Beyond suffrage: the role of Cuban women in the state-building years of a failed democracy (1940–1952)

During the first third of the twentieth century, several women joined associations to promote legal reforms. Between 1917 and 1934, the Cuban Parliament passed laws regarding women’s legal status, therefore challenging the traditional relations between state, Church and family inherited from the colonial period. Although the Constitution of 1940 incorporated these measures, Cuban women barely took part in state institutions, but their increasing presence in public affairs marked a turning point in their social status. A few women were appointed as Cuban representatives to international organizations, and political parties set up female auxiliaries. Moreover, several women’s associations worked for peace, demanded improvements in the healthcare system, took action towards enhancing education in rural areas and pushed for effective reform of the Civic Code in order to provide equal rights for men and women. African-Cuban women’s participation in these organizations was limited due to discrimination and they in turn set up their own organizations.     

An evaluation of EU regional policy. Do structural actions crowd out public spending?

Motivated by the lack of success of previous studies trying to estimate the impact of the European Cohesion Policy, this paper brings an unexplored issue to light: transfers that are intended to finance public investment in key areas for growth might be crowded-out by subsidized governments to alternative uses. In fact, using annual data from fifteen member countries (1993–2005), we conclude that public investment in the member countries makes up around 60% of the increase in EU funds. The limited role of the European Commission in the allocation of the Funds could partially explain this result.     

The Changing Shape of Intellectual Cooperation: From the League of Nations to UNESCO

This article elaborates on some of the key ideas that gave rise to and animated the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, a body which was among the last permanent organisations of the League of Nations. Although the Commission's efforts to cement intellectual relations among nations often went unappreciated, its proponents considered intellectual cooperation to be the very heart and soul of the League's Covenant. From the outset, the Commission sought to harmonise the world's various intellectual and cultural currents while maintaining respect for diversity. During its life, the Commission also became increasingly aware of the issue of its own cultural particularity and the vital need to incorporate perspectives and traditions other than those in which its origins lay. It was in grappling with these issues, and not just in pursuing its broader mandate, that the Commission can be said to be the forerunner of UNESCO.     

The Color of Threat: Race,Threat Perception,and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–1923)

Race is understudied in International Relations generally and International Security specifically. To mitigate this omission, this article provides a racial theory of threat perception. It argues that, under certain conditions, racial prejudices embedded in racial identities shape threat perceptions and generate behavioral dispositions. In the first step, racial similarity deflates threat perceptions, while racial difference inflates them. In the second step, deflated threat perceptions facilitate cooperation among racially similar agents, while inflated threat perceptions facilitate discord among racially different agents. Using extensive archival and secondary sources, the article illustrates the explanatory value of the theory in the case of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-23).