Search results for " economy."
showing 10 items of 1490 documents
The “Big Bang” of the populist parties in the European Union: The 2014 European Parliament election
2018
A significant number of voters are turning their backs on traditional parties. The stability of European party systems is being defied by a growing number of (new) radical parties, whose presence i...
Freedom from Hate: Solidarity and Non-violent Political Struggle in Poland
2002
Thirty-first August 2001 marked the 21st anniversary of the end of prolonged strikes in Poland that resulted in the forming of the trade union Solidarity. The struggle of Solidarity remains a powerful lesson in political non-violence. In spite of the wide support it enjoyed in Polish society, Solidarity was outlawed in December 1981 and its leaders were imprisoned. If one is suppressed by force, one can answer with force. But Solidarity did not. Was it an ethical standpoint that Solidarity used only peaceful means in its defence or a utilitarian or pragmatic strategy? The paper argues that it was both. The struggle of Solidarity was not only guided by pragmatic considerations on how to achi…
Voting Transitions in the 2019 Valencian Autonomous Community’s Elections
2020
The political fragmentation following the 2008 Financial Crisis and its economic, social, political and institutional fall-out have led to a growing left-right polarisation of politics and a weakening of the middle ground. The effective number of parliamentary parties is at an all-time high both inthe Spanish Parliament (Congreso) and in the Valencian Autonomous Parliament (Corts). Voters are spoilt for choice and switch party more often. This paper uses transfer matrices to analyse the shifting voting patterns in the European, General, Regional, and Local elections held during 2019 in The Valencian Country. The most salient result is the ever-shifting pattern at each end of the political s…
Political participation in Latvia 1987–2001
2001
Abstract Political participation is crucial to democracy; we discuss its main features during three stages. The years 1988–91 are marked by anti-regime mobilization and extensive mass activism in support for restoring independence. After a “normalizing” phase between 1992–98 we note contradictory trends in more recent years. Next to conventional political participation one notes increasing protests, referendum initiatives, and corrupt ways of gaining influence.
Net-Strikes: A Proposal for Re-orienting Social Struggles in the 21st Century
2020
The globalisation of the economy and the slow but steady loss of Nation-States’ power to global enterprises and financial capital force us to redefine strikes as a weapon for advancing social causes. The institutions legitimising this form of protest have changed greatly in the 21st Century. They must recoup their ability to change things if they are to remain an effective tool. The following paper reveals the reasons behind the decline of strikes in the modern world and proposes the ‘net-strike’ concept (or networked strike): a formula for bringing strikes up to date to meet today’s challenges.
The rising fear of terrorism and the emergence of a European security governance space: citizen perceptions and EU counterterrorism cooperation
2021
Among a wide range of challenges, EU member states have been facing a growing threat from terrorism in the recent years. The primary responsibility for combating terrorism lies with each individual member state, although the threat is becoming increasingly cross-border and diverse. Regardless of whether terrorism poses a real or perceived threat to the states’ and citizens’ security, public opinion is one important force behind the extensive counterterrorism efforts undertaken in Europe. In this article, we explore the influence of public opinion on EU policy within the security domain in the period 2005–19. We investigate the relationship between the number of attacks carried out on EU ter…
Theorizing religion and media in contemporary societies: An account of religious ‘publicization’
2011
This article argues that a combination of the rapid development and dissemination of media technologies, the liberalization of national media economies and the growth of transnational media spheres is transforming the relationship between religion, popular culture and politics in contemporary societies in ways not adequately accounted for in existing sociological theories of religion (secularization, neo-secularization and rational choice) and still largely neglected in sociological theories of media and culture. In particular, it points to a series of media enabled social processes (de-differentiation, diasporic intensification and re-enchantment) which mirror and counter processes identif…
The nested games of the UK’s EU referendum: ruptures, reconfigurations and lessons for Europe
2021
The 2016 decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union was a seminal one for both parties. In this special issue, we consider the extent to which the inter-penetration of the national and the European arenas produced significant opportunities for recasting political action. The nesting of these two levels matters firstly in allowing for the politicisation and mobilisation of domestic actors around European issues and secondly in explaining why seemingly sub-optimal or counter-productive actions are taken. The tensions this generated reached a critical juncture with the referendum, a rupture that highlights the extent to which a nominally second-order vote can have funda…
Cultural policy regimes and arts councils. Thelongue duréeperspective, birth of the state, religious trajectories and national cultural policies
2021
The cultural policy orientation of European countries has usually been interpreted in the light of political ideological factors or the model of the welfare state. However, while these dimensions e...
Rhetoric of unity and cultural diversity in the making of European cultural identity
2011
The fundamental aim of the cultural policy of the European Union (EU) is to emphasize the obvious cultural diversity of Europe, while looking for some underlying common elements which unify the various cultures in Europe. Through these common elements, the EU policy produces ‘an imagined cultural community’ of Europe which is ‘united in diversity’, as one of the slogans of the Union states. This discourse characterizes various documents which are essential to the EU cultural policy, such as the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Agenda for Culture and the EU’s decision on the European Capital of Culture program. In addition, the discourse is applied to the production of cultural events in Europ…