{"title":"Civil Society and Policy Actors in Post-communist Hungary: Linkages and Contexts","authors":"T. Cox, S. Gallai","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.801705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.801705","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the political strength or weakness of civil society in Eastern Europe by focusing directly on relations between social actors and policy-makers in the broader context of the post-communist political settlement in Hungary. Drawing on concepts from the literature on polity and governance, the paper takes the example on social policy-making in Hungary in the late 1990s and early 2000s to explore the complex relations between civil society organisations and policy-makers in successive governments' attempts to legislate on hospital privatisation.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129492115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Common Security and Defence Policy in a State of Flux? The Case of Libya in 2011","authors":"Ludovica Marchi Balossi-Restelli","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.831265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.831265","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article focuses on the European Union's reaction to the Libyan crisis in 2011 as a case study. It seeks to demonstrate the limitations of the ‘strategic culture approach’ in observing and explaining the EU's lack of a common response, which would have involved the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and to demonstrate that the ‘domestic level approach’ has greater explanatory power. It lays emphasis on France, Britain, Italy and Germany as a sample of the EU/27. The empirical material includes several interviews.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114339980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Outsiders: Power Differentials between Roma and Non-Roma in Europe","authors":"Gabriela Marin Thornton","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.873260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.873260","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Romani/Gypsy political and social mobilization has intensified dramatically across Europe. Romani political parties have been created. A considerable number of Romani NGOs have been established. EU- and state-driven policies have been put in place to address ‘the Gypsy question’: meaning how to deal with the most discriminated ethnic minority of Europe. Yet, despite all these developments, the socio-economic situation of the Roma has remained very precarious, particularly in Eastern Europe, and a new wave of ‘anti-Gypsism’ has risen in Europe. This article seeks to answer the following question: why are the European Roma so discriminated against? I argue that discrimination against the Romani population is a function of power differentials between the Roma and the non-Roma majority. Historically, the balance of power between the two groups has been significantly tilted in the non-Roma's favor. Since the Roma's arrival in Europe, the non-Roma majority has held a considerable amount of political, economic, and social power over the Roma. The Roma have not been part of any kind of European power structure and therefore they have constituted what Norbert Elias and John Scotson called ‘the Outsiders’.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115474609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Taking it to the Streets: Raising the Costs of Electoral Authoritarianism in Russia","authors":"D. White","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.840169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.840169","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract\u0000 The electoral authoritarian regime under Vladimir Putin's presidency in Russia has successfully ensured that political opposition remains either neutered or is removed from the political process altogether. The article argues that the unprecedented level of protest after the flawed parliamentary elections of December 2011 has altered the political landscape in Russia. Using a framework derived from the works of Alfred Stepan the article examines ways in which political opposition in Russia may be able to build on the advances made over the winter of 2011–2012 and more effectively challenge the regime.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116956199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poland (Mainly) Chooses Stability and Continuity: The October 2011 Polish Parliamentary Election","authors":"A. Szczerbiak","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.793535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.793535","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that the key to the centrist Civic Platform's victory in the 2011 Polish election, the first by an incumbent governing party in post-communist Poland, was its ability to generate fear about the possible consequences of the right-wing Law and Justice party returning to power. Although many of the Civic Platform's supporters were disappointed with its slow progress in modernising the country, most voters viewed the party as the better guarantor of stability at a time of crisis and continued to harbour deeply ingrained concerns about the main opposition party. The election appeared to provide further evidence of the consolidation and stabilisation of the Polish party system around the Civic Platform–Law and Justice divide. However, other factors pointed to the dangers of declaring that the Polish party system was ‘frozen’ around these two political blocs and suggested that it remained vulnerable to further shocks and re-alignments.