Search results for "democracy"
showing 10 items of 657 documents
Negotiating digital surveillance legislation in post-Snowden times : An argumentation analysis of Finnish political discourse
2019
Abstract In the digital era, when security agencies world-wide have been challenging basic democratic principles with massive data gathering, Finland has had a different approach: it has conducted no large-scale surveillance of citizens’ online activities. Now, however, the country is planning such a vast expansion of state surveillance that the constitution itself must be altered. The present article examines one key point in this legislative process to see how the new surveillance measures are argued for and criticized, and how the differing points of view are negotiated to ultimately enable political action. Drawing particularly on Fairclough and Fairclough’s (2012) approach to argumenta…
Censura y traducción al español de la novela lésbica en inglés: el caso de Rubyfruit Jungle (1973)
2020
This article analyses the only translation into Spanish of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), translated in Spain by Jorge Binaghi in 1979. In order to do so, the study reviews lesbian narrative in English during the 20th century and the social and political factors that might have influenced its translation in Spain. An overview on Francoist literary censorship is followed by a discussion on how the Spanish literary market has received English lesbian novels and the case of Rubyfruit Jungle. Despite being one of the first lesbian novels published in democracy in Spain, the analysis suggests that the Francoist ideological paradigms are still perpetuated and have altered the translati…
Multi-sited and historically layered language policy construction: parliamentary debate on the Finnish constitutional bilingualism in 1919
2018
In this article, we analyse the construction of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in the aftermath of gaining independence, a traumatic civil war and during the construction of a new republican polity based on regulated parliamentarism in 1917–1919. We take a multi-sited and historically informed approach to the dynamics of political discourse at the parliamentary level, analysing the discursive cycles of people, nationality and nation. We demonstrate the interconnectedness of language policy discourses with historically and spatially multi-sited and highly complex contexts and show how language policy confrontations can add important dimensions to increase our understanding of power stru…
La memoria democrática en las aulas de secundaria y bachillerato : balance de una experiencia didáctica
2018
Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación sobre la concepción y el conocimiento de la memoria democrática en las aulas de secundaria y bachillerato, mediante la confección e implementación de una propuesta didáctica sustentada sobre la historia local y la concepción del aula como un lugar de investigación. A su vez, se analizan los mecanismos de aprendizaje, las transformaciones de la percepción del alumnado y los resultados del proyecto didáctico, que permiten ofrecer, de este modo, algunas claves para el trabajo de la historia y la memoria en la enseñanza de la Guerra Civil y la represión franquista.
Swarming : An Investigation Practice Supporting a Bottom-up Ecological Transition
2022
Dans cet article, nous rendons compte des pratiques d’essaimage d’initiatives locales de transition portées par des collectifs citoyens et associatifs en région Bourgogne Franche-Comté. L’essaimage, défini comme une façon d’enquêter pour agir, caractérise un « activisme environnemental du faire » qui se structure de manière réticulaire et translocale. Ces multiples initiatives qui font des gestes du quotidien un levier de transformation écologique s’activent avec ou sans les institutions territoriales. Celles-ci, indépendamment de l’écho qu’elles renvoient à ces expérimentations, sont interpellées dans leur manière de concevoir l’action publique sous contrainte écologique forte.
Crises and the EU’s Response: Increasing the Democratic Deficit?
2020
Since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty and the end of the permissive consensus, the European Union (EU) has—with varying intensity and emphases—been criticized for its democratic deficits. Whereas previous crises often ended up in further integration and strengthening institutions with popular anchoring (notably the European Parliament), this time many commentators are in doubt as crises pile up and common solutions seem hard to find. The EU’s problem is that the technocratic, non-majoritarian bodies dominate policymaking and, on top of that, are not anchored in other sources of legitimacy than its ability to deliver desirable outcomes. In other words, the crises highlight the fact tha…
Reassessing British Conservative Euroscepticism as A Case of Party (Mis)Management
2015
Much has already been written about internal party divisions and European integration (Hix and Lord 1997; Conti 2007; Szczerbiak and Taggart 2008; Conti 2014), with the example of the British Conservative Party of the 1990s often used as a textbook case of a mainstream government party expressing some forms of opposition to European integration. In a wider comparative framework, the party can also be located within a Eurosceptic drift across the centre-right in the EU (Best 2012, p. 140). The case of the British Conservative Party is all the more relevant as the history of European integration shows how party families on the centre-right initially played an active part in the setting up of …
The Determinants of the Volatility of Fiscal Policy Discretion
2014
We investigate the determinants of the volatility of fiscal policy discretion. Using a linear dynamic panel dataset model for 104 countries from 1980 to 2006 and a system-GMM estimator,we find that more government instability, less democracy and presidentialist systems increase the volatility of the discretionary component of fiscal policy. Additionally, we show that countries with a larger size, a smaller degree of financial openness, and a stable exchange rate system are more insured against the uncertainty about the conduct of fiscal policy. Our results are robust to various regional dummy variables, diferent sub-sets of countries and the presence of high inflation and crisis episodes.
Political, Institutional, and Economic Factors Underlying Deficit Volatility
2013
It is well known that fiscal policy can counter-cyclically smooth out the effect of unexpected shocks and public deficit volatility may reflect the (optimal) policy response to them. However, the welfare losses associated to fiscal instability are also an important challenge for many countries, as it typically implies an inefficient allocation of resources, higher sovereign risk premium and an inadequate provision of public services. In this paper, we empirically analyze the political, institutional, and economic sources of public deficit volatility. Using the system-generalized method-of-moments (GMM) estimator for linear dynamic panel data models and a sample of 125 countries analyzed fro…
Professor Dr Med Oskar Fehr: the fate of an outstanding German-Jewish ophthalmologist: an early contributor to cornea and external disease.
2014
PURPOSE The aim of this study was to recount the immense and abrupt change in the private and professional life of a prominent German-Jewish ophthalmologist in the transition from democracy to dictatorship in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. METHODS This involves a Retrospective analysis of Fehr's clinical and scientific work as the first assistant of Julius Hirschberg's world-famous eye clinic in Berlin; evaluation of Fehr's successful tenure as a chair of Virchow's Eye Hospital; the catastrophic influence of Hitler's seizure of power on the private and professional lives of German-Jewish physicians; and an analysis of Fehr's personal and professional will to continue the…