imagining and living the revolution: an Arendtian reading of Rosa Luxemburg’s letters and writings

In this paper, I look into personal and political entanglements in Rosa Luxemburg’s letters and essays revolving around questions and problems of the revolution. The analysis is informed by Hannah Arendt’s theorisation of revolutions in modernity, as well as her reading of narratives within the political. What is intriguing about the Luxemburg/Arendt encounter is the fact that although both theorists consciously refused to connect themselves with feminist ideas and movements of their times and geographies, their writings have inspired a rich body of feminist theorisations of the political. What I argue is that Luxemburg’s ideas and lived experiences of the revolution largely inspired Arendt’s theorisation of the revolution as a political phenomenon in the pursuit of freedom, and are opening up new vistas in our understanding of gendered dynamics in historical and contemporary revolutionary events.     

Correction to: Age Patterns in Risk Taking Across the World

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - In the original publication, the legends for Figs 4 and 5 were incorrect, such that each regression line was mislabeled with the incorrect country. Below are the...     

Evaluating local government performance in times of crisis

In recent years, Spanish local governments have come under increasing pressure to accommodate severe economic restrictions while maintaining their provision of local public services. We analyse overall cost efficiency in Spanish local governments during the period of the economic crisis (2008–2013), under four different non-parametric methodologies. Moreover, given how problematic it is to precisely define what municipalities do, we compare three different output models with various measures of quantity as well as quality. Results suggest that Spanish local government efficiency improved over the period 2008–2013 since budget expenditures (inputs) fell while local public services and facilities (outputs) were maintained. We also find evidence of the possible implications of service quality when measuring municipalities’ efficiency, and of structural differences in the average efficiency between municipalities located in different Spanish regions. Finally, our results confirm that the level and variation of efficiency scores are affected by the approach taken.     

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens’ levels of policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain.     

The venturous bid for the independence of Catalonia

Following an ambiguous constitutional compromise for democratization, the territorial decentralization of the Spanish state developed by means of political party competition, exchanges, and bargaining. Hence, the so-called state of autonomies was characterized as “non-institutional federalism” [Colomer, Josep M. 1998. “The Spanish ‘State of Autonomies’: Non-institutional Federalism.” West European Politics 21 (4): 40–52]. In the most recent period, competition and instability have intensified. New developments include, on one side, attempts at recentralizating the state and, on the other side, demands and mobilizations for Catexit, that is, the independence of Catalonia from Spain, which resulted in sustained inter-territorial conflict. This article addresses these recent changes with a focus on the relations between the Spanish and the Catalan governments. The political changes were analyzed as a result of opportunities and incentives offered by a loose institutional framework and the subsequent competitive strategies of extreme party leaders.     

Spain: from the indignados rebellion to regime crisis (2011-2016)

Since 15 May 2011 Spain has progressively entered a political and regime crisis in which the main institutional pillars of the political system constructed in 1977-1978 during the transition from the Franco dictatorship to parliamentary democracy suffered from serious wear. This can be analysed following Gramsci's notion of hegemony crisis whose main features fit well with the current situation in Spain. The regime crisis has passed through different stages – the last being the emergence and rise in the polls of Podemos, which emerged in a context marked by the deepening of the crisis and the difficulty of securing significant social victories. To understand the meaning of this current regime crises it is useful to read history, following Walter Benjamin as an open process full of bifurcations with no linear trajectory. Spanish regime crisis opens for the first time since the seventies the possibility of a social and political change whose final sense is still uncertain.     

South European Healthcare Systems under Harsh Austerity: A Progress–Regression Mix?

This article addresses the question of whether the economic crisis provides a politically opportune time to drastically curtail public healthcare in South Europe or whether, instead, there are signs of longer-term reform strategies for potentially balancing fiscal targets with the quest for enhanced value and health outcomes, when eventually growth resumes. After a brief examination of the profile of healthcare systems in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain prior to the crisis, we comparatively assess the mix of retrenchment, restructuring and recalibration strategies. The effects of the austerity-driven reforms on current (and expected) health outcomes are also briefly analysed. We conclude with reflections on the future of public healthcare in South Europe.     

Revolutionary Mothers? Interacting Power Relations,Agency, and Social Change

In this article a theoretical discussion about intersectionality is carried out in dialogue with the ways in which battered and separated mothers deal with their children's situation and their relationship to their violent co‐parents/ex‐partners. In line with Connell's (1987) Connell, R. W. 1987. Gender and Power. Society, the Person and Sexual Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar] argument that categories such as gender are shaped by several structures and that the social order is inherently instable due to historic “unevenness”, contradictions, and internal differentiation, it is shown how abused mothers both follow and undermine well‐established notions of childhood, gender, and parenthood when trying to tackle their situation post separation or divorce. What is furthermore shown is how their “doing” of age, gender, and kinship entails both dichotomization and neutralization. It is argued that constructions prominent in public discussions about children at risk—the intrinsic value of childhood, children's right to personal integrity, and need of safety and protection—serve as a resource when the interviewees argue against the norm prescribing contact between children and fathers post separation and divorce. Two established constructions of the child's best interests are set up against each other when the mothers try to undermine power associated with the father position. An empirically sensitive and actor‐centred intersectional analysis must be sophisticated enough to grasp such complexities if we are to be able to fully explore possibilities for social change.