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This paper discusses the recent European Commission White Paper on European Governance, arguing that the document offers interesting possibilities for the future development of the European Union (EU), how it is governed and more particularly for 'European Urban Policy'. However, the paper argues there are problems with its use of the term governance as a strategy for reform and with a number of its proposals to widen access to the European Commission (EC) and the policy process. With regard to urban policy it is suggested that the White Paper's emphasis on a greater role for sub-national government and citizens' is to be welcomed. Although once again it is unclear whether the Commission has fully thought through the implications of its proposals both for itself and the groups it wishes to engage with. More specifically it is argued that the Open Method of Coordination is broadly similar to the methods whereby both current urban (and spatial) policy have been developed and should be embraced. Overall the White Paper is something of a mixed bag; however, this is to be expected of a document which is primarily intended to stimulate discussion about the future of EU governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography is presented on topics of European political and intellectual history which includes the books "The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion, and Gender in National Histories," edited by Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz, part of the "Writing the Nation" series, "Remembering the German Democratic Republic: Divided Memory in a United Germany," edited by David Clarke and Ute Wölfer, and "Oliver Cromwell: God’s Warrior and the English Revolution," by Ian Gentles, part of the book series entitled "British History in Perspective."

For subnational authorities in Europe the emergence of governance structures at the European level represents an opportunity to further their involvement in the policy process. However, the structures and process by which this governance is to be delivered require a deeper understanding of different national systems of governance. The modernisation agenda in the UK is producing an overall model that clearly emulates the structures of a more formalized federal system and a comparative analysis with Germany and Spain shows that this system does not necessarily match the depth of citizen participation or governmental cooperation and partnership formation upon which the non-regional system in the UK was built. It is suggested that care needs to be taken that a regional form in UK governance is not followed simply for form's sake. For the European Union, the issue is one of ensuring participation and openness -- which entails being aware of the consequences of pursuing a purely regional governance programme at the expense of effective subregional actor mobilisation and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the collection of papers 'Political Economy and European Integration,' on the economic basis for European integration. Topics discussed in the paper; Focus of the article; Analysis of European integration issues in the paper.

The paper suggests that European political identity, as a fragile project, is always in need of external significant 'others' in order to buttress a sense of common fate within the sui generis political entity of the European Economic Community/European Union (EU). Adopting a historical and diachronic perspective, the paper argues that for decades the threat of Eastern European communism represented one such external other as a gathering element for Western Europe, but that with the end of the Cold War this 'other' was gradually replaced by the threat of Islam and Islamism (and by extension Turkey's possible entry into the EU). Europe's threat was first the communist sickle; it is now Islam's crescent. Such a portrayal is obviously problematic because of its populist and simplistic appeal that has served political purposes. This needs to be questioned. The return of religion through what is currently described as desecularisation is a rather recent issue for Europe and the question of multireligious Europe ought to be taken seriously. The paper argues, in the line of Delanty, that one should adopt a civilisational approach to Europe, thus giving real space to differences within Europe, and reflect on certain biases of secularity and laicite towards the dominant religion in various countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical appraisal of citizenship and governance in relation to gender. It draws on poststructuralist themes which look at the relationship between power and discourse. This perspective provides an analytical tool for exploring how gender has been understood in the construction of citizenship and governance values in Europe. Whilst the focus of this discussion is gender, the implications of this analysis for disability and race are also highlighted. The paper argues for a broader, more inclusive, ethical definition of active citizenship that, in turn, will influence how people learn to be citizens and take part in governance. A selected literature identifies different ways in which citizenship is portrayed and learned through texts, schooling, family and social behaviours and traditions. The changing European and globalisation contexts provide additional commentary on the demands for new forms of citizenship and governance. Particular attention is paid to the notion of active citizenship with some recent interpretations of the dichotomy between private (family) and public (political) domains in relation to citizenship and gender. The final sections then analyse different attempts to re-define a gender sensitive concept of citizenship, concluding with the argument for an ethical education which would empower women to play a more active, citizen role in governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the European Community does not possess many of the usual attributes of a nation state, it is none the less expected to provide a framework within which Europe's economic and social problems might be governed. This paper examines the methods with which the Community has sought to establish the possibility of European government. The focus of the paper is on the single market programme and the associated project of `harmonization'. It is argued that the harmonization project can be seen both as a way of realizing a novel organization of European space, and as a process directed at establishing this space as a governable entity. The paper examines the specific character of this spatial order, and its articulation with neo-liberal and nco-social democratic conceptions of European government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the