Using Systems of Innovation Approach (SI) and International Business (IB) literature, this dissertation analyzes the level of embeddedness of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). MNEs are discussed as they link the economy of the host country with the global economy by their regional and global networks. The expansion and successful embeddedness of West European multinational firms is crucial for the industrial integration of CEECs into the EU. The focus of the study is on the largest food processing companies, which invested in the region : namely Nestlé, Unilever and InBev. The dissertation discusses the motives of investment and the entry strategies of food MNEs, outlines their contribution to the local development and stresses the national actors as forces to embedded FDI. The research discovered that EU membership facilitated the processes of global reorganizations of Nestlé, Unilever and InBev in CEE. All of the three MNEs, which form the object of this research, closed partially or completely plants all over CEE (and Western Europe). Hence, in a liberal trade regime it is very difficult to talk about long-term embeddedness of MNEs. It seems that the global strategies of the companies and the size of the market are the factor, which pre-determines the level of embeddedness of food MNEs in a certain economy and not so much the national actors and institutions.
Unemployment does not hit only individual workers, it affects their families as well. There has been increasing interest in household joblessness and the polarisation of work across households. The consequences of household joblessness on well-being can be dramatic. Jobless households have a high risk of poverty and household joblessness can affect the long-term outcomes of adults and children living in such households. The objective of this dissertation is to contribute to the understanding of household joblessness in Europe by analysing couples in which both partners are simultaneously without work. Using data from the European Community Household Panel, I focus on three areas, which have received little attention in the literature.
Au début du 21ème siècle l’autoritarisme semble perdurer dans quelques régions du globe, notamment le monde arabe, où il résiste aux vagues de démocratisation successives. Ce travail s’interroge sur les mécanismes de perpétuation des autoritarismes et tente de comprendre les stratégies qui permettent à ces derniers de se renouveler au jour le jour pour répondre aux défis externes et internes qui mettent en péril leur survie. Ce faisant cette recherche a favorisé l’étude des modes de gestion et de circulation de l’élite gouvernante au détriment d’autres hypothèses expliquant la survie de l’autoritarisme, et a choisi le régime irakien de Saddam Hussein comme cas d’étude, compte tenu de l’habileté dont il a fait preuve pour survivre à des crises déstabilisatrices. Une revue quasi-exhaustive de la littérature sur l’autoritarisme ainsi que sur les théories de « circulation d’élite » permet de rentrer dans le vif du sujet : l’examen des modes de gestion et de la composition de l’élite gouvernante irakienne à travers une étude biographique approfondie de celle-ci. L’objectif de ce travail est d’en extraire un modèle contribuant à l’explication de la survie du régime irakien sous Saddam Hussein.
Este trabajo examina el conjunto de creencias, valores e ideas políticas de los libertarios que en España se movilizaron contra la dictadura franquista entre 1939 y 1975. La tesis principal de la investigación es la emergencia de un proceso de cambio en la ideología libertaria durante ese periodo de clandestinidad que cuestionó algunos de los presupuestos esenciales del pensamiento anarquista clásico. Este cambio y la resistencia al mismo serán analizados teniendo en cuenta la experiencia histórica y las expectativas de los actores que compartieron la ideología, el contexto político y social que rodeó su movilización y la tradición política de la que provenían y a la que éstos de una u otra forma se vincularon.
This dissertation seeks to explain the divergent political pathways of twenty six post-communist states, following the breakdown and eventual collapse of communism in 1989-1991. Considering the trajectories of individual states between 1990 – 2007, this dissertation challenges two central bodies of theory relating to democratization and regime change. Through a sustained analysis of global and post-communist developments within this time period, the author shows that claims of an increasing asymmetry between the ‘electoral’ and ‘liberal’ elements of modern democracy have been greatly exaggerated. The author goes on to contend that in accounting for the geographical dispersion of post-communist regime forms, deeper structural factors should be considered as crucial. The dissertation is divided into the following parts: * Part I demonstrates how different conceptualisations of democracy can lead to very different conclusions about the empirical dynamics of democratization. * Part II contrasts different explanations of post-communist political change and provides an integrated framework for explaining the political pathways encountered within the former Eastern Bloc. This dissertation will be of interest to students and scholars of post-communist studies, democratization studies, comparative politics and regime change.
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This thesis enquires into the making of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) from the perspective of the actors endorsing and contesting the policy. By identifying the political milieu of the policy, it seeks to problematise the established depiction of ESDP and delineate the framing involved in designing and implementing the policy. I thus advance the argument about the all-pervading character of the political and I stipulate the value of micropolitical analysis for unpacking broad political arrangements. In order to trace security practices enacted through the policy, I explore in depth two instances of ESDP operations and a case of strengthening the UNIFIL forces to Lebanon via an EU initiative. I conclude that the ESDP has proven transformative both within the EU internal system of governance and vis-à-vis the EU’s international positioning. The former involves the rise of domestic politics engendered by the interplay of institutional identities and conceptions of achieving EU security. The latter exposes the shift in the international role assignments wherein the EU becomes a deputy of the US and a saviour of the UN’s reputation.
This thesis investigates work and industrial relations in the Herning-Ikast and Prato textile and clothing industrial districts (IDs). It offers a multilevel, empirical investigation of employee working conditions and industrial relations comparing ID and non-ID firms. The study includes employers and employees in 78 firms. Three main work-related elements are examined. First, the antecedents of employees’ positive perception of unions and union membership are explored. Second, central aspects related to employee functional flexibility (i.e. changing tasks and positions within the firm) are investigated. Finally, elements determining the degree of employees’ positive evaluation of their job in terms of opportunities for learning and development and general contentment are investigated. All three elements are analysed by comparing ID/non-ID firms and Danish/Italian firms. Questions related to work in family firms are also raised. The findings reveal that employees in family firms to a lesser extent were members of unions and reported being less functionally flexible. Moreover, the number of family member employees in a firm was negatively related to employees’ positive job evaluation. A trend toward better social relations in ID firms is seen. Findings show a lower degree of functional flexibility exerted by ID employees, suggesting the importance of alternative flexibility types in ID firms. Important national differences are seen, possibly reflecting the different ways in which the textile and clothing sector has developed as well as a more longstanding Danish tradition of focusing on the improvement of employees’ psychosocial working conditions. Findings also indicate that the degree to which the ID industrial relations vary from the national industrial relations models is dissimilar for Herning-Ikast and Prato. In view of the findings of this thesis the generalisability, transferability and future of the phenomenon of industrial districts is discussed.
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This thesis addresses the questions of why national governments choose the OMC and, especially, which factors explain the degree of development of its infrastructure (i.e. the presence of guidelines, indicators, benchmarks, National Action Plans, and peer review). The positive correlation between the development of the infrastructure of an OMC on an issue, and the saliency of this issue in the eyes of the public is taken as a starting point for answering these questions. It is claimed that national governments opt for an OMC with a highly developed infrastructure when they have an incentive to act on an issue on the European level, and at the same time fear a shift of competences because of the saliency of this issue. This conflict is reinforced when the particular issue forms part of the electoral profile of a political party in government and there is public support for more EU involvement with regard to this issue. The stronger the reluctance of member states to act on the European level, the more member states see a necessity to erect a barrier against a shift of competences, and the more the infrastructure of the OMC will be developed in order to prevent a shift to a less intergovernmental governance mode. In this way, the degree of development of the OMC is expected to be positively linked with the capacity of the OMC to function as a barrier against a shift of competences. For assessing these claims, four policy fields on which the Lisbon Council decided to adopt an OMC are selected: education, research and development, social inclusion, and the e-Europe initiative.
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The present investigation analyses the efficacy of sanctions imposed by the European Union against third countries. It looks upon measures imposed after, or in force by 1992, year of the signing of the Treaty on European Union which created the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Sanctions wielded within four legal frameworks are considered: CFSP sanctions, the suspension of development aid and trade preferences under the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, the withdrawal of trade privileges under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), and other sanctions imposed by the EU outside these frameworks. Departing from the assumptions made by theories on the operation of sanctions, the study puts forward a series of hypotheses, which are subsequently tested with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and empirical case-studies. After presenting some findings, the investigation concludes by assessing the relevance of traditional sanctions theory in accounting for the efficacy of EU sanctions, and the implications of the findings for the conceptualisation of the EU's international role.
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This dissertation explores how and to what extent EU conditionality can foster democratisation in a highly problematic case such as post-communist Albania. In order to examining the phenomena of democratisation in operational detail, the thesis delves into the sub-systemic level of democratisation focusing on two partial regimes - electoral regime and civil service system. The analysis follows on the rational choice premise that the domestic actors’ strategies of compliance depend on the structure of external incentives i.e. rewards and threats, that appeal to their interest. Our account on the impact of EU conditionality upon democratisation assumes that the likelihood of compliance depends on 1) the size of the rewards attached to conditionality; 2) the size of adoption costs; 3) the clarity of prescriptions and 4) credibility of reinforcement. The first part consists of developing a conceptual framework for assessing and explaining the impact of EU enlargement conditionality over democratisation processes. The second part explores the case of Albanian democratisation and the specific challenge it poses to the working of EU conditionality. The third part analyses the association between EU conditionality and reform seeking to identify whether the fortification of the EU conditionality coincides with a pattern-breaking change in each of the partial regimes of our choice. The thesis concludes that the EU was more successful to foster reforms in the area of electoral competition than public administration and civil service system. The EU seemed to push forward reforms by articulating clear prescriptions regarding the electoral competition; and advancing contractual relations with the country in function of electoral performance.
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Fondée sur l’examen des archives juridiques et parlementaires, et des imprimés relatifs au droit et à la politique coloniale, l’étude interroge le modus operandi de l’imposition d’une gouvernementalité républicaine en Algérie à travers l’analyse du dispositif juridico-administratif alors perçu comme la clef de voûte de l’État colonial : le code de l’indigénat. Constitué en enjeu du débat public par les républicains, l’Indigénat alimente les controverses sur l’équilibre des pouvoirs et la définition de l’État de droit, parce qu’il renvoie à un modèle autoritaire de police indigène. Cette mesure d’exception constamment réitérée est toutefois légitimée sur le terrain juridique par le biais de l’expertise sécuritaire, conçue par ses tenants (hommes de terrain et hommes de loi) comme une réponse adaptée à la menace indigène, et peu coûteuse. Se fait jour un modèle d’ordre colonial caractérisé par une économie d’hommes, ainsi qu’une ambition régalienne (prélèvement de l’impôt) et destructurante par rapport aux structures sociales autochtones. Ce modèle rentre néanmoins en affinité avec les modalités autochtones de régulation. D’une part, les prélèvements « abusifs » d’amendes et de prestations par les adjoints-indigènes apparaissent comme la contrepartie du faible salaire perçu par ce personnel. D’autre part, les orientations données par les adjoints-indigènes aux administrateurs s’inscrivent dans une série de luttes locales de pouvoir qui s’organisent selon le système autonome de représentation politique des administrés indigènes. Ces deux fonctions tacites de l’Indigénat sont rendues possibles par l’affinité des infractions à l’Indigénat avec les systèmes juridiques autochtones de maintien de l’ordre.
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This work deals with the economic and commercial activities of Italian traders in British India from the 1860s to the 1920s. When confronted with the problem of selecting which type of traders I had to include in my study I choose to work on silk and coral traders. A general study on all the Italian traders active in India would have required much more time, and more archival research, both beyond the possibilities of a doctoral student. The rational behind this choice is explained in detail in chapter 2. Silk and coral traders have been taken as representative of the Italian way of doing business, or at least of the Italian ways of doing business in India between the 19th and 20th centuries.
Questa tesi presenta i risultati della ricerca di un oggetto sfuggente, un’identità politica di parte, nell’Italia del secondo Quattrocento. La ricerca si è estesa su un lasso di tempo piuttosto lungo (cinquant’anni circa), su un’area piuttosto vasta e politicamente frammentata (buona parte della penisola italiana), e su un 'mondo di carta', prodotto tanto negli anni tra il 1450 e il 1499 quanto dagli storici in tempi più recenti. Le ragioni di questa ricerca, e di alcune scelte e definizioni adottate per evitare di perdersi, occuperanno questa introduzione.
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La thèse que nous présentons ici s’inscrit dans le cadre de trois courants
historiographiques différents : l’histoire industrielle de l’après-guerre en Belgique,
l’adaptation d’intérêts professionnels nationaux aux débuts du processus de construction
européenne et, enfin, l’évolution des tensions entre libéralisme économique et économie
mixte. À l’interface de ces trois courants, notre objectif est de montrer que la faillite des
charbonnages belges et l’échec de leur intégration au marché commun de la CECA dans
les années 1950 trouvent une grande part de leur explication dans l’obsession avec laquelle
les patrons charbonniers belges ont prétendu défendre, envers et contre tout, les principes
de la libre entreprise privée et dans l’illusion longtemps nourrie que les pouvoirs
d’intervention de la Haute Autorité pourraient les y aider.
The term ‘citizen of gypsy origin’ [občan cikánského původu] came into use in Czechoslovakia after the Communist coup of February 1948 and was jettisoned almost as abruptly after the collapse of the socialist regime in 1989.  Introduced as a replacement for the derogatory label, Gypsy [cikán], the ‘citizen of gypsy origin’ echoed the better-known term, ‘citizen of Jewish origin.’  Swiftly acquiring a pejorative undertone, the term was never fully absorbed into everyday speech.  To a contemporary audience in the Czech or Slovak Republic, the ‘citizen of Gypsy origin’ is unthinkable outside a pair of inverted commas.  It reverberates with the formalistic official discourse of scientific socialism or, in the words of the pseudonymous dissident Petr Fidelius, ‘the language of Communist power,’ which after thirty years of socialist rule had become so divorced from the ideals it claimed to represent that it seemed an empty carapace, a mere chain of signifiers lacking a referent. Almost immediately after the collapse of communism the Roma were recognised as a nationality in Czechoslovakia, having been defined only as an ‘ethnic group’ until 1989, and so in retrospect the ‘citizen of Gypsy origin’ seems implicated in a policy of coercive assimilation.  At the same time, however, the ‘citizen of Gypsy origin’ was part of a much broader history: the struggle between states and societies over the meaning of citizenship under state socialism in East Central Europe after 1945.
A Hero for the Atomic Age tells the story of how Heyerdahl organized an expedition to sail a balsa raft from Callao in Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia, and explains how he turned this physical crossing into an epic narrative that became imbued with a universal appeal. The book also addresses, for the first time, the problematic nature of Heyerdahl's theory that a white culture-bearing race had initiated all the world's great civilizations.
Ce propos sur la police glissé par Hannah Arendt dans le portrait qu’elle consacra à Walter Benjamin, lorsqu’elle évoque le Paris des années 1910 qu’il visite avant la guerre, peut constituer le point de départ de cette recherche. Arendt suggère l’existence de deux éléments distincts qui représentaient des obstacles à l’idée de cosmopolitisme mais qui ne pouvaient cependant s’opposer à cet idéal européen qui prenait corps en particulier à Paris : d’un côté, une xénophobie enracinée dans les mentalités collectives, d’un autre côté des pratiques policières spécifiques développées par la police et les policiers, auxquels s’attache ici l’adjectif “national”, à l’égard des étrangers. L’intérêt de ce propos est aussi de distinguer nettement un dispositif culturel, qui joue, certes, un rôle dans l’accueil, ou le rejet, des migrants, et un dispositif policier, dont l’histoire, condensée ici dans l’adjectif “raffiné”, est celle d’un développement spécifique de structures, de pratiques, de décisions institutionnelles mais aussi individuelles, d’actions isolées ou coordonnées.
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This dissertation addresses the problem of the function of Catholic anti-Jewish propaganda in the second half of the nineteenth century as well as the question of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the formation of Italian national identity. The study examines the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica in the period 1850-1903 as a source exemplifying the attitude of the intransigent hegemony within the Church. As a first step, aspects in the discourse of the Jesuit journal that are most constant over time are described. These are themes inherited from Catholic tradition, constructing an image of 'the Jew' that may be circulated independently of the reality of Jewish life. Secondly, the activation of this image in the journal’s rhetoric related to Italian unification is analyzed. The analysis reveals a strong connection between the position towards Italian nation building and the usage of anti-Jewish rhetoric. Thirdly, the research indicates that the Jesuits’ approaches to the 'Jewish question' and antisemitism were determined by the wish to reinforce a Catholic national identity. The study confirms that antisemitism was institutionalized within La Civiltà Cattolica in the two last decades of the nineteenth century. However, the investigation adds important nuances to the prevailing ideas about the journal, by suggesting that the majority of the College did not support the anti-Jewish propaganda of the few members that most energetically wrote about Jews. The conclusions of this study point in two directions. On one side, the investigation indicates that the approach towards Italian nation building should be taken into account when studying the rhetoric concerning Jews of the Roman Catholic Church in the second half of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it supports the thesis that the contribution of the Church towards shaping Italian national identity should be taken seriously in the studies of the Risorgimento.
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Why, yet another study on the long 19th century European mass-migration movement to the US, when during the last decade migration historians have encouraged a shift away from the Atlanto-centrism and Modernization-centrism that has dominated the sub-discipline (Lucassen and Lucassen, 1996, 28-30; Hoerder, 2002, 10-18)? For many, the topic seems saturated, yet one particular and reoccurring question has not yet received a satisfying answer: how did the migrant trade evolve and influence the relocation of approximately thirty five million migrants across the Atlantic, of whom an ever increasing percentage returned and repeated the journey during the steamship era? More than half a century ago Maldwyn Jones, Frank Thistletwaite, and Rolf Engelsing drew attention to the fact that transatlantic migration was determined by trade routes (Jones, 1956, Engelsing, 1961; Thistletwaite, 1960). Migrants essentially became valuable cargo, on a shipping route made up of raw cotton, tobacco or timber from the New World; a route that had room to spare on the return leg of the journey. Rolf Engelsing in particular documented how the maritime business community reacted to this trade opportunity, by erecting inland networks, directing a continuous flow of human cargo to the port of Bremen during the sailship-era. Marianne Wokeck later stressed the Atlantic dimensions of these networks, by dating the origins of non-colonial mass migration movements to the 18th Century (Wokeck, 1999).
Gli interrogativi posti dal mondo in cui viviamo sono sempre alla base di ogni ricerca storica, anche in questo caso il tema affrontato è stimolato da una riflessione che coinvolge il presente. Trattare di Chiesa e guerra è fondamentale per chi vive in una società, come quella attuale, nella quale la Chiesa cattolica romana ha fatto del rifiuto assoluto della guerra uno dei pochi capisaldi universalmente condivisi. Il rapporto tra la Chiesa e la guerra, anche alla luce dei drammatici eventi contemporanei, si è quindi imposto come un tema centrale anche nell’agenda degli storici. Numerosi studi si sono recentemente occupati del tema declinandolo secondo prospettive, orientamenti storiografici ed approcci metodologici diversi, ma in una comune visione di longue durée. Tutti questi lavori ci ricordano che la condanna della guerra in ogni sua forma, da parte della Chiesa, non è una costante assoluta nella storia. Il Rinascimento appare un terreno d’indagine molto frequentato, perché paradigmatico di una società che legittimava la guerra tra cristiani.
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As a consequence of the Castilian monarch’s intervention in Ireland in 1601-02, Irish communities under Spanish royal patronage were consolidated in various parts of its dominions. One of the most important of these was that of La Coruña in north-west Spain, whose Irish population was greatly augmented through royal policy to concentrate the Irish there as a means of diverting Irish migrants away from the court in Valladolid or Madrid. The nature of this emigration from Ireland to Spain involved the transfer of a broad cross-section of the native population, whose oral culture and agnatic kinship structures contrasted with the more written culture and the cognatic family structures of the host society. The long-term presence of this Irish community, dependant on the Castilian crown for economic survival, led to its engagement with the host society and its political and religious structures. This gives us a rare opportunity to view the mechanisms and the processes of assimilation in an early-modern state, which is the subject of this thesis. The results of this investigation can be categorised in terms of the effects and influences of royal institutions, based principally at the court, on both the mental world of the migrants as well as on the socio-cultural structures that they brought with them from Ireland, spread over three phases. The first phase, which lasted until 1609, was characterised by resistance to the host society and avoidance of its institutions. The second phase, from 1610 to 1624, represented a period of transition and transformation, marked by the first signs of engagement with the institutions of the host society at both the local level and at the court, and the beginnings of the breakdown of the community’s kinship structure. The final period witnessed the consolidation of these tendencies as well as the assimilation of Castilian ideas and concepts related to legal status, racial purity, and nobility.
In July 1936 a major part of the Spanish army revolted against the democratically elected Popular Front government.The resulting civil war raged on from 1936 to 1939,when general Franco’s troops secured victory, resulting in the establishment of the Franco dictatorship that lasted until 1975. The Spanish Civil War did not only pit a coalition of anti-left parties and groups against the ruling Popular Front coalition. The instant support of Hitler and Mussolini for the Nationalists, headed by general Franco, and subsequent support for the republican Loyalists by the Soviet Union and Comintern turned a civil war, that was deeply rooted in internal Spanish strife, into a conflict with significant international dimensions. Before long,the first foreign volunteers could be seen fighting in different militias on the Spanish battlefields. Most of them were delegates for the Workers Olympiad that was to take place in Barcelona in July 1936 and was organised in answer and opposition to the Olympic Games in Berlin. Instead of joining a sports event they ended up in the middle of a civil war and many decided to stay, volunteering to fight the revolters and subsequently serving in the different militias, anarchist, socialist and communist, that were organised in the early stages of the conflict. In September 1936 the Communist International (Comintern) decided to recruit an international army in aid of the Republic and its member parties began the recruitment of volunteers.
The aim of this thesis is to analyze and compare the operatic culture of Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy. This task implies analyzing and comparing the operatic cultures, and scrutinizing governmental policies as they affected opera in the USSR, Germany, and Italy in the period of authoritarian rule. The most important focus is on the impact which these three regimes had on opera. And we start our analysis from the paradoxical fact that opera managed to retain its high quality during the time of strictest repression
The aim of this thesis is to analyse the changes through the time of the West European academic images and stereotypes of Japan since the 1970s, and to study how Japan has been produced and constructed for Europe in some major academic disciplines, that is, economics, business management studies, social sciences, and across these disciplines. Therefore, it is a thesis to clarify the European imaginations and stereotypisations of Japan as reflected in the West European academic debate. It also aims to illuminate the European conceptualisation of Japan. How have the European academics perceived and interpreted the Japanese economy, its business management, society and historical backdrop since the 1970s? How have the images and stereotypes of Japan been constructed and developed for Europe as a model, as a threat or as the Other? Do any remarkable shared features or differences between images and stereotypes exist within each period or each academic discipline? These questions are addressed in the thesis. The thesis was born out of an academic interest in the development of the civilisational dialogue between Europe and Japan. Europe had always presented the models to emulate for the other non-Western nations, including - at least previously - Japan. After a century of Japanese interest in emulating European models of modernisation, in the 1970s influences started to operate in the reverse direction. It was during the 1970s that the West Europeans faced their serious economic, social and identity crises, and when the Europeans started to look to Japan for an alternative model with much more interest and close attention. Over the period since the 1970s Japan has provided itself to be the first non-Western nation in modern history that has demonstrated the alternative economic and social models from which Europe can learn or with which it can contrast itself for the first time.
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The decade after World War I saw the daring creation of the League of Nations: West European security had to be preserved through cooperation in transnational networks instead of through traditional multilateral expedients, and a new generation of diplomats had to enhance open diplomacy, push away the international, aristocratic elite, and democratize politics. Peace movements appeared on the international stage, and blew a fierce ideological wind over Europe. This hopeful change experienced its halcyon days around 1925-1928, when Europe as well as the Pacific encountered a true détente. This thesis deals with these changes in international security matters, incited by World War I and the subsequent creation of the League of Nations, and their consequences for Dutch foreign policy.
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This thesis addresses the issue of the relative performance of dynamic factor models in finite samples in the presence of structural breaks. It extends an existing literature by considering new data sets and evaluating finite sample properties of dynamic factor models and factor-augmented VARs and VECMs in Monte Carlo exercises.
Chapter 1 Forecasting Emerging Market Indicators: Brazil and Russia
Chapter 2 Co-Breaking and Forecasting Performance of Factor Models
Chapter 3 Factor Augmented Error Correction Models
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The inclusion of findings from psychology into economics (see e.g. Rabin (1998)) and the increasingly available evidence of deviations from the standard model of behaviour in economics (e.g. DellaVigna (2007)) have given rise to a new sub-discipline of economics, behavioural economics. Behavioural economics studies deviations from the standard economic model in three respects: first, non-standard preferences, second, non-standard beliefs, and third, non-standard decision making. The study of self-control problems can be regarded a subfield of the study of non-standard preferences. A general definition of self-control problems is the inability to stick to a decision or the inability to carry out a plan. This inability might result from time-inconsistent preferences, i.e. preferences that make people judge objectively equivalent trade-offs differently only due to the fact, that they make these judgements at different points in time. The recent years have seen a surge of theoretical literature establishing a theoretical framework for the analysis of self-control problems and applying this framework to many fields (see Frederick et al. (2002), and Chapter 1). Some contributions have also assessed the effect of self-control problems on different outcomes empirically. My thesis is an attempt to contribute to this empirical literature. I try to assess the effect of self-control problems on different outcomes of interest, namely credit card borrowing and saving. After surveying the relevant literature in Chapter 1, I discuss the measurement of self-control problems in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is an attempt to assess the effect of self-control problems on credit card borrowing and Chapter 4 is an attempt to assess the effect of self-control problems on saving in illiquid assets. I use data from a recent household survey from Australia.
Oil represents a key commodity in the world energy market and it is not a surprise that its price is largely viewed as one of the leading indicator of the global economic health. Therefore, the recent soaring up of the price of oil has generated a large concern about its potential e¤ects on global economic activity. Indeed, even thoughmost developped economies are generally better prepared to deal with oil shocks nowdays than in the 1970s (better conduct of monetary policies, technological progress), the e¤ective role of oil price shocks in a¤ecting macroeconomic performance is still debated. The aim of this thesis is then to investigate some aspects of the relationship between oil and the macroeconomy by means of both an empirical and a theoretical analysis.
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The traditional debate concerning humanitarian intervention has changed since the publication of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) report. This thesis addresses both the debate before the publication of the R2P report and the report itself by examining in-depth the international responsibility, which the international community shares in relation to such grave humanitarian crises as genocide. It is argued that the debate before the R2P report made implicit assumptions about international responsibility. Moreover, international collective responsibility is examined both at a conceptual level and at a practical level, thus contributing to the discussion after the publication of the R2P report. It is argued that especially the conceptualization of international responsibility is lacking in the report, and this thesis suggests a conceptualization of international collective responsibility, which is then modeled in the second half of this thesis. Furthermore, the responsibility model and its functioning are illustrated first with the help of a thought experiment and then by examining the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and some of the international responses to the tragedy. The responsibility model serves also as a tool for evaluating the international responses, and thus the justifications of non-intervention are assessed. On a higher level this thesis contributes to an understanding of the functioning of international politics. For example, the thesis argues for a particular understanding of the international community as well as state practice within the community. Moreover, the thesis addresses some of the roles that states have and some of the expectations that we have of states at the international level. Finally, the use of discretion in practicing international politics is an underlying theme of this thesis, thus addressing both what is the politics in international politics and how it is or should be conducted.
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This thesis contains several lines of research conducted during my four years at the European University Institute. It deals with two distinct topics in the area of recursive economies, developed in three chapters. The first chapter considers a general class of recursive models in which inequality constraints pose a challenging problem: Standard Dynamic Programming techniques often necessitate a non established differentiability of the value function, while Euler equation based techniques have problematic or unknown convergence properties. The second chapter studies a model of optimal redistribution policies in which agents face unemployment risk and in which savings may provide partial self-insurance. Moral hazard arises as job search effort is unobservable. The optimal redistribution policies provide new insights into how an unemployment insurance scheme should be designed. The third chapter studies a very similar model to that explored in Chapter 2. In contrast, however, I impose a liquidity constraint that limits agents' possibility to borrow. As will be shown, this additional constraint will have salient quantitative implication on how an optimal unemployment insurance programme should be designed.
This thesis is a theoretical study of the roles nations play in international politics, with a particular focus on Britain’s changing engagement with the international system since the Second World War. It notes the pervasiveness of the dramaturgical analogy—or the metaphor of the ‘world stage’—in reference to the behaviour of states in international affairs, but the general silence from International Relations (IR) as to the importance of the concept for the theory and practice of international politics. The thesis consequently puts forward an ‘interactionist’ approach to state roles, based on a reading of symbolic interactionism that, it is argued, can solve a number of the problems identified in the limited number of theoretical treatments of roles found in the literature. Such an approach focuses on the way shared understandings of a state’s proper place in the world, or its ‘role’, emerge and change through particular interactions. This lens is brought to bear on the case of Britain’s changing role in the post-War world, which, it is contended, offers a particularly salient example of a state that has altered the bases of its international relations in the recent past. Four episodes of Britain’s post-War foreign policy are then analysed in depth in order to gauge the changing meanings associated with Britain’s role on the world stage: the ‘Skybolt crisis’ of 1962, the withdrawal from East of Suez in 1968, the Falklands War of 1982, and finally Britain’s involvement in the international intervention in Kosovo between 1998 and 1999. It is argued in conclusion that the approach outlined in the thesis provides not only a more fine-grained analysis of Britain’s post-War experience than the dominant narratives represent, but that it also offers a useful theoretical framework with which to approach the study of state behaviour in international politics, one that significantly advances theorising within the constructivist paradigm and the English School tradition.
