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European Union Is Killing MigrantsAt Europe's Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean. A stark and unavoidable conclusion in Mainwaring's and Stierl's respective studies is that the immigration control policies of the European Union (EU) and its member nation-states are killing unauthorized migrants. Mainwaring begins by showing that the response of the European Union (EU) to what is widely characterized by nation-states, most media, and even some migration scholars as a "migration crisis" has been entirely disproportionate, even perverse (p. 5). [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on research conducted to determine whether social capital or trust and association involvement predict political consumerism, particularly with the use of boycotting and buycotting. Researchers used data from the 2002/2003 European Social Survey and conducted a multilevel logit analysis of 24,854 individuals in 228 within-country regions in Europe. They wanted to evaluate whether social capital and political consumerism are positively related at both the individual and regional level. They found that individuals with greater personal social capital and those who live in regions with higher average levels of social capital are more likely to be political consumers.

The article presents an in-depth historical examination of the social conditions and ideologies of 1960-1975 in Europe and the United States, highlighting the development of large scale countercultural movements. The notable growth of public reactions to generational senses of disillusionment from social norms and ideals in the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Germany are discussed. The political elements of the ideological shifts relating to the national and cultural pressures of the Cold War are also examined, citing ways in which countercultures influenced policy decisions in their respective countries.

After two decades of relative silence, science shops seem to be back on the agenda of science policy-making. In this article, country-specific and country-independent factors for their success and failure and their co-operation with civil society are discussed in terms of different traditions in political culture. Science shops seem to be at a cross-roads, where their work focus and their coalitions may have to change. On the one hand, they are still connected to their roots, the social movements. On the other hand, a general trend towards business co-operation in science policy can be observed. The increasing debate about science and society interfaces lends importance to the science shop concept, as is especially visible in the recent support given them by the European Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although several studies explore the political environments and institutional features of Western European women's movements, few have examined the mass attitudinal bases for feminist politics in Europe. This article extends the study of feminist politics by testing models of feminist attitudes developed in the United States with data collected in the European Community in 1983. We explore the connections between the support of feminist goals and measures of marital status, female employment. socioeconomic level, age, religiosity, place of residence, and political party identification, focusing on differences in the predictors of male and female attitudes. Consistent with studies of the United States, we find that women's labor force participation fosters feminist attitudes among themselves and their husbands. Age, education, religiosity, and partisanship are also found to be predictors of feminist support. In contrast to studies of American women and men, we find that marital status has no effect in Europe. Our conclusions have implications for the future of feminist politics in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Healthy Cities project can be characterized as a social movement that employs an extremely wide range of political, social and behavioural interventions for the development and sustenance of urban population health. At all of these levels, the movement is inspired by ideological, theoretical and evidence-based perspectives. The result of this stance is a dynamic, complex and diverse landscape of initiatives, plans, programmes and actions. In quantitative terms (the number of WHO designated cities and associated cities and communities through national networks), ‘Healthy Cities’ can be regarded as an extraordinary accomplishment and a credit for both WHO and cities in the movement. In qualitative terms, however, critics of the movement have maintained that little evidence on its success and effectiveness has been generated. This critique finds its foundations in the mere perceptions of evidence, the politics of science and urban governance, and perspectives on the preferred or professed utilities of evidence-based health notions. The article reviews the nature of evidence and its interface with politics and governance. Applying a conceptual framework combining insights from knowledge utilization theory, theoretical perspectives on (health) policy development, theory-based evaluations and planned intervention approaches, it demonstrates that, although the evidence is overwhelming, there are barriers to the implementation of such evidence that should be further addressed by ‘Healthy Cities’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]