科层制属性和公共部门绩效:东南欧地区比较研究

行政合理化程度、经济增长率和公共部门绩效之间的相互作用,至少对于东南欧国家来说,目前仍然是研究不足的代表性领域之一。它从本质上预先假定国家行政管理中的科层属性具有经济上的影响,这种科层结构在行政集中和动态性方面或多或少近似于韦伯行政结构。截至20世纪末,该领域的文献已经对这一主题进行了综合性研究,分析了超过全球35个国家的情形。但是东南欧各国没有包含在这些研究中。在此背景下,论文旨在对东南欧各国,尤其是巴尔干地区国家进行理论和实证研究的比较,以确定科层制属性、经济增长和治理绩效之间的相互关系。这一研究方法——"经济性科层制分析"适应于论文的研究目标,并且由"竞争性工资、内部晋升和职业稳定性、功绩性聘任"组成,其内容建立在韦伯的行政合理化原则基础之上的。论文的社会学调查在4个东南欧洲国家进行:罗马尼亚、希腊、保加利亚和克罗地亚,这4个国家是从125个相关样本中选取的,基于的标准是以上提到的国家在中央政府层面上严格的代表性水平。     

非传统安全与欧洲新安全战略

非传统安全问题已日益成为国际关系中的一个新的焦点,作为区域安全共同体的欧盟同样面临着紧迫的非传统安全形势。欧盟首部《欧洲安全战略报告》界定了欧洲当前面临的主要非传统安全问题并提出了对策措施,彰显了欧洲安全观念的变迁和安全实现路径的转变,这对于欧盟和整个国际社会而言都将产生深远影响。     

Ideological identity,issue-based ideology and bipolar affective polarization in multiparty systems: The cases of Argentina,Chile, Italy,Portugal and Spain

In multiparty contexts, we know that affective polarization tends to cluster in ideological blocs, although the factors driving this process are still quite unexplored. In this paper, we contribute to filling this gap in the literature by exploring the capacity of ideological identity vis-à-vis issue-based ideology to polarize sentiments towards party voters into two opposing left-right blocs. Specifically, we provide empirical evidence that affective attachments to ideological labels increase the affective distance between ideological blocs to a greater extent than issue extremity and issue consistency. These bipolarizing effects of ideological identity persist even when the identity is inconsistent with issue-based ideology. Additionally, we show that bipolar affective polarization exerts little reverse influence on ideological identity. We support these arguments using an original survey from the TRI-POL project carried out in five multiparty systems: Argentina, Chile, Italy, Portugal and Spain.     

Income inequality and level of corruption in post-communist European countries between 1995 and 2014

This paper analyses the relationships between income inequality and corruption in Europe and looks specifically at post-communist European countries. The scientific community agrees that there is important relationship between income inequality and corruption and many authors believe that low income inequality is connected to low corruption. According to empirical papers, this is true not only on the European scale, but also on a global scale. In this paper, I test this claim by conducting a multilevel analysis on 39 European countries in the period of 1995–2014. This model ascertains that there are immense differences between post-communist countries and the rest of European countries. The effects of income inequality on the level of corruption are discussed.     

Reshaping EU Attitudes? The Case of Social Democratic and Radical Left Parties in Spain and Italy

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, the issue of European integration has become increasingly salient in many European polities. The European left has adopted a different stance toward European integration, both in terms of economic and welfare‐state integration. On the one hand, radical left parties (RLPs) have always opposed a process of integration dominated by neoliberal logic; on the other hand, the social democratic parties (SDPs) have appeared as one of the main pro‐EU party families, identifying the EU as a privileged space in which to promote the building of a European social model. In this paper, we propose a binary comparison between RLPs and SDPs in Italy and Spain with a qualitative content analysis methodology. Our results show that albeit the crisis brought SDPs closer to a Eurocritical stance vis‐à‐vis the social‐Europe, this dimension along with the political integration are still dividing issues for the RLPs and SDPs families.     

Unintended Consequences of EU Democracy Support in the European Neighbourhood

ABSTRACT

The European Union’s (EU) impact on the political governance of the European neighbourhood is varied and sometimes opposite to the declared objectives of its democracy support policies. The democracy promotion literature has to a large extent neglected the unintended consequences of EU democracy support in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The EU has left multiple imprints on the political trajectories of the countries in the neighbourhood and yet the dominant explanation, highlighting the EU’s security and economic interests in the two regions,cannot fully account for the unintended consequences of its policies. The literature on the ‘pathologies’ of international organisations offers an explanation, emphasizing the failures of the EU bureaucracy to anticipate, prevent or reverse the undesired effects of its democracy support in the neighbourhood.     

Municipal Activism on Irregular Migrants: The Framing of Inclusive Approaches at the Local Level

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which city policymakers in Europe frame the reasons for provision of welfare services to migrants with irregular status. In the context of restrictive national legal and policy frameworks, the article explores a tendency toward municipal activism in extending access to services, providing a typology of six policy frames used by policy makers that identify the intended beneficiaries and stated policy aims. Drawing on interviews with local policymakers and documentary sources, the article contributes to our understanding of the reasons why some European cities provide services to this particular section of the migrant population.     

Faith-based HIV response in post-Soviet Eastern Europe: the case of Channels of Hope in Russia,Romania, and Armenia

ABSTRACT

Most of the data available on faith-based HIV response focus on Africa, which is the heart of the pandemic. This article investigates faith-based community-level HIV responses within Eastern Europe, by studying the implementation of World Vision International’s “Channels of Hope” faith-based HIV intervention. The intervention approach was developed in a high HIV-prevalence setting (South Africa) and then implemented across sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere – including three low HIV-prevalence Eastern European settings (Armenia, Romania, and Russia). Drawing from implementation and evaluation research, this article explores the nature, challenges, and potential of faith-based HIV response within low-prevalence, post-Soviet contexts.     

Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe

ABSTRACT

In this article, Sayyid’s focus is on the relationship between the emergence of Islamophobia and the crisis of Europeanness. What is it about Europeanness right now that makes one of its most vocal expressions an insistence on the Muslim question? To answer, or perhaps address, the question of why the Muslim question and why now, Sayyid places the formation of European identity in a postcolonial context. That is, the horizon opened by the decentring of the West not only geopolitically or economically but also culturally and philosophically is explored. East Central Europe in its various permutations—historical and cultural—provides an excellent platform to study the impact of the postcolonial on Europeanness. The East Central European experience of the postcolonial is inflected through a history of imperial articulations and peripheralizations that demonstrate not only the contingency of the idea of Europeanness but also its imbrication with the Orient.     

The past in the present: time and narrative of Balkan wars in media industry and international politics

In this article, we explore various forms of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy-making, truth claims and expert accounts in which different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars, both old (1912–1913) and new (1991–1999), have been most evident. We argue that the ways in which these perspectives are rooted in different temporalities and historicisations and have resulted in the construction of commonplace and time-worn representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives that have led to the sensationalism of media industry and the essentialisation of collective memory. Taken together as a common feature of contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant international opinion, politics and scholarship, these narrative patterns show that historical knowledge is conveyed in ways that make present and represent the accounts of another past, and the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public hegemonic representations. The aim is to show how certain moments of rupture are historicised, and subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe.