Search results for " international"
showing 10 items of 2887 documents
The ‘Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidate selection in the British Conservative Party
2016
International audience; Since 2003, hundreds of open primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates have been held by the British Conservative Party as a means of democratising party organisation and enhancing representativeness. In the run-up to the 2015 general election, only 26 primaries could be identified. This article will apply the analytical framework provided by Hazan and Rahat to demonstrate that the relative failure of the experiment in terms of intra-party competition, participation, representation and responsiveness is counterbalanced by the benefits brought by this procedure, both as a tool of party branding at the national level and as a strategy for raising the prof…
Miracles in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt and Refugees as ‘Vanguard’
2019
AbstractThe radical uncertainty that refugees face because of war, flight and exile often dramatically shapes their participation in society. Violent conflict and human rights abuses are not just disproportionately experienced by, but can also create, political subjects. Such life events can transform the motivations, sense of responsibility and political actions of individuals with refugee backgrounds. In this article, we explore the links between civil–political engagement and the life stories of such individuals, analysing our empirical data through themes in the work of Hannah Arendt. We make three central points. First, we highlight the possibility of refugees as ‘vanguard’, playing a …
Russia-Ukraine balance of military power
2017
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the most serious test of European security in the 21st century and the forgone conclusion is that Russia can easily prevail in the conflict, but this has not been the case. This article uses balance of military power analysis to report findings on the plausible outcome of a war between Ukraine and Russia. I report findings based on realist theoretical perspectives that indicate Russian victory is unlikely because of relative balance of power where Russia has to face multiple threats diverting its military power while Ukraine can concentrate its military power for a single purpose. The findings suggest implication for policy in Russia, Ukraine, EU and the Unite…
From Neo-Functional Peace to a Logic of Spillover in EU External Policy: A Response to Visoka and Doyle
2017
In their recently published JCMS article, Gezim Visoka and John Doyle have proposed the concept of ‘neofunctional peace’ as a means to conceptualize the EU's peacemaking practices in the case of the EU-facilitated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. This article challenges the ‘neo-functional peace’ on conceptual and empirical grounds. We critically discuss Visoka and Doyle's (2016) reading of neofunctionalism and question parts of their empirical evidence given for the existence of a ‘neo-functional peace’. Going beyond a mere critique of the article by Visoka and Doyle and arguing that the authors may not have fully exploited neofunctionalism's potential for theorizing EU external policy, we stip…
How women are imagined through conceptual metaphors in United Nations Security Council Resolutions on women, peace and security
2017
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 is a landmark pronouncement on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Not only does this resolution highlight the important role of the involvement of women in peace processes, but it also stresses the importance of their equal participation in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace. Furthermore, it also triggers the approval of some other resolutions, which are all further elaborations on that first document. The aim of this paper is to analyse, from a cognitive linguistic perspective, the way in which women are actually narrated in these pronouncements by means of the two conceptual metaphors that are most often repeated: WOME…
The 2015 Spanish election: the times they are a’ changing
2016
ABSTRACTThe Spanish legislative election of 2015 speaks of change. This is the end of the traditional two-party system and the beginning of a new political era marked by institutional renewal. The Socialist Party and the Partido Popular have both lost significant parliamentary force, whereas two new parties (Podemos, and Ciudadanos) are now crucial to ensure stable government majorities. This new parliamentary scenario seems to better mirror the political pluralism of a changing society which has already demonstrated for change in striking events such as the 15-M Movement. However, political parties are far from showing conciliatory aspirations, possibly because a new election is suddenly a…
When Peace Leads to Divorce: The Splintering of Rebel Groups in Powersharing Agreements
2017
While research has already focused on power-sharing agreements by assessing specific effects of political, economic, territorial and military provisions, some provisions might be more important tha...
The privatization of death: the emergence of private cemeteries in Romania’s postsocialist deathscape
2020
Private cemeteries constitute a new development in the Romanian postsocialist death system that poses a challenge to the traditional burial culture. This paper charts the emergence of privately own...
Committee Parliamentary Specialization Index. Explaining MPs’ specialisation in the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados
2019
Nowadays legislatures are largely based on committee systems. This enables a division of work and specialisation, in the context of highly complex politics and policy development. It seems clear that MP specialisation in the field of the committee they serve on is an important political asset, both for MPs and their parliamentary party group. This paper presents the Committee Parliamentary Specialization Index. This index measures the degree an MP is specialised in the jurisdiction of the committee they serve on. In the second part of the paper, the index is applied to the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados, an interesting case for testing this multi-faceted index, to find institutional, pol…
Dwuizbowy parlament i reformy instytucjonalne w Republice Włoskiej
2019
Parliaments are dual institutions by nature, as they connect society with the legal structure of the state power. An analysis of the structural properties of contemporary legislative bodies indicates the particular importance of the factor of internal organization, which makes it possible to distinguish a symmetrical bicameralism. The case of Italy is attractive for researchers of political systems for many reasons. One of them is a fact, that both chambers hold the identical legal and political positions, have the same five years’ terms of office and identical scopes of authority. The proportional voting system guaranteed (with two exceptions) that the legislative branch was a mirror image…