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My thesis focuses on the topic of sentencing in international criminal law. The title - Sentencing in International Criminal Law: The Approach of the two UN ad hoc Tribunals and future perspectives for the International Criminal Court - already indicates the central role occupied by the jurisprudence of the ICTY and ICTR in this analysis. The motivation in undertaking research on the topic of international sentencing is rooted in the belief that a study of this kind could contribute to the current debate and provide an interesting contribution to the existing literature.
In particular, my research intends to achieve three main objectives: 1) to clarify the scope of international sentencing law; 2) to highlight problems arising from the current sentencing practice of the ad hoc Tribunals; and 3) to indicate possible ways of addressing such problems and developing a coherent system of guiding principles for sentencing in international criminal justice. The research questions that guided my
analysis and that this thesis addresses are the following:
- What is the current and evolving tendency of international criminal justice?
- Are the purposes of punishment at the international level comparable to those of
national sentencing?
- How can the ‘principle of proportionality’ be applied in international
sentencing?
- Is the principle of legality of penalties fully respected?
- Which are the influential factors on sentencing that can be appreciated
throughout the jurisprudence of the ICTY and ICTR?
- Is it possible to identify consistent patterns or trends for international sentencing
emerging from the practice of the ad hoc Tribunals?
This thesis deals with different topics on international macroeconomics, in particular on business cycles in small open economies, the motives for net foreign asset accumulation and the transmission of shocks in an international framework. The three chapters deal with very different issues and different degrees of modeling complexity. There is an eternal discussion between the trade-off between simple models that target to understand a little piece of the macroeconomic mechanism and more complex models that are closer to reality. The first two chapters are more simple and their main contribution relies on the analysis of very particular issues, such as the role of expectations and the role of risk aversion. The last chapter tackles with a sophisticated 2-country model with vertically integrated firms to analyze the transmission of shocks.
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This dissertation explains the emergence and functioning of three forms of governance structures within the context of the European integration and constitutionalisation process: comitology, (regulatory) agencies and the Open Method of Co-ordination. The point of departure is the insight that the intergovernmental/supranational distinction, which most theories of European integration and constitutionalisation rely on, has lost its strength. A new paradigm of EU research is therefore needed. Against this background it is suggested that the distinction between governing and governance provides a more appropriate basis for analysing the phenomenon of integration and constitutionalisation in Europe. The distinction between governing and governance allows for an understanding of the EU as a hybrid consisting of a governing dimension, characterised by legal and organisational hierarchy, and a governance dimension which operates within a network form characterised by legal and organisational heterarchy. The function of governance structures is to ensure the embeddedness of the governing dimension in the wider society. Instead of representing contradictory developments, the two dimensions are therefore mutually constitutive in the sense that more governing implies more governance and vice versa. These theoretical insights are illustrated through two detailed case studies which respectively reconstruct the operational mode of the Open Method of Coordination within EU Research & Development Policy and the regulatory system for the EU chemicals market (REACH). The book is inter-disciplinary in nature and incorporates insights from law, political science and sociology.
This thesis deals with a number of different topics in the field of international macroeconomics. It proposes theoretical models of the open economy to think about and analyze questions such as the effects of financial globalization, countries' external adjustment mechanism, international relative prices, or the world's state of global imbalances.
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This thesis aims at shading light on three issues which are at the forefront of the European Commission’s agenda. The first two chapters deal with the issue of state subsidies and their impact on market competition and development. Both papers design a theoretical setting where such impact can be assessed and provide for the tools needed for welfare analysis. The third chapter, instead, is mainly empirical and aims at measuring the effect on competition due to an increase in advertising in the context of public procurement auctions. Throughout this introduction, I will briefly describe the motivation and the main insights underlying each chapter.
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Until recently, Courts were not an important component of political science research on Latin America. The quantity of research on the judiciary does not compare even remotely to the vast literature on others institutions. However, despite the relative inattention to their role, courts are institutions whose performance has concrete and relevant effects on the socio-political system. Indeed, Courts have currently emerged as active participants in the political process offering new opportunities to citizens, social movements, interest groups, and politicians. Focusing on three countries of Central America (Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala), this dissertation illustrates how far the political system in these countries is shaped in significant ways by the role of Courts as political institutions. Throughout a comparative approach, this study offers what may be the first cross-national analysis explicitly designed to serve as a comprehensive measure of the political role of High Courts.
As a novel and complex polity, also subject to endless proposals for institutional reform, the viability of the EU is an open but under-theorized question. This thesis conceptualizes EU viability from an internal perspective, that is, the viability of the process of integration rather than Europe as a viable actor in international politics. Adopting the concept of a compound polity to understand the tensions inherent in the EU, viability is defined in relation to the -rules of the game- of this compound system. This gambit has a twofold purpose. Firstly, it permits an analogy with another historical case of a compound system, the antebellum US republic. Secondly, it enables the specification of two scenarios of viability in a compound polity: dynamic equilibrium and voluntary centralization. Four aspects of the rules of the game (institutions, expectations, competence allocation and representative functions) are analysed to determine which scenario the EU follows. The analogy with the early US and its own conflicts over these four elements of the rules of the game is then contrasted with the EU experience. Five differences in how these disputes arise and the means for trying to settle them are singled out to explain the differing problems of viability in both compound polities. The results of this analogical analysis are then used to explore the appropriateness of certain proposed changes to the rules of the game in the EU, notably in the area of political representation. In a system accustomed to dynamic equilibrium, enhancing the representation of individuals is often seen as a condition for favouring more voluntary centralization. However, the analysis of conflicts over the rules of the game in two compound systems suggests a more cautious approach is required in the interests of viability. Hence this study presents itself as a significant, if incomplete, initial step in the process of identifying what makes the EU viable.
The analysis in the thesis unfold in three steps. It departs from a set of inquiries on the several discursive threads that intersected in the process of criminal codification in Italy, which, due to their eminently transnational nature, are rooted on a plane that goes beyond the strict Italian case (Part I). It then focuses on the process of criminal codification proper under fascism (Part II). Lastly, in Part III, the penal question is again addressed as a transnational theme, an operation that allows us to grasp the meaning of these juridico-penal institutions in terms of the political and social dimensions that underlie their fabric.
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The dissertation shows that countries with severe human rights violations and/or dictatorships are likely to be subjected to sanctions, irrespective of their strategic or economic importance to the West. A considerable number of states are never sanctioned for violating human rights, but these countries tend to be liberal democracies, allies and at peace. I found that the differences between the E.U. and the U.S. are negligible with respect to the use of punitive measures, but striking when it comes to the use of positive measures. The E.U. uses a combination of “carrots” and “sticks”, while “engagement” essentially means free trade and little else for the U.S. I argue that the institutional set up of the E.U. and the U.S. political systems can largely account for the differences in their reactions, while their common adherence to liberal norms can account for the similarities. Historically and institutionally speaking, it is easier for the E.U. to decide on positive measures than on negative measures. The institutional set up of U.S. sanctions policy, in contrast, favors the use of sticks, given the role of Congress in the decision-making and the small constituencies which favor positive measures. The findings, which largely undermine Realism and support Liberalism and Constructivism, challenge the conventional wisdom in the field, both among scholars and in the wider policy world according to which Western states pursue rather inconsistent human rights policies.
This is a study of the consequences for the Anglo-American special relationship of Heath’s attempt to place Britain at the centre of the EC. British accession to the EC is widely regarded as the chief accomplishment of the Heath Government, although the positive influence of membership are issues which are still debated. In contrast, contemporary Anglo-American relations, during the stewardship of Prime Minister Edward Heath and President Richard Nixon, are described as either inconsequential or as bewildering. The conventional interpretation of the Nixon-Heath years is that Heath pursued a European objective for Britain and that he was indifferent with regard to the special relationship.
This thesis applies microeconometric methods to analyze various economic research questions using different data sources.
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This study analyzes the role of social and legal transformations regarding homosexuality in the construction of gay and lesbian identities. In this respect, the recognition of same-sex couples constitutes a fundamental element of a changing social environment in the contemporary European context and as a phenomenon stands at the centre of the inquiry. The interest in the functions of the law in identity construction explains the topical focus on legal changes. Qualitative research methods are combined with a theoretical inquiry into notions of recognition and identity. Fifty in-depth interviews have been conducted in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. The fieldwork focuses on a metropolitan lesbian and gay bar milieu: respondents were approached in bars and cafés in Berlin, London, Paris, and Rome. This fieldwork and the discourses and narratives that stem from it constitute the main empirical source of the project. The notion of identity management (Goffman), a critical theory approach to recognition (Honneth) and a social theory approach to the individual and social change (Kaufmann) feed into the research project from the outset and are in tum informed by it. What does it mean for lesbians and gays to experience the current debates on same-sex marriage and partnership laws? How, if at all, do the normative changes in their social environments affect their life plans, the understanding of their own lives, and the expression of homosexuality in public settings? How can the researcher link the very personal level of individual lives to the macro-level of normative change in society at large and in the legal and political realm?
Over the past decades, governments have increasingly been confronted with problems that transcend their boundaries. A multitude of policy fields are affected, including environment, trade and security. Responding to the challenges triggered by Europeanization and globalization, governments increasingly interact across different spheres of authority. Both theoretically and empirically, the puzzle of institutional choice reflected by the variety of arrangements in which intergovernmental cooperation takes place inside individual countries and across their borders remains surprisingly under-explored. In an attempt to solve this puzzle, the dissertation tackles the following questions: Why are the intergovernmental arrangements governments set up to deal with boundary-crossing problems so different? To what extent do these institutional differences affect the effectiveness of intergovernmental cooperation? To address this gap theoretically and empirically, this book adopts a deductive, rationalist approach to institution-building. It argues that internal politics, the type of executive-legislative relations within the interacting governments, explains the nature of institutions set up to channel intergovernmental processes: while power-sharing governments engage in institution-building, power-concentrating governments avoid it. It also shows that these institutional choices matter for the output of intergovernmental cooperation. The approach is applied to Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and finally the European Union. Disaggregating individual government units, the theoretical approach reveals how intragovernmental micro-incentives drive macro-dynamics and thereby addresses the neglect of horizontal dynamics in multilevel systems. The willingness and capacity of lower-level governments to solve collective problems on their own and to oppose central encroachment are crucial to understand the power distribution in different systems and their long-term evolutions.
The Organization of European Security Governance investigates what impact the changing nature of security challenges has had on the organization of security governance in Europe. As the most pervasive security challenges today are difficult to classify as either internal or external, the traditional divide between domestic and international security has become blurred. In response, European leaders have emphasized the need to develop comprehensive and horizontal approaches to security in the European Union. But has the European Union been able to deliver a coherent response to this new security environment? In a detailed comparative study of two crucial policy fields - EU counter-terrorism and post-conflict crisis management - the dissertation outlines the scope of the ongoing transformation of Europe's security order, examines its challenges and explains its defects.
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The thesis discusses whether the western aid policy of Civil Society Promotion (CSP) in postcommunist Albania constituted a policy of colonization with its direct penetration of the local public sphere or one of emancipation that pluralized the local and the international public spheres and created opportunities of transnational redistribution. It confronts the academic analysis of CSP with the debates emerged in the Albanian public sphere and looks at the reasons why the three different strands of denunciation of CSP as colonization identified (the problem of control, that of the technocracy and finally at the heuristic value of western categories) do not reflect the reception of the policy in the Albanian public sphere. The dissertation reconstructs the different phases of CSP’s policy making in Albania and discusses why, after the initial welcoming of the policy, its outcomes in terms of growth of local NGOs have been widely considered unsatisfactory. What emerged from my inquiry was that the main criticism towards CSP that was raised in the Albanian public sphere was that its real beneficiaries turned out to be local NGO representatives themselves while society at large did not really benefit from the foreign support in the field due to its standardized way of dealing with the recipient’s context. The thesis discusses the reformulation of the western policy making by local NGOs in connection to the post-communist troubled transformation. It confronts the different critiques to CSP with the efforts done by Albanian NGO to emerge and be recognized as civil society experts, civic innovators, and cultural mediators. The work concludes that CSP faces a circular problem: it requires a functioning local public sphere to be critically appropriated by the recipient public sphere but when it is mostly needed it is unlikely to work.
This dissertation analyses the dynamics of EU policy making through a structured and focused comparison with two other federal polities: the United States and Switzerland. To this end, it draws on the wider comparative federalism literature to examine how basic federal political institutions structure the development of policy outcomes. The empirical focus is on the regulatory challenge posed by the internet's spectacular proliferation during the period of 1995-2005. Two hypotheses are formulated as to how basic federal political institutions shape the development of policy outcomes in the three polities under investigation. First, given the cross-border nature of the policy challenge, we expect to find similar interactions among the different levels of government in all three units of analysis. In particular, federal level political actors should be similarly mobilised into offering centralising solutions to problems with cross-border effects. Furthermore, this could provoke allocational shifts in authority towards the centre in the three units of analysis. Second, it is expected that differences in the policy process and the ‘power capabilities’ of the centre help to explain the variance in policy outcomes. The main findings of the empirical investigation suggest that the dynamics of policymaking in the realm of internet regulation exhibit similarities that make EU comparison with other federal polities across these dimensions especially revealing. This is particularly the case when comparing the EU with polities characterised by an extremely decentralised federal configuration, institutionally weak centres, consensual modes of decision-making, and decentralised modes of policy implementation such as Switzerland.
This is a study of how and why nationality, as a perception of time, space, and political authority, was diffused in the Ottoman Empire, leading to its fragmentation into two nation state polities - namely, Greece and Turkey. These questions are addressed through the study of banknotes. In studying the process whereby the banknote became a territorial currency, which allowed the impersonal and catholic mediation of transactions across, yet only within, national territories, the banknote is treated as a 'window' to the normative alignment of a national community. In studying the banknote as a cultural artifact that empowers and at the same time delineates a protocol of social interaction - ie. economic exchange - the banknote is treated as a window to a process of ‘sign-alignment', namely the homogenization of cultural expression.
The thesis offers a theoretical clarification of the concept of political competition and an empirical study of one of its defining dimensions, namely contestability. In the first part, the relevant literature is subjected to a critical review with an eye to arriving at a model of competition suited to an empirical study of its effects. The model proposed focusses attention on the incentives political actors aspiring to positions of power have to win votes. Two dimensions are singled out as crucial for such incentives. The first is the degree of contestability. That is, how open the political arena is to the entry of new competitors. The second dimension, vulnerability, addresses how closely incumbent governments are faced with the threat of losing office. The second, and main part of the thesis, is devoted to the empirical study of contestability by examining the barriers to entry for new parties in 21 democracies. Four barriers are identified and measured in turn. The first two determine access to competition for votes. The Registration barrier captures the costs of participation, while the Recognition barrier tries to identify costs and opportunities involved in becoming known to the public. Unlike the other barriers, several indicators are proposed to capture it. The next two determine the difficulties involved in winning seats. The Representation barrier measures this by the properties of the electoral system, while the Accessibility barrier takes the interaction of electoral behaviour and the electoral system into account. Finally, the individual and combined strength of each of the barriers to entry are investigated on the number of new parties entering. The results suggest that the relative importance of the barriers varies considerably, but also that they together explain a considerable amount of variation in the entry of new parties. The implications of the findings are finally evaluated in light of competitive theory.
From a sociological point of view, camps or transit zones may present the institutionalisation o f temporariness as a form of radical social exclusion and marginalisation in modem society and a conservation of borders as dividing lines
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This Thesis, entitled 'The Shaping of Third-Party Effects: Presuppositions and Constraints', is set in the context of constitutional theory and practice and deals with the impact of (constitutional) fundamental rights on private relations, known under the slogan 'human rights and the private sphere'.
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Le développement durable suscite l’intérêt du juriste. Intrigué par ce concept
malléable à la définition évasive1, qui «traduit [la] nécessité de concilier développement
économique et protection de l’environnement»2, ce dernier s’emploie à l’analyser pour en
déterminer les implications sur le plan du droit. Souvent pourtant, le juriste se trouve
désemparé face à l’objet de son étude. Le développement durable intéresse certes, mais il
désoriente, sa nature fuyante et intrinsèquement évolutive le rendant rebelle à la classification
juridique.
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This study aims to define the legal contours of the concept of corporate accountability in international environmental law. This concept is often related to the insistent calls by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academics to ensure some sort o f international oversight over private companies, particularly multinational ones, to avoid the most serious environmental harm caused by them. Corporate accountability is also equally relevant when considering the growing practice of international organizations to increasingly engage the private sector in attaining global goals for the protection of the environment.
This thesis adheres to the fundamental principle of maximizing behavior and equilibrium and shows how behavioral economic assumption of preferences, which go beyond self-interest, makes microeconomic theory applicable to a broad field of social behavior, where traditional models fail. All three thesis chapters are self contained but the thesis evolves from modelling social preferences and an analysis of their behavioral consequences in bargaining situations to an empirical test of their prevalence.
Are migrants from a transition economy positively self-selected not only with respect to observable characteristics, but also with respect to the unobservales? Moreover, since the decision to migrate is endogenous, what are the causal returns to geographic mobility, net of unobservable confounders? Finally, does gender matter? Do female migrants from a transition economy experience a gain or a (double) disadvantage in the western labour market of being both female and migrants compared to female stayers and to male migrants?
This thesis deals with economic growth theory. By growth theory I refer to that field of economic theory which studies through mathematical models, the mechanisms behind the growth of the main macroeconomic variables like capital, consumption and output. These economic mechanisms depend crucially on the set of hypothesis which the model is built on. Relax some of these assumptions, or change some of them, in order to increase the explicatory power of the model is one of the main objective of the theoretic macroeconomist.
On the Ist of January 1999 eleven European Union (EU) members fixed their currencies to form the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In the run-up to the formation of the euro area candidate countries had to fulfil a set of entry criteria laid down in the Treaty of Maastricht. These consisted of limitations on nominal exchange rate volatility, and on the levels of inflation, interest rate, public debt and fiscal deficit. After the successful formation of the common currency, the countries gave up individual monetary policy to the European Central Bank (ECB), which supposedly, at least for some, meant a gain in credibility and a substantial change in monetary policy in general. Finally, following the latest wave of EU enlargement, which took place on the 1st of May 2004, in the next years we can expect new members to be aiming to join the euro. The five nominal criteria will most certainly be applied to future enlargements. Whilst before EU entry practically all candidate countries declared a willingness to join the euro ”as soon as possible” the question whether they are ready and suitable to do so, is important.
Public utilities provide fundamental services both to households and firms. Continuous, adequate, and reasonably priced supplies of water, electricity and gas are essential for healthy living in every modern society. Moreover, while there is no direct physical need for telecommunication services, in today’s information economy they have clearly become a social need. At the same time infrastructure sectors are key for sustained economic growth and international competitiveness, since they also provide necessary inputs to firms, allowing them to produce and interact with both suppliers and customers. In this dissertation we will analyze some important policy issues that emerge in relation to these sectors.
This thesis deals with the transmission of shocks, i.e. how economics adjust to unforeseen changes in either exogenous circumstances or policy variables. It is divided in three parts, including this introduction. The second part, containing two chapters, is devoted to the transmission of monetary shocks in closed economies. Chapter 1 looks at frictions at the price-setters side and chapter 2 at frictions at the consumers' side. Both chapters are developing alternative, more micro-founded explanations to the nowadays standard model in New Keynesian Economics, in which price setters are exogenously forced to set prices only at random dates.
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My thesis consists of three independent chapters. Each of them is an empirical study using time series techniques to learn something about the macroeconomy. Hence the title "Essays in Applied Macroeconometrics". Whilst the first chapter is a rather descriptive analysis of the functioning of European bond markets when public news come out, the second and third chapters are guided by business cycle theory and use this theory in the estimation of the models. The next section gives a very brief overview of the thesis. The first chapter. "Macroeconomic News and the European Bond Market", is an empirical analysis of how the European bond market reacts to macroeconomic announcements and in particular to news in those announcements. The second and third chapters study the causes of the US business cycle and the functioning of the US labor market. The second chapter, "Shocks and Adjustment Costs in an estimated BBC model for the US", takes the simple RBC model and asks which real shocks and which factor adjustment costs matter for the US business cycle in such a model. The third chapter, "Dynamic Beveridge and Phillips curves: A macroeconoinetric analysis of the US labor market", investigates in more detail the frictions in the IJS labor market. Although chapters two and three are empirical in nature, they are firmly grounded in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) theory and make heavy use of this theory in the empirical analysis. The rest of this introduction summarizes each chapter in some more detail.
There is little doubt that fiscal policy plays an important role in business cycle fluctuations; however, the ability of fiscal policy measure to work as a countercyclical stimulus has recently been questioned (see Taylor, 2000), in light of the efficiency and transparency of monetary policy interventions. Far from postulating a definitive answer to the debate, the objective of this dissertation is to contribute to a better understanding of the transmission mechanism of fiscal policy shocks, through their interaction with the consumption behaviour of private agents. The fundamental contribution of this thesis is the introduction of different forms of households’ heterogeneity in the analysis of the effects of government expenditure shocks and tax cuts.
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This volume collects together three papers in applied labour economics. They have in common the use of an outstanding panel of linked employer-employee data that covers almost all of the wage earners in the Portuguese private sector (more than 2 million workers). Beginning in 1982, and continuing on a yearly basis, every' firm with wage earners has been legally obliged to reply' to tins inquiry' by the Ministry' of Labour and Solidarity'. Reported data match the firm, the establisliment and each of the workers, and include the workerﾒs gender, age, skill, occupation, schooling, tenure and earnings as well as the firmﾒs location, industry' employment level, sales volume and legal setting. The existence of a unique identification number (social security number) for the workers and firms enables the construction of a panel of worker's or firms
The topic of this thesis is optimal reimbursement of healthcare providers.
This thesis on Irish elite exiles in Continental Europe, from c. 1649-1660 will be a study of those politically, militarily, and socially influential Irish royalists, who are described as Ormondist in the existing historiography and who, in the wake of the victory of English Parliamentary forces in the civil wars of England, Scotland and Ireland of the 1640s and early 1650s, chose to follow the Court of the Stuart claimant to the thrones of those three kingdoms, Charles II, into exile on the Continent. The purpose of this thesis is to establish and advance a number of solutions to a particular set of questions.
Without questioning the fact that many nobles in Belgium entered into the resistance against the Nazi occupation out of compassionate engagement for their fatherland and king, this thesis argues that a Belgian noble identity built around ‘Serving King and Country’ is not a remnant from a remote, pre-modem past. Rather, it is the Belgian variant of a deep transformation that nobles all over Europe experienced following the disintegration of the old order of Estates. In line with other recent scholarship, I suggest in this dissertation that noble identity underwent a profound shift around 1800, which can be summarised by the notion of ‘nationalisation’. Even if the specific moment, context and manner of this change differed from state to state, sooner or later, all aristocrats throughout Europe, like all burghers, were to be caught up by nationalist fever. The main question of the thesis at hand is simple: when and why did nobles come to think of themselves as being part of a Belgian nation, and how did this sense of community change over time? The group of families on which this research is based are the families of the noble Estate of Brabant. (More details about these lineages are provided at the end of this chapter). The period I look at stretches from the middle of the eighteenth century) when no abstract form of Southern-Netherlandish nation can be detected, to the middle of the nineteenth century, when an independent Belgian nation-state had turned out to be a stable construction.
The primary aim of this thesis is to question how, and the extent to which, the implementation of Communist rule in Russia influenced the new discursive formation of literature. The latter refers to the complex process of continuous transformation of the literary discourse due to the interaction of a heterogeneous set of factors (such as theories, works, institutions, practices, policies, agents, instruments and many others). This transformation concerns not only those trends, theories, policies, or practices, which emerged from within the Marxist-Bolshevik framework and culminated with the appearance of Socialist Realism, but also those which developed outside of this framework and, thus, ‘ignored’, challenged or opposed it. Moreover, it considers those shifts which occurred because of the tension created between these two challenging paradigms, as well as due to a continuous striving for mutual accommodation. In chronological terms, the analysis broadly deals with the years between the 1890s and the 1930s, while focusing more specifically on the 1920s- 1930s. This study attempts to go beyond the ‘orthodox’ analysis of the literary discourse, by transcending literary studies. Such a strategy has a dual purpose. On the one hand it intends to present a deeper understanding of the literary phenomenon, by seeing it in connection with a cultural and intellectual tradition, as well as part of a defined historical reality. On the other hand, it aims to contribute to the study of this tradition and of the historical context of the literary discourse being analysed. Broadly, this analysis aims to show the way in which the political power of the Communist ideology was challenged by the strength of the literary world.
The aim of the present study is to offer a new understanding of the ‘uses of history’ in English liberal culture between the passing of the Second Reform Act of 1867 and Britain’s entrance in the First World War in August 1914. Culturally as well as politically, this period is commonly recognised as having a distinctive character for which the epithet ‘liberal’ offers an apposite shorthand. Although the period saw long spells of conservative administration (under Derby, Disraeli, Salisbury, and Balfour) as well as the liberal ministries of Gladstone, Rosebery, Campbell-Bannerman, and Asquith, it is often called a liberal age, or construed as the heyday of English liberal politics, because liberal values and the memory of an exceptional liberal heritage pervaded political life and the organisation of society. Just to sum up: the years from 1867 to 1914 saw the extension of the franchise to almost all the male population (in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884), diminishing property qualifications, disestablishment of the Church in Ireland and Wales, political consensus in regard to free trade up until the late 1890s, and the last days and slow demise of the Gladstonian minimal state with its reliance on subsidiarity, voluntarism, self-help, and a spirit of civic duty. In comparison to the heavily centralised states of the European continent, England continued to have a ‘minimally centralised system of governance’ until the end of the nineteenth century, a system in which citizens saw a source of national pride and proof of England’s superior, vanguard role in the world as the cradle of parliamentary government and civic liberties.
Since the 1970s numerous museums and exhibitions have been opened and new monuments erected in many European countries. This 'memory boom' came to a head in the middle of the 1990s with the arrangements for the half-centenary anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The last 15 years have seen a tremendous change in international politics.
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In this study I explore the low participation rates of southern women in paid work during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s through the phenomenon of work-family conflict in an 'unconventional' way.
Innovative ideas, development of skills and job search- these are not only the constitutive elements in the life of a doctoral researcher but also of this dissertation. The three chapters presented in the following apply the concept of general equilibrium to topics related to technological innovations and labor markets. Thereby, the thesis combines strands of the industrial organization literature with the growth literature- and includes a chapter with business cycle analysis.
European integration has upset many assumptions regarding the distribution of power, functions and authority across and within states. Scholars have bewailed or rejoiced the ‘emptying’ of the state – the erosion of its competences by supranational integration and decentralisation. However, there are few examinations of how substate actors have responded to state and European structural change, and none that have analysed how substate political parties have sought to enhance regional powers and influence during a period in which state boundaries have become permeable. This research fills this lacuna by exploring how substate parties in Scotland, Bavaria and Sardinia have pursued territorial strategies to secure autonomy and capacity in Europe since 1979. The choice of comparing dissimilar regions enables us to explore the uneven effects of European integration in different places, and to examine why some parties have used Europe to advance their territorial projects whilst others have not. Territorial strategies – which include demands for constitutional recognition as well as policy capacity – differ across territories and party systems, owing to a variety of local and statewide factors. They also change over time in response to perceived opportunities for action in Europe. For instance, from 1988-95 the possibilities of a Europe of the Regions led to a convergence of territorial demands, causing nationalist parties to moderate claims to independence and pro-centralist parties to support greater substate autonomy. However, the closing of opportunities for regions from the late 1990s caused some parties to revert back to previous – or more Eurosceptical – positions, or to trade-off autonomy for more access to the state. This indicates that substate party support for European integration is often tactical, whilst pressures for autonomy are motivated by the perception of policy benefits to be obtained, with or without Europe.
Using insights from the theory of discursive psychology, and a combined methodology of quantitative and qualitative techniques, this dissertation investigates the everyday discourses of individuals working in three “European Community Agencies”. Two main issues were studied: a) how individuals in the agencies talk about “working together” and b) how individuals construct the roles of the EU agencies. The research brought to the fore a variety of interpretative repertoires concerning the notion of “working together” and the role of the agencies. Furthermore, the variation that was observed was shown to parallel scientific discourses about Europe and culture, as well as the more specialised literature on the EU agencies. In this way, both the lay and the scientific discourses were structured on similar arguments. Thus, it was shown that scientific discourse informs and is informed by lay discourse, a finding that is consistent with a discursive psychology approach. However, the analysis also identified innovative discourses that are emerging in an attempt to transcend the ideological dilemmas that pervade both the lay and the scientific discourses. In this connection, one of the major claims advanced in this dissertation is that focusing on the norms and expectations produced in an agency’s organisational setting through statistical techniques as well as the qualitative analysis of the agencies’ everyday discourses can provide illuminating insights on questions such as identity, culture and issues of political power which are extremely pertinent to the broader European integration process.
This thesis is divided in seven chapters exploring the works of Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) in the context of seventeenth-century European culture. It addresses a series of important questions regarding his oeuvre that have been hitherto ignored or, at best, left unanswered. Thus, the project attempts to provide a response to the following points: how has Filmer been read since the seventeenth century right up to modern historiography? Has his thought been mainly interpreted in a caricatured way? Secondly, who was the ‘real biographical’ Sir Robert Filmer? Thirdly, what do we know about the much commented upon but scarcely studied Patriarcha, namely about the document itself? When was it conceived and in connection with what milieu of publications? Did it respond to a particular target and, if so, what was the offending text or political language in question? What elements urged Sir Robert to compose his writing? Moreover, to what extent were Filmer’s ideas compatible with those of his contemporaries? Did he shape his principles in conjunction to the discourses of other authors? Did his doctrines of absolute monarchical power exert any influence or, at least, can it be said that he had some theoretical heirs in the eighteenth century? Finally, did Sir Robert put pen to paper exclusively to discuss political issues or did he formulate concepts and ideas on other relevant subjects debated within the republic of letters?
History of astrology is no longer neglected. Studies on the subject now benefit from a rich historiographical tradition within various fields, such as history of science, history of art, intellectual history, and so on. In this opening section, I would like to present a general overview of the main themes and arguments that serve as a framework for a study on the history of astrology and the Inquisition in seventeenth-century New Spain. Other methodological and historiographical issues will be discussed in their corresponding sections. First, I will show how astrology became a salient object of historical inquiry as the result of crucial changes in the historiography of the Scientific Revolution from the 1960s onwards. This new historiography reflected both on the flexibility of previously fixed categories such as reason and faith or rationality and superstition, as well as on the boundaries between different fields of knowledge. Astrology was thus not considered anymore as a superstitious belief, but as a field whose transformations during the seventeenth century played a fundamental role in the shaping of modern disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, I will show how this change of narrative about the Scientific Revolution shifted the attention from the texts to the various contexts in which this entity called modern science was developed. As opposed to an internalistic analysis, this externalistic approach focuses on the study of different sites of knowledge, such as laboratories, universities, museums, or, in this case, the inquisitorial courtroom. Moreover, what this emphasis on context shows is that knowledge is not transmitted from one place to another in a unidirectional way. Rather, knowledge is adapted and creatively transformed in every different context.
International trade and trade liberalization is the logical nexus through this thesis. Not only trade volumes have largely expanded after World War II, but - perhaps less known - also the number of developing and underdeveloped countries opening their markets to international trade has increased sharply in the 80s and the 90s. During the period 1960-1998 the average share of import plus export in total GDP rose from less than 0.55 up to 0.75 and the total volume of merchandise trade rose steadily at a rate of 10.7%. The greater openness of many developing countries is mirrored by the large membership WTO has reached - almost 150 countries. While the number of participating countries at the first round of GATT in 1947 were a bit more than 20, slightly above 100 were sitting in the last GATT round (the Uruguay round).
Originally, the term business cycle referred to combination of periods of economic expansion and decline, however the concept has been enlarged to include fluctuations of growth around the trend, that is, combinations of periods when growth is higher than the long-term growth with periods when it is lower.
Overall deforestation is at the frontier of development and the environment, and forests constitute both an environmental concern and a renewable resource. Deforestation and forest issues are therefore a very interesting and challenging research object.
This dissertation is composed by three independent chapters. Their common denominator is that they all deal with game theory, either contributing to this branch of microeconomics from a theoretical point of view, or using a game theoretic approach in analysing a specific problem.
Despite the European Commission President’s importance as an agent of supranational integration, the presidency has attracted relatively little academic attention. This thesis examines the phenomenon of leader effectiveness in the context of the presidency by asking "how can the President's effectiveness be explained?” Two branches of theory - institutionalism and charisma theory - drive this research. By examining leadership from these contrasting perspectives a broad understanding is attained. Two independent variables - political / institutional context and leader charisma - are proposed as the core determinants of leader effectiveness. Human resource management theory is used to develop a job description for the President and a set of metrics is proposed to measure presidential effectiveness. Seven case studies are undertaken. Each examines the leadership of a Commission President. Firstly, the nature of their political / institutional context is established and the effect it had upon their leadership is estimated. Secondly the President’s character, behaviour and impact upon others are examined. Finally their effectiveness is assessed. Each case is based upon data derived from eighty one interviews with political actors and a questionnaire completed by thirty academics and journalists. The cross-case analysis strongly supports the research hypotheses - presidential effectiveness consistently relates to the nature of the political / institutional context and the leader’s charisma. Furthermore both independent variables relate positively to effectiveness- i.e. when charisma is high and the political / institutional context is empowering, leadership is typically effective, and vice versa. Although both independent variables are important, charisma is found to exert greater influence over effectiveness.
The economic and monetary union (EMU) is characterized by a framework for economic policy-making in Europe which is unique. While the single monetary policy is oriented towards a Union-wide objective, namely the maintenance o f price stability, the other policy areas involving fiscal and wage policies largely remain the competence o f national governments and other national actors. This thesis investigates some o f the mechanisms o f propagation o f asymmetric shocks in a monetary union and the effect that they may have on the conduction of policies and ultimately on macroeconomic variables. In the context o f the European Monetary Union (EMU), and without any pretension to be exhaustive, the question is addressed o f whether the current framework o f policy coordination, based on a common monetary policy oriented to price stability, national autonomy o f fiscal policies within common budgetary rules and wage policies determined at the national level, is appropriate in ensuring macroeconomic stabilization. The focus on asymmetric shocks is due to the specific importance they have in a monetary union. In the case of symmetric shocks, the situation is not veiy different from that o f a country which has its own currency. On the other hand, the effects of asymmetric shocks on policies and macroeconomic outcomes in a monetary union was (and probably is) not yet completely understood. It is partially because o f this lack o f understanding that the presence of big asymmetric shocks was used by economists as a criterion to decide whether a country should join the EMU.
En 1905, après une après-midi de peinture plutôt éprouvante sous la chaleur de la campagne parisienne, Maurice de Vlaminck s’arrête pour se rafraîchir dans un bistro d’Argenteuil. Sur le bar qui lui fait face, perdus entre les bouteilles d’alcool, trois objets africains attirent son attention : deux pièces Yoruba du Dahomey et une pièce de Côte-d’Ivoire. En échange d’une tournée générale, le propriétaire accepte de les lui céder. C’est en les montrant à un ami de son père venu visiter son atelier en mars 1906, qu’il obtiendra de ce dernier deux autres statues africaines, ainsi qu’un masque blanchâtre assez quelconque, qui pourtant fascina son alter ego fauviste, le peintre André Derain, dès qu’il le vit. Pressé par des soucis financiers, Vlaminck repoussera une première offre d’achat de son ami pour mieux accepter celle qu’il lui fit quelques jours plus tard. Début avril 1906, pour 50 francs, Derain était entré en possession de son célèbre masque Fang1 et l’accrochait aux murs de son atelier de la rue Tourlaque.
The thesis presents in a comprehensive fashion European film policies in the context of both EU and international law. It relies on a broad survey of national and EU film policy measures, the EU practice in the areas of state aid, antitrust and merger law with respect to the sector and the application of international trade law to film policy instruments. These three different bodies of law are systematically analysed to assess how cultural policy considerations underlying film policy can be married to market forces. The EU experience is studied in depth as the book argues that it can effectively serve as a model to reconcile these sometimes conflicting goals in the global trade arena. This justifies the attention paid to the way in which cultural objectives of film policies are accommodated within the EU competition law framework. The thesis contributes valuably to the current debate on cultural diversity and free trade by providing a more harmonious if not a symbiotic vision of this relationship.
Pursuant to Article 151(4) EC, when exercising its competences under the various policy areas within its purview, the European Community must heed the cultural repercussions of its activities, so as to refrain from jeopardising the preservation and further enhancement of Member States' cultural diversity. Evaluating the degree of accommodation, or lack thereof, of cultural considerations in EC law and action, this book offers valuable insight into the plethora of ways in which the European institutions seek to balance cultural with other legitimate EC policy objectives. The study draws upon a series of policy areas that are (or can be) enriched with a cultural dimension and examines concrete judicial and legislative instances attesting to the efforts deployed to deliver coherent, culture-sensitive policies at EC level.
This dissertation, written by an academic-cum-practitioner with substantial experience in the field of antitrust enforcement, presents the rise of private enforcement of competition law in Europe, especially in the context of the recent modernisation and decentralisation of EC competition law enforcement. In particular, the study examines the role of courts in the application of the EC competition rules and views that role in the broader system of antitrust enforcement. The author starts from the premise of private enforcement's independence of public enforcement and after examining the new institutional position of national courts and their relationship with the Court of Justice, the Commission, and public enforcement in general, proceeds to deal with the detailed substantive and procedural law framework of private antitrust actions in Europe. The author describes the current post-decentralisation state of affairs but also refers to the latest proposals to enhance private antitrust enforcement in Europe both at the Community level, where reference is made to the December 2005 Commission Green Paper on Damages Actions and its aftermath, and at the national level, where reference is made to recent and forthcoming relevant initiatives.
This thesis explores the impact of international human rights law on the changing trends in international development policy and practice. The subject matter is analysed through a case study of European Union development cooperation policy and its relations with the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.1 Whilst there is a burgeoning literature on this subject, known as the nexus between human rights and development?,2 the discovery of the convergence or union between human rights and development may have come of some surprise to non-jurists and to those within in the field of development. According to professionals engaged in this domain, development is usually defined and identified with economic growth, trade, capital flows and the transfer of technology.3 As Johan Galtung argues, both concepts (human rights? and development?) have evolved in distinct historical contexts, therefore, any connection or compatibility has more to do with Western history and culture than anything else.4 Furthermore, as Sano states, whilst both human rights and development were institutionalised in the global system in the post-World War II climate, both have different roots and have emerged in different contexts.5 In light of these claims, an obvious point of departure should consider what is meant by the terms development? and human rights? and briefly describe the interlinkages between these previously distinct domains. To this end, the idea of a gradual convergence of human rights and development will be introduced6 and this will be followed by a discussion of where EU development cooperation policy fits into this debate. In the remaining sections of the introductory chapter, the aims of this thesis and research questions will be outlined. A description of the methodology used, literature review and an overview of the chapters will also be presented.
II presente lavoro prende in esame il periodo storico compreso tra il 1958 fino ai primi anni ’80, ed è costituito da due sezioni concettuali speculari. ' La prima mira a investigare le modalità di instaurazione, strutturazione ed estensione del dispositivo che anima il consumo reai soci ali sta del secondo dopoguerra facendo leva su fonti differenziate che hanno aperto piste e prospettive di ricerca inusuali, legate in particolar modo alla pratica discorsiva e impolitica del consumo. La seconda sezione approfondisce, invece, la costruzione del l’immaginario del consumo socialista ovvero gli elementi che appartengono alla produzione e commercializzazione deirintrattenimento e allo sviluppo di importanti settori dell’industria culturale della DDR. Entrambe le sezioni della ricerca mostrano linee di discontinuità e fratture interpretative che non impediscono, però, la determinazione di un processo storico autonomo del fenomeno del consumo, osservato in Germania Est, terreno di rappresentazione fertile nel porre al centro dell’indagine storico culturale le forme impolitiche di determinazione degli equilibri sociali e politici di una determinata società. I fenomeni sociali e le pratiche istituzionali prese in analisi nel caso della DDR, corrispondono a fratture in cui sono stati ricercati gli elementi della formazione degli strati subalterni cosi come di una particolare classe agiata del socialismo, luogo politico dove le distinzioni sociali avrebbero dovuto lentamente scomparire, a vantaggio di una omogeneità sociale costruita su paradigmi redistributivi, di equità e privi di differenziazione e stigma di classe.
The production of medicines, pharmaceutical and herbal, involves the sourcing of both genetic resources in the natural environment, and local knowledge. Sourcing substances for medicines in the natural environment is known as biodiversity prospecting or bioprospecting. To ensure that benefits resulting from medicinal bioprospecting are brought to those ultimately bearing the costs of conservation and sustainable use, there must be a focus on indigenous peoples rights particularly property rights, whether to land, genetic material, intellectual property, or traditional medicinal knowledge. This study considers the importance of access and benefit-sharing agreements as incentives for biodiversity protection. It analyses the meaning of the objectives set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for its implementation, examines selected domestic access and benefit-sharing measures and industry practices and, finally, evaluates the discussions taking place in international fora regarding the Convention and its principles. Finally, it attempts to make recommendations on how to realize the objective of the Convention for fair and equitable benefit-sharing, focusing on enhanced protection of indigenous peoples rights.
A fines de 1638 o comienzos del año siguiente se concluyeron las obras de un pasadizo secreto que don Gaspar Alonso Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, IX duque de M edina Sidonia, había manado construir para unir su palacio con el castillo de Santiago, distantes ambos algunos cientos de metros y situados en lo alto del terraplén de Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Tan novelesca construcción incita a especular sobre su función, aunque la falta de datos concretos sobre su uso aconseja prudencia. En el tiempo del que nos vamos a ocupar, los descendientes de don Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, el héroe de Tarifa, comandaron expediciones de conquista, organizaron armadas, defendieron la costa andaluza y pacificaron reinos. Pero también pleitearon con la Corona, se opusieron a sus designios e interpretaron el bien común desde la perspectiva de su palacio sanluqueño, perspectiva que no siempre resultó coincidente con la voluntad regia. El objeto de este trabajo es desentrañar las lógicas que presidieron la elaboración de las estrategias políticas que los Medina Sidonia fueron desarrollando en este tiempo en un esfuerzo por armonizar sus propios intereses con los de la Corona, modificando unos u otros en la medida que sus posibilidades y cálculos les permitían hacerlo.
What follows is a study of the reactions in Denmark to the creation of the Fifth French Republic and its European projects under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle in the period 1958 to 1969. Despised and admired, only a few statesmen have been as central as de Gaulle in the construction of the present French Republic and the working out of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of today’s European Union (EU). The Fifth Republic builds largely upon his constitutional visions, and the major non-socialist political family in France, the neo-Gaullists, consider itself his heir. General de Gaulle had the political responsibility for completing the transformation of France from a colonial empire into a leading EEC actor in the early 1960s; for ending the Algerian W ar (1954-1962); for turning France into a nuclear power (1960); and for provoking at least a couple of crises within the EEC and NATO (1963 and 1965-66), Politics and culture in post-war Europe were strongly permeated by the Cold W ar and the cleavage between the Soviet Union and the United States. In virtue of France’s pivotal role in the emerging Western collaboration, however, political observers took a considerable interest in French politics and society. Particularly the Gaullist visions and politics provoked interesting debates and deliberations about Western identities and internal conflicts - about Western solidarity and the pursuit of national interests.
The thesis considers the extent to which did international aid, in particular form the EU, impact on the stateness of the Palestinian Entity and help the emerging Palestinian Authority acquiring state features. Nine features of stateness are developed (territory, people, recognition, monopoly of violence, extraction capacities, regulation and rule of law, bureaucracy, central administration, and services) to those a tenth dimension is added, Regime. The thesis suggests analyzing EU aid intervention through looking the potentiality, intentionality and reality of aid project. It concludes that at certain stateness attributes, EU aid managed to help; in others it failed to do so. Reasons for this, varies from political, managerial, lack of interest, or absence of a vision about how to achieve Palestinian stateness. The thesis argues that in order for aid to maximize its benefit, it must be based on such a stateness vision and in that both the Palestinians and the donor community must agree and collaborate. In the absence of such vision, aid risks being unsustainable.
The present study presents a comparative neo-institutionalist analysis of labour market institutions in the Czech Republic and Hungary in the period 1989-2002. It aims to contribute to the contemporary debates on institutional continuity and change, varieties of capitalism, and post-socialist capitalist development. It presents an analytical model combining a variety of elements from different neo-institutionalist schools and applies this model to the two cases of post-socialist institutional change. The analysis presents converging and diverging developments in the two cases, and explains the direction of change. It is concluded that although both countries adopted a series of similar basic institutions, regulating the basic principles of property rights, industrial relations and the employment relationship, institutional reform at the lower levels followed quite different trajectories and labour market institutions limit the role of the market to a much larger extent in the Czech Republic than in Hungary. Also, major differences can be observed both within each case, between different institutional domains, and over time. The change of institutions in the two cases is then explained by the ideas and interests of the (domestic and international) actors shaping these institutions; their power relations and patterns of interest representation; the historical backgrounds of the cases; the international ideational context in which change takes place; and the feedback from different outcomes that the process of change produces. The similarities and differences concerning these factors, as well as the interaction between them, account for convergence and divergence between the cases.
This dissertation examines a burgeoning policy area of the EU - the regulation of cross border civil and commercial litigation. The dissertation analyses the EU's specific legislative measures regulating civil procedure and assesses their impact on litigation, particularly due process rights. The policy is then placed in the broader contexts of European integration and the international codification of civil procedure.
This thesis does not, however, take Catholics or English Asians as its focus, but the most disadvantaged and marginalised group in Europe: the Roma. The daily discrimination and violence Roma face in Europe and beyond is well-documented. It is not, however, the subject of consideration here. Rather, it is the claim of the Romani movement that the globally scattered groups of Roma constitute a nonterritorial nation that is the subject of this thesis. I first encountered the claim to nonterritorial nationhood in a document submitted as part of the Romani delegation to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. The incongruence of this claim with the centrality of territory to political organisation and, consequently, to international law was striking. Yet, enquires made with my colleagues and with a wider circle of Romani leaders about the nature of this claim elicited confusing answers. This thesis project began, therefore, with the simple aim of understanding the claim itself: what was being asked for? How was a non-territorial nation to be understood? What was the claim intended to gain for those in whose name it was being made? In addition to questions internal to the nature of this particular claim, the second aim of this research was to take an external perspective. I wanted to understand how such a claim would be received: to whom was the claim being made? What consequences flowed, or could flow, from the status of being a non-territorial nation?
As the saying goes, money is power. This being so, then an efficient way to deter and repress activities declared unlawful by international or national legislators, such as terrorist acts or organized crime activities, could be through the detection, seizure and confiscation of financial assets held by the persons or entities involved in such unlawful activities — whether the assets are intended to finance future crimes or have been gained through the perpetration of past crimes. This patrimonial outlook is the basis for various legal régimes of crime control designed to: disrupt the financing of crime (especially ‘terrorise/'); prevent and punish the ‘laundering- of proceeds of crime; provide for the detection, seizure and subsequent confiscation of such assets; and to enable international legal assistance and police co-operation for achieving these goals. These areas of the law form a comprehensive international and European global prohibition régimes designed to fight criminality through the financial — or, more broadly, patrimonial — flank. We refer globally to these various law enforcement policies and approaches as patrimonial strategies of crime control.
This dissertation offers the first comprehensive assessment of the various internal and external measures undertaken by the European Union to guarantee security of oil and gas supply. It sets out and analyzes in a coherent and thorough manner those aspects of EU external policy that are relevant in establishing a framework for guaranteeing energy security for the Union. What makes the book unique is that it is the first of its kind to bridge the gap between EU energy and EU external policy. The dissertation discusses EU policy towards the major oil and gas producing countries of Russia, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf at the bilateral as well as regional and multilateral level. It brings together not only the dimensions of trade and investment but also other important aspects of external policy, namely development and foreign policy. The author argues that the EU's energy security cannot be achieved through adopting a purely internal approach to energy issues, but that it is necessary to adopt a holistic approach to external policy, covering efficient economic relations as well as development co-operation and foreign policies towards energy producing countries. The dissertation will be a valuable resource for students of EU law, WTO law or international energy law, as well as scholars and practitioners dealing with energy issues.
The financial market events in 2007–9 have spurred renewed interest and controversy in debates regarding financial regulation and supervision. This dissertation takes stock of the developments in EU legislation, case-law and institutional structures with regards to banking regulation and supervision, which preceded and followed the recent financial crisis. It does not merely provide an update, but anchors these developments in the broader EU law context, challenging past paradigms and anticipating possible developments. The author provides a systematic analysis of the interactions between the content of prudential rules and the mechanisms behind their production and application. European Prudential Banking Regulation and Supervision includes discussions of the European banking market structure and of regulatory theory that both aim to circumscribe prudential concerns. It scrutinises the content of prudential norms, proposes a qualification of these norms and an assessment of their interaction with other types of norms (corporate, auditing and accounting, consumer protection, competition rules). It also features an analysis of the underpinning institutional set-up and its envisaged reforms, focusing on the typical EU concerns related to checks and balances. Finally, the book attempts to revive the debate on supervisory liability, in light of the developments discussed. This dissertation will be of great value to all those interested in financial stability matters (practitioners, policy-makers, students, academics), as well as to EU law scholars.
The way the sovereign state is taken for granted in political theory prevents an explanation of historical and contemporary organizations and phenomena different from this ideal type. Peter Haldén bypasses the state and the problems it causes by constructing an understanding of politics and a research model based on classical and early modern republican political theory. This enables historical analysis without anachronism and a new interpretation of the European Union. By comparing the EU with the Holy Roman Empire (1648-1763) and the antebellum United States (1776-1865), he explains that the EU's international weakness is a result of its strength as a security system that stabilizes Europe. The author argues that continued American support and embedding in NATO is necessary in order for the EU to act on the world stage and to stabilize Europe in the long run. Through these theoretical innovations, he explores alternatives to state-building in the Third World.
By using empirical data, this research considers whether there are changes in the saliencies of attitudes about nationality-related issues in contemporary Serbia, and if so, whether they can be linked to the political context of the period. Demonstrating the susceptibility of the saliencies of these attitudes to ‘external’ influence is its main goal. I maintain that this research is best framed by a constructivist approach to the study of nationalism. This thesis also addresses the ongoing debate concerning the origins of the late eighties and early nineties resurgence of nationalism in Serbia. A particular emphasis is devoted to the consideration of the role of the political elites in the emergence of the ethnic conflicts of former Yugoslavia and in general. The data included in the analyses have been collected by the Centre for Policy Studies, the United Nations Developmental Program and the World Value Survey. The period examined in most depth is 2000-02 encompassing the Milosevic regime change. Additionally, an analysis of the ‘nationalizing’ content of the most read newspaper Blic is conducted in order to provide evidence of the transmittance of the ‘nationalizing’ potential of political events and processes through the media to the public. The conclusion of these analyses is that there are detectable changes in the saliencies of the attitudes about nationality-related issues in Serbia during the period 2000 - 02 and these changes are attributable to the corresponding political context.
« La circonférence d'une vie » Connu comme notable de l’Empire depuis la brève notice que lui avait consacrée Georges Viard2, Jean-Jacques Guyenot (1745-1824) doit à Denis Woronoff d’être sorti de l'anonymat dans lequel l'histoire l'avait longtemps relégué. C’est l’un des maîtres de forges haut-mamais qu’il étudia dans sa thèse sur l’industrie sidérurgique entre Révolution et Empire3. En 1998, Thomas Mambrini poursuivit dans le cadre de sa maîtrise l’exploration des activités sidérurgiques de Guyenot, dont l’itinéraire singulier fait figure d'exception parmi les dynasties de maîtres de forges en Champagne4. Quelques années auparavant, D. Woronoff m’avait fait découvrir une autre facette du personnage, celle du premier commis de la commission des péages, intéressé dans le même temps à la perception des droits de propriétaires illustres. Tour à tour commis de la monarchie administrative et maître de forges pendant la Révolution, il devint concessionnaire de canal sous l'Empire avant de subir à la fin de sa vie un revers de fortune.
Der von Zeitgenossen als Entfremdung und Bedrohung empfundene 'Dualismus' von Staat und Gesellschaft im Zeichen einer wachsenden Bürokratisierung des Fürstenstaates ist ein zentrales Thema der Geschichte 'moderner' Staatlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Von der vormärzlichen Bürokratiekritik ausgehend schildert dieser Band den Kampf der liberalen und demokratischen Bewegung in Baden für eine Demokratisierung der Staatsverwaltung: 'Volkstümlich' sollte die Verwaltung werden! Diese Forderung verstummte mit dem Scheitern der Revolution von 1848/49 nicht, sondern wurde vielmehr in Badens 'Neuer Ära' der 1860er Jahre unter neuen Vorzeichen mit dem Bezirksrat realisiert.
To most people grain prices constitute a rather prosaic topic. Nonetheless, there were strong emotions attached to the subject every time the most prominent political figures of the European Economic Community (EEC) had to take decisions relating to the issue. For instance, Commission President Walter Hallstein has recounted one o f the toughest and longest Council of Ministers negotiations in the EEC, which lasted from 18 December 1961 to 14 January 1962, like this: “Forty-five separate meetings, 7 o f them at night; a total o f 137 hours o f discussion, with 214 hours in subcommittees; 582,000pages o f documents; 3 heart attacks - the record is staggering. It is also, I think, quite striking in its testimony to the whole spirit o f our enterprise”. This, and the logic quoted above, is illustrative of the heavy political weight that the issue carried in the EEC, and nobody disputed this logic. Grain prices became the centrepiece o f the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and the CAP has undisputedly been the centrepiece of the EEC ever since its creation.
Le service militaire obligatoire repose sur une contradiction. En tant que mode privilégié de la participation du citoyen aux affaires de la cité, il est à la fois élément et garant de sa liberté politique. En tant qu'institution disciplinaire, il le soumet à un système coercitif et l'isole de la société civile. La nationalisation de la force armée par la conscription introduit donc une tension irréductible entre citoyenneté et discipline, et pose concrètement le problème de la liberté politique. Egalitaire dans son principe, le service militaire ne concerne pourtant que la frange masculine de la population, l'absence des femmes dans l'armée répondant à leur exclusion des droits civiques. L'universalité de l'obligation se trouve par ailleurs contrecarrée par les stratégies de certains groupes sociaux pour négocier des conditions favorables. Plutôt que d'opposer le modèle de conscription républicaine à la française au militarisme prussien, cet ouvrage s'attache à montrer comment la Prusse a répondu de manière dialectique à l'institution révolutionnaire de la violence de masse. La Révolution française et la Réforme prussienne sont ainsi appréhendées comme deux moments d'un processus intrinsèquement transnational. Cet ouvrage entend mettre à l'épreuve de l'Histoire le problème politique tel que l'ont formulé Rousseau et Kant, en s'appuyant sur des sources officielles, des autobiographies, lettres, chansons, conçues comme des articulations subjectives de la modernité politique.
Examine the views of the Empire and Commonwealth held by British policy makers during the two decades after World War II, arguing that the institutional framework of the formal and informal empire and the Commonwealth was considered necessary and useful to promote British interests.
This thesis is about the experience of domestic service in Athens between 1920-1945. It is based on life-stories of women who worked as domestic servants and explores the ways in which subjects perceived and were constituted through the experience of service. The interviewees are made up of two categories. Firstly, there were internal migrants (bom between 1906 and 1925) for whom domestic service was a form of temporary or permanent migration. Secondly, first and second generation refiigees from Asia M inor (bom between 1916 and 1932) who belonged to the urban population, as they were either bom or spent their childhood in Athens.
In 1851, Pope Pius IX, as part of the project of canonizing Columbus, asked the official historian of the Vatican, Count Roselly de Lorges, to write a pious and glorifying history of Columbus. This canonization attempt served as a theme for the Cuban poet A lejo Carpentier in E l A r p a e y l a s o m b r a . He fictionalises the Colum bus story but, at the same time, notes that one has to be careful when reading history. In his novel, Carpentier dares to awaken Columbus from his glorious eternal rest to denounce his foolishness, his mendacity and his insatiable greed for gold. The main part of the fictional novel is a flashback to Columbus’ own deathbed. The first part of the novel takes place in Europe in 1856 and introduces the Italian nobleman M astai-Ferrati, the future Pope Pius DC. There is a flashback to the pope’s youth, in 1823, when he traveled from Genoa to Santiago in Chile, to see if an apostolic mission could be sent to the region, a request that had been made by Bernardo O ’Higgins, then head o f the Chilean government, to Pope Pius VII. The motives of M astai-Ferrati for initiating the procedure are shown to be political rather than religious, as part of the Catholic Church’s constant scheming to shore up its power in Latin America. Like Pius IX, his pretensions to power are covered in a gloss of religion, part of the book’s achievement being to show how such political strategies have continued long after Columbus. The noblem and pions the cause of Columbus* beatification in the belief that it will provide an antidote to the venom of philosophical ideas of the late nineteenth century.
This thesis grows out of the Portuguese inruption on to the Eurasian spice trade at the very beginning of the sixteenth century with the inauguration of a dramatic oceanic route to the traditional areas of spice cultivation in the East, that is the Indian Malabar coast, Ceylon and the Moluccas in the Indonesian archipelago (Insulindia). If spices had never disappeared from European markets, it was the first direct and sustained commercial contact Europeans enjoyed with the Indian Ocean since the demise of the Red Sea fleets based at Myos-Hormos the Roman Emperor Augustus had used to exploit the luxury trades of the Indies from the latter half of the first century B.C. and that Pliny had once valued at 100 million sesterces a year; the few adventurous Venetian merchants that got so far during the pax mongolica of the fourteenth century brought back little in terms of marketable commodities but helped to keep alive the dim awareness of a bountiful land of milk and honey in the European collective memory.
The object of this study is to reinstate the market in second-hand clothes and furnishings within the hi story of Venice from c.1500 to c.1650. The discussion focuses on the Venetian guild of second-hand dealers, a number of 'alternative' exchanges of used goods, and a group of Jewish second-hand dealers who became established in Venice in the early sixteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the issues of guild exclusivism and the inelasticity of craft structures within the market for used goods. There are seven chapters. Chapter 1 explores the notion that the guild of second-hand dealers was traditional1y important in the market but did not have complete control, and Chapter 2 investigates various 'alternative' exchanges coexisting with the guild. In the next three chapters, these basic structures are examined in detail and their development is charted over the period as a whole. In Chapter 3, traders within the second-hand market are considered and the new group of Jewish competitors is introduced. The craft activities of the guild members and the Jewish dealers are analysed in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, a study is made of outlets for used goods and of their distribution within the city. The last two chapters assess the impact of two types of setbacks: outbreaks of plague, and a seventeenth-century recession in the used-goods market.
This thesis will study the ways in which rhetoric and rituals were politically employed in Sweden in the 1860s, in particular how rituals and language were used in the context of parliamentary reform and Scandinavian union from 1859 to 1865. Rhetoric and rituals becam e important tools in 1860s Sweden in order to express a need for constitutional reform and a broader union than that existing between Sweden and Norway. The debates on parliamentary reform and Scandinavian union both focused on the important question of defining a Swedish national identity, in order to convince public opinion about these projects. Therefore, the Swedish struggle for parliamentary reform and Scandinavian union looked for inspiration to the nationalist movements of the European continent. The nationalist movements in France, Italy, Poland, and Hungary became models for politicians wanting to define the need for parliamentary reform and Scandinavian union in the 1860s.
In a letter to the Augsburg patrician Martin Pfinzing, Anna of Saxony referred to herself as the Landesfurstin of Saxony. The term Anna used to describe her position is significant because it cannot simply be translated as “territorial princess” or female consort. Rather, the term Landesfurstin constitutes a female counterpart to the term Landesfurst, which is best translated as territorial ruler. In the letter she takes upon herself the responsibility for the well-being of the Saxon subjects, thereby acting in accordance with the literal meaning of the term with which she describes her position. More than ten years ago, Heide Wunder concluded that “the ruling couple [in early modern Germany] regarded itself as an ‘office-holding couple’, as the father and mother of the land - analogous to the position of the master and mistress of the house. Since the exercise of power was legitimated by eminent descent, women could assume the highest position in feudal political systems”. This is exactly what the Saxon electress expressed when she referred to herself as Landesfurstin and it is also implied in the associated terms Landesmutter and Mater Patriae, which both recur throughout numerous texts that were produced during the lifetime of Anna of Saxony.
The College of Cardinals was one of the most exclusive elites of any period, with respect to both church and society. Traditionally, its members formed a well-defined group possessing special privileges and status. In the sixteenth century, however, the College was far from being an homogeneous body, either in social or economic terms, although they must have appeared as such to an outsider. /.../ The present study is based on the account books and other perscnal papers of Cardinal Niccolo Ridolfi (1501-1550). The Ridolfi were a wealthy Florentine family, and formed part of the mercantile aristocracy of that city. Niccolo himself was a grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent and was related to both the Medici Popes of his time. His surviving accounts cover the period 1535-1550, but a large collection of letters, both to him and to his family, extends over a much longer period. In addition to these two principal sources, extensive material has been found in other Italian archives, notably in Rome and the Vatican. Following a brief biography of Cardinal Ridolfi, two chapters are based on an analysis of his household and of his personal relations between the Cardinal, his relatives and famiglia. The last four chapters of this work turn from the study of the household of Cardinal Ridolfi, to an analysis of his financial affairs.
L'histoire de la croissance et du développement et de leur conséquences exerce une fascination sur le chercheur en histoire économique. Joël Mokyr la qualifie de “the issue of issues” [Mokyr, 1990: 3]. En dépit de la masse de documents et d'interprétations accumulés, à propos de l'industrialisation en Europe occidentale depuis que la discipline acquît son autonomie, il semble que ce soit encore le domaine qui occupe le plus les chercheurs. La réalité (et la documentation) est si riche que les analyses et les synthèses s'y succèdent et s'y opposent dans des débats sans fin.
L'étude comparée de la croissance en France et en Grande-Bretagne au cours des trois derniers siècles a pris, dans ce contexte, des proportions de cas d'école sur lequel plusieurs auteurs éminents, depuis Marx, ont livré leurs réflexions. Contre toute attente, le sujet semble encore loin d'être épuisé, peut-être parce que l'enjeu du débat a une portée qui dépasse l'aire géographique qu'il représente. Sans aller jusqu'à affirmer avec McCloskey que "l'histoire britannique guide les autres histoires” [McCloskey, 1990: 40], on doit reconnaître, -c'est une fait qui s'impose à nous- que les sociétés avec l'histoire la plus longue et la mieux documentée ont tendance à acquérir le statut de modèle qui pourrait, par exemple se résumer dans une formule simpliste comme "l'Angleterre a produit une révolution industrielle sans connaître de révolution politique et la France une révolution politique sans révolution industrielle". Avant même l'apparition des possibilités offertes par la comptabilité nationale le couple France, Grande-Bretagne était devenu un paradigme.
The call to look beyond national borders in writing history has come into fashion. Labels which designate this trend proliferate, and already there are debates about delimitations between different “schools”: “international”, “transnational”, “global” and “world” history compete for conceptual hegemony, and they do not exhaust the terminological variety offered. This trend equally applies to labour and trade union history. Van der Linden has criticised the “methodological nationalism” o f past research agendas within the discipline, and has advocated a shift towards what at times he calls “transnational”, at times “global” labour history. A t first sight, these claims may seem surprising: The labour movement has a very long tradition o f international organisation, and debates about “internationalism” have been present since the mid 19th century; indeed, this particular history has had a considerable impact upon the evolution of the term “international” itself. Numerous studies have been carried out on the international organisations the labour movement has created since then.
Italy’s attempt to become a colonial power in the years before the opening o f the twentieth century floundered badly on the battle-field of Adowa. After such great expenditure of resources, both human and material, what was left behind were a few strips of barren land on the edges of the Hom of Africa. These offered very few prospects for the settlement of Italy’s vast “excess population” and were almost bereft of commercial possibilities without investments on a scale Italy could hardly contemplate. But if Ferdinando Martini had been packed off to Eritrea to preserve the colony by making Italy “cease to remember it”, the defeat of Adowa and, more generally, the vicissitudes of the Prima Guerra d ’Africa remained densely embedded in Italian consciousness. It is true that when Martini was asked to send something that could adequately represent Italy’s colonies at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 he sighed bitterly that there was nothing except “delle ossa di morto, dei piani di battaglia sbagliati, o delle lunghe note di somme buttate via” 1, but he could also have added that Italy’s wars in Africa had produced a whole set of iconic images, a data-base of heroic events and memories, that had a significant place in newly united Italy’s self-image and in its quest for the assumption of a vital and central role in a Europe that was abandoning liberal nationalism for expansionism and imperialism. The ideal of La Grande Italia was tight in its Risorgimento guise but the quest for empire in Africa had at least given the Italy of prose some significant moments of poetry.
La aparición del libro de Marco Polo está relacionada con un renovado interés por la Cruzada, la posibilidad de establecer contacto con la retaguardia del Islam y la obtención así de la supremacía del Occidente latino sobre otras comunidades imaginadas. Su fama y extraordinaria difusión, sin embargo, se explican por su capacidad de cuestionar los fundamentos de dicha aspiración. Ésta es la paradoja que el presente libro analiza con la ayuda de otros textos contemporáneos de viajes al Lejano Oriente, trayectos que describen un movimiento que circula entre la aquiescencia con formas tradicionales de poder y la resistencia a esas mismas fuerzas. La demanda por parte de las élites europeas de información actualizada y concreta sobre las Indias inauguraba una forma de representación del Oriente que, al convertirlo en objeto pasivo y carente de soberanía sobre sí mismo, contribuyó a la expansión política y espiritual del Occidente. Ésta es la historia de una forma de Orientalismo destinada a perdurar.
This thesis is the outcome of years of research on the complex aspects of military spending among various countries in the interwar period. It would not have been possible to complete this study without the help and encouragement of numerous individuals and organizations, although the ultimate responsibility for the remaining errors is of course mine. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude is owed to Professor Jaime Reis, whose intellectual challenges and individual support have been invaluable in order for me to reach the conclusion of this journey. Secondly, the same goes for Professor Mark Harrison’s untiring efforts to sharpen and develop the theoretical and empirical premises of this thesis, as well as for his kind assistance during my recent stay at the University o f Warwick. In addition, Professor Alan Milward’s comments and scholarly challenges have greatly influenced my stay here in Florence. Of the rest of the faculty here, I would also like to mention Professor Giovanni Federico's and Professor Arfon Rees' insightful seminars and intellectual companionship. The friendship and scientific challenges posed by certain of my fellow researchers have been invaluable: Gerben Bakker, Marc Prat, Tobias Witschke, Svetlozar Andreev, and Babak Rahimi. Data has been provided over the years by, among others, numerous professors and researchers: Erik Buyst, Piet Clement, Herman de Jong, Olga Christodoulaki, Thomas David, Olle Krantz, and Jan Tore Klovland. Moreover, a thank you should also be directed towards the staff of the Department of History and Civilisation during these years, especially Rita Peero and Angela Schenk. The EUI library has offered good facilities for this comparative effort, for which also Dr. Serge Noiret should be thanked.
Die biographische Selbstdarstellung eines der wichtigsten intellektuellen Stichwortgeber der frühen Bundesrepublik wird einer kritischen Überprüfung unterzogen. Der Arzt, Psychoanalytiker und Sozialpsychologe Alexander Mitscherlich (1908-1982) hat mit seinen politischen Stellungnahmen und sozialpsychologischen Analysen das intellektuelle Profil der Bundesrepublik maßgeblich geprägt. Werke wie »Auf dem Weg zur vaterlosen Gesellschaft« oder »Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern« stehen noch heute für wichtige Entwicklungen und Stimmungslagen der westdeutschen Gesellschaft in der Nachkriegszeit. Anhand von bisher unveröffentlichtem Material entwirft Martin Dehli die Biographie Mitscherlichs vor dem Hintergrund der deutschen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts: Sie führt von den nationalrevolutionären Zirkeln um Ernst Jünger und Ernst Niekisch im Berlin der frühen dreißiger Jahre über Exil und Gefangenschaft nach Heidelberg und Frankfurt, von wo aus Mitscherlich sein Wirken entfaltete. Mitscherlich erscheint nicht als Ikone bundesrepublikanischen Selbstverständnisses, sondern in all der Widersprüchlichkeit, die einer Gründerfigur in einer Zeit des Übergangs zu eigen ist: in all dem Facettenreichtum und der Unmittelbarkeit, die Mitscherlichs politischem und wissenschaftlichem Wirken das Gewicht verliehen und so seinen Beitrag zur Modernisierung der deutschen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft erst möglich gemacht haben.
Con l'inizio del nuovo secolo ed in particolare dopo la fine della prima guerra mondiale, le maggiori banche italiane iniziarono ad aprire filiali all'estero o a costituire banche affiliate in paesi in cui si aprivano opportunità di penetrazione economica per la finanza e l'industria italiane. Questo processo di internazionalizzazione raggiunse il culmine nel corso degli anni Venti quando, anche grazie all'attività delle banche italiane all'estero, le relazioni internazionali della finanza italiana si intensificarono e permisero un maggior grado di apertura dell'economia del nostro paese agli influssi internazionali oltre che il temporaneo superamento di alcuni dei più vistosi ostacoli al processo di sviluppo economico italiano quali la scarsità di capitali e di valute pregiate. Questo maggior grado di apertura internazionale si ripercosse però in modo molto negativo sul sistema finanziario ed industriale italiano con il sopraggiungere della crisi dei primi anni Trenta che creò tali difficoltà da costringere lo Stato ad un massiccio intervento di salvataggio. Quando sopraggiunsero poi i problemi legati alle sanzioni contro l'Italia per l'aggressione all'Etiopia ed il progressivo avvicinamento dell'Italia all'area di influenza politica ed economica tedesca, l'elemento valutario assunse un ruolo predominante nelle preoccupazioni dei responsabili della politica economica italiana ed il sistema di banche e filiali italiane all'estero assunse un nuovo ruolo quale collettore di divise pregiate e di canale di connessione con l'estero della sempre più debole finanza italiana. Le vicende delle banche italiane all'estero nella prima metà del XX secolo forniscono dunque una serie di spunti di notevole interesse per comprendere meglio i principali aspetti della storia economica italiana di quel periodo e per delineare quelle interazioni tra vicende economiche e scelte politiche che costituiscono uno degli elementi chiave della storia italiana degli anni in esame.
Questa ricerca nasce dal recente ritrovamento, presso gli eredi del pittore fiorentino Giovanni Colacicchi, di lettere e documenti appartenuti a Carlo Levi, risalenti al periodo in cui il pittore e scrittore torinese tenne aperto uno studio a Firenze: dalla fine del 1941 alla fine del 1945. Durante questi anni, accadono molte cose che un biografo definirebbe “fondamentali”. Dalla Questura di Firenze parte l’ordine di arresto che costa a Levi la terza carcerazione della sua vita: dalla fine del giugno 1943 sarà detenuto al carcere delle Murate, da cui uscirà il 26 luglio. Tra il 1943 e il 1944, nascosto in piazza Pitti, scrive Cristo si è fermato ad Eboli, che resterà il suo libro più celebre. A Firenze Levi aderisce al Partito d’Azione, e quindi lo rappresenta, dall’agosto 1944, nella direzione interpartitica della “Nazione del Popolo”, il quotidiano pubblicato a cura del Comitato Toscano di Liberazione Nazionale. Tra i cinque condirettori, Levi si ritaglia un ruolo di assoluto primo piano: ha un peso molto rilevante nella scelta dei collaboratori, a lui si devono la presenza di certi temi e prese di posizione sulle pagine della “Nazione del Popolo”. Levi interviene direttamente – sono almeno trenta i suoi articoli di fondo, concentrati soprattutto nei primi mesi di vita del giornale –, oppure commissiona alcuni pezzi ad hoc ai suoi collaboratori più stretti.
Perché le camere di commercio e la politica degli interessi nel XVIII secolo? Lo spunto per riflettervi è venuto anni fa da un'osservazione di Franco Molteni, che nella voce curata per l'Enciclopedia del diritto esprimeva l'opinione che 'le prime Camere di Commercio in senso moderno' non derivassero dalle chambres de commerce francesi, ma dalla Camera di Commercio, Arti e Manifatture di Firenze creata dal granduca Pietro Leopoldo nel 1770, e dalle Camere introdotte in Lombardia nel 1786 da Giuseppe II: due stati soggetti nel corso del XVII secolo a profonde riforme statuali, condotte all'ombra delle pratiche di governo asburgiche. Verificare questa apparentemente innocua annotazione, discosta dalle opinioni correnti le quali optano per una filiazione lineare dagli istituti francesi, alla luce delle indicazioni della storiografia più recente ed avvertita sull'amministrazione economica dell'età moderna significava passare in esame l'intero tragitto che nel tardo antico regime permette alle camere di commercio di derivazione francoitaliana di consolidarsi in forma di pubbliche istituzioni e di entrare stabilmente, con l'Ottocento, nell'organigramma statale napoleonico.
Entertainment Industrialised is the first study to compare the emergence and economic development of the film industry in Britain, France and the United States between 1890 and 1940. Gerben Bakker investigates the commercialisation and industrialisation of live entertainment in the nineteenth century and analyses the subsequent arrival of motion pictures, revealing that their emergence triggered a process of incessant creative destruction, development and productivity growth that continues in the entertainment industry today. He argues that cinema industrialised live entertainment by automating it, standardising it and making it tradeable, a process that was largely demand-led, and that a quality race between firms changed the structure of the international entertainment market. While a hundred years ago, European enterprises were supplying half of all films shown in the U.S., the quality race resulted in today's industry, in which a handful of American companies dominate the global entertainment business.
Why are national identities imagined in one way rather than in another? The book analyses national imaginations as an on-going reconstruction process in a political and social context in which several imaginations of the nation struggle to impose their conception. Focusing on a fundamental element of any collective identity, namely the «Other», the book looks at the reconstruction of national identities by actors in political debates on immigration in the late 1980s and 1990s, particularly associations and political clubs which were in favour of and against the presence of immigrant minorities in their respective countries. Thus, the book investigates different ways of imagining the same nation in two old European nation-states, namely France and Denmark, which differ with regard to their nation-building processes, their Second World War history, their memory of colonialism and their experience of immigration. It is thus possible to illustrate that existing ideas of the nation and memories of historical events shape the way in which the nation could be re-imagined in the 1980s and 1990s.
From the point of departure of international relations theory it is not an easy task to come to grips with the European integration process. We are faced with a situation where some of the world's oldest and traditionally most sovereignty-loving nations have surrendered essential parts of their power to a supranational institution. In order to make sense of this the book employs a constructivist framework. Empirically it focuses on the way in which the Community has transformed from a traditional international regime, based on classical international law, to a semi-federal polity where Community law and regulations trump national law and constitutions.
Despite the abundance of literature and comment upon the political involvement of trade unions in Britain, surprisingly little work of any detail has been directed towards the impact that unions might have upon the the way that people vote in national elections (though for a little known exception see Freyman, 1980). Given that the burgeoning field of electoral studies has been indicating clearly for some time the widespread state of flux in which the British electorate finds itself, it would not be so unreasonable to assume that unions could comprise one element in this pattern of electoral change. After all, trade unions present us with an example of what are essentially non-electoral organisations which nevertheless play an important role in mobilising political consciousness and action. Trade unions have been crucial to the development of politics in the modern industrial society that Britain has been throughout the twentieth century. In founding and sustaining the Labour party they have played a seminal role in the crystallisation and institutionalisation of the class politics which has so manifestly characterised British culture since before the Great War. Moreover, and notwithstanding some speculation to the contrary, there is reputable and cogent research to remind us that Pulzer's famous injunction that "class is the basis of British politics - all else is embellishment and detail” remains more than pertinent (Marshall, Newby, Rose and Vogler 1988). To be more specific about their modern significance, one could imagine a variety of ways in which unions might affect electoral outcomes.
Marco Verweij presents a new and challenging theoretical framework within which to understand international relations, based on the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas, Michael Thompson, Aaron Wildavsky, and others. By applying this framework in a detailed study of the environmental protection of the river Rhine in Western Europe and the Great Lakes of North America, he also contributes to a better understanding of how transboundary environmental problems have been, and can be, solved.
Party politics has been undergoing a revival in many democracies. However, parties are much less studied in countries with unstable political regimes. Party interactions can help to provide explanations for the emergence and performance of regimes, whether of the democratic or authoritarian type. This dissertation is a comprehensive case study that analyses, in depth, Turkish political parties. Starting with broad historical analysis, Huri Tursan takes the reader down to the most recent electoral activities and party politics in a country whose topicality is on the rise, not least due to its political problems. While the author deals with many issues of politics (including the role of the military), she focuses on an aspect of party competition which renders democracy problematic in Turkey, namely polarisation in party politics along cleavages.
An analysis of the extent to which the outcomes of the process of European monetary integration and, particularly, of the development of the debate over the establishment of EMU, have been influenced by domestic politics and by domestic economic interest groups in Italy and in the United Kingdom. From an empirical point of view, the work provides an account of the development of Italian and British socio-economic interest groups towards the issue of European monetary union from the making of the EMS until the establishment of EMU. Argues in favor of the rational behavior of foreign exchange rate commitments within a structural definition of the credibility of exchange rate commitments which links together economic and political science perspectives. Analysis is conducted on the cases of Italy and the UK and their experience in the exchange rate mechanism of the European monetary system. The period considered ranges from the decision of the two countries to peg their currencies in the ERM of the EMS to their departure on September 1992.
Situated on the edge of mass communication studies and transition studies, this PhD thesis examines the process of media reform in countries undergoing post-communist transition. By performing three very different single country studies - a relative success story of transition (Hungary), a struggling post-Soviet society (Ukraine), and a post-conflict, international-administered province (Kosovo) - the work seeks to compile a thorough account of the problems that have plagued the region's media reform process in the last decade. The primary goal is to contribute to the discussion on media démocratisation through preparing comprehensive case studies on the basis of carefully selected empirical material. While focusing on the most important elements of the complex interaction between political and media systems, the thesis reviews the new structural and cultural organisation of the media systems. It focuses on the policy decisions that were adopted by political elites, and on the discussions which surrounded the theoretical grounding and/ or the implementation of these decisions. The work hypothesises that media systems undergoing transition can be fruitfully analysed according to four normative media models - the libertarian, social democratic, authoritarian and development assistant models. These theoretical models help to ascertain the fundamental organisational and structural principles which define a given media segment, and also help to identify the basic commonalities and differences between the various development paths. The work argues that the success of media reform ultimately depends on the political elites' commitment to implementing the above models in an appropriate balance. It concludes that a "transitional media model" might make sense for some of these countries, in which continued party political presence and political parallelism - particularly in the print segment - may be justified.
This thesis is the result of a research project on notions of justice and fairness in international relations. Unlike the rapidly growing literature on ‘international ethics’ this project is empirically oriented, rather than philosophically. It thus does not seek to establish a new theory of international justice but to investigate the practical relevance of justice notions in international affairs. It explores concepts of justice, which politicians and other actors in international affairs use, and the way they use them. I employ the term ‘use’ here, instead of e.g. ‘hold', because it characterises another dimension of the project. The subject of this study is not so much which ideas of justice politicians or diplomats have as individuals. I am more interested in the moral concepts they use in social interaction, when they make a statement. Thus I study, if you will, discourse rather than opinion.
Over the last fifty years women's employment has increased markedly throughout developed countries. Women of younger generations are much more likely than their mothers and grandmothers to enter the labour market and stay in it after they marry and have children. Are these changes due only to changes in women's investments and preferences, or also to the opportunities and constraints within which women form their choices? Have women with higher and lower educational and occupational profiles combined family responsibilities with paid work differently? And have their divisions changed? With an innovative approach, this dissertation compares Italy and Great Britain, investigating transformations in women's transitions in and out of paid work across four subsequent birth cohorts, from the time they leave full-time education up to their 40s. It provides a comprehensive discussion of demographic, economic and sociological theories and contains large amounts of information on changes over time in the two countries, both in women's work histories and in the economic, institutional and cultural context in which they are embedded. By comparing across both space and time, the book makes it possible to see how different institutional and normative configurations shape women's life courses, contributing to help or hinder the work-family reconciliation and to reduce or reinforce inequalities. Women in and Out of Paid Work will be valuable reading for students, academics, professionals, policy makers and anyone interested in women's studies, work-family reconciliation, gender and class inequalities, social policy and sociology.
This dissertation investigates the successes and failures in consolidating those democratic regimes that emerged in Europe and Latin America in the last quarter of the 20th century. The theoretical approach developed combines the most prominent political-institutional and socio-structural approaches to explaining the Consolidation of Democracy (CoD). Reinterpreting conventional claims, Schneider 's comparative analyses of 32 countries indicates that the driving force behind CoD is the fit between the institutional type of democracy and the societal context in terms of power dispersion. This dissertation: presents new data measuring dimensions of regime transition processes in Latin America, the Middle East and Northern Africa, as well as some former Soviet republics; reassesses some core assumptions of the dominant transition paradigm; discusses general methodological issues involved when investigating causally complex claims in comparative social research and presents fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) as a valuable addition to the methodological tool kit of comparative social scientists. This innovative and important study will be of interest to political scientists, particularly those with an interest in democracy, democratization, comparative politics and comparative methodology.
The subject of the study is regime change understood as the modification of broadly defined political institutions and practices governing domestic politics. Democratization is a possible outcome of such a process if the modification of political institutions and practices reflects convergence with a particular set of liberal ideas and norms. During the last 25 years the interest of political scientists in such processes has steadily grown. Democratization spread from Southern Europe in the 1970s to Latin America in the 1980s and finally reached Eastern Europe and the other continents in the late 1980s and early 1990s. More recently, some have diagnosed an 'ebbing' of the wave. While the empirical record of the 'third wave' is mixed, its profound effects on the way the academic community studies democratization are undeniable. The new cases o f democratization led during the 1980s to a paradigm shift away from structuralist explanations towards more contingency-driven and agency-based approaches. Challenges to the modernization school or cultural explanations of democratic change highlighted cases of regime change under structurally unfavorable conditions and called for greater attention towards the role of political actors, institutions, and contingencies.
Cluster words or definitions which impose themselves upon wide fields of discourse do not arise and consolidate by chance. Some of these acquire a pivotal position in discourses produced within one or several formations, or are even able to engender new types of discourse on the basis of previously separate traditions of intellectual endeavour. Political Islam is a prominent example of this type of phenomenon; for the present work, it represents the main catchcategory, a sort of 'umbrella' definition for a family of other terms and definitions which have become popular since the late seventies, and which all aim to point not to Islam 'as such', but to an Islam perceived as 'in movement' and at the same time 'made unpredictable', according to the assumption that the politicization of Islam occurs by virtue "of an eccess of zeal rather than with clearly defined goals" (Piscatori 1983). The central purpose of this work is to reconstruct the path through which the catchcategory of "political Islam" (hereafter referred as PI) arises and develops from the original reification of Koranic din in the form of islam (or Islam) to the emergence of the tendence to predicate Islam in terms of its alleged firstly societal, then political dimension up to the formation, during the seventies, of what we will call the 'hermeneutic field' of PI, as defined by the constraints on any attempt to frame the relationship between Islam and the political domain, dictated by the emerging image of an 'Islam in movement'. Furthermore, we will analyse some important attempts by Arab authors to transcend the discursive constraints promanating from this hermeneutic field. Such attempts became evident, and were to a large extent  consciously manipulated, from around the early eighties, when the hermeneutic field of PI consolidated its conditioning strength.
Why art we interested in societal value orientations? Squeezed between utilitarianists, structuralists and constructionists the preoccupation with values and guiding ideals seems to be awkward, old-fashioned, even conservative, and certainly not at the forefront of academic fashion. The idea of values communicates the notion of settled beliefs and change resisting attitudes formulated in early childhood or adolescent experiences as well as suggesting continuity and stability of human conduct They refer to the unbroken transmission of attitudes and culture across generations and offer themselves as the explanation for the development of social and political lifestyles. Values also promise coherence and reliability. Too much stability? Too much pre-determination? Too much boredom for the contingency- trained post-modern brain? Values are supposed to be basic and powerful, but can this really still be convincing? Why do we not think of human beings as individualised rational choosers who act in pure accordance with preformulated and calculated interests? Why can we not see the world as a universe of contingency open to be re-interpreted and re-structured at any given point of time and space? What we have to prove, therefore, is the simple fact that values - or rather societal value orientations - still play a central role in the development of modem societies and the political conflicts that take place within these societies. Furthermore, we have to show that an emphasis on values can explain contemporary phenomena in a way that is superior or at least complementary to explanations resting on structural, constructionist or rational choice assumptions.
In this unique exposition of important and yet often neglected developments in the history of Western spirituality, Stefan Rossbach reminds us of the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of the Cold War era, drawing on the traditions of apocalypticism, millenarianism and 'Gnostic' spirituality. Beginning with the 'Gnostic' systems of late Antiquity, the analysis follows 'lines of meaning' which extend through the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, right up to the present. From the long-term perspective which is thereby established, the spectre of a man-made nuclear apocalypse appears as the latest and most dramatic expression of an outlook on the human condition which refuses to accept limits in the imposition of human designs on the world. The paradoxical continuities that underlie the sense of epoch evoked by the end of the Cold War highlight this work's profound implications for our understanding of contemporary international politics.
Cosa Nostra e 'Ndrangheta sono fratellanze segrete e polifunzionali composte ciascuna da un centinaio di famiglie. Queste ultime si fondano su rapporti di parentela artificiali creati attraverso una cerimonia di affiliazione. Il loro scopo non è principalmente la massimizzazione del profitto economico, ma l'esercizio di una signoria politica all'interno della comunità, che si esplica prevalentemente tramite l'esazione di "tributi". Le organizzazioni mafiose tradizionali appaiono quindi ripiegate sul proprio territorio e trovano crescenti difficoltà ad operare sui mercati illeciti internazionali, come dimostra il declino di Cosa Nostra americana e la sua emarginazione dai commerci illegali più lucrosi.
The relationship between the state and European integration is with good reason a central concern in current political sciences. Scholars approach it in different ways; some study how integration influences the state, others how the state influences integration. In answering the question of how the state and integration relate to each other, all of them deal with a problem which is particularly important because of its concrete implications, but which is also particularly difficult to resolve. The concrete empirical questions of what happens to the state in the process of integration, or what is the role of the state in that process, are essential for the understanding of the nature and functioning of the present European political systems. If the states' functions change, one can also expect changes in the political, administrative and judiciary systems and structures of the states. Changes in functions and practices can also be seen as amounting to gradual changes in political culture. Through changes in the role and nature of the state, the contents of citizenship as well as the forms of political participation may be expected to change. Finally, the understanding of democracy and identity will be modified. On the other hand, if the states guide the process of integration, they can be seen to do so on the basis of their own characteristics, being able to halt the process when they wish. The empirical relevance of the understanding of the relationship between the state and integration is, however, not based only on these long-term effects. In some situations, it has an immediate and decisive importance in political decision-making. Not least, a country's decision to join the European Union is based on an evaluation of the consequences of membership; the understanding of these consequences, then, depends on how the relationship between the state and integration is seen.
The fact that most of the European research on «new» social movements has come from more advanced capitalist democracies of Northern Europe -- Germany, in particular -- does not necessarily prove that «new» movements have been either quantitatively or qualitatively more important than in Southern European countries. This could simply be due to the fact that Southern researchers were too occupied with their own countries' regional problems and party systems. This problem was initially raised by Klandermans and Tarrow (1988: 16-7) as a challenging point to one of the most basic assumptions of the European Tradition of «New» Social Movement Studies, which stresses a causal link between advanced industrialism and «new» social movements.
The thesis presents an analysis of the transnational political groups of the European Parliament, relating this to theories of political parties, parliaments and representation, while emphasising that existing comparative studies applied, to Europe are of limited value in explaining the nature of political organisation at the European level. The thesis postulates that it is essential that the political groups be analysed in terms of the nature of the European Community itself as a fluid polity and illustrates the problems of understanding European Integration as a political process. An analysis of the functions and role of the political groups is carried out and the study concludes that the groups function effectively as organisers of the European Parliament, with integrative and representational functions, but that at this stage of their development they cannot be seen as European parties. The study is based on research and analysis carried out through interviews conducted by the author as an active member of the European University Institute Survey team for the Study of MEPs, and supplemented by interviews with EP and political group officials.
Historical memoiy is often short, but we all recall the great experience of the popular revolutions in East Central Europe, The collapse of state-socialism had tremendous repercussions all over the world, and a large number of undemocratic regimes, no longer sheltered by East-West bipolarity, have crumbled. Francis Fukuyama made a name for himself by proclaiming the approaching end of history as the victory of liberal-democratic political orders. There is, Fukuyama boldly stated, “a fundamental process at work that dictates a common evolutionary pattern for ail human societies - in short something like a Universal History of mankind in the direction of liberal democracy". Fukuyama was making the broad point that the idea of liberal democracy, or some recognlsably liberal version of the conceptual pair of liberty and equality, was triumphant in the sense that it was no longer rational to imagine better worlds that were not liberal, that attempts to do so were local leftovers, and that, give and take setbacks and delays, governments across the globe would find it increasingly difficult to secure a minimal degree of popular legitimacy, save by taking decisive steps towards conforming to liberal ideas.
Oggetto di questa originale ricerca storica sono due tra i più noti e più studiati sistemi malavitosi: la camorra napoletana e il milieu marsigliese. Nelle due grandi città mediterranee le organizzazioni criminali sembrano avere stabilmente assunto un ruolo che va al di là della gestione di singole attività illegali, sia pur importanti e ramificate. Gli interi contesti urbani di Napoli e Marsiglia ne sono stati caratterizzati, al punto da rimanere marchiati da una persistente «mauvaise réputation» ed essere considerati in se stessi «criminogeni». In realtà, in entrambi i casi, i sistemi criminali, esaminati da vicino e nel corso della loro lunga parabola otto-novecentesca, si presentano assai mobili, occupano ruoli cangianti, mostrano un'attitudine all'adattamento che conosce come unica costante proprio la loro capacità di autoriproduzione. Le «élites criminali» di Napoli e Marsiglia passano da una fase che si può definire «archeologica» e che corrisponde agli esordi ottocenteschi, attraverso i grandi cambiamenti di fine Ottocento e poi del nostro secolo, fino a un ampliamento dei mercati illeciti e dei sistemi clientelari che raggiunge l'apice nei tempi a noi più vicini. Il punto decisivo è rappresentato dai legami che queste élites illegali riescono di volta in volta a intrecciare con la società, con il contesto «legale» nel quale, spesso agevolmente, si muovono. L'approccio comparato consente di mettere in rilievo analogie e differenze, fasi e tempi, modi e articolazioni delle iniziative criminali, punti di forza e di debolezza, reti clandestine e modi di «emersione». La conclusione è sorprendente: le organizzazioni criminali non hanno in sé la capacità di crescere e di misurare la propria potenza; sono le istituzioni legali, quelle dell'ordine pubblico e quelle preposte alla formazione della pubblica opinione, a conferire con la loro stessa azione una capacità di «accredito » ai gruppi criminali che operano nelle due città.
This is an in-depth, cross-national comparative study of living arrangements of young people in Europe. It compares France and Spain and proposes a theoretical framework for understanding international variations in young people's living conditions and transitions to adulthood. The study attempts to answer the question: Why do some young people stay longer at home than others? This leads to a sociological interpretation of differences in the opportunity structure of young people and of their respective strategies in the transition to social independence. This research links micro and macro-level analysis and matches two national large-scale surveys to treat a topic which is of relevance to many people, especially with regards to social policy reforms.
This thesis has two fundamental objectives. On the one hand, at the level of theoretical generalization, it aims to make a contribution to the study of collective identities, and more specifically, of national identities within the context of European integration. On the other, at the level of empirical investigation, it aims to compare how the collective ideals, memories, and sentiments of two national communities, Britain and Spain, have conditioned the diverse symbolic representations of ‘Europe* which have emerged over the course of time in the public spheres of these two particular case-studies.
Post-colonial European politics have undergone profound changes. Constructing an intellectual history of European development discourse, this book brings together post-structuralist and critical approaches to understanding development. Nathalie Karagiannis analyses three key terms of European development discourse: ‘responsibility’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘giving’. Situating these terms in a concrete history of European post-colonial politics, the author shows how European policy has shifted from accepting responsibility for colonialism – constructed as it is on the paternalistic model of the gift – to a more amnesiac politics in which post-colonial countries are responsible for their own fate. In this way, Karagiannis illustrates that efficiency has become the overriding goal of development, and that the relationship between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries is mainly defined by considerations pertaining to market capitalism.
From the beginnings of intergovernmental co-operation in the 1980s to the Amsterdam Treaty and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the developing EU refugee policies have oscillated between the conflicting policy frames of internal security on the one hand and human rights on the other. Taking a multilevel perspective on the process of Europeanisation, this work highlights the entanglement between domestic as In m reforms in Germany and France and European co-operation and investigates the scope for a common refugee policy in the EU. Enlightening and innovative, this much-needed analysis of the Europeanisat ion of asylum policies is essential reading for scholars of European integration. asylum and refugee policy, and all those interested in the prospect of political unification in Europe.
This thesis is concerned with the changing nature of European Community (EC) policies towards semiconductor producing firms. It is an important tale to recount, as industrial affairs have, since the early 1980s, been at the forefront of Europe's search for common areas of action. The creation of a single Community-wide industrial policy may thus be viewed as another substantial step towards economic and political union. Whereas other works look at the European Monetary System (EMS) for instance, and test its success or failure as a policy to enhance integration, I look at industrial policy and endeavour to place it in the context of the integration process. One of the hypotheses which I want to develop in this work is that EC policy for the semiconductor industry evolved as part of the Community's efforts to create a common area of action for industrial affairs. The shift in policy emphasis away from the national and towards the EC level for this industry, established semiconductors as the Community's vanguard high technology industry in the post-Single European Act drive towards economic integration. This hypothesis can only be tested through a critical study of EC industrial policy. In undertaking such a study, I am aware of the need to advance a definition of this much abused concept, and to identify its constituent policy mechanisms. Moreover, it is essential to look at how policy evolves and who (i.e. which actors) exerts the greatest degree of control over the policy-making process.
The question this thesis attempts to answer is summarized as follows: what accounts for the amazing stability of Italian transport policy in the face of European challenges, given the fact that - as most national and European policy-makers readily believe - it is not capable of addressing the problem of the sector? This study analyzes the transport policy in Italy from the 1990s into the 21st century. It looks at how the two sub-sectors of surface transport, road haulage and raliways, have been managed by the public and private actors involved. In both sectors the policy appears to have failed, either by not offering a remedy to problems or by aggravating them further. The author believes that studying transport policy in Italy will shed light on the wider question of how national policy-making patterns are influenced by developments in the international environment; in this case looking closely at the influence of the European Union.
On June 26, 1991, after some 46 years without a war in Europe, violent conflict erupted in the territory of what used to be the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It took more than four years of atrocities before a peace agreement was finally negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995. This book provides a detailed analysis of the response of Western Europe to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The account pays particular attention to the behaviour of the major Member States of the European Community (later Union), such as France, Britain, and Germany, in two crucial moments of debate and decision-making: the diplomatic recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, and the debate on the desirability and form of a possible military intervention in the warring country. By combining three theoretical approaches to the study of international politics - neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism - Lucarelli provides a theoretically informed analysis of the main forces behind Western Europe's response to the Yugoslav wars. Conclusions are drawn on the major characteristics of Western Europe's management of the conflict, the interplay of international and domestic factors behind the behaviour of Western European states, the relative explanatory power of each of the three theoretical perspectives and their common research tradition, and the perspective of the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union. The book's reconstruction and evaluation of conflict management in ex-Yugoslavia, its attention to the influence of the European integration process on the foreign policy of its Member States, and its use and assessment of International Relations theoretical tools, should make it of topical interest for a wide range of scholars interested in both international and European political affairs.
Regional integration has become a need for national states to face the challenges of globalization. However, the ongoing integration processes are not alike, and neither are their outcomes. This research outlines the political differences concerning a few of them, particularly the two blocs that have reached the customs union stage: the European Union and Mercosur. Whereas the former features a pattern of increasing institutionalization at a regional, often supranational level, the latter does not progress along the same path but through intergovernmental mechanisms, in a more politicized -as opposed to institutionalized— shape. This research tackles two main puzzles. The first is the success of Mercosur in a region where previous attempts at integration had systematically failed. The second is the unexpected characteristics of Mercosur operation, which challenge both established theories and the archetypal model of the European Union. The main hypothesis suggests that Mercosur success-without-regional-institutions can be partially explained by the domestic institutional settings o f its member countries. Executive format is thus addressed in order to appraise whether presidential democracies have been able to back up an integration process in a previously unsuspected way. Through the empirical analysis of seven regional processes that took place between 1985 and 2000, this research looks into the extent to which national instead of regional institutions provided for decision-making, dispute settlement and rule enforcement. The conclusion arrived at is that, in the absence of regional institutions, a specific combination of national institutions with presidential diplomacy has supplied effective bases for regional integration.
This text attempts to halt and roll back the confusion surrounding the concept of international stability. It is based on the premise that if we cannot agree upon what constitutes a stable international system, then we cannot hope to create one. The aim of the book is, firstly, to understand why the concept of stability has been conceptualized in such diverse ways in international relations and, secondly, to propose an innovative understanding of international stability that may serve as a solid basis for future debate. The book tests this theory on two important issue areas of contemporary international governance - the United Nations Security Council and the International Monetary Fund. The findings have implications for both theory and practice in international relations.
Este libro estudia el desarrollo organizativo del Partido Socialista Obrero Español durante el período comprendido entre la reconstrucción de su organización en las postrimerías del franquismo y su derrota en las elecciones de marzo de 1996.Utilizando un marco analítico centrado en el concepto de estrategia organizativa y los factores que influyen en sus características, la investigación empírica aborda tres cuestiones: "la política de afiliación" del PSOE, sus vínculos con otras organizaciones, fundamentalmente con la UGT, y la comunicación directa con el electorado, prestando una especial atención a las campañas electorales. Los tres son aspectos fundamentales de las estrategias organizativas, y la opción de desarrollar en mayor medida uno u otro depende de múltiples condicionantes -internos y externos a los partidos- que se analizan en el libro. A partir del estudio del caso del PSOE, y mediante la utilización de conceptos, teorías y modelos propios de la literatura comparada sobre el tema, este libro pretende contribuir al conjunto de investigaciones recientes que reflejan el renovado interés de la Ciencia Política en analizar los rasgos organizativos de los partidos, las repercusiones de éstos en el rendimiento y funcionamiento de los propios partidos, y en diferentes aspectos de los sistemas políticos a los que pertenecen.
L'un des problèmes que présente la notion de mémoire est qu’elle constitue une «notion-carrefour»!: elle renvoie d'abord à un certain nombre de fonctions psychiques grâce auxquelles les êtres humains sont capables d’actualiser des impressions ou des informations passées. A ce titre, la mémoire intéresse la psychologie, la neurophysiologie ou encore la biologie. Dans le champ des sciences sociales, la «mémoire» — à laquelle on adjoint souvent l’épithète «collective» — a fait une entrée remarquée il y a une vingtaine d'années déjà. S'agit-il d’un simple phénomène des temps, d’une mode passagère ou, au contraire, doit-on estimer que cet engouement pour le thème de la mémoire, participe d’une réflexion de fond sur le passé, l'histoire, le souvenir et l'oubli? Cette recherche n'abordera pas directement ces questions, même si elle peut, en passant, y apporter quelques éléments de réponse. S'inscrivant dans une perspective sociologique, ce travail a pour objectif majeur de questionner l’utilisation d’un terme polysémique, qui revêt par conséquent des significations multiples. En d’autres termes, il s’agira de répondre à la question suivante: existe-t-il une réalité sociale que l'on puisse nommer «mémoire collective»?; si oui, quelle est-t-elle?; ou encore, qu'est-ce que la «mémoire collective»?, et comment fonctionne-t-elle?
NGOs and the United Nations reveals how NGOs have changed their interaction with the UN since the mid-1990s. It also looks at how their representation to the UN, their consultative status and their characteristic features influence their relationship with the UN. The case studies include some of the most renowned players on the international scene, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, CARE International and Oxfam International.
The welfare state can be regarded as the major institutional arrangement of western societies that contributes to a socially accepted allocation of resources amongst the members of a given society. It is a means by which the political sphere re-balances intolerable inequalities and outcomes that have occurred within the market. For this purpose, a significant proportion of income must be transferred between individuals and social groups. Most welfare measures, therefore, are redistributive measures that aim at achieving a distribution of societal resources that is preferable to the primary distribution of the market.
In ihrem Dissertation begreift Jessica Eisermann das Problem der Mediengewalt als sozial konstruiertes Problem, dessen Deutung und Wahrnehmung von einem „Masterframe der Kausalität“ dominiert werden. Die Soziologin fragt nach möglichen gesellschaftlichen Gegenmaßnahmen und den aktuellen Folgen, die diese Konstruktion für die Rundfunkregulation hat.
Die Idee, eine Arbeit über die Neue italienische Frauenbewegung zu schreiben, wurde von Freundinnen von mir geboren, nachdem ich das Telegramm meiner Annahme am Europäischen Hochschulinstitut in Florenz freudestrahlend in den Händen hielt: "Mensch, du kannst nach Italien, dann schreib gefälligst was über die Frauenbewegung dort, das waer doch 'ne tolle Sache, und hier wissen wir nichts darüber!" Ich fand die Idee ausgezeichnet, zumal ich seit Jahren in Frauengruppen arbeitete, zu diesem Zeitpunkt in einer Gruppe, die das Problem der Frauenerwerbslosigkeit, von der ich selbst betroffen war, aufzuarbeiten versuchte. Die Idee war sicherlich ausgezeichnet, doch hatte ich nicht die geringste Ahnung, in welche Schwierigkeiten ich mich damit eingelassen hatte und einlassen würde...
The liberalization of transatlantic trade relations since the Great Depression is one of the key developments in the global political economy of the last hundred years. This period has seen the negotiated reduction of both tariffs and nontariff barriers among developed countries, which allowed for the rapid expansion of trade flows, a driving force of economic globalization. In Protection for Exporters, Andreas Dür provides a novel explanation for this phenomenon that stresses the role of societal interests in shaping trade politics. He argues that exporters lobby more in reaction to losses of foreign market access than in pursuit of opportunities, thus providing a rationale for periods of acceleration and slowdown in the pace of liberalization. Dür also presents hypotheses about the form in which protection for exporters is provided (preferential or nonpreferential) and the balance of concessions that is exchanged in trade negotiations. Protection for Exporters includes case studies of major developments in international trade relations, such as the passage of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in the 1930s, the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in the 1940s, the Kennedy Round in the 1960s, the debate over Fortress Europe in the 1980s, and U.S.-European competition over access to emerging markets in the early 2000s. Dür's rigorous argument and systematic empirical analyses not only explain transatlantic trade relations but also allow for a better understanding of the dynamics of international economic relations.
In 1992, on the basis o f a sophisticated econometric analysis o f the long-term patterns of economic growth of the seven largest Latin American economies during the period 1940-1985 (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela), a detailed and careful study predicted that Chile would be the country to experience the slowest economic growth during the 1990s (between 2.5% and 2.8% per year). This prediction took into account capital and labor endowments and their growth patterns as well as other economic factors traditionally supposed to determine a country’s pattern of GDP growth. However, up to today—September of 1997—Chile appears as the fastest growing Latin American economy o f the 1990-1996 period, with an average GDP growth rate o f 7.2% per year (5.5% in per capita terms). Moreover, in 1996 Chile completed 13 years o f sustained, uninterrupted economic growth. What determines the pace of growth of the wealth of a country? Why do some countries grow faster than others? Which factors affect the long term pattern o f economic growth of a country? These questions—as old as Adam Smith—have attracted increased attention from economists and social scientists during the last two decades. One remarkable characteristic of this endeavor has been the sustained effort to incorporate non-economic factors into the analysis of growth in order to improve understanding of the sources of divergent patterns in countries economic performance.
Quali fattori determinano l’influenza di uno Stato membro nei processi decisionali delFUnione Europea? E’ sufficiente l’ampia dimensione del paese, come afferma Moracvsick? Ovvero prevalgono piuttosto variabili di natura interna, come suggerisce il domestic policy approachl La presente ricerca cerca di rispondere a tali quesiti, comparando due casi tra loro: l’Italia ed il Portogallo. L’ipotesi di fondo è che la dimensione “grande” dello Stato membro di per sé non sia sufficiente a determinare l'influenza dello stesso, e che sono piuttosto le caratteristiche proprie del quadro istituzionale e politico nazionale a determinare l’influenza effettiva che riesce ad avere. Infine, si ipotizza che la durata della membership nella Comunità / Unione costituisca un’ulteriore variabile positiva in tale quadro, facilitando l’adattamento delle istituzioni e dei processi decisionali domestici. La ricerca si divide in tre parti: la prima discute l’inquadramento teorico e metodologico del tema; la seconda è dedicata all’analisi empirica comparata dei due casi in oggetto; la terza costituisce la parte di analisi e di verifica delle ipotesi proposte. L’ambizione del lavoro presentato è di contribuire a colmare un gap della letteratura - analizzando due casi meno studiati di altri (ad es. Francia, Germania o Regno Unito) - e di contribuire alla riflessione teorica sul funzionamento dell’Unione Europea ed in particolare al filone di studi che si occupa delle relazioni tra gli Stati membri e l’Unione Europea.
This study has a dual objective. On the one hand, it seeks to contribute to a more complex of understanding of modernisation and social change. In this respect, my casestudy of the Romanian experience with modernity might be of interest to scholars working in other fields, as the particularities of the Romanian case could have relevance for other Tater modernising countries’, i.e. those countries that did not take part in the emergence of Western modernity. On the other hand, the study attempts to contribute to a fuller understanding of the Romanian history of modernisation, in that it seeks to provide theoretically informed interpretations of its pattern of modernisation. It is claimed that particular experiences that are usually understood as non-modem should be interpreted as contributing to the overall modem experience in Romania. It should be noted that only in a more advanced stage of my research I was able to consult sources in the Romanian language, as I started out without any knowledge of Romanian. This also means that in some instances I have relied on translated sources.
This text concentrates on the economic sociology of return migration, with specific reference to Tunisia. As such, it aims to analyze, on the one hand, the patterns of resource mobilization and the strategies for survival developed by some Tunisian entrepreneur returnees with a view to providing for the survival of their own business concerns, as well as the elements which have shaped their entrepreneurial activities, on the other. By building a typology, which comprises three categories of entrepreneur returnees (namely the 'Heirs', the 'Converts' and the 'New Entrepreneurs') this book sets out to explain how and why some interviewed Tunisian return migrants have succeeded in investing their past experiences of migration, lived in Europe, in their current entrepreneurial activities in Tunisia, while being involved in the dynamics of cross border social and economic networks.
The research explores women’s attitudes towards and motivation to remain childless or childfree. In the mid 1980s, most research including much feminist literature assumed that all women desired children. And yet there was a growing paradox in the UK: British culture and society was largely ‘pronatalist’ and, while some ‘antinatalist’ rhetoric was present, it was directed at lower income groups. Yet it was among middle income women that parenthood was being delayed to the point where some demographers acknowledged that it could result in permanent childlessness. The literature review included the biological, sociological, gender studies, and psychological literature (largely American or Canadian; few relevant British studies were found); pronatalist and antinatalist ideologies; and demographic trends. The empirical research focused on women teachers in the UK. A collaboration was developed with the Inner London Teachers’ Association, which was willing to provide access to their list of teachers and fund a questionnaire survey, due to its interest in learning about early infertility.  The research included a questionnaire on attitudes to childlessness administered to 1,000 London based teachers, followed up by 19 in-depth interviews.
A comprehensive and theoretically informed examination of European foreign policy making towards the Mediterranean, from 1957 to nowadays. This dissertation focuses on the reasons and the patterns of Europeans’ actions, with a special emphasis on the early 1970s and on current times. It analyses how interest in Europe for the Mediterranean has generally arisen out of a shared sense of puzzlement in front of challenges, such as terrorism or migration, originating from the Southern neighbours. The dissertation casts new light on the role of member states as policy entrepreneurs in European integration, and explains European foreign policy as a way to collectively reconstruct a new understanding of Euro-Mediterranean relations.
L'aumento dell'astensionismo elettorale, fenomeno oggi attuale in Italia così come in molti altri paesi occidentali, e più in generale lo scarso interesse dei cittadini verso la politica generano dubbi e perplessità sull'effettivo funzionamento delle democrazie moderne. Lo studio delle predisposizioni e del comportamento degli elettori mostra che essi sono senza dubbio «pigri», nel senso di poco inclini a dedicare tempo ed attenzione alla politica. Ma gli elettori sono in grado di sopperire alla loro scarsa competenza in materia di politica grazie a «scorciatoie cognitive », vale a dire opportune strategie di raccolta e di elaborazione dell'informazione che consentono di prendere decisioni di voto relativamente informate. L'autrice presenta una rassegna completa ed aggiornata di come la letteratura politologica — dalle teorie tradizionali ai più recenti modelli della cognizione politica — ha interpretato il problema dell'informazione e concentra l'attenzione sui processi di ragionamento attraverso i quali gli individui percepiscono e rappresentano il mondo della politica. Il volume illustra inoltre i risultati di un'indagine empirica sulla conoscenza politica degli elettori italiani, offrendo alcuni interessanti spunti per ricostruire il processo di adattamento dei cittadini alle nuove regole e al mutato panorama politico degli ultimi anni.
How does a democracy deal with threats to its stability and continued existence when those threats come from political parties that play the democratic game? In Defending Democracy, political scientist Giovanni Capoccia studies key European nations between World Wars I and II which survived such democratic crises. A comprehensive and thoughtful historical analysis of the democracies of interwar Europe, Defending Democracy provides a unique perspective on the many lessons to be learned from their successes and failures. With this exclusively empirical investigative approach, Capoccia develops a methodology for analyzing contemporary democracies -- such as Algeria, Turkey, Israel, and others -- where similar political conditions are present. Given the rise of terrorism and the persistence of extremism in both established and new democracies today, continued research and dialogue on the defense of democracy are necessary for its preservation.
In an in-depth comparative and long-term analysis Daniele Caramani studies the macro-historical process of the nationalization of politics. Using a great wealth of new and unexplored data on single constituencies in seventeen West European countries, he reconstructs the territorial structures of electoral support for political parties, as well as their evolution since the mid-nineteenth century from highly fragmented politics in the early stages toward nation-wide alignments. Caramani provides a multi-pronged empirical analysis through time, across countries, and between party families. The inclusion in the analysis of all the most important social and political cleavages - class, state-church, rural-urban, ethno-linguistic and religious - allows him to assess the nationalizing impact of the class cleavage that emerged from national and industrial revolutions, and the resistance of preindustrial cultural factors to national integration. Institutional and socio-economic factors are combined with actor-centered patterns and differences between national types of territorial configurations of the vote.
Este libro analiza las causas de la abstención electoral en el marco de las elecciones parlamentarias considerando simultáneamente las variables individuales y las características del sistema político y de la elección como factores explicativos. En primer lugar se explora la relación de los recursos socioeconómicos, la integración social y el compromiso político sobre la abstención. Para ello se analizan datos de sondeos post-electorales y Eurobarómetros procedentes de quince países de Europa occidental. En segundo lugar el análisis sistémico centra la atención en el efecto que los incentivos institucionales, los anclajes de los partidos políticos en la sociedad y las características de cada convocatoria electoral pueden tener sobre la variación de la tasa de abstención de estos países. Finalmente se analizan las posibles interacciones entre variables procedentes de los distintos niveles de observación, el individual y el sistémico. Según este tercer tipo de análisis no todos los electores tienen por qué ser igualmente sensibles al contexto político y electoral en el que viven. Mientras que para algunos las características del entorno son importantes a la hora de decidir entre votar o abstenerse, para otros estos elementos ejercen un impacto menor o incluso en un sentido diferente.
This thesis presents an analysis of the transnational social forces in the making of a new European socio-economic order that emerged out of the European integration process during the 1980s and 1990s. Arguing that the political economy of European integration must be put within the context of a changing global capitalism, Van Apeldoorn examines how European change is linked to global change and how transnational actors mediate these changes.
In this thesis, Adam Arvidsson traces the development of Italy's postmodern consumer culture from the 1920s to the present day. In so doing, Arvidsson argues that the culture of consumption we see in Italy today has its direct roots in the social vision articulated by the advertising industry in the years following the First World War. He then goes on to discuss how that vision was further elaborated by advertising's interaction with subsequent big discourses in Twentieth Century Italy: fascism, post-war mass political parties and the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a wide range of primary sources, this fascinating book takes an innovative historical approach to the study of consumption.
How can we approach the Commission's role as co-manager of policy implementation? Why should we expect the Commission to be pulled into domestic policy execution and to accumulate something like an implementation management capacity? How should we conceptualise the Commission's linkage with post-decision management issues? Finally, how does the Commission's involvement in the application of EU policies, if any, significantly change everything? Such questions are answered in this study, which is concerned with what may be called the implementation management capacity of the European Commission. Simply put, this is the role the Commission plays in the implementation of large-scale European spending programmes. While it is true that the Commission's predominant prerogatives are to draft legislation and facilitate bargaining, it also has a role in post-decision policy management. This role is of increasing importance for the emerging governance of the European Union.
Why have some countries been more successful than others in keeping price stability? This thesis answers this question by exploring the political determinants o f the policies of price stability on the basis o f the political cost they incur to the government It challenges the universality o f conventional approaches to the politics o f inflation such as the role of independent central banks or the role o f wage moderation. It argues that price stability cannot be understood without taking into account the political costs politicians face in different political and economic systems when deciding to deflate. Price stability is a public good that has to be financed by all the groups in the society. At the same time, it is a good with negative externalities; some groups benefit more than others (for example savers and financial intermediaries) while some other groups pay higher cost than others (lower income groups that face higher risks of getting unemployed). The political dilemma is resolved by compensating those who bear the highest cost, as long as they have the political voice. The political inclusiveness o f the political party system determines whether the interests o f the disaffected minority will be represented in the government and will be taken care of through higher social transfers. As a result, price stability is a function o f the party system and of the welfare state. The thesis provides empirical support from 18 OECD countries of the positive role o f social insurance on deflation. It also shows that proportional electoral systems and coalition governments redistribute more through higher social spending than less proportional systems and single party governments. As a consequence, more proportional political systems have enjoyed higher price stability and have been less subjected to monetary political business cycles than less proportional systems.
This dissertation attempts to explain how the Commission o f the European Union became such an active player in the policy-making o f the Union the last twenty years. In doing so, it provides a micro-founded theoretical framework o f involvement o f the Commission as an institution carrying out public policies. The basic premise is to understand the policy-making process as an interaction o f the top-officials o f the Commission with other purposeful societal actors at the micro-level. This interaction constitutes a multi-level game where top-officials as policy-makers contend with their own policy preferences over the policy outcomes that could be obtained, and try to maximize their utility function subject to what other players in the game pursue. Departing from corporatist and elite theories, it is argued that policy innovation can be a purposeful output pursued by bureaucrats in their attempt to reshape their policy competence (bureaucratic politics). This attempt takes part within the pattern of interaction between the various involved administrative departments and their policy clients and external suppliers. Then, in order to understand the dynamics o f the innovative activity of the administration, in our case the Commission, it is needed to see how this activity is influenced by the development o f the structure o f interaction. Which are the strategies followed by the administrative departments and which are their possibilities o f success for policy innovators under a well developed structure and an underdeveloped structure o f interaction. For this reason, the capability o f topofficials for policy innovation is tested under the case o f maritime industries (a well developed structure) and the case o f tourism (underdeveloped structure).
Ausgehend von den anhaltenden Debatten um das islamische Kopftuch in staatlichen Bildungseinrichtungen Deutschlands und Frankreichs analysiert Schirin Amir-Moazami die Logiken der Diskursproduktion über den Islam und bringt die Argumente der Kritiker mit den Stimmen Kopftuch tragender junger Musliminnen ins Gespräch. Die Studie zeichnet nach, wie die wachsende Partizipation sichtbarer Muslime, hier symbolisiert durch das Kopftuch, im dominanten Diskurs beider Länder Abwehrreaktionen provoziert und der Islam mehrheitlich als Gegenkategorie zu jeweils national geprägten Säkularitätskonzepten begriffen wird. Zugleich zeigt sie, wie die jungen Frauen in die Diskurstraditionen beider Länder eingebettet sind und sich in komplexen Aushandlungsprozessen engagieren.
The end of the Cold War has seen the resurgence of old patterns of internal and external armed conflicts. War and civil war as factors in the process of the dissolution and formation of political structures have reappeared even within Europe. In the post-Cold War world politics appears less to be ordered by clear principles. Instead, it is insecure and undermined by violence and instability) It would, however, be misleading to assume that the contemporary experience of eruptive violence simply signifies an aberration from a peaceful path of social and political development. Against the identification of modernization and the gradual decline of (civil) wars, Hans Joas (1996), in close reference to current historical sociology, has emphasized that external and internal forms of armed struggle cannot be seen as deviations, anomalies, or interruptions in the development of modern social and political structures. Rather, they represent their inherent feature.2 According to his view, (civil) war and violence are constitutive parts of mRdernity and not its prehistory; the ongoing military and armed conflicts are thus only a reminder of this close connection. How should political theory react to the central role of (civil) war and armed violence in shaping modern political structures? If current historical sociology is right that (civil) war and armed conflicts lie at the foundations of modern politics, political theory would find its overriding field of interest in the conceptual analysis of politics and violence.
Tanja Borzel argues that the effect of Europeanization on the politics and institutions of the EU's member states depends on the degree of conflict between European and domestic norms and rules. The thesis examines the relationship between the central state and regions in Germany and Spain, showing how Europeanization has served to weaken the powers of the regions. In both countries, the regions were forced to cooperate more closely with the centre, but the institutional impact in the two countries has been strikingly different. In Germany the existing cooperative Federal system was reinforced, but in Spain the traditional competitive relationship between the levels of government could not continue. Europeanization has led to a significant change in the pattern of Spanish politics, turning rivalry into cooperation. This thesis thus presents an important analysis of the impact of Europeanization on domestic politics, and on the relationship between states and regions in particular.
In this dissertation Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth.
This thesis addresses two questions: first, has there emerged in Europe a system of industrial relations which crosses national boundaries? Secondly, does organised labour contribute to the process of democratisation of the European Union? Scholars have argued that the EU cannot be democratised because there is no European society as such, no European network of intermediate social institutions, no European public sphere, no European demos and no Euro-democratic citizens’ movement. This thesis has discovered evidence to the contrary.
Regional government has become a fashionable topic of analysis, but the impact of regional autonomy on public policy has so far received little attention. In this book, Stefaan De Rynck examines how the creation of regional government has affected the substance of public policies in Belgium. He explains the observed pattern of policy change by referring to shifts in regional power structures. His publication offers a political analysis of policy change, and warns against concluding that public policy is responsive to social problems or cultural differences between regional societies. The book demonstrates the importance of political action for understanding the link between political institutions and policy change. In its case-studies, Changing Public Policy: The Role of the Regions focuses on the development of education and agri-environmental policy in Flanders and Wallonia since 1988, the year in which competence for these sectors was transferred from the national to the regional level. The research material on the policy cases covers a twelve-year period. It is based on a wide range o interviews and extensive documentary analysis.
Global market competition and the political responses to globalization transform urban societies and states, and thus the cultures of capital cities in contemporary Europe. Vienna's cultural district Museumsquartier and the planned Humboldt Forum on Berlin's Schlossplatz illustrate two of the most controversial sites of urban reconstruction in Central Eastern Europe since the 1990s. Tracing the processes of their political emergence through more than a decade of heated public debates, this book narrates the metaphor-rich and engaging stories about these old European capitals facing change. It compares the reconstruction of political legitimacy and its cultural symbols from two different local perspectives of European state transformation. This enquiry into urban culture highlights the diversity of contemporary cities and their political potential for change.
The institutionalization of ecological attitudes in highly industrialized societies is the main interest of this study. Analyses of national politics often underestimates the competing and partially latent interests which are voiced by different political pressure groups. Therefore, I am interested in the response of the workers' movement to the ecological challenge. Although the labor movement does not support the cruder forms of ecologism such as no-growth claims, of all established political actors it is the most open to these demands. This is so because the ecological politics offers an utopia for a modern society. The labor movement has also the aspiration of being a socially progressive force of society that aims for social change. Most directly, the left-wing parties have to compete with other parties that attract the post-material electorate. However, the policy and strategy of workingclass parties are not independent of trade union policy. It is self-evident that politicians of social democratic parties consult trade unions in order to formulate their political goals. But also on the national policy level, unions are often consulted in order to obtain a broad alliance for some political decisions. All these examples should illustrate that trade union policy and standpoints concerning the development of society are important for the better understanding of the political outcomes of society. Yet traditional union policy - and also trade union research - tends very much to generally ignore politics: "Unions are involved in a major way in a very significant activity - the political life of the country - and yet there is considerable evidence that they do not take that activity very seriously".
The central idea of this study is a simple one. It is to develop the argument that action must be explained by the way actors reflect about a problem. The study argues that those reflections and their consequences for action can be described in systematic ways. Behind this basic statement lies a fundamental assumption: Besides analysing the interests, preferences and strategies of actors and the resulting interaction, it is at least equally important to study the emergence of these interests, preferences and strategies. In other words, it is important to examine not only how actors get what they want but also why they want what they want. Systematic patterns of reflection, this is the thesis, are at the basis of interests, preferences and strategies.
Italy is one of the OECD countries with the lowest levels of educational attainment. This dissertation examines the reasons for this situation through the analysis of the main factors affecting individual educational decisions. Two main approaches are considered: the Structuralist and the Rational Choice Theory. The first emphasises the fundamental role played by external factors, that is family background, the educational system and the labour market, in determining individual educational allocation; the second explains the distribution of educational credentials as the result of individuals* rational evaluation process of the costs and benefits associated to different educational choices. Based on this theoretical framework four main hypotheses are formulated and tested. The first two refer to the constraining effect of individuals’ family background, of tracking in education and of different regional economic development; the other two refer to the occupational benefits an individual gains from reaching different educational qualifications and to subjective expectations of educational success. Linear regression and logit models are the main tools used to analyse the data from the 1985 Italian Mobility Survey. The results indicate that individuals* social class of origin, the tracking system and labour market prospects are very important factors in explaining the low levels of educational attainment in Italy. Gender and regional differences do not emerge as having a significant role in the story. The conclusions highlight that two main elements seem to differentiate Italy from the other countries: the selective effect of tracking which reduces the attainment rates at both upper secondary and tertiary level; and the occupational returns to education which do not give a clear signal about the benefits of investing in education.
Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of the limitations of the traditional approaches to parties and politics in the EU, and introduces an alternative framework which combines the theory and method of ‘comparative politics’. In Chapter 2, the two theoretical levels are brought together in a “comparative politics theory of parties in the European Union”. This theory is subsequently tested in three empirical chapters, each covering a different aspect of party federation behaviour in the EU: party organisational development (Chapter 3); the changing shape of party policy competition (Chapter 4); and the ability of parties to reap policy rewards from the European Council (Chapter 5). A description of the data and the methods used in the analysis is set out in a series of Appendices. Finally, the empirical and theoretical conclusions of the research are drawn together in Chapter 6.
This thesis explores the changing role of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), one of the biggest stumbling blocks to European integration, enlargement, and multilateral trade agreements. Marjoleine Hennis offers a unique perspective by focusing on the interaction between European integration and domestic politics. She analyzes the different levels of policymaking in the EU and applies a comparative analysis of interest intermediation in three important member states: France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Utilizing a political economy lens, the author draws a comprehensive picture of the structural changes in European agricultural policymaking by tracing the impact of globalization and the related changes in European regulation on the key actors in the CAP. Illuminating the dynamics and apparent contradictions of the CAP, this study offers valuable perspective on the contours of future European integration.
Ideas about public engagement with controversial technologies are growing in political prominence. This dissertation delivers a theoretically grounded, empirical analysis of why active public involvement is considered to be of growing importance for the legitimate use of new technologies. It examines the different social dynamics influencing actual attempts to engage the public and the difficulties encountered. Janus Hansen argues that while there are strong normative reasons to further public engagement with the regulation of controversial technologies, there are also strong sociological reasons to reflect carefully on what such engagement can realistically achieve. This dissertation delivers conceptual tools and empirical analyses to support such reflections based on in-depth case studies of important attempts to engage public concerns across Europe.
In questo studio di sociologia della scienza cerco di iniziare a dissodare il campo relativamente ampio delle modalità tramite le quali rivendicazioni di conoscenza scientifica possono essere delegittimate. Lo scritto si compone di due parti: la prima tratta di teoria sociologica e il 'problema dell'ordine' ne costituisce il filo conduttore, mentre nelle seconda presento e discuto due casi di ricerche biomediche che sono state sottoposte a tentativi di delegittimazione.
Has the international movement for democracy and human rights gone from being a weapon against power to part of the arsenal of power itself? Nicolas Guilhot explores this question in his penetrating look at how the U.S. government, the World Bank, political scientists, NG0s, think tanks, and various international organizations have appropriated the movement for democracy and human rights to export neoliberal policies throughout the world. His work charts the various symbolic, ideological, and political meanings that have developed around human rights and democracy movements. Guilhot suggests that these shifting meanings reflect the transformation of a progressive, emancipator), movement into an industry dominated by "experts" ensconced in positions of power. Guilhot's story begins in the 1950s when U.S. foreign policy experts promoted human rights and democracy as part of a "democratic international" to fight the spread of communism. Later, the unlikely convergence of anti-Stalinist leftists and the nascent neoconservative movement found a place in the Reagan administration. These "State Department Socialists," as they were known, created policies and organizations that provided financial and technical expertise to democratic movements and also supported authoritarian, anti-communist regimes, particularly in Latin America.
Over the last decade, the Internet has transformed how information can be made available-it is now used to transfer information about things as varied as financial transactions and celebrity gossip and to link and coordinate activities between otherwise isolated people, from protest groups to lonely hearts. This unprecedented ease of access to a wealth of information and contacts presents a challenge to national governments who wish to control and restrain some of this activity. In recent years, Internet control has become one of the major indicators to assess the balance between freedom and security in democracies. This book explores and compares how, why, and to what extent, national governments decide to control the Internet and how this impacts on crucial socio-economic activities and fundamental civil rights. The author provides detailed studies on the US, Germany, Italy and further case studies on Brazil, Canada, India, the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland, to address topics such cyberterrorism, the protection of information infrastructure, and the impact on individual privacy and freedom of speech. This is the first cross-country, comparative study on the issue of Internet control. It will be of interest to international relations scholars and students, and particularly those with an interest in the Internet.
In recent years economic research has explored further the role of technology within the process of economic development both from a theoretical and from an empirical point of view. New growth theory has attempted to frame, within a formal model, the determinants of technological progress and the form of its impact on productivity. In the new approach, a series of different factors are able to influence directly countries* growth rates, for example particular policy choices, or countries* interaction with the international environment. Together with theoretical developments, empirical research has attempted to evaluate of the size of the impact of a set of variables, which represent technological progress, political choices, and the extent of interactions with the international environment on cross country growth performances. An interesting aspect of new growth theory is that international knowledge spillovers and technological diffusion have a direct impact on growth rates of the receiving country. The first part of this research (Part A) concerns the theory of what motivates open economies to assimilate technology and to compete in the international markets. The theory is used to predict the effects of such behaviour on long run rates of growth. The second part (Part B) empirically evaluates the magnitude of the impact of technological diffusion and technological assimilation as represented by alternative technological variables, on growth rates on a panel sample of countries.
Several empirical studies of the inter-industry wage structure tend to show results which do not seem consistent with the competitive model of the labour market. Pieces of casual evidence like the one just quoted are confirmed by a number of more detailed investigations. These suggest that some industries might pay higher wages than others, even when differences in (observable) labour quality are taken into proper account. In other words, equal employees may not be paid equal wages across industries. Inter-industry wage differentials also seem a very stable phenomenon over time, across countries and across occupations. According to existing work, today’s high- and low-wage industries tend to be the same as those at the beginning of this century and, moreover, have remained in these relative positions during the whole intervening period; high- and low-wage industries appear to be the same in several countries, especially developed capitalist economies; and, wage differentials seem to be stable with respect to different occupations within the same industry.
The aim of this thesis is to analyse the importance of technology in influencing the trade performance of developed countries. Normally, attempts to explain the objective of this thesis meet with two distinct reactions. The first reaction, that of non-economists, is that differences in technology between countries seem an obvious explanation for differences in trade performance, and that the importance of technology is surely not a controversial issue. The second reaction, that of most economists, is ’why technology’, and how can differences in technology across countries possibly be more than a short run phenomenon. The reason for the difference in these reactions clearly lies with economic theory which, at least as far as neo-classical trade theory is concerned, has made strong assumptions concerning technology. Neo-classical trade theory has been based on the assumption of constant technology across countries, explicitly ruling out differences in technology as a source of trade. Hence the surprised reaction of most economists to the idea of considering differences in technology as a determinant of trade performance.
Testing economic theory on the basis of available data sets through econometric modelling is only legitimate if each condition of the entire collection of underlying assumptions is satisfied. This, at first glance obvious, statement has more implications than many of the practitioners of econometrics in the field are aware of. Even on a theoretical level, econometricians seem to show little agreement about the recommended modelling strategies or estimation procedures. This is imputed to the highly non-experimental nature of economic data and the fact that in many cases the theoretical variables do not coincide one-to-one with the available observed data. Disciples of both Fisher’s experimental design paradigm or Gauss’s theory of errors have to assume that the mechanism which generates the data is a nearly isolated system. See Spanos (1993) for an exposition of these different methodologies. This means that the systematic explanatory part of the model is somehow fixed or predetermined and the error terms can be viewed as non-systematic effects of omitted influencing factors or mismeasurement. In sharp conflict with this assumption, economic data is held to be generated by a fickle process where explanatory variables are often endogenous and influential factors show up and disappear. Usually, a specific economic theory only considers a sub set of the systematic explanatory components and makes predictions under the assumption that the influential factors which have been put aside are Constant. These ceteris paribus clauses often do not hold when analyzing real data sets.
This study is an attempt to analyze labor conflicts in France, Italy, and the United Kingdom since World War II. More precisely it will focalize on a particular expression of labor conflicts, namely, strikes, which are defined by Hicks as an "abstension from work, usually planned, by a considerable number of workers." This definition includes two elements, the group factor and the organizational factor, that distinguish! strikes from -other forms of work conflicts such as lateness, registered or unregistered sickness, or absenteeism. In fact, these two elements are always present during a strike and contrast with the individuality and the individual willingness which are present in other forms of conflict usually grouped under the heading of "unorganized conflict".
This thesis aims at contributing to the analysis of the issues of collusion and mergers from an industrial organization perspective. The thesis is composed of three main chapters. In what follows each of those chapters will be discussed in greater detail. In particular, I will briefly describe the model considered in each chapter, its relation to the literature, and the contribution each chapter makes to the existing literature. Chapter one deals with the issue of entry and collusion both theoretically and empirically. In particular, it re-considers Green and Porter’s (1984) model of collusion with imperfect monitoring (in the price version, as in Tirole’s (1988) textbook). In this model with homogeneous goods, a firm can either charge the monopoly price to share the market with other firms or secretly undercut its rivals to get the whole market. Since market demand is affected by stochastic factors, firm’s demand could be zero even when no firm is deviating. Given that the only available information to each firm is its own sales, it is difficult for them to infer whether a low demand is caused by a secret price cut or it is just due to a “bad” demand shock. In equilibrium, the firms need to start a price-war (i.e., charge the competitive price) when the demand is zero to maintain the incentive to charge the monopoly price in the collusive phases. As a result, a price-war occurs with positive probability as an equilibrium phenomenon.
This thesis consists of three empirical essays analysing firm and plant dynamics. In particular, the thesis examines the determinants of firm entry and exit, survival of new plants and firms’ decisions to open and close down plants. Several studies (e.g. OECD (2003) and Foster, Haltiwanger, and Krizan (2001)) have shown that micro-level dynamics contribute to aggregate productivity growth through a process o: creative destruction where the most successful business units survive and new units replace less productive old units. New firms and plants are also thought to have an important role in innovative activity and technological progress. Furthermore, each decision to establish a new business unit and to close down an existing unit involves the creation and destruction of jobs. From the policy perspective, it is thus important to understand the determinants of micro-level dynamics behind the aggregate economic and employment development.
Worker mobility is an essential part of transition from the socialist plan to a market economy. However, not all worker mobility is the same and the type of mobility is important for success in transition. Two features of worker mobility are particularly vital for a successful transition. First, according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD): ”...higher mobility is not necessarily desirable in itself. What is desirable is reallocation from less to more productive enterprises” (p.104; EBRD, 2000). This comment suggests that the direction of worker mobility matters. In the transition context higher productivity is a priori associated with private ownership, an assumption that is supported by empirical evidence. As a result, it is possible to rephrase the comment by stating that mobility from state jobs to private employment is more desirable than other types of worker mobility. Second, the human capital characteristics of workers that move are important. Workers are different in the amount of human capital and skills that they possess, and consequently, some workers are more productive than others. Assuming that the private sector is more efficient in its use of resources, the reallocation of workers with high human capital and skills to the new private sector is more desirable. Moreover, the reallocation of human capital determines growth of the new private sector. The private sector requires workers and their skills - educated professionals, skilled machine-operators, as well as those who are able to adapt to the new environment - in order to grow and be productive.
The academic literature has developed a number of "standard prescriptions" for the privatization and regulation of utilities. The main purpose of this thesis is to qualify some of them, and build on the qualifications to find new insights. Although these prescriptions have not been endorsed universally, they permeate most of the theoretical and empirical work done in the recent past. In general, they constitute a benchmark that has enriched our understanding of the many economic issues related to the role and performance of privatized, regulated firms. These standard prescriptions are broadly based on the British experience and some specific strands of economic theory. By and large, progress has been made in reforming countries using these standard prescriptions. But the British experience can today be complemented with the experience of other countries, and with new developments in several fields of economic theory. The evolution itself of the British privatized industries, interacting with the evolution of the political cycle in the U.K., also helps to give a more balanced and complex view of this field.
This thesis is composed of three papers that analyse the interaction of law and economics. The first paper is a study of the attempts to use whistleblowers to control corporate crime. The paper asks which type of reward system is likely to promote welfare enhancing levels of whistle-blowing: large rewards will tempt more whistleblowers, but some of these may have fabricated the evidence in the hope of misleading the courts. The optimal level of rewards depends on the accuracy of the legal system, and if the legal system never makes mistakes then corporate crime can be eradicated. In the second paper the focus shifts from the individual to the firm and to opportunities for profiting in the stock market. The paper comes in two parts. The first investigates predation when the predator can take short positions in the shares of the predated firm. The second part investigates the effect of long and short positions in one's competitors' shares on cartel stability. In the third paper I return to the individuals within a law breaking firm, but this time I concentrate on the executives and their remuneration. The paper empirically tests whether the executives in firms that breached the UK competition laws were compensated for the extra risks inherent in breaking the law. In the rest of this introduction I describe each paper in more detail.
The telecommunications industry is in the throes of rapid technological and regulatory change. Markets for terminals and services have been liberalized, and only the provision of networks has remained under the control of national operators. This book analyses from an economist's point of view the benefits which may be expected from the introduction of network competition in Europe, and describes how competition can be reconciled with social objectives. The author first looks at the latest technological developments and discusses the impact of new transmission systems such as mobile phones and satellites, and the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications. He goes on to weigh up the arguments for and against network competition, looking in particular at the natural monopoly view and at universal service. The third part of the book compares policy in Europe and the USA, with a detailed analysis of the European Commission's approach, and an up-to-date view of the regulatory frameworks in five European member states. Finally, the author sets out a strategy for network competition in Europe which takes into account both the latest developments and the characteristics of the European environment.
The present thesis consists of three applied studies dealing with aspects of the recent macroeconomic performance of the Greek economy. They all aim to pursue and to link two different kinds of issues: a) The first one is to derive useful insights into the functioning of the Greek economy during the post 1974 period. That is of particular interest given the country’s poor macroeconomic performance in comparison with its post-war experience. In addition, the period covers the effects of a number of important policy regime shifts (restoration of democracy in 1974, admission to the EU in 1981, switch in macroeconomic policies in the mid 80’s) and therefore can be of use for making inference on the effects that institutional and policy regime changes have on economies. b) The second one has to do with the implications that methodological issues have on econometric modelling.
Stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models have become in recent years the central paradigm for the analysis and understanding of macroeconomic fluctuations. As Gali (1995) puts it, though early applications to business cycle models (e.g., Kydland and Prescott (1982)) were generally restricted to model economies for which technology shocks were the only sources of fluctuations, and where built-in classical assumptions guaranteed the optimality of equilibrium allocations, the flexibility of that paradigm has been illustrated in a number of recent papers which have developed models of economies characterized by the presence of non-classical features (e.g., imperfect competition as in Rotemberg and Woodford (1991), Gali (1994) or Ubide (1995) and/or alternative sources of fluctuations (e.g., shocks to government spending as in Christiano and Eichenbaum (1992) or Baxter and King (1993)). These efforts to enrich the basic framework have been conducted with the objective of improving its empirical relevance and performance.
This thesis is motivated by the observation that the time series properties of financial security prices can vary fundamentally with their sampling frequency. Econometric models developed for low frequency data may thus be unsuitable for high frequency data and vice versa. For instance, while daily or weekly returns are generally well described by a martingale difference sequence, the dynamics of intra-daily, say, minute by minute, returns can be substantially more complex. Despite this apparent conflict between the behavior of high and low frequency data, it is clear that the two are intimately related and that high frequency data carries a wealth of information regarding the properties of the process, also at low frequency. The objective of this thesis is to deepen our understanding of the way in which high frequency data can be used in financial econometrics. In particular, we focus on (i) how to model high frequency security prices, and (ii) how to use high frequency data to estimate latent variables such as return volatility. One finding throughout the thesis is that the choice of sampling frequency is of fundamental importance as it determines both the dynamics and the information content of the data. A more detailed description of the chapters follows below.
Essays in cointegration analysis never was the working title of the work in progress for the last seven years. I started this project with the aim of doing applied research in economics and econometrics. Hence the last chapter of this thesis, Money demand in the Netherlands, was the first chapter written. Yet that very first version, written in Florence in 1998, bears little resemblance to the present version, included in this thesis. The only substantial agreement with the first version are the data used: the short term interest rates were collected from private banks in the Netherlands: as they increasingly offered above money-market interest rates to retail investors, those official interest rates were not relevant for retail investors and even small firms. That interesting problem - the irrelevance of money market rates to money demand - was thus solved rather quickly. Yet the other five chapters all evolved from practical problems, I ran into, during the cointegration analysis of the Dutch data set. I shall thus very briefly describe the cointegrated VAR models and then discuss in turn the problems, these chapters deal with. Each chapter is stand-alone, in that it can be read without having to read any of the others first: this also means that short general overviews of the methodology are presented in each one of them and not repeated here. This introduction just points at the general problems tackled in the papers. For each of the chapters, Matlab programs are available to replicate the results. These are included on a CD, which is part of this thesis. Two programs have been developed into stand-alone packages: 'me2' for maximum likelihood estimation of I(2) models and 'datamine' for the automatic identification and restriction of the cointegration space. Both of them are used in the replication of the results. The replication notes are thus a good starter for using these programs.
Under present international arrangements, central banks are virtually free to decide on whether or not to pursue exchange rate policies; similarly, in the domestic asset markets, they may choose to peg an interest rate or an other, or else to operate with aggregate targets.
The overall aim of this dissertation is to investigate from a theoretical and empirical point of view thè determinants of thè capitai account of thè balance of payments with special regard to a small, open economy. As an empirical case study, I have chosen Denmark, which I know particularly well, but, unfortunately, Denmark is somewhat atypical to thè textbook models, because of its rather tight capital Controls.
After much theoretical study, economists have recently switched their interest to the empirical analysis of product markets. This empirical “renaissance’ in industrial economics, as was pointed out by Breshnaham and Schmalensee (1987) and Kirman and Fillips (1993), has been made possible by, on one hand, advances in economic theory in the 1980s. which provided sound theoretical foundations, and on the other, by the development of more sophisticated empirical techniques which cased the quantitative analysis of the data, as well as the availability of new and better datasets. The present dissertation belongs to this new stream of industrial economics, and studies one of those issues which have received both theoretical and empirical attention, namely the transmission of nominal exchange rate fluctuations to import and export prices, also known as pass-through from exchange rate changes into prices. Primarily focused on the link between these two variables at aggregate level, this thesis concentrates on the microeconomic aspects of this relationship at firm level, giving more attention to the empirical tests of the explanations in use. These two aspects notwithstanding, it was surely the search of data, needed to produce an empirical work at firm level, which greatly influenced the final direction of this work. At this level of disaggregation, data was not easily available. Nonetheless. Alan Kirman’s suggestion, of the possibility of studying the price behaviour of The Economist newspaper across countries, decisively pushed this investigation ahead, and was proved to be, as is shown later, a good one.
Monetary integration theory, of mainly a monetarist orientation, from the last decade, tends to show the adjustment process to uniform rates of domestic inflation as a mechanistic outcome of a harmonization of national supplies of credits. This belief that credit restraint is the panacea for balance of payments disequilibria is based on the dictum that the exchange rate is the relative price of two monies, hence the adjustment process is mainly a question of having national money supplies converging. Indeed the present study shows that the adjustment process for a small inflation prone open economy is far more complicated. The process is burdensome and tedious, and by interpreting external disequilibria as a fiscal phenomenon, this study suggests that a broader range of instruments be used. The previous over reliance on restrictive monetary policies combined with a high degree of short to medium term autonomy for fiscal policy have had serious structural repercussions by changing the pattern of production and consumption for the economy. The resulting squeeze on the tradeables sector as a direct result of restrictive monetary policies, shifts the adjustment burden from the nontradeables sector to the tradeables sector. The result, as demonstrated in the present study, is a chronic expansion of the public sector, which in turn makes future adjustment yet more difficult. The chances are now that the economy will experience a new variety of a "vicious circle", from overvaluation of the currency to a permanent expansion of the public sector.
In this thesis cointegrated vectorautoregressions are used to explore the empirics of the intertemporal approach to the current account recently popularized by Sachs (1981), Obstfeld (1986), Obstfeld and Rogo? (1995a,b), Razin (1995), and Obstfeld and Rogo? (1996). The theoretical framework will be given throughout by quadratic models that allow for simple closed-form solutions. These models are not of particular theoretical interest but rather serve to motivate an important reduced-form implication that should also survive in more complicated model settings: the current account should be an order of magnitude less persistent than its driving forces, savings and investment. This prediction can be formalized as a cointegrating restriction in VAR-approximations of the data dynamics.
In three essays, this thesis contributes to the literature by examining a multinational firm’s mode of serving a foreign market in different contexts. In doing so, it also looks at host country effects of foreign entry such as competition, changes in market structure and productivity. The first chapter examines to what extent policy measures aimed at reducing trade and investment barriers can induce firms to increase their trade and foreign direct investments inside an integrating region. In the second chapter, the question is how a multinational’s mode of entry affects the decisions of firms in the host country industry and what implications this interaction has for market structure, investments and welfare in the host-country. While the first two chapters attempt to rationalise empirical observations in theoretical models, the third chapter is an empirical analysis. It examines whether foreign and domestic firms differ in their contributions to productivity growth. It also explores whether greenfield entry and entry via acquisition have a different impact on the productivity of host-country firms. The remainder of this introduction provides a non-technical summary of the three essays and their main contributions.
This dissertation analyses the efficacy of stabilisation policies in the early period of transition to the market, marshalling evidence from the experience of three countries - the Russian Federation, Poland and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR). The Russian experience is the central focus, whilst evidence drawn from Poland and the former CSFR allows more rigorous testing of the central analytical conclusions. What can such a study add to the arsenal of economics? The nature of the Russian inflation and stabilisation remains a theoretically and empirically disputed question, with critical policy implications. Thus the systematic, analytically-based account of this, underpinned by econometric evidence, could be considered a contribution on its own. Clearly this account is also one more opportunity for empirical examination of fundamental theories on the nature of inflation and the impact of alternate stabilisation measures, still much disputed in the literature. A key conclusion of this part of the work has been that inflation in Russia was mainly a monetary phenomenon, and that the expansion of the money supply has been driven by the size of quasi-fiscal expenditures and the way they were financed. The reader will find standard modelling of the Russian case.
This thesis is about economic time series analysis and econometrics. It centers around the use of Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity models (Arch), even though Arch models are not the only subject of the thesis. They are also used as a playground on which to exercise those aspects of econometrics which are considered in the thesis, such as seasonal adjustment, filtering, computational methods and inference with quasi maximum likelihood estimators. I begin by introducing time series analysis with Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (Arima) and Arch models. This introduction is intended to define notation; the mathematical operators; and the basic properties of the models to be used in subsequent chapters rather than to be a survey on time series analysis find Arch models. Some of the issues to be addressed in the remaining chapters will also be introduced when needed. A unified treatment of most of the concepts introduced in this chapter can be found in the books of Box and Jenkins (1970), Granger and Newbold (1986), Harvey (1981), Piccolo (1990) and Priestley (1981).
The neoclassical theory of discrimination is almost entirely a demand-side theory. There are very few contributions where workers’ heterogeneity matters, and even fewer that study the possibility that unequal outcomes may arise or persist for reasons attributable to workers’ expectations. This dissertation is aimed at filling this gap, analyzing the role that workers’ expectations may play in explaining the long-run persistence of unequal outcomes that characterize some minorities in the labor market. The first chapter introduces a generalization of the Self-Confirming Equilibrium concept to the case of aggregate observable outcomes, i.e. when players at the end of each round observe also the outcomes of games in which they are not directly involved. Such an extension becomes necessary to characterize the equilibria of a game, like that presented in Chapter 2, where social learning is assumed to be more important than individual outcomes directly observed by the agents. Moreover, aggregate outcomes ensure that Self-Confirming Equilibria do not rely on agents accessing different information. The second chapter presents a model that analyzes the role of minority workers’ expectations of being discriminated against. The model is formalized as a two-stage game of incomplete information in wThich populations of workers and employers are engaged, and where the preferences and beliefs of both sides of the labor market matter. In every repetition of the game played by actors randomly drawn from their populations, three players participate: one employer and two workers, one of whom belongs to a minority group. The employer promotes one (and only one) of the two workers after having observed their effort, which is a function of unobservable taste for work. Crucially, promotions depend via effort on workers’ expectations about the unknown employer’s type, which captures the possible disutility of promoting a minority worker.
Agriculture is currently being liberalized. In industrialized countries, it consists in reducing agricultural support, while in developing countries, agricultural taxation has to be reduced. Simultaneously, the farmer’s status has significantly changed over the last two decades, both in industrialized and developing countries, with more and more farmers also having off-farm occupations. This dissertation describes these changes, and provides a quantitative assessment o f the distributive effects of agricultural reforms. Indeed, these reforms lead to dramatic consequences in terms of welfare distribution, between farmers and non-farmers, and among fanners themselves. This analysis complements already existing studies by taking into account the changing definition of a farmer, leading to new results about the agricultural instruments most adapted to different economic, political and social objectives. The methodology used is a calibrated mono-country general equilibrium model, applied to the European Union and to a very poor representative developing country, where the share o f agriculture in the economy is very large. The main results show that, in both kinds of countries, agricultural liberalization improves the global welfare o f the society, although some groups suffer from it. Indeed, in the European Union, farmers' s welfare decreases dramatically when agricultural support measures are eliminated. Some compensation schemes should hence be implemented, and direct payments appear to be the best instrument to target specific farmers. In developing countries, agricultural liberalization is likely to hurt the most vulnerable part of the society, urban poor and rural small producers. In this context, the elimination of the production tax should be preferred to that of marketing boards.
This thesis analyses strategic firm behaviour in international markets. It extends models of entry deterrence with informational asymmetries to scenarios with multinational firms. We see that trade policy has not only a direct effect on competition but also an indirect effect through influencing the actions of domestic producers.
Introduction; One aspect of the analysis of regional problems is that it is easier to describe the symptoms than to point to the causes. We begin this chapter by highlighting a few of the most evident "symptoms" of the regional problem. Some of the possible causes are then discussed. Thirdly we look into the overall pattern of regional development at the European Community level. This is discussed, (i) at a theoretical level with reference to location theories and theories of spatial competition; (ii) at an empirical level with respect to regional employment and industrial structures, and (iii) at a dynamic level, taking into consideration factors which may explain the process of economic growth at a regional level. Fourthly, we consider the implications of greater interEC trade links and direct foreign investment on the pattern of regional development. This leads on to a discussion of the regional implications of the multinational enterprise — the locational aspects, the distribution of their economic surplus, and their linkages with firms in the domestic sector. Fifthly, some alternative strategies for regional harmonisation are outlined. Policies to reduce regional disparities can be divided into two groups; firstly macropolicies working at either a national or Community level, such as public spending or fiscal integration; secondly micro-policies such as financial incentives and disincentive policies.
Despite the fact that mergers are a ubiquitous phenomenon of economic life, the reasons why firms do merge are yet only poorly understood. This thesis attempts to improve our theoretical understanding of mergers. A merger consists of a legal transformation through which two or more formerly independent firms come under common control. Mergers are particularly interesting and pose a wide variety of research questions due to some stylised facts. World wide merger activity was outstanding during the last decade (peaking in 2000 with a volume of more than $3 trillion US dollars1), showing that the merger strategy has been preferred to alternative corporate strategies such as re-structuring or expansion. Despite these intense merger movements, there is no clear evidence that firms improve performance after merging. On the contrary, indicators tend to point to a poorer performance relative to the industry. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, mergers appear to occur in ’waves’. Waves in the sense that the number of past mergers affects positively the number of current mergers up to a point where the number of mergers starts smoothly decreasing. The current merger movement that initiated the downturn in 2001 corresponds to the fifth historical merger wave, being the first one back in the nineteenth century. The findings on poor post merger performance apply to most of the previous waves.
This dissertation studies the scientific relations the German National Socialists developed with Greece and how they tried through these relations to exercise cultural, political and economic influence. The investigation, however, goes back to the Weimar years and unfolds the beginnings of Germany's Foreign Cultural Policy and the mobilization of science in the country's efforts to regain its lost place in the sun and escape the isolation after its defeat in WWI. The author tries to cast some light to problems like continuities and discontinuities or analogies in concepts and practices between the Weimar and the Nazi period in the interacted fields of science, culture and foreign affairs. The study focuses on the small peripheral country of Europe, Greece, well known for its ancient culture but not its scientific achievements, and tries to understand Germany's interest to promote its scientific relations with a country with poor performance in modern science but with high geo-strategic importance.
L'oggetto di questa tesi sulla Seconda Guerra Mondiale e sulla Resistenza armata in Italia è il racconto che viene «inventato» per narrare gli eventi passati o la memoria selettiva. Si tratta di uno studio su storia e memoria e sul modo in cui funzionano e sono trasmesse. Basandosi sull'analisi di fonti disparate come le riviste storiche divulgative, le immagini fotografiche e documenti alleati e tedeschi, esso osserva le discrepanze tra i fatti (storia) e la loro narrazione (memoria). Inoltre studia come sono narrati i fatti, come si ricorda e si dimentica, chi è il narratore (testimoni, seconda generazione, collettività) e come ciò influisce sul racconto tramandato. Il testo tenta di capire se c'è una ragione per la forma narrativa scelta e quale potrebbe essere. Prendendo spunto dal funzionamento psicologico della memoria individuale, esso osserva la memoria collettiva e come, nel dopoguerra, l'Italia narrandosi «sceglie» o «inventa» una memoria che le dia una nuova identità.
A análise das famílias, das formas de união e da reprodução social na freguesia de São Tiago de Ronfe, foi desenvolvida a partir do cruzamento nominativo de fontes de gama variada, constituída pelos registos paroquiais, róis de confessados, testamentos, visitações, licenças matrimoniais e, de alguma documentação de cunho fiscal (décima, manifesto do gado, listas de eleitores). Era nossa intenção compreender como, dentro desta comunidade específica, a população enfrentou e criou estratégias efectivas para sobrepujar as dificuldades inerentes aos acasos da demografia, às limitações do meio ambiente, às pressões económico-sociais, às tradições culturais e religiosas que compõem, no seu conjunto, a região do Noroeste Português onde a comunidade está inserida. A opção por uma metodologia que elege a comunidade como centro de análise, requer e justifica o emprego de um conjunto tão variado quanto disperso de fontes, mas acarreta algumas longas e complexas etapas, seja na fase da recolha e do cruzamento dos dados obtidos, seja no âmbito da definição dos limites e objectivos do estudo.
Voglis examines the relationship between the specific subject of political prisoners, and certain practices of punishment in the context of a polarization that led to civil war in Greece from 1946 to 1949. He asks what impact an exceptional situation, such as a civil war, has on practices of punishment; how the category of political prisoners is constructed; how a social and political subject is made; and how political prisoners experienced their internment.
Esta tesis es un intento de mostrar el proceso de expansión de una orden religiosa femenina en la primera mitad del siglo XVII. La idea principal es establecer una aproximación al mundo de la clausura femenina en el siglo XVII, y para ello hemos elegido como hilo conductor la expansión del Carmelo Descalzo desde Castilla (y concretamente desde su convento de Salamanca) hacia Francia y Flandes, entre los años 1600 y 1650, aproximadamente. Elegimos este tema como hilo conductor por varias razones. Para empezar, porgue nos muestra un buen ejemplo de instrumentalización de una orden religiosa por parte del poder político, y en este caso, con la particularidad de que se trata de una orden femenina, pues aunque la intervención del clero masculino al servicio del estado era corriente, no lo era tanto la de las religiosas.
Le buone maniere non rappresentano vuote formalità o regole fini a se stesse, ma sono rivelatrici di rapporti, conflitti e contesti che riguardano la società nella sua totalità e che aiutano a rileggerne e interpretarne le complesse dinamiche. Nel corso dell'Ottocento furono pubblicati in Italia oltre 400 galatei, il cui studio è fondamentale per comprendere a fondo il XIX secolo. I galatei furono infatti uno degli strumenti con i quali le èlites dell'Italia risorgimentale e post-unitaria organizzarono schemi utili a ordinare il "corpo sociale" secondo modelli più gerarchici che democratici, più tesi alla disciplina che non fiduciosi nel libero protagonismo della società civile.
Sulla base di un'ampia ricognizione degli archivi americani, francesi, italiani e tedeschi, l'autore avanza un'innovativa interpretazione del piano Marshall e ricostruisce per la prima volta gli effetti sulla vita politica ed economica italiana, individuando i complessi fili che legarono la politica di De Gasperi, l'espansione dell'intervento pubblico, la nascita della Cassa per il Mezzogiorno e le origini dell'integrazione europea.
Diese Arbeit befaßt sich mit einem noch weitgehend unbekannten Aspekt der Appeasement-Politik: mit Chamberlains Propaganda gegenüber der deutschen Bevölkerung zwischen dem Münchener Abkommen vom September 1938 und der alliierten Niederlage in Norwegen im April 1940. Anhand umfangreicher und größtenteils unveröffentlichter Quellen aus britischen und deutschen Archiven werden erstmalig die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und inhaltlichen Entwicklungen der britischen Deutschlandpropaganda im Detail rekonstruiert. Zugleich wird die Propagandakampagne in den größeren Rahmen von Chamberlains Appeasement-Politik eingebettet Dieser methodische Ansatz, der zwischen den traditionell getrennten Bereichen der Propagandaforschung und Diplomatiegeschichte zu vermitteln versucht, eröffnet neue Perspektiven und führt zu Erkenntnissen, die die bisherige Forschung in vielerlei Hinsicht ergänzen bzw. revidieren. Institutionell zeigt sich die britische Propagandakampagne gegen das Dritte Reich als ein komplexer Prozeß, in den sämtliche Entscheidungsebenen der britischen Außenpolitik, die britischen Geheimdienste und die Rundfunkgesellschaft BBC involviert waren. Inhaltlich liegt der Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung auf einer Rekonstruktion des britischen Bildes vom deutschen Volk und seines Verhältnisses zum Nationalsozialismus sowie - daran anknüpfend - in der Analyse der Propagandastrategien und -konzepte, welche die britische Regierung als geeignet betrachtete, den Widerstand der Deutschen gegen Hitlers Außenpolitik zu schüren bzw. einen Regimewechsel im Dritten Reich herbeizuführen. Als Bezugsrahmen ist dabei nicht nur die britische Außenpolitik auf diplomatischer Ebene ständig präsent, zu deren Unterstützung die Propaganda betrieben wurde, sondern auch die nationalsozialistische Propaganda, deren Widerlegung eines der Hauptziele der britischen Propagandakampagne war.
Portraits of the Nation offers a fascinating insight into the construction and development of national identity in two multilingual countries—Belgium and Switzerland. This book not only shows that multilingualism was no obstacle for the development of national identity—in both countries it was used as a positive means of collective identification —it also demonstrates that other means of identification were much more important. These were found on a national and supra-linguistic level—in Belgium the Royal Family and in Switzerland the Alps—and on a local and sublinguistic level—in Belgium mainly the provinces and in Switzerland the cantons. This study also shows that, contrary to what might be expected, Belgium was often more successful than Switzerland in constructing and adapting its national identity, especially in the inter-war years. Combining written and iconographic sources found in the archives of the national banks, mints and Post Offices in Berne and Brussels this book furthermore fills in an important historiographical gap using stamps, coins and banknotes as historical sources for the first time. Often neglected by historians, Alexis Schwarzenbach successfully argues that these sources have to be seen as important lieux de mernoire and that they are ideally suited for the study of the interrelated topics of memory and identity.
The existence of Africa was widely appreciated in southern Europe since Antiquity. Its proximity to the coasts of Greece and Italy on the one hand, and the wide-ranging expansion of the Roman Empire on the other, had indeed revealed the existence of African territories on the other side of the mare nostrum. From the earliest times then, the southern shores of the Mediterranean were easily integrated into the classical ecumene, defined as a mental continuum of inhabitable space not fragmented into continents. No independent idea of Africa could thus arise in Classical Antiquity, nor did it appear in the Middle Ages. As shall be argued throughout this work, it is not until the Renaissance that the idea of Africa finally emerged.
Die vorliegende Dissertation hat sich zur Aufgabe gestellt, die bisher nur in Einzelaspekten erforschte deutsche Besatzungszeit in Rom zu untersuchen. Die Arbeit lässt sich dabei von den im wissenschaftlichen wie im öffentlichen Dislcurs seit 60 Jahren immer wieder gestellten Fragen leiten. Durch eine empirische Herangehensweise, gestützt auf z. T. bisher unbekanntes Quellenmaterial wird hier der Versuch unternommen, unbeachtete Details der deutschen Besatzungspolitik zu erhellen, sowie bekannte Episoden quellenkritisch zu überprüfen. Das Überschneiden von Quellenmaterial deutscher, italienischer und angloamerikanischer Provenienz ermöglicht es, ein differenzierteres Bild der Besatzungszeit zu zeichnen und den Focus auch auf längst beantwortet geglaubte Fragen schärfer zu stellen. Auch in die eher synthetischen Teilkapitel wurden bis heute unveröffentlichte Quellenbestände eingearbeitet und anhand dieser die bestehende Sekundärliteratur überprüft. Im Mittelpunkt der Arbeit steht die Politik der deutschen Besatzungsmacht und versucht, hier klassische Grundlagenforschung zu leisten. Auch den anderen Protagonisten auf dem politisch-militärischen Parkett Roms, wie dem Vatikan, dem Widerstand oder den verschiedenen kollaborierenden Organen wird der entsprechende Platz eingeräumt, was die Arbeit gleichzeitig zu einer ersten Synthese der Problematik in deutscher Sprache werden lässt. Die erste Hälfte der Besatzungszeit wird besonders ausführlich dargelegt, da sie in Forschung und Publizistik weitgehend vernachlässigt wurde.
Percorsi di vita, fortune imprenditoriali, ristrutturazioni urbanistiche, aggregazioni associative, conflitti politici e sociali, compongono la storia del nuovo artigianato urbano fiorentino: caso singolare di una formazione sociale in parte consistente “inventata” sulla base di dinamiche culturali, ma anche “modello” economico e sociale da confrontare con quelli di altre capitali europee che hanno avuto uno sviluppo analogo.
In the 1980s, Field Day brought together some of the most important names in Irish artistic life—Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Seamus Deane, Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, David Hammond and Thomas Kilroy—to articulate a cultural intervention into the deadly stalemate of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’. At the heart of the enterprise was an annual theatre tour around the island of Ireland that visited cities and small villages, playing in theatres and community venues. These plays did not tackle the ‘Troubles’ directly, but brought their audiences to places such as pre-Famine Ireland, the world of Greek tragedy, pre-Revolutionary Russian provinces and apartheid South Africa. Informed by poststructuralist thinking and archival materials, this book argues that the political and postcolonial salience of these dramas lies in the ways in which they foregrounded acts of cultural translation in order to disrupt disabling constructions of Irish identity that had contributed to engendering the ‘Troubles’.
Ce travail se proposait à l’origine d’étudier, dans sa complexité, l’approvisionnement d’une grande ville du royaume en lien avec la diversité des consommations alimentaires de ses habitants. De grandes monographies ont été entreprises sur le premier thème, essentiellement dans le cadre parisien1. Quant aux recherches sur le goût et les consommations, elles n ’ont cessé d’occuper, depuis les travaux pionniers de Jean-Louis Flandrin2, un nombre croissant d’historiens, jusqu’à aboutir à la création récente d’un Institut Européen d’Histoire de l ’Alimentation, dont le colloque fondateur s’est tenu à Strasbourg en janvier 2001. L’étude qui suit, dont l ’ambition première était de croiser ces deux axes de recherche, se situe en définitive, au terme d ’une réflexion nourrie autant des apports historiographiques récents que de la richesse des sources lyonnaises, dans l’espace qui, selon le point de vue adopté, les relie ou les sépare. Son objectif est d’appréhender l ’économie urbaine d’Ancien Régime à travers l’analyse d’un commerce aussi banal qu’essentiel, celui de l’alimentation. Dans cette perspective, elle s’attache à démêler, à l’échelle de la cité, l’écheveau des valeurs, des relations et des pratiques qui président à la fabrication, à la circulation et à la consommation des denrées. Parce qu’il est absolument vital pour la population urbaine et représente, de ce fait même, un enjeu essentiel pour les autorités de la cité, le commerce alimentaire constitue un observatoire privilégié à la fois des mécanismes ordinaires de l ’échange dans la ville d’Ancien Régime et des acteurs qui les animent.
Quando l'ultimo scalpellino ha cessato la sua attività, ed è cosa relativamente recente, per Fiesole si è chiuso un ciclo le cui origini si confondono con quelle mitiche della città stessa. Una società che aveva mantenuto a lungo, e a dispetto dei grandi eventi della storia, la sua tradizionale fisionomia, che si era identificata si può dire con la risorsa che le aveva garantito per secoli la sopravvivenza, il macigno o pietra serena, ha visto irrompere sulla scena le forze della modernità socio-economica che in breve volgere di anni hanno provocato profondi mutamenti in quella struttura sociale. Oggi l'economia fiesolana, che ancora alla metà di questo secolo fondava le proprie fortune quasi esclusivamente sull'artigianato (rappresentato soprattutto dalla lavorazione della pietra, disponibile in abbondanza nelle numerose cave circostanti) e sull'agricoltura è ormai largamente basata sul terziario, a sua volta dipendente in buona parte dai flussi turistici nazionali e internazionali (come del resto è accaduto in molti altri centri della penisola a vocazione turistica): dalla metà degli anni settanta ad oggi le presenze di visitatori sono aumentate del 300% circa.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Central and Western European nobilities underwent a major process of transformation, which affected not only its material basis and the conditions of power. As a result of its changed social profile, its legitimation had to be readjusted in order to meet the demands and the requirements of the Early Modern state. The central feature of its new ideological concept was the assumption that the nobility formes a hereditary ruling class, both qualified for and entitled to power on account of inherited substantial superiority. By using its privilege of ennoblement, the imperial government exerted significant influence on the shaping of a new model nobility, which was intended to be an elite of loyal and dependent subjects. The analysis of contemporary characterisations and definitions of the term nobility and of arguments, given by applicants for ennoblement to prove their claim for noble superiority demonstrate that the entire notion of nobility was gradually changing from a concrete corporate body, legally defined by privileges, towards a status symbol.
Our collective memory has not been engraved by vivid descriptions in poems and novels about the life of cosmopolitan and still nationalist Greeks1 in the city of Marseille. Nor did my ancestors live in this city but, strange as it may seem, "La Cannebiere"- the main marseillaise road leading to the port - and the world-wide soap-brand "Camay", Marseille's export product, were part of my childhood's aromas and imagined worlds: my father was a seaman and Marseille was one of his main destinations in the late 1960's. My relationship with Marseille ends here, - to this remote memory becoming a personal reference or a private joke,- exactly where my scientific interest starts. Of course, all this can also be bluntly attributed to the structure of my knowledge formed in a specific social and economic environment, (which, ironically, leads back to a father's profession and narrations); it can also be attributed, in more scholarly tone, to the influence of a specific scientific community, which leads to my deliberate choice of the Greek community in Marseille and, finally, to the Greek historiography concerning the Greek communities in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
Ce thèse reconstitue les différentes étapes de la transformation d'une invention technique en médium musical. De l'étonnante " machine parlante " au système audio en passant par 1'" instrument de musique ", il reconstitue la genèse d'un objet et, avec lui, d'un système culturel tellement omniprésents aujourd'hui qu'ils en sont devenus transparents. Loin du schéma linéaire habituel des travaux sur l'histoire du disque, il suit pas à pas une trajectoire au caractère incertain, hybride et collectif : des espaces dans lesquels s'inscrit le disque, des réseaux qui se forment autour de lui, des qualités qui lui sont prioritairement attribuées, des compétences requises pour son appropriation, des moments et situations de son usage, des paradigmes préexistants sur lesquels celui-ci s'invente, aux publics visés ou conquis en passant par l'" objet " de l'enregistrement, ce thèse analyse une innovation culturelle associant ingénieurs, agents commerciaux, musiciens, critiques et amateurs, mais aussi objets, espaces, répertoires, compétences, médiations discursives et arts de faire. Ce faisant, il nous fait prendre la mesure des profondes mutations culturelles associées à ce processus, dont la moindre n'est pas l'invention d'un paradigme nouveau de la culture musicale, caractérisé par la triade consommation, domestication, personnalisation, et qui régit aujourd'hui encore, à travers de nouveaux médias, les pratiques musicales. Au-delà, l'analyse de cette innovation culturelle offre des ressources pour appréhender le développement des médias les plus contemporains, eux aussi situés à la rencontre des domaines technique, commercial, esthétique et culturel.
La tesi si occupa dello sviluppo dell’alfabetizzazione e della scolarizzazione a Prato tra il 1841 e il 1911, esaminando in particolare la dialettica tra domanda e offerta di istruzione.
This dissertation deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy of law and constitutional thought: that of conflicts of fundamental rights Comparative analysis, with perspectives from European and American legal systems Analyses actual cases of conflict, such as privacy versus free speech, and the Terri Schiavo physician assisted suicide case This book deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy of law and constitutional thought: how to understand clashes of fundamental rights, such as the conflict between free speech and privacy. The main argument of this book is that much can be learned about the nature of fundamental legal rights by examining them through the lens of conflicts among such rights, and criticizing the views of scholars and jurists who have discussed both fundamental legal rights and the nature of conflicts among them. Theories of rights are necessarily abstract, aiming at providing the best possible answers to pressing social problems. Yet such theories must also respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. Taking up the problem of conflicting rights, Zucca seeks a theory of rights that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to rights discourse. The idea of constitutional rights is one of the most powerful tools to advance justice in the Western tradition. But as this thesis demonstrates, even the most ambitious theory of rights cannot satisfactorily address questions of conflicting rights. How, for instance, can we fully secure privacy when it clashes with free speech? To what extent can our societies assist people in dying without compromising the protection of life? Exploring the limitations of the rights discourse in these areas, Zucca questions the role of law in settling ethical dilemmas helping to clarify thinking about the limitations of rights discourse.
This thesis deals with the protection of human rights in international criminal proceedings. The basic assumption of the study is that hum an rig h ts form the y a rd stick against which to measure the conformity of in te rn a tio n a l crim inai p roceed in gs with the rule of law,; The main purpose of this dissertation is to make an assessment of the implementation of human rights safeguards in international criminal trials. The study takes a procedural approach to human rights guarantees in international criminal proceedings and covers the systems of both the a d hoc T ribu n als an d the International Criminal Court (the ICC). It analyzes the rights conferred on individuals involved in international criminal trials from the commencement of investigations to the sentencing stage, as well as the procedural rights of victims and witnesses. The analysis has been carried out taking into account the influence of differing models of criminal procedure (adversarial and inquisitorial) in shaping the rules of international criminal procedure, while regularly referring to the jurisprudence of the ad hoc Tribunals. The introductory chapter sketches the structure of the study and outlines the main problems with which it deals. Starting with the relatively minor importance of human rights safeguards at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, the focus shifts to the elaboration of human rights standards in international law. This is the turning point of the second half of the XXth century. The influence of these standards on national laws of criminal procedure and the problem of the extension of such standards to international criminal trials are also dealt with.
Après le congrès de Vienne de 1815, les Royaumes de Naples et de la Sicile furent unifies. Cette unification, qui revenait, au fond, a une sorte d'annexion de la Sicile a l'Etat napolitain avait de grandes conséquences du point de vue administratif et législatif, et comportait, entre autres, que la législation napolitaine serait désormais également applicable à la Sicile. De plus, l’ile n'aurait plus ni gouvernement séparé, ni drapeau ni armée propres. Comme base juridique pour cette annexion, la version italienne de l’article 104 de l'Acte final du Congrès de Vienne fut invoquée. Dans cette version de l'article, le roi Ferdinand était indiqué comme “Re del Regno delle Due Sicilie“. Dans la version authentique française de l'Acte, il était question du "Roi des Deux Siciles”. La version italienne porte à croire qu'il s'agit-là d'un seul royaume, tandis que la version française semble plutôt se référer à la situation préexistante, celle d’un roi qui règne sur deux royaumes sépares. Il parait que la formule italienne est due à la subtilité juridique de l’ambassadeur napolitain de l’époque, qui a habilement su profiter de l’inadvertance des autres négociateurs, qui ne se sont pas aperçus de la divergence entre les sens des deux versions linguistiques.
This dissertation discusses the role of public policy in Article 81 of the EC Treaty. The Commission, and recently the Court of First Instance have said that the sole objective of Article 81 EC is consumer welfare. Many competition lawyers and economists support this view. Writing in a crisp, plain style, Townley demonstrates that public policy considerations are still relevant in that provision. He also examines how and where they are currently considered and then suggests why, how and where this might be changed. The book explains how some of the most complex competition law cases can be understood and offers a framework for those fighting or deciding such cases in the future. As such, it will be of interest to European competition lawyers, both academics and practitioners (furnishing them with a framework for hard cases), as well as students, seeking a deeper understanding of how the European competition rules work and how they interact both with European Union and Member State public policy goals. It will also help competition economists by revealing the mechanisms through which public policy considerations impact upon the consumer welfare test in European law.
Con l’istituzione del Tribunale di primo grado, resa possibile dall’Atto unico europeo e realizzata con la decisione 88/951 del Consiglio, è stato introdotto nel sistema comunitario il doppio grado di giurisdizione per le cause trasferite in primo grado alla competenza del Tribunale, A seguito della progressiva espansione delle competenze trasferite, il Tribunale è attualmente giudice di primo grado per tutti i ricorsi diretti proposti dalle persone fìsiche e giuridiche. Il Trattato di Maastricht ha esteso l'ambito delle competenze " potenziali" del Tribunale: l'art. 168A CE consente infatti il trasferimento dei ricorsi diretti proposti dagli Stati membri e dalle Istituzioni comunitarie. Resta riservata alla Corte di giustizia la competenza a conoscere delle questioni pregiudiziali sottoposte ai sensi dell’an. 177 del Trattato.
‘Indigenous,' ‘indigenous peoples,' ‘indigenous rights’ are commonly used terms in contemporary international legal discourse, and necessary reference points in any exploration on the rudiments of the international human rights system. Ironically, while reflection on the legal status of indigenous peoples has been present in the law of nations since its inception, it has been only recently that ‘the rights of indigenous peoples* has gained a distinct meaning in international legal terms. Formerly an instrument of the historical subjection of indigenous peoples to colonial rule and their subsequent confinement within a world of nation-states, international law has now become a key means -albeit by essence limited- for their continuous struggle for survival and recognition as distinct cultural and political communities. A ‘humanitarian* concern of the fate of this perpetually downgraded, oppressed peoples, has been recurrent in Western legal thought practically since the beginning of the long history o f colonial expansion overseas, helping to bridge the moral contradictions existing between the idealistic principles and brutish practice o f colonialism -and ultimately contributing to legitimise it. But the ‘indigenous rights* discourse, understood as a sui generis derivation of the international human rights regime, is only a recent construct in modem international law.
La diversité culturelle croissante des sociétés européennes et les tensions qu'elle engendre sont au cœur d'importants débats contemporains. Dans le champ juridique, ces débats se cristallisent autour de la notion de protection des minorités ethniques, religieuses ou linguistiques. Ce livre propose une analyse de la contribution de la Convention européenne des droits de l'homme à la protection de ces minorités. La Convention ne contient pas de disposition spécifique relative aux droits des personnes appartenant à des minorités. L'ouvrage montre cependant, à travers un examen critique de la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme, comment les droits individuels classiques, garantis par la Convention, permettent d'assurer le respect et la protection des identités minoritaires. Encore faut-il que ces droits soient interprétés de manière dynamique, à la lumière des principes sur lesquels la Convention se fonde, à savoir les notions de liberté, d'égalité et de société démocratique. La délicate question des limites du respect dû aux spécificités culturelles est également abordée. Pour éclairer les problèmes théoriques soulevés par la jurisprudence de la Cour, l'analyse prend en compte les débats menés en philosophie politique sur le thème du multiculturalisme et de la conciliation des différences dans une société démocratique.
