Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece

In the context of a cross-national economic crisis, questions about democratic legitimacy are again topical. We explore the question of democratic legitimacy in Portugal and Greece by employing the conceptual differentiation between diffuse and specific regime support. Our findings indicate that while specific support has fallen in both countries, only Greece has experienced a precipitous fall in diffuse support, suggesting a link between regime performance and support for democracy. Individual-level analyses do not reveal any clear patterns concerning the impact of long-term societal factors or short-term economic considerations. Due to data quality limitations the paper has a predominately exploratory nature.     

Political Learning as a Catalyst of Moderation: Lessons from Democratic Consolidation in Greece

Utilizing over 100 interviews conducted with Greek political and military elites, this article offers a refinement of the process of political learning, believed to contribute to democratic consolidation by modifying individuals' beliefs about political goals and the best means to achieve them. Using the Greek case as an empirical test, this study confirms the democratization literature's claim that elites learn from singular catastrophic events. It offers a refinement, however, of specific lessons and the related behavioural change. Moving beyond the main conclusions of that literature, the article argues that learning can arise in a variety of ways and from varied experiences. Inductive trial-and-error learning stimulated by success can also play a key role as can slow and cumulative learning, which results from the accumulation of both positive and negative lessons, and can proceed in a two-step process of instrumental learning first, followed by more principled learning later. Learning thus sometimes takes a tangled course: elites take tentative steps, implement small policy changes, observe the effects of their actions, and learn from them as lessons accumulate, interact and slowly reinforce each other. Finally, learning does not always guarantee moderation and the adoption of democratic attitudes, tactics, and policies. As the article illustrates, the political learning process is often best characterized as highly contingent and complex.     

Civil wars,party politics and the consolidation of regimes in twentieth century Europe

The present article explores how winners' and losers' strategies for competition influence the possibility of democratization after civil war. Civil wars have been pivotal events in many states, but there has been little analysis of how they affect democratization. Since most have been won by the political right in twentieth century Europe one expects a correlation between civil war and the imposition of authoritarian solution to political conflicts. However, an analysis of five civil wars shows a wide variety in the patterns of political dominance achieved by the winners, ranging from total clampdown in Spain to the winners relinquishing power, as in Ireland. In between, Finland, Greece and Hungary combined various degrees of open competition with restrictions on the losers. In effect democratization can be as likely an outcome of civil war as regression to authoritarianism. Explaining the variation in outcomes of the five cases is the objective of this article.     

A supranational party system and the legitimacy of the European Union

China’s emergence as an economic and military power has given rise to apprehensions globally, related not only to China’s cultural and historical ‘alienness’, but also to its apparent willingness to challenge the global system and architecture of global governance. While non-Western countries are wary of the possible impact on them and on the global order of Chinese actions, they appear to be willing to cooperate with China on some global issues in order to change a system often seen as inequitable and unbalanced. Yet, the West seems to conflate the idea of a rising China with that of other emerging markets. Given their historical, political and cultural experiences, however, their access to power and influence, if and when it happens, need not necessarily take the same route as China. This is true particularly of India; India is likely, at least for the foreseeable future, to remain within the existing paradigm of global governance, though it may seek to adapt the rules and structures to better reflect its economic, political and security interests. This would not preclude cooperation on a selective basis on specific global issues with different partners, particularly in the realm of global challenges such as climate change, non-proliferation, international trade and finance and the global commons, such as space, the oceans and cyberspace.     

Measuring Technological Change in Greece

This paper uses the Growth Accounting methodology to estimate technological change, as well as labor and capital productivity in the various sectors of the Greek economy over the period 1988–1998. The results show that the technological level, as measured through annual growth in Total Factor Productivity, has remained practically unchanged. Meanwhile, technological change accounts for about 40% of economic growth, which is slightly lower compared with the relative performance of other O.E.C.D. countries. Finally, our main findings are, in general terms, consistent with estimates by other researchers.      

现代性立场的困难--评加加林《早期希腊法律》

加加林坚持严格的法学立场,从现代的法律观念来看待古希腊早期法律,不承认西方法律源头处曾有过“不成文法”。这样一来,加加林就无法解释法律的渊源问题,对西方法律思想的认识也就有失偏颇。按照古希腊法律的最初面貌,而非今天的立场,来研究思想史,也许才是解决这种困难的最好办法。     

社会主义和谐社会对古典理想社会理论的继承与发展

构建社会主义和谐社会是我党现阶段的治国方略，是社会主义时期的理想社会。在中西方的政治哲学史中，理想社会都是哲学家们重点关注的问题。中国的先秦时期和同时期的古希腊作为中西方两大文明的起源，根据各自不同的经济政治条件，分别建构了不同类型的理想社会理论。将这些理论汇总、整理和比较后，汲取其中对构建社会主义和谐社会有益的部分，对我们今天的社会主义和谐社会建设工作很有意义。     

古希腊人文精神与科技萌芽

希腊作为人类历史的奇迹，以其特有的人文精神和哲学理念征服了世界。她独特而深邃的人文精神，在两千多年前的人类社会中是绝无仅有的。这种人文精神的产生至少有三个方面的原因，即独特的地缘优势、深刻的哲学理念和人性化的神话传说。同时这种人文精神也孕育了古希腊科学技术的萌芽，并对后世的科技发展产生了重大的影响。     

The sex industry,human trafficking and the global prohibition regime: a cautionary tale from Greece

Using the concept of global prohibition regimes as an analytical point of departure, this article interrogates the development and results of the agitation campaign that relayed the new global prohibition regime against trafficking for sexual exploitation in Greece after 1995. In line with the international trend towards the issue of trafficking in the 1990s, the Greek campaign has been successful in shaping perceptions of the change in the Greek sex industry on the basis of an equation of prostitution, trafficking and transnational organized crime, and it also successfully capitalized on transnational supports to induce changes in legislation and public policy. However, a critical examination of the Greek situation suggests that there is a considerable discrepancy between the above conceptualisation and the knowledge of the issue emerging from the activities of criminal justice agencies. The examination of the general conditions of economic exploitation and social marginalization of migrants in Greece in the 1990s and after reveals significant homologies between the social organization of the sex industry and other sectors of the economy that have depended on migrant labour. This result underscores the nature of the idea of organized crime as an ideological construct acting as a diversion from more substantive paths of inquiry into the structures of national economy that bear upon the exploitation of sexual labour.

Democracy, Sea Power and Institutional Change: An Economic Analysis of the Athenian Naval Law

The present essay attempts to test the validity of the theory of institutional change based on the concept of property rights, in the remote historical setting of Classical Athens. The Naval Law introduced by Themistocles in 483-2 BC, established the institution of trierarchy to produce warships to face the Persian invaders. This reform led to the first attempt to define the costs and benefits of public goods in the field of national defense. Thus, institutional change in Ancient Athens, through an efficient arrangement of property rights and duties, had long-term consequences on economic performance, creating a new growth path and ensuring economic prosperity and social justice for more than 150 years.