The 1984 Luxembourg election

The emergence of new interest groups and social movements in the 1960s and 1970s facilitated a participation explosion in Western democracies. With increased levels of education and improved understanding of the workings of the political process, modern citizens are now faced with a vibrant and growing market for political activism. Political parties face an especially strong challenge in this market‐place as it appears that citizens now make a succession of participatory decision, akin to impulse buying in a supermarket. It is not surprising that the market share which traditional parties retain is apparently in decline. Whether this is problematic for democracy is more open to debate than conventional models of participation would suggest.     

Subnational Governments in the Negotiation of the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014–2020: The Case of Spain

The negotiation of the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014–2020 has been an outstanding topic on the agenda of the EU during the past few years, on which subnational units also tried to have a say. In this article we analyse the formal institutional framework available for the Spanish Autonomous Communities to participate in the negotiation of the Cohesion Policy 2014–2020 and the Common Agriculture Policy 2014–2020. By analysing this participation, this text explores how this institutional framework has evolved during the past few years and how the Autonomous Communities could represent their interests at the domestic and supranational level within these crucial negotiations.     

The development of an entrepreneurial university

An entrepreneurial society refers to places where knowledge-based entrepreneurship has emerged as a driving force for economic growth, employment creation and competitiveness. In this context, entrepreneurial universities play an important role as both knowledge-producer and a disseminating institution. In the literature, several studies contributed with relevant findings. Most of these studies reveal a tendency to use case studies to explain this phenomenon justified by the embryonic nature of the topic field, and with the lack of a robust theoretical framework to understand it. No empirical study, however, has highlighted the interrelations among environmental and internal factors that conditioned the development of entrepreneurial universities with the teaching, research and entrepreneurial missions that they need to achieve. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of these interrelations identifying the most critical factors that conditioned these missions and to this end brings a proposal model to measure this phenomenon empirically in the light of the Institutional Economics and the Resource-Based View. The methodology adopted is integrated by the Spanish Entrepreneurial University Scoreboard to identify this phenomenon and Structural Equation Modeling to analyze the relationships among independent and dependent variables that integrate the proposal model of entrepreneurial university. This research could cover invaluable strategies to bring further benefits to society (in terms of the creation of new business and employment) and, in particular, to educational institutions.     

Sharaf Rashidov and the international dimensions of Soviet Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT

During the Cold War, Sharaf Rashidov became a representative of the Soviet anti-imperialist agenda, a key interlocutor with Third World leaders and a promoter of Uzbekistan as a modern and emancipated model of political, economic, social and cultural development for newly independent countries emerging from decolonization. Tashkent hosted important meetings among Soviet and Asian leaders, along with international festivals of cinema and literature, which attracted hundreds of Asian, African and Latin American intellectuals, writers, poets, journalists, trade unionists and athletes. Moreover, Uzbekistan came to symbolize the self-proclaimed compatibility between communism and Islam, offering a façade of religious freedom, tolerance and tradition combined with Bolshevik progress. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan discredited this narrative – and Uzbekistan and (posthumously) Rashidov were humiliated in the Cotton Affair – pointing to the impact as well as the limits of Uzbek internationalism.