Search results for "POLITICAL ECONOMY"

Do Eurosceptic Parties Influence Their Party Systems?

2021

This book is written around—and anchored in—the Radical Party Hypothesis, which states that the success of Eurosceptic parties leads to changes of policy position/preferences by the other parties. In order to test it, it seeks to analyse whether the position changes of centrist parties on the issue of European Integration correlate with the electoral success of Eurosceptic Parties in those aforementioned parties’ countries, when controlling for a variety of factors, such as public opinion/sentiment on EU integration, socio-economic factors, time, as well as characteristics of those parties whose position changes this study measures: their size, their ideological orientation, their electoral…

The PSOE's deliberation and democratic innovations in turbulent times for the social democracy

2020

In the midst of the great recession, the Spanish Socialists Worker's Party (PSOE) lost the Government and experienced a process of instability while trying to reconnect with its electorate. The party's strategic response was embracing highly inclusive deliberations on both key institutional and policy issues that eventually sparked tensions and division. These internal debates led to the introduction and implementation of other democratic innovations, such as direct votes and consultations that substantially transformed key features of the PSOE's organizational model. The article discusses the main features and problems of such deliberations and democratic innovations, and their wider conse…

Ethnic or Socio-Economic Conflict? Political Interpretations of the Rwandan Crisis

1996

AbstractRather than trace the political history of the conflict in Rwanda I will focus on the different interpretations of the conflict by the actors involved. The external identification of the Tutsi refugees as 'Banyarwanda' corresponds with the ideology and self image of the RPF who were recruited among the refugees and their descendants who fled to Uganda during and after 1959. The RPF presents itself as a democratic organisation speaking for all Rwandans and its anti-ethnic stance is designed not only to appeal to Rwandans but also to a Western audience. The RPF's opponent, the Habyarimana government in Rwanda, presented itself as the heir of the 1959 'peasant revolution' which had rep…

The ‘spirit of the times’: Fast policy for educational reform in Finland

2020

This article examines the nature of neoliberal influences upon educational policy making in the Finnish education system in recent times. The article draws upon key policy documents, government reports, journal articles and media articles about reforms in the early childhood, basic/compulsory school and vocational education and training sectors to evidence these processes. Analytically, these reforms are understood as instances of what has been referred to as ‘fast policy’. Methodologically, we draw upon principles of zeitgeist analysis to reveal the features and effects of these fast policy influences as they relate to educational provision in Finland. These features and effects include i…

Information Greater than Mobilisation Greater than Interaction: Contours of a Pan-European Style of Social Media Campaigning

2021

This chapter compares the Facebook campaigns of 90 political parties aggregated by the political groups in the EP to which they belong from 12 countries in the 2019 EP election. Based on these results we identify the contours of a pan-European style of social media campaigning that can be described as follows: national contexts dominated and framed the EP elections. In comparison to the three key functions of election campaigns, parties place the most importance by far on information in their use of social media. Calls for mobilisation play a certain role, while the parties seem hardly interested in interactions. The ongoing neglect of social media’s interactive potential in politics calls …

HARVARD MEETS THE CRISIS: THE MONETARY THEORY AND POLICY OF LAUCHLIN B. CURRIE, JACOB VINER, JOHN H. WILLIAMS, AND HARRY D. WHITE

2015

The paper discusses the interpretation of the Great Depression and the policy decision making by four Harvard economists: Lauchlin B. Currie, Jacob Viner, John H. Williams, and Harry D. White. All were eminent scholars in the field of monetary and international economics, and were deeply involved in policy decisions during the New Deal. We will discuss how their Harvard training provided them with a common methodological and analytical perspective, and how this common perspective translated into specific policies when they moved from the academia to public service in the US administration. Their interpretation of the causes of the Great Depression and their policy proposals show the eclecti…

Maartje Abbenhuis, An Age of Neutrals. Great Power Politics, 1815–1914. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2014

2015

Violence as a Subject of Social Science I The Specificity of Political Violence

2021

In contrast to the world's uniformity all types of violence are observed: urban violence, in poor countries where conflicts are incomprehensible from outside, violence which surface is religious in countries of Muslim tradition, fundamentalist violence, nationalist, racist; violence in the world system which accepts the growing difference between poor and rich. Judiciary violence in executions in States that seem the principal warrantors of social peace. There is violence throughout the globe and under surveillance by the great power. It could be said that the global system tolerates a certain “reserve of violence” and obtains certain profits, as well as the economy tolerates certain extent…

Conclusion: Resisting, Cooperating, and Fighting

2016

The three-fold division of this book—how these peasant elites and the peasantry in general confronted the authorities, how they dealt with them, and how they acted within their own local communities and networks—has aimed to place their aggressive and violent behaviour in the framework of Nordic state formation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The focus has thus been on their relationship with the state and its representatives. This structure contained per se a conflict of interests between states that wanted to intervene and control local communities and the leading peasants in these communities who wanted to guard their favourable positions. At the same time, there were possibi…

The role of social media in the rise of right-wing populism in Finland

2021

Right-wing populism is typically entangled with xenophobic nationalism and neo-conservatism, which often usher in racism and misogyny. In this chapter, the authors take Finland as a case study to examine the role of media technology in the rise of right-wing populism. They demonstrate the strengthening of the far-right ideology on and through social media from the beginning of 2010s. It focuses on the mediated construction of two entangled ideologies in the right-wing populist movement racism and misogyny. In early spring 2020, the debate about Turkey opening its EU border to refugees made Jussi Halla-aho eagerly participate in this discussion in the parliament and on Twitter now as the cha…