Search results for " economy."
showing 10 items of 1490 documents
Yearly quotas and country-reserved shares in Italian immigration policy
2008
Regular immigration to Italy is based on a quota system setting annual ceilings to legal entries. Reserved shares are granted to single countries or categories of countries. Reserved shares have been increased; they are used as an incentive to obtain the cooperation of countries of origin in stemming irregular migration flows. The total quota of regular immigration has gradually increased too. Still, it does not fully respond to the growing demand of foreign workers on the labour market, and quotas seem to be used as crypto-regularisations rather than as an instrument for regulating legal entries.
The Hidden Counterpoint of Spanish Federalism: Recentralization and Resymmetrization in Spain (1978–2008)
2010
The recent evolution of the Spanish ‘State of Autonomies’ has given rise to numerous political and academic criticisms, which argue that the initial federal logic of the system is giving way to a confederal logic that threatens the cohesion of the state. This article contradicts the negative diagnosis, outlining the main mechanisms that retain and in fact reinforce the powers of federalization in tandem with the fundamental political decentralization process that has taken place since 1978. This paper focuses on three critical areas: the distribution of legislative power, the fiscal system and the dynamics of the political process. In these three areas powerful mechanisms are at work reinfo…
Repeated Multiparty Elections Expand Civil Liberties
2008
Democracy and Elections in Africa. By I. Lindberg Staffan. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 248 pp., $55.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-8018-8332-3), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-8018-8333-0). Democracy and multiparty elections are high on the agendas of many international actors, human rights groups, and African governments. Although the possibilities for free association, monitoring the use of power, and electoral competition have increased, electoral fraud and political violence are prevalent in many African countries. As a result, democratization remains a critical area for researchers and practitioners interested in African affairs. It is, therefore, exciting to come across a book that…
How Supportive Are Romanian Consumers of the Circular Economy Concept: A Survey
2016
The aim of this paper is to investigate consumer behavior regarding the environment and the adoption of new patterns of behavior and responsible consumption in the promotion of a Circular Economy (CE) in Romania. With this goal in mind, a questionnaire survey was performed on-line on a nationwide scale to explore consumers’ behaviors and attitudes, which was distributed in all four of Romania’s macro-regions and interviewing 642 respondents. The results indicate that the consumers have a positive attitude towards the importance of the environmental protection, in general and it also measures the frequency of adopting eco-friendly behaviors by the consumers, showing that the consumption beha…
Religion and Culture of Origin. Re-Shaping Identity in the Integration Process: A Case Study in Sicily
2019
Cosa succede quando persone di differenti culture, valori, religione vivono insieme? Queste dinamiche sono stare analizzate in una ricerca sul processo di integrazione degli immigrati a Palermo.I principali risultati sono presentati in questo saggio. In questo caso studio, i dati della ricerca ipotizzano un modello teorico di integrazione in cui gli immigrati, liberi di esprimere le loro differenze religiose e culturali, tendono a ridurre la loro percezione di minoranza. What happens when people of different cultures, values, religion live together? Sociological studies on immigrative phenomenon often swing between immigration and integration policies. These policies actually reveal the dif…
How populist crisis rhetoric affects voters in Switzerland
2019
Right-wing populism has a long tradition in Switzerland. Nevertheless, only little is known about how populist messages in the media contribute to the success of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and to the acceptance of the party’s anti-immigration policies. In this study, we combine data from a large media content analysis (including newspapers and TV news shows) with data from a panel-survey in order to address this research gap. Thereby we differentiate between effects driven by the content and the form of right-wing populist communication. While right-wing populist content depicts immigrants and the political elite as a threat to the Swiss people, populist style evokes the sense of a cris…
We Had to Feed the People: The Italian Lira and the Political Economy of Currency in British Eritrea, 1941–1950
2021
Following the occupation of Eritrea in 1941, British authorities in London promoted a currency policy aimed at replacing the Italian lira with a sterling-based currency basket. In May 1942, they opted for the enforcement of the East African shilling as the new legal tender. The lire, however, did not disappear overnight. Their circulation was tolerated—and, in some cases, even encouraged—by British authorities in Asmara, which exploited the small deal of autonomy they enjoyed from London to adapt the new monetary system to the needs of local governance. The case study is a useful lens to analyse the multiplicity of interests that shaped the political economy of currency of the United Kingdo…
Surveillance and student dissent: the case of the Franco dictatorship.
2014
The rising of a powerful democratic student movement in Spain in the sixties represented a substantial stimulus to the repressive modernization of the Franco dictatorship. New containment strategies were adopted in the context of the counter-subversion and intelligence policies that the USA administration and their allies were also implementing. From this assumption, this paper analyzes the specific dynamics of surveillance on student protest, exploring the previous situation at university, the challenges introduced by the youth upheaval, the diverse responses of the establishment, the role of the American aid, and finally the consequences both for the dissidents and for the dictatorship it…
From ‘Awkward Partner’ to ‘Awkward Partnership’? Explaining Norway’s Paradoxical Relations with the European Union
2017
Norway is the only Nordic state to have rejected membership of the European Union four times. Applying the conceptual lens of ‘awkwardness’, as developed by Murray et al. (2014), it seems fair to consider the country as an awkward partner in the process of European integration. As a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), however, Norway has been tightly associated with the European Union ever since 1994, actively participating in a large number of EU policies and programs and effectively forging a close partnership that has in itself become increasingly ‘awkward’. This holds true despite the fact that successive Norwegian governments have recently started to embrace a generally more re…
The Temptation of Populism in David Cameron’s Leadership Style
2015
DOI: 10.1057/9781137439246\₁0; International audience; It may seem unusual to associate the widely-used concept of populism with the leadership of the British Prime Minister, David Cameron. Populism is, however, open to various interpretations and definitions and so easy to manipulate that it could apply to almost anything. Moreover, populism has so often been used to describe movements and groups critical of representative democracy, generating a ‘malaise’ (Mény and Surel, 2002: 21) or a ‘threat’ to democracy (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2012), that it is has become difficult to conceive it as a new political practice in the hands of democratic governments. To accept what would appear to be a co…