine why and how Europeanization pressures in the ‘New Europe’ affect regional mobilization along these three dimensions. In the final section, the article also introduces the various contributions to this Special Issue and relates them to the analytical framework.     

‘New politics’ in Finland: The greens and the left wing in the 1990s

This article examines the development of two Finnish political parties (the Green Association and the Left‐Wing Alliance) from a ‘New Politics’ perspective, focusing on changes in their electoral, programmatic and organisational profiles, with emphasis on the composition and value‐related features of their electorates in 1991, 1995 and 1999. The results confirm the position of the Greens as the prime representative of New Politics; but the party has moved away from its anti‐establishment role and its supporters increasingly share the social and attitudinal characteristics of the average electorate. The UNA, on the other hand, has moved towards a New Politics profile and a gradual dealignment of its old male‐dominated working class electorate; but its central characteristics and its supporters are still firmly entrenched in an old leftist format.     

After the fall: the impact of government regulation on church attendance in Eastern Europe, 1990–2004

Previous literature modeling the demand for religion has identified socioeconomic factors, religious human capital and religious market structure as being the fundamental determinants of the level of participation in religious services and practices. Building on the existing literature, this study analyzes the effect of government regulation and intervention on religious activity. Using religion-related data as well as demographic and economic data from 22 Eastern European countries after the fall of Communism, the existence of any form of religious restrictions is found to reduce church attendance rates.     

Dissent,Public Space and the Politics of Citizenship: Riots and the ‘Outside Agitator’

This paper presents an historical examination of a significant period in which state authority and citizenship came together around the question of dissent in the US. Drawing on congressional records, news accounts and legal documents—and deploying theories of citizenship and space—it presents an argument about how state power and geographical space came together around the question of the ‘race riots’ that swept American cities in the late 1960s. I focus in particular on how government officials and others constituted the figure of the ‘outside agitator’ as the cause of illegitimate dissent and the subject of state intervention. Such arguments about the geography of authority and dissent were themselves interventions in the politics of citizenship. More broadly, then, the paper argues for closer attention to issues of difference—and the geography of difference—in the constitution of state power.     

Reconceptualizing International Intervention: Statebuilding, ‘Organic Processes’ and the Limits of Causal Knowledge

This article examines the transformation in the conceptual understanding of international intervention over the last two decades. It suggests that this conceptual shift can be usefully interrogated through its imbrication within broader epistemological shifts highlighting the limits of causal knowledge claims: heuristically framed in this article in terms of the shift from policy interventions within the problematic of causation to those concerned with the management of effects. In this shift, the means and mechanisms of international intervention have been transformed, no longer focused on the universal application of Western causal knowledge through policy interventions but rather on the effects of specific and unique local and organic processes at work in societies themselves. The focus on effects takes the conceptualization of intervention out of the traditional terminological lexicon of International Relations theory and instead recasts problems in increasingly organic ways, suggesting that artificial or hubristic attempts at socio-political intervention should be excluded or minimized.     

Changing french military procurement policy: The state,industry and ‘Europe’ in the case of the A400M

Numerous sector-specific studies have shown that over the past 20 years different parts of the French state have changed their relationship to national industry and the European Union. However, the defence sector has been both under-studied and the victim of an assumption of ‘military exceptionalism’. Based upon empirical research into the ordering of the Airbus A400M military transporter, this article uses a cognitive approach to policy analysis to unpack the sets of actors and distribution of power which today make French procurement decisions. It shows that many policy preferences have changed considerably but that the key protagonists have remained remarkably stable.     

The ‘treason of the intellectuals’: the shadowy presence of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Greece, 1950–1963

This paper seeks to reconstruct the Greek adventures of the Congress for Cultural Freedom from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s. It argues that the presence of the CCF in Greece was weak as can be inferred by the inability to form an official committee, but also by the absence of an original intellectual production in Greek. Its weakness can be attributed to the inability to combine commitment to the anti-communist cause, in the liberal terms of the CCF, with intellectual or artistic work of some merit for CCF representatives in Greece. These contradictions are personified by Manolis Korakas, a socialist and passionate anti-communist, who remained in the shadows due to the Congress’ elitist bias.     

In search of the ‘Other’ in Asia: Russia–China relations revisited

This paper argues that Russia and China are partners of consequence and that the neglect of the normative dimension of the Sino-Russian relationship has led its impact on global governance to be undervalued and misunderstood. Following a constructivist approach, the paper examines the shared norms underlying an ever closer Sino-Russian partnership, despite divergent interests in a number of areas. A first section examines how shared norms lead Russia and China to define their identity similarly, facilitate joint actions, and constrain their individual policy choices. For Russia, elaborating its own unique identity is crucial to its claim to global status, though complicated by interactions with multiple ‘Others.’ Russia's effort to engage Asian partners is often viewed as hedging against China, but as second section argues that Russian engagement in Asia is better understood in terms of Russia's effort to define an Asian identity. A third section highlights the securitization/desecuritization dynamic in Sino-Russian economic relations. Xi Jinping's efforts to redefine China's global role reinforces its tendency to desecuritize the vulnerabilities that lead China to seek economic cooperation with Russia. Russia, fearing becoming a ‘resource appendage’ of China, then securitizes economic relations with China.     

‘A reach greater than the grasp’: Israeli intelligence and the conflict in south Lebanon 1990–2000

This article examines the way in which intelligence was used by Israel in its war against Hizb'allah in south Lebanon. By using ideas drawn from the literature on strategic culture, it argues that in trying to replicate methods used in countering Palestinian insurgents, Israel's intelligence agencies failed to appreciate fully the finite political aims of Hizb'allah's guerrilla struggle. As such, the paucity in Israel's collective intelligence effort allowed operatives of Hizb'allah's military wing, al-Muqawama, to score notable intelligence triumphs over Israel, triumphs that did much force the IDF into a unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2000.     

Mobilizing for a ‘Europe from below’: network,territory, and place in the anti-austerity Blockupy movement

In March 2015, the anti-austerity movement, Blockupy, protested the inauguration of the ECB's new premises. This article explores Blockupy's construction of a sociospatial imaginary of a ‘Europe from below’. The article: (1) analyses the construction of the transnational Blockupy network, (2) compares the territory of the elite's austerity Eurozone with that of a different ‘Europe from below’, and (3) shows how the ECB premises have been the central place of European austerity and protest. This approach supplements recent debates on multispatiality, and shifts the lens used to analyse crises from a structural one to one emphasizing ongoing politicization ‘from below’.     

Parsis and Public Space in 19th Century Bombay: a Different Formulation of ‘the Political’ in a Non-European Context

Abstract

This paper looks at the Parsi community in 19th century India and its role as an agent in the formation of public cultural space in Bombay. The Parsis provide a unique example of an indigenous community under colonial rule, who through acceptance of the values of modernity and enterprise culture, manage to negotiate a position of prominence within one of the power centres of the then dominant British empire. The notion of the public sphere thus employed, provides an interesting contrast with the Habermasian theory of the bourgeois public sphere. Furthermore, it provides a model that directly challenges the somewhat simplistic subject-object relations that are often implicit within post-colonial theory. Indeed, there is a particular kind of desire for modernity that is reflected in the active participation of Parsis in the construction of imperial public space in Bombay. This leads to a reconsideration of the fluidity of the notion of the ‘political’ within the discussion of post-colonialism.     

The ‘I’ and the ‘we’ of citizenship in the age of waning democracy: Wolin and Balibar on citizenship,the political and dedemocratization

Despite drawing on different historical traditions and philosophical sources, Sheldon Wolin and Étienne Balibar have come to see citizenship and democracy in fundamentally similar ways. However, the work of one has not been considered alongside that of the other. In this paper, I examine some of their key texts and draw out three areas of common concern: the historical specificity of the political, citizenship as a dialectical process and dedemocratization. The significance of Wolin and Balibar’s writing on citizenship and democracy lies in a set of proposals for the eternal rebirth of the citizen as democratic agent between action and institution, hierarchy and equality, individual and community, difference and the universal. Their open-ended frameworks can be seen as an antidote to contemporary pessimism about the fate of democracy as either political order or normative ideal. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary Ecuadorean and Bolivian debates about how to combine relational ontologies and liberalism has opened a fertile domain for re-imagining the I and We of citizenship.     

