Death and the erotic woman: the European gendering of mortality in times of major religious change

This paper explores the use of European erotic death imagery produced in the Death and the Maiden (D&M) genre in two time periods. It compares and contrasts D&M imagery produced by the Germanic-speaking proto/early-Reformation artists, Hans Baldung (alias Grien) (c1484–1545), Niklaus Manuel (known as Deutsch) (c1484–1530) and Sebald Beham (known as Hans Sebald Beham) (1500–1550) which highlighted the folly, futility and transience of earthly vanities during the transition from Roman Catholic to Protestant Christianity, with contemporary calendar art produced by Cofani Funebri (from 2003) and Lindner (from 2010) which advertise coffins manufactured in the increasingly secular countries of Italy and Poland. Drawing on Biblical narrative, Augustinian theology and European socio-cultural perceptions of gender, this paper argues that these D&M images are highly eroticised and place woman as signifiers of transcient life (vanitas) and earthly pleasure (voluptas), juxtaposing her with a masculine/male representation of death; Death being imaged as an individual in the sixteenth century, and as a coffin in the contemporary works. The paper also contextualises the imagery in terms of traditional European Christian notions of life and death, as informed by the Biblical Fall narrative, with its elucidations of sin, concupiscence and punishment. It thus asserts that both socio-cultural and religious attitudes towards gender are highly significant in D&M imagery and indeed in terms of the artworks, argues that the masculine signifier of Death can be placed as Adam, whilst the Maiden, as fecund life, represents Eve. However, the overt eroticism of both sets of artworks also allows for a reading that draws on Messaris' [(1997). Visual persuasion; the role of images in advertising. London: Sage] notion that visual images ‘make a persuasive communication due to iconicity; the emotional response to the visual image presented’. Thus, this paper contrasts D&M imagery produced over 400 years apart to examine consciously erotic gendered thanantological allegories of women as vanitas and voluptas, and the male/masculine as representations of Death.     

中东欧国家与冷战后北约的新变化

冷战结束后,北约并未因对手的消失而瓦解,而是通过扩大组织、出台新战略和实施新行动找到生存依据并获得新的发展。在北约的新扩大、新战略和新行动中,中东欧国家不管是主动参与还是被动接受,都起到了不可低估的作用。中东欧国家的加入令北约成员国从16个增至30个,拓展了北约的疆域。东欧剧变带来的国际局势的变化,特别是前南斯拉夫地区发生的战争促使北约提出新的战略概念,波黑战争、科索沃战争和马其顿危机更是成为北约新战略的试验场。中东欧国家参与了北约在波黑、科索沃、阿富汗和伊拉克的行动以及乌克兰危机发生后针对俄罗斯的军事部署,做出独有的贡献。同时,中东欧国家的加入也给北约在决策效率、行动能力、责任分担和价值观方面带来新的挑战。不过,由于中东欧国家的军事力量和国家实力有限,在北约内部的影响力不大,这些挑战不足以危及北约的生存。     

俄国石油业的发展与外国石油资本

19世纪后期到20世纪初,俄国石油业在先发性与相对滞后性的矛盾中发展。先发性指俄国是世界石油工业发展较早的地区之一;相对滞后性指与美国相比,俄国石油业在组织方面存在着差距。俄国因其石油资源丰富、利润丰厚成为国际石油资本角逐的场所。俄国外有美国石油资本的竞争,对内则引进欧洲石油资本。以诺贝尔公司为代表的欧洲石油资本不仅资金雄厚、技术先进,还得到俄国政府的支持。欧洲石油资本既推动了俄国石油业的发展,但又并非总能与俄国保持利益上的一致。     

The European lavender vote: Sexuality,ideology and vote choice in Western Europe

In many European democracies, political punditry has highlighted the attempts of political parties on the left to court the ‘lavender vote’ of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. This article examines the presence of a gay vote in Western Europe with a focus on assessing the role of sexuality in shaping individuals’ political preferences and voting behaviour. Empirically, the effect of sexuality on both ideological identification as well as party vote choice is analysed. Using a cumulative dataset of eight rounds of the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2017, this article demonstrates that partnered lesbians and gay men are more likely than comparable heterosexuals to identify with the left, support leftist policy objectives and vote for left-of-centre political parties. The analysis represents the first empirical cross-national European study of the voting behaviour of homosexual individuals and sheds new light on the importance of sexuality as a predictor of political ideology and voting behaviour within the Western European context.     

Cross-pressures and the European lavender vote: Testing the conditionality of the sexuality gap

Emerging evidence points towards the existence of a “sexuality gap” in the political preferences and behaviour of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) voters and that of heterosexuals in Western Europe. Very little is known, however, about how this gap is moderated by socio-economic status. This paper tests the conditionality of the sexuality gap by analysing how the effect of LGB status is conditioned by income and education. Empirically, we rely on data from the European Social Survey (2002–2017) to analyse the marginal effect of sexuality in determining ideological placement, vote choice and support for economic redistribution across different income and education levels. The results demonstrate that the divergence between LGBs' and heterosexuals’ preferences only emerges amongst those with higher income and education. The findings also suggest that the sexuality gap may be the result of the asymmetric effect of these socio-economic variables for LGBs and heterosexuals.     