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116024309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Homo Post-communistus: Portrait of a Character in Transition","authors":"C. Tănăsoiu","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.793536","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.793536","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Post-communist transition affected not only institution-building and policy, but also individuals' value systems, linguistic patterns and code of conduct. This fluid environment is inhabited by a hybrid socio-political character, one both grounded in the present and marked by the past, and who speaks a language in transition, mixing post-communist lingo with communist idioms. The post-communist Romanian political and public arenas show that liberal democracy and market economy have been appropriated in terms of form and utility (the first is observed rather than engaged, the second as a consumer), and less as responsibility (e.g., rule of law, the respect of contractual obligations, or civic duties).","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124658074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Extreme Right, Violence and Other Action Repertoires: An Empirical Study on Two European Countries","authors":"M. Caiani, R. Borri","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.793532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.793532","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite the growing scientific interest in extreme right mobilisation, empirical studies on the various forms of protest used by these groups are still scarce, with few attempts to consider, and integrate for explanation, the context of both external (structural) and internal (organisational) factors that might affect them. In this article, focusing on different types of extreme-right organisations (both political parties and non-party groups) in Italy and Spain, the use of violence and other different forms of action will be investigated and linked to the political opportunities of the context and organisational resources. With a view on the actors' symbolic construction of reality, the ways in which macro-level characteristics (e.g., state repression and provisions, social support, etc) and meso-level features and dynamics of the organisations influence their action repertoire will be explored. This will be achieved by combining qualitative and quantitative data from 20 semi-structured interviews with extreme right leaders with a protest event analysis on their most recent mobilisation in the two countries (2005–2009). The main differences and similarities among organisations and countries will be demonstrated.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"23 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116351925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"European Citizenship: Mixing Nation State and Federal Features with a Cosmopolitan Twist","authors":"Espen Olsen","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.772750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.772750","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract European citizenship poses a challenge to the paradigmatic understanding of citizenship as congruence between nation, state, and membership rights. Contrary to previous research which has focused on single elements or normative ideas, this paper addresses this challenge by comparing ideal typical models of the EU polity. Is EU citizenship more nation-based, federal, or cosmopolitan? Utilized heuristically, the models account for different features of European citizenship practice, and the relative weighting between them. Based on this conceptual analysis, the main argument is that despite important developments towards granting rights based on ‘personhood’ and not ‘nationhood’, European citizenship is also marked by the interface between nation state and federal arrangements in EU politics. The degree of ‘incongruence’ in European citizenship is therefore dependent on the mixed nature of EU politics, rather than the effect of post-national projects that address the ‘liberation’ of citizenship from nationality.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128462751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Seven Year Itch? The European Left Party: Struggling to Transform the EU","authors":"Richard Dunphy, L. March","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.773653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.773653","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It's an apposite moment to analyze the European Left Party (EL), one of the newest transnational parties (TNPs) founded in 2004, which gathers a large number of radical left parties situating themselves to the left of social democracy. Despite the ostensibly beneficial crisis environment across the EU, radical left parties as a whole have so far failed to make significant gains. The EL's third congress in Paris in 2010 recognized significant future challenges in order to react to the adoption of the Lisbon treaty and to ‘build a Europe of social change’. In this paper we examine this relatively under-analyzed TNP's organizational development and cohesiveness by focussing on the interaction between national parties, the party at European level and the GUE/NGL (European United Left/Nordic Green Left) European parliamentary group. The EL's 2010 congress showed it struggling to combine the ‘deepening’ of its organizational cohesion with the ‘widening’ of its political representation. Although the EL's development to date marks a significant intensification of radical left European co-operation in historical terms, it remains ill-equipped to become an organizationally and strategically effective organization.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123872103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a Lighter Shade of Red? Social Democratic Parties and the Rise of Neo-liberalism in Western Europe, 1970–1999","authors":"Andreas Fagerholm","doi":"10.1080/15705854.2013.772748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15705854.2013.772748","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper focuses on the ideological development of 19 social democratic party ideologies in Western Europe. The years of interest are the last three decades of the twentieth century, when the broadly cherished Keynesian model was gradually replaced by a revived form of classical liberal economic thinking, i.e., neoliberalism. In order to measure the impact of these neoliberal values on social democratic parties, I use the widely utilized Manifesto Data Set and develop a new, exclusively socioeconomic, left–right scale that mainly focuses on core political questions regarding the scope of the state, the role of markets and the allocation of public goods. The results from the descriptive analysis reveal that neoliberal values did gain influence also within social democratic parties, although no more than four parties demonstrate a significant and long-standing ideological change towards the neoliberal pole. A less clear neoliberal trend, moreover, can be distinguished in five additional parties while the remaining ten parties within the West European social democratic party family did not experience any enduring ideological shifts.","PeriodicalId":186367,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on European Politics and Society","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132729924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}