Higher education and confidence in institutions: A secondary analysis of the ‘European values survey’, 1981–83

A secondary analysis of the ‘European Values Survey’ tests some of the theoretical conclusions regarding the rationality of trust and distrust in established institutions. A reanalysis of the data set's question relating to confidence in ten particular institutions shows that the expected impact of higher education on confidence in institutions to punish governments for breach of trust applies only to those countries with a long, uninterrupted tradition of upholding civil liberties. In these countries multivariate analyses reveal a latent pattern of ‘civil society’ which is the most important dimension of how institutions are perceived by respondents.     

Female voting power: the contribution of women’s suffrage to the growth of social spending in Western Europe (1869–1960)

Women’s suffrage was a major event in the history of democratization in Western Europe and elsewhere. Public choice theory predicts that the demand for publicly funded social spending is systematically higher where women have and use the right to vote. Using historical data from six Western European countries for the period 1869–1960, we provide evidence that social spending out of GDP increased by 0.6–1.2% in the short-run as a consequence of women’s suffrage, while the long-run effect is three to eight times larger. We also explore a number of other public finance implications of the gender gap.     

Even rules,uneven practices: Opening the ‘black box’ of EU law in action

While considerable attention is paid to the legal aspect of implementation of European directives, the practical ‘street-level’ implementation of EU law remains to a large extent a ‘black box’. This article sheds light on this black box with a study on the implementation of the Safety Data Sheets Directive in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. This cross-national analysis reveals that different phases in the implementation process leave different traces. Although the member states correctly and completely transposed the directive, compliance by the regulated leaves something to be desired and enforcement by regulators is rare and varies considerably between and within the countries. This article looks into the factors that explain why even rules do not necessarily lead to even practices and argues for more attention for the phase of practical implementation.     

‘Words are cheaper than bullets’: Britain’s psychological warfare in the Middle East, 1945–60

Psychological warfare, the use of propaganda to aid military operations, acquired prominence in British strategy in the early Cold War Middle East. This article argues planning made limited progress until the 1956 Suez crisis. Suez produced optimism about propaganda’s ability to address threats from Egypt, the USSR and the Yemen. In Oman, Aden and Cyprus, psychological warfare was practiced to demoralise enemies, bolster allies and counter smears about British conduct. Only mixed results ensued though, and doubts about the military’s involvement in propaganda lingered. Psychological warfare endured because it was a cheap option that might sometimes work, and could induce opponents to surrender rather than fight on.     

Testing Social Ties against Merits: the Political Career of Provincial Party Chiefs in China, 1990–2007

The literature of Chinese politics focuses on two determinants in selecting government officials—merits and social ties. On the one hand, local officials who produce higher economic growth are more likely to be promoted. On the other hand, local officials who have social ties with top Party leaders are more likely to become candidates of future leaders. Since1990 two major factions have dominated in the Chinese politics. Strong tie with one faction might be perceived as a threat to the rival faction. My empirical analysis will examine what determined the promotion outcomes of provincial Party chiefs from 1990 to 2007. Five indicators of social ties are used in the Cox event history analysis: ties built through family, college, birthplace, workplace, or mishu. In the analysis the factionalist argument holds better than the meritocratic argument. But the story of social ties is complex because different social ties have different effects on promotion outcomes.     

The Fate of ‘Big Government’ in the United States:Not Over,But Undermined?

Big government in the United States has never been as expansiveas the big state abroad. Whatever its scope, there is little evidence that the days of big government are numbered. Among both the public and organized interests there is at once antagonism toward big government and yet consistent support for many of the protections it affords, including those provided by the U.S. federal government's largest, and sure to get larger, social programs. The most important story is not the threat of a reduced state, but rather itstransformation. Continuing attempts to privatize its administration could put much of the big state, including its social programs, in the hands of big business.