Reinventing ‘new’ Europe: Baltic perspectives on transatlantic security reconfigurations

This article examines the self-positioning of the three Baltic states in international politics in relation to the major structural pressures challenging the status quo of the transatlantic security configuration. The constitutive role of the Russia-Georgia war of 2008, the global economic recession, the debt crisis in the eurozone, and the shifting policy preferences and force projection of the United States towards Asia are explored as the key sources of the emerging Baltic security predicament. The empirical conclusions of the poststructuralist discourse analysis conducted for this study demonstrate how the Baltic states, in particular Estonia, have recently come to redefine the contents of ‘new’ Europe, thereby shifting the extant fault lines within the European Union.     

Exploring the ‘Something for Nothing’ Syndrome: Confused Citizens or Free Riders? Evidence from Sweden

This article examines the occurrence of political non‐attitudes in Sweden and identifies the population segment possessing a ‘something for nothing’ (SFN) mentality regarding social spending. Sweden – often regarded as epitomizing the advanced welfare state – constitutes an analytically interesting case, providing a useful counterpoint to the predominantly American‐based evidence on the subject. It is argued here that national political institutions fundamentally affect the prevalence – and social base – of the SFN segment. To identify SFN sentiments, two question batteries measuring social spending preferences are used. One battery contains ‘priced’ items emphasizing the cost of public spending, while the other set of ‘unpriced’ items does not explicitly connect increased public spending with increased taxes. The patterning of attitudes across these items is explored in order to determine whether SFN sentiments are common in the Swedish electorate. The observed attitude patterns are then linked to broader sets of attitudes to the welfare state, testing whether the degree of ideological coherence differs fundamentally between the SFN segment and other groups. The analysis then explores the individual‐level determinants associated with different attitude patterns. The overall results show that: SFN sentiments are not dominant among the Swedish citizenry; the quality of the SFN segment's belief system, in terms of ideological coherence, does not represent a deviant case; and the background characteristics associated with SFN sentiments suggest that members of this segment should rather be viewed as free riders in economically vulnerable positions than ignorant and politically confused citizens.     

Intergenerational Transmission of Party Affiliation Within Political Families

Political Behavior - We investigate the intergenerational transmission of political-party affiliation within families with at least two politicians. We use Swedish registry data that covers all...     

Sentences by Mexican Indian Peasants

Much of the existing literature on the replacement of sharecropping by wage labour in the cotton South during the post‐Depression era tends to focus on developments internal to the United States and to the South as a region. As such, it fails to provide a more global analysis which takes into account the fact that Southern cotton production was integrally tied to a world economy. This article addresses these shortcomings by examining how changes in the class structure of Southern cotton production had an impact on both foreign cotton production and the rise of the man‐made fibre industries between 1930 and 1950. This analysis attempts to avoid some of the major criticisms levelled against dependency theories and world‐system approaches, while showing how a global approach provides a more complete understanding of the relationships between the internal and external socio‐conomic factors which contributed to this historical transformation.