Search results for "Politics"
showing 10 items of 2266 documents
PELA-USAL: A Methodological Tool for the Study of Elites
2020
This introductory chapter presents the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America (PELA-USAL) project, which has conducted interviews with Latin American legislators in the lower chambers of political representation for more than 20 years. The following emphasizes the PELA-USAL project’s methodology, as well as its most important inputs and future challenges. Based on the experience of researchers from the project, our aim here is to re-think several issues (such as data mining) that arise during the research process, taking into account the wealth of available information (after two decades of development) and the particularities that parliamentary elites present as an object of study. First we…
Huntington and the liberal thought. Problems of Anglo-democracy to understand politics
2013
The liberal thought has inspired philosophy and sociology during years. From its view, US has two main goals. One is to expand the civilized culture to other non-western countries, and second to grant the democratic values. Paradoxically, terrorism poses one of the most troubling aspects of contemporanean democracy. On one hand, not only it defies the democratic resources to anticipate the next blow, but also put US to conduct one-sided attacks to autonomous countries. To legitimize the expansion of this new imperial order, the liberal discourse appealed to two strategies: first and foremost, denoting pejoratively as the case of Latin America that there is a cultural matrix that impedes the…
The Union Societies’ Role in the Formation of a Parliamentary Culture of Debate
2016
Here the Oxford and Cambridge Unions are placed in the British tradition of debating societies. Haapala shows that the Unions were forerunners in the adoption of parliamentary debate and that they became models for other similar associations, thus taking a prominent role in the formation of a parliamentary culture of debate in Britain. The foundation of the Union Societies is discussed with comparisons to other contemporary and previously established debating societies, paying particular attention to membership requirements and rhetorical training. Finally, some first-hand accounts of the benefits of Union training for political careers will be provided.
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces: Communication as Practice and Resource
2018
In this chapter, the author offers an analysis of European public spaces and follows with a discussion of the transformations in the European Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004. For the first time, the European Commission openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions. It was involved in the construction of a new communication strategy that would fill the gap between supranational segmented publics and general national publics. This risky political move involved the redefinition of the status of political communication, the reinforcement of the communication aspect in all of the Commission’s activities, the recruitment of new …
Comparing the performance of autocracies: issues in measuring types of autocratic regimes and performance
2013
This paper discusses two methodological issues in research studying the performance of political regimes. First, it compares the conceptualisation and measurement of three data sets on types of autocratic regimes developed by Geddes et al. (2012a), Hadenius et al. (2012), and Cheibub et al. (2010). The data sets are found to differ with respect to their conceptualisation of autocratic regimes (narrow vs. flexible concepts) and types of autocratic regimes (criteria for classification, number of autocratic regime types and definition of the main types), as well as their levels of measurement (simple vs. complex indicators). As a result, the choice of data sets matters for this type of researc…
Paradise Lost? The Collapse of Dutch Multiculturalism and the Birth of Islamophobic Post-Liberalism
2013
The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the integration debate in the Netherlands, and especially on the prominent role of Islam and cultural issues in this debate (Boomkens 2010: 307). Arguably more than in any other European country, anti-Islamic sentiment has produced political consequences, including the formation of three political parties on a principally anti-Islamic platform (Leefbar Nederland (Liveable Netherlands), List Pim Fortuyn and Partij voor de Vrijheid (Freedom Party)) since 2000 and the dismantling of key aspects of state-supported multiculturalism, including a cessation of ethnic monitoring of labour market participation, the withdrawal of national-level funding for m…
1959: The Stabilization Plan and the End of Autarky
2020
This chapter analyses the contribution of the 1959 Plan de Estabilizacion (Stabilization Plan) to the economic changes that occurred in Spain during the 1960s. Economic growth improved in the 1950s after a decade of stagnation, but it was autarkic growth and the country accumulated serious imbalances. By reducing interventionism, initiating a process of liberalization and creating an appropriate economic framework, after two decades of autarky, the Plan contributed to promoting economic growth and helped change attitudes and mentalities. Moreover, the Plan had a long-term impact by allowing Spain to take advantage of a favourable international context during the 1960s. However, the dictator…
Medieval Treasure Lore
2012
Treasure took a number of forms in the Middle Ages.1 We will first deal with treasure troves in mythical and epic sources. Then we will look at the political and theological significance of medieval treasures.
Research Practices and Operations in Studying Debates and Documents
2017
The chapter presents research practices and operations (or methods and techniques) that are useful in studying debates and documents as part, and as arenas and reflections, of political activity, political processes, strategies and actions. It contains first general considerations that are valid and helpful for most interpretative and textual analyses, with additional emphasis set on how to analyse political activity linked to texts: the research interest and research question target the moves, strategies, interests and actors involved in the political processes in question, rather than simply the contents of the text, and this in return crucially determines material selection, research que…
A Two-Sided Kingdom: A Sicily of Export and Urban Wheat Supply
2021
The Sicilian victualling system sought to guarantee both the subsistence of cities and the income of the great aristocratic landowners interested in the wheat market. A set of economic mechanisms, social practices, and political conflicts unfolded around the urban victualling offices, dealing with wheat and flour distribution, bread production, contracts for the procurement of supplies, and the price system of the mete, run by political elites. North-eastern Sicily was exclusively consumer, while the central-western area produced surpluses for the foreign market and for the rest of the island, including Palermo—the capital city—and Messina—a rich and hungry city—. The centralised office of …