Search results for "Economy"

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…

The German Fascists: Nazi Political Culture

2019

The rise to power of National Socialism in early 1933 made Germany become the second fascist regime and seemingly confirm fascism’s universal character. In this text, Morant examines Nazism as the German exponent of the fascist political culture by focusing both on the most characteristic elements of its world view (anti-Semitism, the myth of the Volksgemeinschaft, its nature as a political religion and its totalitarian ambitions) and the visible representations of a movement that paid special attention to future generations and did not neglect (non-Jew) women, since they constituted at least half of the “national community”. Many of these elements distinguish Nazism from its reactionary na…

Neoliberalism in the Culture of Terror

2018

One of the most troubling aspects of neoliberalism is that paradoxically though it is widely used and cited in the different studies, books, and dissertation in social sciences, little is known respecting its nature. This is the reason why the present chapter theorizes on neoliberalism, its different meanings, as well as its ideological core. Today’s neoliberalism coincides with something else than the need to adopt free trade globally to curb social conflict. It traverses many other fields that are confronting neorealism. I dissect, here, not only the evolution of liberal mind through different authors and authoritative voices, but also how 9/11 and an imposed culture of fear gradually und…

Social policy reforms in Latvia

2019

European Union Crisis: An Introduction

2020

What is the impact of crisis on European Union (EU) integration? This chapter unpacks the concept of crisis and ways to conceptualize it. We outline three conceptual scenarios on the EU’s putative response to crisis and subsequently apply them in all chapters of the volume. The chapter sums up the key findings from different parts of the Handbook on the impact of crisis on EU policies and institutions, as well as the applicability of existing theories. The volume finds overall that the EU has been surprisingly resilient in the face of crises due to its ability to adapt and absorb, and if necessary, change, in response to crisis. The chapter also discusses the EU’s responses to democratic ch…

States, nations, and societies: a case study of Valencia

2017

Political activity of contemporary western societies has been structured based on a definition of territorial units of action, which we call states. This western political structure has been legitimised by a link between each state to a collective owner of sovereignty, which we call a nation. The life of this society revolves around areas linked to different fields of community life, such as production, consumption, distribution of work, etc., including the discursive elements of these practices. Social practices take place within the complex interaction between all these fields of relations, which we call social structure. Each of these collective forms (states, nations and social structur…

Conflicts and Reconciliation in the Postmillennial Heritage-Policy Discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union

2019

AbstractLähdesmäki analyses the heritage-policy discourses of the EU and the Council of Europe. She particularly discusses how these institutions deal with the challenges the idea of heritage faces in today’s Europe and the opportunities that these may present to respond to these challenges. The analysis shows how the EU and the Council of Europe seek to reconcile heritage-related conflicts by approaching heritage as a space for civil participation, interaction, intercultural dialogue, and conversation about divergent values and narrations of the past. However, their policy discourses often relay on a static and materialist notion of heritage. This kind of discourse maintains geographical, …