This study argues that the growing autonomy of international commercial arbitration constitutes the leitmotiv of virtually all recent legislative and doctrinal developments in this field. On the basis of an interest-analysis, the book first establishes the legitimacy of this trend. It then examines the various levels and dimensions of the increasing autonomy of international commercial arbitration. In this context, particular emphasis is laid on the doctrine of lex mercatoria, the internationalization of court review of arbitral awards, and the decreasing significance of the concept of the arbitral seat.
In the last twenty years, public opinion and governments have become increasingly concerned with the escalating risks to human health and the environment entailed by several industrial activities connected with waste generation and management. The disastrous discharge of toxic and dangerous waste into the Love Canal in the United States is only one of the numerous examples which provoked cancer and genetic deformations and forced the inhabitants to evacuate as "environmental refugees". This and other cases revealed that when hazardous waste was shipped, its fate was often uncertain and there was little or no control over its destination by the country of origin or by the recipient. In the late seventies, after the disappearance of toxic barrels from the Seveso accident, a great deal of public and government concern in industrialized countries focused on the issue of the management and disposal of toxic and dangerous waste, and in particular, on the harmful consequences - including those of an accidental nature -, that arise from the uncontrolled transport of such waste from the site of generation to its final destination.
The main objective of this dissertation is to present the on-going process of European integration via a comprehensive analysis of the institutional dynamics of, and politics linked with, the emerging migration law and policy of the European Union. More specifically, it presents the historical evolution, the main institutional legislative and policy steps, the position of, and interactions among, the different actors, and the factors impeding the formation of a common policy at EU level. On this basis a critical analysis is provided of the main institutional problems, the current policy framework, the overarching rationale as well as of the content and quality of the nascent EU migration law.
"Quand un symposium est tenu autour d’une distinction, il est presque certain que ceux qui y participent sentent qu’elle n’est plus un succès”, disait Duncan Kennedy dans son rapport au colloque sur la distinction public/privé organisé à l’Université de Pennsylvanie en 1982. Et il soutenait que le "succès pour une distinction juridique a deux facettes": "premièrement, il faut qu’il soit possible de faire la distinction: les gens doivent sentir intuitivement que diviser quelque chose en ses pôles a un sens et que la division apparaîtra de manière presque identique, indépendamment de la personne qui l’opère. Deuxièmement, la distinction doit produire une différence: une distinction sans différence est un échec, même s’il est possible à chacun de tomber d’accord sur la manière de l’opérer. Produire une différence signifie qu’il est clair que les situations doivent être traitées différemment, en fonction de la catégorie dans laquelle elles rentrent". Kennedy constate que depuis le tournant du siècle on assiste au déclin d’un ensemble particulier de distinctions qui constituent "le mode libéral de penser le monde social" et parmi lesquelles figure celle entre public et privé; et il ajoute qu’il y a "une séquence invariable de six stades dans le passage d’une distinction d’une santé bonne et robuste à une extrême vieillesse" (1982, 1349-350).
[From the introduction:] La domanda circa il futuro del conflitto sindacale, che si è detto sottendere all’intero lavoro qui introdotto, resterà aperta. Ciò che però si vuol far emergere con forza dall’analisi comparata e comunitaria è come la sopravvivenza del diritto di sciopero presuppone che si compia quel processo di costituzionalizzazione dei diritti sociali fondamentali, che a Nizza è solo timidamente iniziato. La scelta di fondo da compiere è tra un diritto del lavoro che riconosca ancora una funzione “autonoma” ai diritti collettivi, ed uno che li riduca a variabili dipendenti degli obiettivi di politica economica e dei vincoli di competitività del mercato. Resta ovviamente la consapevolezza che molto dipenderà dalla capacità dei lavoratori organizzati di trovare forme e modi d’azione incisivi anche sul piano sovranazionale, dal momento che sono le lotte dei lavoratori a dar vita ai diritti sindacali e non viceversa.
This thesis analyses issues in European Community Law and European Union Law related to immigration from third countries into the Union and regarding natural persons already living within the countries of the Union who do not have the nationality of a Member State. For the sake of simplicity these persons are referred to as third country nationals, or immigrants from third countries. In the absence of indications to the contrary, these expressions should be understood as comprising three categories of persons who live in a Member State of the European Union [hereinafter ’’Member State”]: first, nationals of a third country who have immigrated into a Member State; secondly, persons born in a Member State but who have the nationality of a third country and, finally, also stateless persons. In 1992 these three categories made up a total of about 10 million persons. The key concern of this thesis is the situation of third country nationals belonging to national or racial groups who are socially disadvantaged. Clearly, in certain areas, Swiss, (white) American or even Japanese entrepreneurs or managers are in a completely different position to that of Algerian, Chinese or Peruvian low-skilled workers. The latter have a far less advantageous socio-economic status in comparison to the former. They are the ones in need of more attention from public institutions and from the society as a whole. Thus, they are the main concern of this thesis. However, in certain other domains, any person not having the nationality of a Member State can confront basically the same problems - like those pertaining to exclusion from the rights granted only to nationals of a Member State. In this aspect, the thesis will examine in the same manner the position of all third country nationals.
Despite the significant growth in academic interest in both children's rights and socio-economic rights over the last two decades, children's socio-economic rights are a comparatively neglected area. This is particularly true with regard to the role of the courts in the enforcement of such rights. Aoife Nolan's book remedies this omission, focussing on the circumstances in which the courts can and should give effect to the socio-economic rights of children. The arguments put forward are located within the context of, and develop, long-standing debates in constitutional law, democratic theory and human rights. The claims made by the author are supported and illustrated by concrete examples of judicial enforcement of children's socio-economic rights from a variety of jurisdictions. The work is thus rooted in both theory and practice. The author brings together and addresses a wide range of issues that have never previously been considered together in book form. These include children's socio-economic rights; children as citizens and their position in relation to democratic decision-making processes; the implications of children and their rights for democratic and constitutional theory; the role of the courts in ensuring the enforcement of children's rights; and the debates surrounding the litigation and adjudication of socio-economic rights. This dissertation thus represents a major original contribution to the existing scholarship in a range of areas including human rights, legal and political theory and constitutional law.
Refugee law faces a serious crisis in Europe. This crisis highlights the need to explain the following questions: What is the relationship between refugee law and immigration policy? How much immigration do States need to tolerate for moral and practical reasons even if they do not wish any immigration? The general legal principle of necessity offers a useful theoretical basis for refugee law. Necessity explains the conditions under which it would be unfair to fight off unwanted immigrants by deportation and punishment. Necessity also explains the conditions under which a restrictive immigration policy is not feasible at a reasonable cost versus desperate individuals. It follows that necessity overrules a restrictive immigration policy and qualifies as a robust explanation of the purpose of a fair refugee policy.This study explores the consequences of the theory of necessity for the interpretation of key concepts of refugee law (persecution, well-founded fear, reasons of persecution, asylum) and concludes that a generous refugee practice can be conceived and logically justified even if a restrictive immigration policy is a political reality.
La ciencia del derecho viene mostrando un creciente interés por el papel que las decisiones judiciales anteriores tienen en la solución de casos futuros. Tanto es así que, en el ámbito de los sistemas europeos de derecho codificado, hemos pasado de hablar de la jurisprudencia de los órganos de casación a los precedentes; de posiciones como 'la jurisprudencia no es fuente del derecho' a 'hay que tener en cuenta los precedentes', reconociéndoles de este modo cierta relevancia jurídica. Los jueces y tribunales de los sistemas jurídicos continentales traen decisiones anteriores a la argumentación jurídica y a la justificación de sus nuevas decisiones; a esta relevancia de hecho de los precedentes se le suma el interés por su valoración teórica plasmado en un creciente número de publicaciones al respecto. Dos razones (no del todo desconectadas entre sí) explican este interés práctico y teórico: el acercamiento de los sistemas jurídicos continentales y de derecho común, y la evolución del modelo de razonamiento jurídico.
The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection. One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts. The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants. The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.
The idea of this doctoral thesis arose from the lecture, some years ago, of a work of Professor Antonio Cassese that under the title "Modern Constitutions and International Law" was published in the "Recueil des Cours" of the Hague Academy of International Law in 1985. The great quantity of legal problems these lectures posed regarding the relationship between international and domestic laws and its approach to the conflict "state sovereignty vs. international demands" stimulated my scientific curiosity. In particular, the last part of the work (which was devoted to analyse the constitutional authorizations to limitations of state sovereignty) raised several questions that, in my view, had an exceptional importance. The exam made by Professor Cassese, although having a limited scope because the author concentrated knowingly his attention on a restricted number of contemporary constitutional charters, put forward a exceedingly interesting proposal for discussion: whether domestic laws contemplated provisions authorizing the transfer of state sovereignty for the setting up of international organizations and thus, if these provisions were put into practice which would be the impact on the Member States' legal structures. Taking this problem as starting point I proposed to examine the reactions of domestic legal systems to the exigencies of international institutional co-operation.
Obiettivo della tesi è analizzare il significato e l'evoluzione della Politica Comunitaria Preferenziale di Cooperazione allo Sviluppo. Tale lavoro di ricerca non intende essere un 'percorso storico', uno studio cronologico dell'evoluzione delle relazioni preferenziali con gli ACP, dal Trattato di Roma al Trattato di Maastricht. Piuttosto esso si prefigge di analizzare la Politica di Cooperazione allo Sviluppo preferenziale attraverso la sua trasformazione, avvenuta nella pratica comunitaria, da una situazione 'de facto', a una situazione 'de jure'. Ovvero il passaggio da 'relazioni di cooperazione', avviate fin dalle origini del sistema comunitario (Trattato di Roma), ad una reale Politica Comunitaria di Cooperazione con il riconoscimento specifico di una competenza in tale settore in capo alla Comunità (Trattato di Maastricht).
The dissertation provides an approach that is more comprehensive than other contributions within this field. It is located at the intersection of two central and challenging issues in international law. The first concerns the ways in which such normative frameworks change, evolve or are modified in international law. The second concerns the extent to which the basic norms governing the use of force against terrorist have changed significantly since the attacks on New York and Washington DC, in 2001. The international rules governing the use of force in international relations have been under pressure in recent years. They have on several occasions been challenged by states' practice, be it through actual acts (for example in the case of Kosovo 1999, Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003) or in statements (such as the 2002 US National Security Strategy). A fundamental question concerns how international law reacts to such challenges: does is disintegrate or does it adapt to the new circumstances? It is found that international law in this area has in fact developed and adapted to meet new challenges posed by terrorism.
Cette introduction est organisée en trois parties. La première est consacrée à la formulation de l’objet de ce travail, la seconde a trait à la méthode qui a été employée pour le réaliser et la troisième présente la forme dans laquelle il a été réalisé, c’est-à-dire le plan. En France et en Italie, du point de vue des droits positifs, la souveraineté appartient à la nation ou peuple. Parler de la souveraineté de l’Etat n’est possible qu’en tant que "raccourci", dès lors que, dans ces deux pays, l’Etat est l’organe qui agit au nom de peuple ou de la nation. La notion de souveraineté de l’Etat au sens qu’on vient de préciser a fait l’objet d’un grand nombre de définitions et de distinctions. Mais ce qui nous intéresse ici n’est qu’un aspect de cette souveraineté. Cet aspect est la capacité à dire le droit, à savoir la juris dictio. Comme l'a rappelé G. de Vergottini, « un des aspects essentiels de la souveraineté consiste dans la capacité à produire des normes juridiques ». A la suite d’un phénomène lent mais continu de centralisation du droit, cette capacité est devenue une capacité totale dans le sens où la souveraineté juridique d’Etats tels que l’Etat français et l’Etat italien signifie que ces Etats disposent du monopole du droit, du monopole de la juris dictio. Cette situation a d’ailleurs été qualifiée d’étatisme juridique ou d’absolutisme juridique.
Dépolitiser le règlement des conflits relatifs aux investissements, en permettant aux Etats et aux personnes privées étrangères un accès à un forum arbitral neutre 1 était la gageure que s'étaient fixée les promoteurs de la Convention de Washington du 18 mars 1965 . Gageure en effet, dans la mesure où cette initiative s'inscrivait dans le cadre d'une problématique bicéphale : à la disparité des parties à la relation contractuelle se greffait l'ambivalence des enjeux politiques et économiques véhiculée par la notion d'investissement.
This dissertation presents a comprehensive analysis of the regulation of cross-border insolvencies in Europe. Council Regulation 1346/2000 on Insolvency Proceedings forms the natural focal point of such a study. However, while this book explores in detail the background, legal basis as well as the substance of the Regulation, it also contains an examination of the Regulation from two wider perspectives: that of international cross-border insolvency regulation and Community law. The approach adopted by the Regulation to the problems raised by cross-border insolvency forms part of a paradigmatic shift at the global level. The ‘struggle over jurisdiction’ - the natural state of affairs under the old principles of ‘universality & territoriality’ – is increasingly being replaced by co-operation between the jurisdictions involved. The Regulation must be understood against the backdrop of these new cooperative approaches, including the UNCITRAL Model Law and ancillary proceedings. Doing so, this dissertation argues that the co-operative framework of the Regulation is limited and may ultimately not suffice to realise the efficient and effective cross-border proceedings it is aiming for. Although the Regulation is an exponent of this global shift towards cooperation, the legal context in which it operates is nevertheless very different. Community law, as an autonomous legal order, has limited the private international law autonomy of Member States and generated a comitas Europaea. This dissertation argues that Community law and its comitas must be taken seriously. They are an important source of principles to guide courts in the interpretation and application of the Regulation and may reinforce and expand the co-operative mechanisms of the Regulation.
This dissertation examines the impact of international trade rules on the promotion and protection of human rights, and explains why human rights are an important mechanism for assessing the social justice impact of the international trading system. The core of the dissertation is an in depth analysis of the impact of international trade law rules on the protection and promotion of human rights, emphasising the significance of the jurisdictional context in which the human rights issues arise: coercive measures that are taken by one country to protect and promote human rights in another country are distinguished from measures taken by a country to protect and promote the human rights of its own population. The author contends that international trade law rules have utilised certain ad hoc mechanisms to deal with particularly pressing human rights concerns in the trade context, but also argues that these mechanisms do not provide systemic solutions to the inter-linkages between the two legal systems. The author therefore examines mechanisms by which human rights arguments could be more appropriately raised and adjudicated upon in WTO dispute settlement proceedings. He concludes by considering broader systemic issues outside the dispute settlement process that need to be addressed if trade law rules are to successfully protect and promote human rights.
Using the example of research tools in biopharmaceutical research and innovation, this book examines the complexities of the relationship two fundamental areas of law and policy - intellectual property rights and competition law. It addresses a question that is certain to become paramount in other industries also: how to strike the balance between initial and follow-on innovation so as to ensure that access to 'essential' research tools (or other fundamental elements to follow-on innovation) is not impeded.The book concludes by suggesting how competition law could be used to complement the patent balance. "Competition Law and Patents" caters for various groups ranging from those with a general interest in competition law, patent law and/or biopharmaceuticals, to students who want to understand how competition and intellectual property work in practice (or to understand the interface between the two policies), and from practitioners and policymakers to people within the biopharmaceutical industry itself.
In conseguenza del processo di integrazione europea, i cittadini dei paesi membri dell’Unione europea si trovano ad essere soggetti non solo alla normativa nazionale, ma anche - nei settori e nelle materie in cui i paesi membri hanno rinunciato alla propria esclusiva sovranità per trasferirla all’Unione - a quella comunitaria. Il che, da un lato, può portare ad una ulteriore complicazione dei rapporti tra le pubbliche istituzioni ed i cittadini, ma, dall’altro lato, può altresì portare ad una maggiore omogeneità nell’applicazione del diritto dei paesi comunitari, dato che la legislazione e l’interpretazione dei principi comunitari fanno (quasi) sempre riferimento ai principi comuni derivati dai vari paesi membri. Nei paesi dell’Europa comunitaria il paradigma che voleva esclusivamente bilateri i rapporti tra cittadino e Stato (ovvero tra cittadino e pubblica amministrazione) non trova più esclusiva applicazione1: infatti in aree cruciali per la vita economica dei paesi comunitari (dall’agricoltura alla concorrenza, dal credito alle imposte sul valore aggiunto), l’intervento comunitario é divenuto sempre maggiore, per non dire dominante.
As the title of this thesis indicates the topic of this study is "Corporate Bankruptcy Law and Business Reorganization in the United States and the Netherlands: A comparative legal analysis of the use of the bankruptcy laws as a means of reorganization of large businesses run in the form of corporations." This is a vast topic and some further explanation as to the exact subject matter of this thesis is necessary. Limitations of the thesis can be deduced from the title itself. This thesis deals with bankruptcy law, but it does not encompass all bankruptcy procedures or all the possible applications of bankruptcy procedures. The main focus is on those bankruptcy procedures that might lead to the financial and economic reorganization of the corporation or its underlying business. The use of the bankruptcy laws by a large corporation in order to reorganize its business does not necessarily preserve the corporate entity itself. The effect of corporate bankruptcy could be that the business continues to be run within the same corporate entity. On the other hand, it could also lead to the preservation of the corporation's underlying business whereas the corporate entity is extinguished.
The conceptualisation of the social dimension of the European Community, and Union, has proven to be a complex challenge. Beyond the central elements such as free movement of workers, equal treatment, workplace health and safety, the boundaries are uncertain. The situation is further complicated by the fact that though most issues of labour law and social policy primarily fall within the responsibility of the Member States, there has always been a common vision of a European social model based on mutually accepted values and principles.
Having this vision in mind, distilled from the rhetoric of the Treaties and from political commitments, the research was based on a learning process. This process opened up a critical approach towards the initial assumption which described European integration around a social model per se founded on solidarity and welfare. By juxtaposing various opinions and explanations, both from the side of Community institutions and scholars, a more articulated view was acquired on the value choices and reasons which fundamentally influenced the development o f Community labour law and social policies.
The most appropriate method seemed to be the historical reconstruction of the evolution of those institutions, processes and motivations which form the core elements of the European social dimension. A project to analyse the whole area would have been too ambitious: the research focuses on those aspects which then led to the new Title on employment in the Amsterdam Treaty. This method might be considered as a descriptive one, but it proved to be a useful way to understand and to make visible how Community reasoning and value choices have changed and new issues have emerged throughout the Community's history.
The past two decades has seen a growing interest, from both policy makers and scholars, in the legal regulation of work performed by self-employed workers. Increases in non-agricultural selfemployment in industrialised countries, together with political and ideological shifts, have fuelled interest in self-employment as a means of increasing employment. The attractions of selfemployment are manifold. To firms, self-employment is part of a two-fold change in the way firms operate: the move towards more flexibility as to the size and composition of the workforce, marked by an increased use of atypical workers and the disintegration of firms by arranging production through outsourcing, subcontracting and franchising. To workers, self-employment offers the greater autonomy connected with being their own boss, a chance of higher returns, or, at least, opportunities of gainful employment in times of high unemployment. To governments, self-employment has been seen as a means of increasing the number of small businesses, supposedly beneficial to the creation of new employment. Encouraging and removing barriers to self-employment is, therefore, a priority for many governments.
Ecrire sur un sujet amplement exploré, comme l'est assurément le problème des relations internationales de l'Etat fédéral, représente à bien des égards un défi. Le danger le plus évident - et pourtant peut-être le plus difficile à éviter - est celui de la banalité : si l'on n'entend pas se limiter à reprendre ce qui a été écrit dans les analyses précédentes, on est bien forcé de choisir une approche nouvelle, qui soit susceptible de projeter sur des problèmes déjà connus un éclairage nouveau. A l'inverse, une approche par trop éloignée des précédentes risque de n'apporter qu'une contribution limitée à l'évolution de la réflexion générale, précisément parce que les préoccupations communes seront trop limitées. On risque ainsi de se retrouver en présence d'analyses parallèles du même objet, qui connaîtront chacune un développement autonome sans qu'un effort de synthèse soit réalisé. L'ambition de l'analyse qui suit est précisément de jeter les bases d'une telle synthèse. Cela n'est évidemment possible qu'en prenant en compte les tentatives qui ont été réalisées jusqu'à présent, de façon à éviter l'excès de diversité dont il vient d'être question. Inversément, cette analyse se veut plus qu'une simple compilation documentaire de ce qui a été écrit sur les relations extérieures des Etats fédéraux ; par sa méthode et par son objet, elle se distingue de celles qui l'ont précédée. Méthode et objet sont d'ailleurs indissociablement liés.
This thesis challenges several traditional assumptions concerning human rights. In particular it challenges the presumption that the fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights are irrelevant for cases which concern the sphere of relations between individuals. It asks whether victims should be protected from non-state actors, and attempts to develop a coherent approach to 'human rights in the private sphere’. It is the application of human rights law to the actions of private bodies which this thesis labels 'the privatization of human rights'. The research concentrates on the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights, and their enforcement in the courts of the United Kingdom and at the European level: at the European Commission and Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
This dissertation provides a doctrinal and “applied” overview of the main developments in the post-Maastricht transfer of monetary sovereignty from the member states to supranational institutions. In so doing, it concentrates on three areas of particular interest, complexity and tension between different forces. One area is simply the configuration of supranational institutions involved and their relationship, and in particular the tensions among the independent ECB, the national dimension of the broader ESCB and the state-dominated Ecofin Council. A second area concerns the well-known tension between monetary and broader economic union – and in particular the asymmetry between the significantly centralized monetary institutions and the retention of fiscal authority at national level. A third area concerns the internal and external dimension of monetary authority (exchange rates) from broader macro-economic consideration, and, reflecting this, the continuing absence of a definitive legal and institutional resolution of the extent of external monetary sovereignty transferred to central EU institutions. Here there emerges an analysis of the framework of good governance for the new multilayered system of monetary union. The key question addressed by the author of this study is whether the shift in monetary authority does or should involve a reconceptualization of the question of where sovereignty lies in Europe, both over monetary matters specifically or more generally.
Data l’impostazione dei rapporti fra le fonti comunitarie e quelle interne voluta dalla Corte di Giustizia e lentamente penetrata negli ordinamenti nazionali, le Comunita europee possono oggi incidere sui principi e sulle norme costituzionali degli Stati membri. L’affermazione da parte delle autorita comunitarie e l'accettazione da parte degli Stati membri del principio del primato delle norme comunitarie sulle norme nazionali, comprese quelle di rango costituzionale, ha aperto inevitabilmente la possibilità che l’integrazione europea comporti alterazioni anche alla normativa nazionale di livello costituzionale. Come è stato detto efficacemente di recente ‘gli atti normativi della Comunità europea [...]  appresentano un cuneo la cui punta incide al livello costituzionale’. Il presente lavoro si colloca nell'ambito delle riflessioni che si occupano del rapporto tra le Costituzioni nazionali e il diritto comunitario. L'interesse sarà focalizzato in particolare sulla sorte della Costituzione - intesa come tavola di valori che risponde, almeno tentativamente, ad un disegno unitario e unificante - di fronte alle sempre crescenti influenze della Comunità europea. Piu precisamente il problema che qui si cercherà di affrontare è quello dei limiti entro i quali l’ordinamento costituzionale può aprirsi ad un sistema sovranazionale orientato a un ordine di valori non sempre coincidente con quello tratteggiato nella Costituzione. L’attenzione sarà, perciò, rivolta in primo luogo - cap. I - ad una indagine esemplificativa dei casi in cui l’appartenenza alla Comunità europea ha portato, o potrà portare, dei mutamenti nei principi e nei diritti protetti dalla Costituzione italiana.
In the philosophical tradition, natural law has served as one designation of the borderline between human and divine. This tradition is associated with a complex of ideas which has been traced back as far as Heraclitus’ fragment according to which "all human laws are nourished by one which is divine" . In line with this, Aristotle’s definition of the right by nature as a kineton suggested that the right by nature is something ultimately moved by the prime unmoved Mover, the akineton. Something of the Heraclitan fragment is echoed in Augustine’s affirmation that "men derive all that is just and lawful in temporal law from eternal law" . Against the background of parts of various Greek, Stoic, Roman and Christian traditions the language of eternal, divine and human laws along with that of natural law and justice developed. It found a powerful synthesis in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae in which natural law is conceived of as a participation of the eternal law, and as the source of human law. Of course, many things happened to the meaning of the concepts used, which I cannot here go into. Here I merely wish to point to the core of a tradition in which natural law stood as a philosophical symbol of the relation between God and man. [From the introduction]
Oggetto dì questo studio è il principio di eguaglianza in quanto parametro per il controllo giudiziale della legittimità di atti e comportamenti normativi nell'ordinamento giuridico delle Comunità Europee: ovvero, per dirla sinteticamente, il "giudizio comunitario di eguaglianza" . L'interesse per il tema nasce da due constatazioni (in punto di fatto) e da una ipotesi (di politica del diritto).
Le droit communautaire interdit aux entreprises tout comportement anticoncurrentiel, accord, pratique concertee ou abus de position dominante susceptible d'affecter le commerce entre Etats membres. A ces regles etablies en 1957 par les articles 85 et 86 du Traite de Rome, s'ajoute, depuis l'adoption en decembre 1989 du reglement du controle des concentrations, l'interdiction formelle de creer, ou de renforcer, une position dominante incompatible avec le Marche commun. Cet ultime developpement de la legislation communautaire est significatif de l'importance croissante de la concurrence. Bien que celle-ci ne soit pas un objectif de la Communaute mais un simple moyen faisant partie d'une politique economique d'ensemble, elle est en realite essentielle : Sans son maintien dans la Communaute d'apres 1992, les resultats qui sont attendus du marche unique, notamment une productivite accrue, des prix plus bas et de meilleures possibilites d'emploi, seraient immanquablement compromis. Pour mener a bien cette politique qui suppose de detecter, d'interdire et de reprimer les agissements anticoncurrentiels, la Commission peut promulguer des reglements, diligenter des enquetes, declarer une entente ou une operation de concentration illegale, imposer des amendes ou des astreintes. Devant de tels pouvoirs qui autorisent l'administration communautaire a intervenir dans les droits essentiels des entreprises, ces dernieres doivent beneficier d'une protection adequate. La Commission doit etre liee par des regles claires, precises et fiables, c'est a dire suffisamment determinables pour leurs destinataires, et obeir a certains principes tel celui du respect des droits de la defense. Si besoin est, les entreprises doivent pouvoir mettre en oeuvre un controle judiciaire apte a assurer le respect de ces regles.
La tesi analizza il processo di creazione e l'evoluzione istituzionale della Banca Centrale Europea facendo una comparazione con l'esperienza storica del Federal Reserve System americano. Vengono così confrontate le ragioni che hanno portato alla creazione delle due banche centrali, le politiche economiche che ne hanno ispirato l'azione ed i problemi istituzionali legati alla gestione della politica monetaria in un'area politicamente non uniforme quale appunto l'attuale Unione Europea.
In the last two decades, it became clear that traditional “command-and-control” environmental legislation was insufficient to meet the need of protecting the environment. Industry attacked the myriad of regulations, complaining that while the largest companies were in compliance, they continued to be over-regulated. Meanwhile, the limited government resources meant that public authorities were unable to properly enforce regulations against the small and medium-sized firms which, in many cases, were the major polluters. Thus, the search began for alternative, cost-effective methods of enforcing environmental law. Among the many approaches developed was the environmental agreement, a type of contract regarding pollution control between public authorities and industry (and on occasion, public stakeholders). However, the role of the environmental agreement remains unclear and its efficacy untested. Accordingly, this thesis poses the following hypothetical: Can an environmental agreement be used as effective complement to or substitute for traditional command-and-control legislation?
The treaty is dead! Long live the legally non-binding agreement!’ A rather extreme and not entirely accurate assessment of the current state of human rights law-making but indicative all the same of an emerging trend in human rights law-making; a trend characterised by a move away from traditional state-centred law-making processes such as treaty-making to less state-centric, more inclusive, innovative and nuanced processes. A trend which this thesis seeks to examine by reference to the efforts in recent years to develop a normative framework for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons - a conventional human rights issue, addressed in a rather unconventional manner.
This thesis examines the relation between human rights and culture. It holds that culture is a quality of the individual seriously affecting the capacity to utilize rights and freedoms in a way that is effective and meaningful to the right-holder. Culture does not primarily connote a set o f community-oriented concerns as much as it purports to tell us something about what people, in fact, try to be and do when they exercise their rights and freedoms. It also informs us about the nature of some obstacles or barriers that undeniably impede these endeavours. This reality, it is argued, calls for a sustained shift of focus onto a range of issues that still stands in need o f serious attention and redress in the theory and practice of human rights. Those arc the issues that shall be of main concern in this study. The introductory part consists of four sections. I first introduce the background to the thesis and then articulate the main elements of my argument. Thereafter follows a comment on the reasons for my choice of method. I then briefly discuss the cosmopolitan assumptions central to my approach. The fourth section, finally, presents an outline of the various chapters.