金融危机下中东欧转型模式再评估

新兴市场国家经济与政治体制转型是转型问题研究的焦点,而中东欧国家的转型模式也作为一个范例持续得到来自理论和实证研究上的关注.本研究以金融危机发生、演化为背景,旨在检测金融危机背景下中东欧国家的整体经济表现与金融市场表现,并通过分析对国际学术界公认的"转型优等生"中东欧国家的转型模式进行再评估和反思.     

Coming out of the shadow? Studies of local governments in Central and Eastern Europe in European academic research

This article is an analysis of the changing role of research on local governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within mainstream European studies. It refers to dependency theory (Wallerstein, Prebish) as applied to scientific research. It classifies CEE as being in the semi-periphery of academic research. The empirical analysis consists of two parts: (1) qualitative review of the most important of the comparative studies of European local governments. It includes a discussion on the role of local governments and researchers from CEE in these studies; (2) quantitative based on an analysis of articles published in international journals and citations for those articles in Scopus. The analysis covers 14 countries (all new member states who joined the EU from 2004 onwards, plus the Balkan countries: Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia).     

The transition from limited access orders to open access orders in the post-communist Europe

This paper attempts to explain the process of institutional transition of post-communist countries applying conceptual framework proposed by D.C. North, J. J. Wallis, and B. R. Weingast. The first part of the article is devoted to outline the theory of North, Weingast, and Wallis. The second part the theory is used to analyze transformation processes in post-communist countries. An important conclusion of this paper is that cultural, religious and historical factors have crucial impact on formation of new coalitions of elites in the transitions countries. In the countries where Western values were present the transfer of the market and democratic formal institutions was easier. Also, the process of transformation was strongly influenced by external factors, especially the prospect of integration with the European Union, which encouraged elites to take action that benefited the opening of both political and economic markets. These observations suggest that, in general, the success of transformation in transition countries did not depend on the intentional actions of ruling elites.     

Partisan effects in morality policy making

Current comparative policy research gives no clear answer to the question of whether partisan politics in general or the partisan composition of governments in particular matter for different morality policy outputs across countries and over time. This article addresses this desideratum by employing a new encompassing dataset that captures the regulatory permissiveness in six morality policies that are homosexuality, same‐sex partnership, prostitution, pornography, abortion and euthanasia in 16 European countries over five decades from 1960 to 2010. Given the prevalent scepticism about a role for political parties for morality policies in existing research, this is a ‘hard’ test case for the ‘parties do matter’ argument. Starting from the basic theoretical assumption that different party families, if represented in national governments to varying degrees, ought to leave differing imprints on morality policy making, this research demonstrates that parties matter when accounting for the variation in morality policy outputs. This general statement needs to be qualified in three important ways. First, the nature of morality policy implies that party positions or preferences cannot be fully understood by merely focusing on one single cleavage alone. Instead, morality policy is located at the interface of different cleavages, including not only left‐right and secular‐religious dimensions, but also the conflicts between materialism and postmaterialism, green‐alternative‐libertarian and traditional‐authoritarian‐nationalist (GAL‐TAN) parties, and integration and demarcation. Second, it is argued in this article that the relevance of different cleavages for morality issues varies over time. Third, partisan effects can be found only if individual cabinets, rather than country‐years, are used as the unit of analysis in the research design. In particular, party families that tend to prioritise individual freedom over collective interests (i.e., left and liberal parties) are associated with significantly more liberal morality policies than party families that stress societal values and order (i.e., conservative/right and religious parties). While the latter are unlikely to overturn previous moves towards permissiveness, these results suggest that they might preserve the status quo at least. Curiously, no systematic effects of green parties are found, which may be because they have been represented in European governments at later periods when morality policy outputs were already quite permissive.     

Electoral infidelity: Why party members cast defecting votes

Party politics and electoral research generally assume that party members are loyal voters. This article first assesses the empirical basis for this assumption before providing individual‐level explanations for defection. It combines prominent theories from party politics and electoral behaviour research and argues that internal disagreement and external pressure can each bring about disloyal voting. The hypotheses are motivated with multi‐country European survey data and tested on two sets of party‐level national surveys. The results show, first, that, on average, 8 per cent of European party members cast a defecting vote in the last election, and second, that dissatisfaction with the leadership is the strongest predictor of defection. Additionally, internal ideological disagreement is associated with higher probabilities of defection, whereas the effects of pull factors in the form of contentious policies are rather limited. These findings emphasise the importance of testing scientific assumptions and the potential significance of party leadership contests.