Voting when the economy goes bad,everyone is in charge,and no one is to blame: The case of the 2009 German election

The economy was a major issue in Germany’s 2009 election. The global economic crisis did not spare Germany, whose economy is tightly integrated into the global economy. So when the German economy experienced a historical shock, did voters connect their views of the economy with their vote choice? Or did they, as some research has suggested, recognize Germany’s dependence on global markets and cut the government slack, especially when the government consists of the country’s two major parties? Using pre- and post-election panel surveys from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we investigate the weight that voters gave to the economy, relative to other considerations, when casting their ballot and whether governing parties were disproportionately judged based on the state of the economy.     

Economic voting in a crisis: The Irish election of 2011

The paper explores a question raised by the 2011 Irish election, which saw an almost unprecedented decline in support for a major governing party after an economic collapse that necessitated an ECB/IMF ‘bailout’. This seems a classic case of ‘economic voting’ in which a government is punished for incompetent performance. How did the government lose this support: gradually, as successive economic indicators appeared negative, or dramatically, following major shocks? The evidence points to losses at two critical junctures. This is consistent with an interpretation of the link between economics and politics that allows for qualitative judgements by voters in assigning credit and blame for economic performance.     

冷战初期苏联的对外战略评析

从二战结束的1945年到1947年的两年间,由于大国关系、国际政治环境发生了重大变化,苏联的对外战略随之进行调整,即从"积极防御战略"向有限扩张战略转变。这种战略转变加剧了美苏的权力竞争和利益争夺。     

Lost Imperium: the European Liberation Front (1949-54)

In 1947, just two years after the fall of Nazi Germany, an American expatriate living in Ireland named Francis Parker Yockey wrote Imperium, a massive tome that advanced a new strategy for post-war European fascism. Yockey insisted that fascists abandon their narrow nationalist viewpoint and, instead, fight for a new European-wide fascist empire, which he dubbed the 'Imperium'. In 1948 Yockey and his closest collaborators left Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and founded the European Liberation Front (ELF), a British-based groupuscule that lasted until 1954. Rejecting the possibility of building a mass fascist movement in post-war Europe, the ELF defined its primary task as ideological: namely, the advancement of the 'Imperium' idea inside the ranks of Europe's 'fascist elite'. The ELF soon ran into stiff opposition from Mosley over Yockey's controversial identification of the United States, and not the Soviet Union, as Europe's 'main enemy'. The ELF also met with fierce resistance from Hitler worshippers inside the British right like Arnold Leese, who rejected the ELF's emphasis on 'culture' over 'race'. Despite the ELF's relatively brief existence as a groupuscule, its introduction of a new kind of 'Eurofascist' thinking has recently led to its rediscovery by contemporary European New Rightists now searching for a new political strategy following both the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's sole 'superpower'.     

‘Playing for fascism’: sportsmanship,antisemitism and the British Union of Fascists

Taking recent developments in the study of fascism as a cultural system as a starting point, Spurr examines the interrelationship between notions of race, sportsmanship and Britishness in the subculture of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). More specifically, by focusing on the BUF’s understandings of Britishness and sportsmanship, he highlights the self-reflexive qualities of the movement’s subculture in which a fascist world-view shaped not only explicitly political programmes but also the ways in which this variant of European fascism mirrored particularly English modes of defining national identity and cultural difference in the rhetoric of sportsmanship. In addition, Spurr outlines one of the many ways that this fascist culture shaped social practice in the fascist community, so reflecting an assumption that fascism was as much a lived experience as it was a world of ideas and political philosophy. In so doing, he examines the implications of the BUF’s distinctly English notion of sportsmanship for its followers’ self-definition as Britons, and how this understanding functioned in the construction of the counter-image of the Sporting Jew. As a metaphor, while seemingly rather innocuous, this characterization of the Jew enabled Mosleyites to express a multilayered critique of Jews in a manner that encapsulated their wider ideological concerns and in an idiom readily recognized in the wider context of British inter-war culture. In adopting this approach, Spurr rejects suggestions that the BUF mimicked Nazi models of antisemitism and moves beyond revisionist historiography’s concern with origins and forms to explore the cultural functions of racism in the movement’s subculture.     

中国经济学范式的反思与创新

中国传统经济学的"生产关系范式",不以生产方式为主要研究对象,脱离客观实际,陷入主观主义、形而上学和法学幻想;新时期的"生产关系+资源配置范式"存在严重的逻辑混乱和内在矛盾;现代中国经济学的"生产方式范式",应研究社会主义初级阶段生产方式以及与之相适应的生产关系和上层建筑的基本特征,以马克思主义经济学的科学世界观、方法论与基本原理为指导,吸收、借鉴西方经济学积极成果,坚持从实际出发,以中国问题为导向,形成中国风格和中国特色。     

Young Turk Governance in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War

Abstract

The article analyses the system of government of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by looking at three elements: the constitutional-parliamentarian monarchy, the Committee of Union and Progress and the army. The analysis takes place along two axes: one in which the functioning of, and the power relations between, the different institutional elements are analysed, and one based on a series of case studies of important decision-making moments of the years 1914–18.

The civil-military relations as they developed during the war years are studies in a comparative framework. The Ottoman situation is analysed against the backdrop of changes in the balance of power between military and civilian authorities in other belligerent countries in Europe.

The conclusion is that the Ottoman Empire was a constitutional and parliamentarian monarchy only in name, but that its governance did not turn into a form of military rule either. It was run by the Committee of Union and Progress, but within that, key decisions were taken by changing informal coalitions of power brokers in such a way as to make sure that the two dominant factions, the civilian one led by Talât and the military one led by Enver were in agreement.     

Persistence and change in Soviet and Russian relations with Afghanistan

This paper examines persistence and change in the Soviet Union's and then Russia's relations with Afghanistan with respect to development and security. First, a detailed analysis of the promise and reality of Soviet development assistance reveals conceptual shortcomings in their attempt to induce economic development in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union's heritage is then revealed in order to understand Russia's current perception of post-Taliban Afghanistan as well as Russia's emerging interests and commitment to Afghanistan's economic development. This paper argues that Russia will most likely replicate standard industrialization development approaches in contributing to Afghanistan's development. Therefore, Russia will probably run into problems similar to those that led to the failure of the Soviet modernization project, which consisted of large-scale development projects that were inappropriate to the country's institutions and the lives of most Afghans. It is questionable whether such reiteration will induce economic development now, in the complex setting of a fragmented and fragile state with a multitude of external players looking out for their own interests.     

Environment and Energy: The Baltic Sea Gas Pipeline

Germany and Russia have agreed to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The 1,200 kilometers-long structure will run from Vyborg, Russia to Greifswald, Germany traversing the Baltic Sea. The Baltic countries, Finland, Poland and Sweden, have expressed concerns about the project. At issue is the environmental impact of the project as well as the energy, political, and socioeconomic implications.     

Family Formation in the Baltic Countries: A Transformation in the Legacy of state socialism

This article examines the transformation of nuptiality patterns in the Baltic countries since the late 1960s, in the context of long-term trends. The aim of the study is to compare the entry into first conjugal union in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and analyze the position of the Baltic countries in a broader European perspective. The analyses employ microdata from national surveys conducted in the framework of the European Family and Fertility Surveys program. Our main results on the timing and mode of union formation show that in Estonia and Latvia the shift from direct marriage to cohabitation started well before the fall of the state socialist regime, and followed a trajectory close to Scandinavian countries. In Lithuania, on the other hand, the change in the pattern of union formation has been much slower. The article discusses the factors underlying the observed similarities and dissimilarities in union formation.