paper is to illuminate Metternich's attitude towards possibilities of reform in the Ottoman Empire and the reasons for his interest and practical steps taken in this matter. The paper attempts to provide an accurate account of an important, but until now, entirely ignored, aspect of Metternich's diplomacy and offer further proof that Metternich was not the benighted reactionary depicted in the nineteenth-century historiography, but a conservative keenly aware that the conservative order could survive only if reformed so as to adapt it to the realities of a post-revolutionary age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies possible micro-mechanisms for the operation of Lipset and Rokkan's freezing hypothesis and suggests that their effects do not disappear altogether with the decline of cleavage politics but are sustained by any persistent social or attitudinal divide between the electorates of different parties. A multi-level analysis of survey data from the 2004 European Election Study supports the expectation that political involvement should be consistently higher and volatility lower than otherwise expected among citizens who are predisposed to support particular parties because of their enduring attitudinal and social characteristics. This paper argues that this fact powerfully biases the choices of established parties towards appealing to those citizens who vote in a way that maintains existing political divides among groups in the electorate. This provides a new explanation of why the mobilisation of enduring social and attitudinal divides in the electorate makes party systems reflect past divides even when the conflicts that gave rise to them have lost some or all political relevance, for instance, because of a shift from the national to the European electoral arena. The analysis also provides additional insights into why European elections fail to produce a European party system and why sources of political participation and interest vary across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the Cold War, Irish national security was detached from Western priorities and its policy attracted little academic interest. But such detachment has become increasingly problematic. This paper argues that the threat of international terrorism underlines the need for a change of attitude among security scholars and policy managers alike. Irish policy on terrorism places at risk the security of other Western states and highlights deficiencies in the European Union's fight against terrorism. New evidence is explored here regarding Irish air and sea security, intelligence systems, and immigration procedures, underlining the international implications of each. Trenchant insights and reforms emerged from Irish experience in the weeks that followed the 11 September attack. The policies framed in that period, however, have not changed in any substantial way since. Within the literature on Irish security there are three key explanations for the shape of national policy: 1) political pressures on the security agencies; 2) financial pressures on these agencies; and 3) Anglo-Irish security considerations. Domestic deficiencies create problems for broader counter-terrorism efforts, especially at EU level. This challenges the premise that individual member states will help secure the Union as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an attempt to resist the "resurgent" intergovernmentalism of the last few years, all Europeans in favour of an ever-closer Union and the rise of a political Europe have strenuously defended the "Community Method". This paper argues that such a defence is short-sighted and that, because of its underlying principles and working mechanisms (diplomatic negotiations, opacity, compromise, etc.), the Community Method is no longer capable of carrying European integration forward, i.e. it is unable to create the conditions that can allow the EU to grow into a polity and a political community similar to those existing at nation-state level. Instead, the article contends that it would be only thanks to a process of politicisation, generating polarised policy preferences to the necessary degree, that a system of alternating power between (a European) government and opposition - a prerequisite to establish a genuine political Europe - could be brought into being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the widespread recognition of significant changes in urban and regional governance in Europe, this paper explores the ways of understanding the dynamics of these changes and comments on the implications for recent themes in contemporary debates about urban governance—the extent of the re-scaling of governance arenas and networks, the role of a territorial focus in the new urban governance, the emergence of new forms of politics and the balance of progressive versus regressive potentials in the “new” governance. A brief introduction raises questions about the nature of the perceived experimentation and fragmentation in contemporary urban governance. The paper then outlines an emerging “sociological institutionalist” approach to governance transformation processes which links together the worlds of actors in episodes of governance with the rhythm of established governance processes—networks, discourses and practices, and the deeper cultural assumptions which give authority and legitimacy to actors and processes. The arguments are then illustrated through examples of governance initiatives from different arenas within a particular urban region, all of which to an extent challenge established discourses and practices. The paper concludes with some comments on how to interpret the broader significance and trajectory of transformative shifts in urban governance processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is an example of regionalisation characterised not only by economic integration, but also by a 'spatial politics' aimed at instilling a sense of European identity and citizenship. Spatial politics are discussed here in terms of governance, regional policies and the production of geographical knowledge that reinforce the notion of a diverse but interdependent European space and, hence, political community. The paper examines recent planning concepts and regional development initiatives and their socio-political qualities and, in particular, their contested nature. Critical questions are raised, for example, regarding European spatial planning, its openness to different spatial development options and its apparent domination by 'core' Europe. The author suggests that European spatial politics can potentially contribute to a more cohesive political community, but that this is contingent upon the translation of symbolism into concrete incentives and opportunity structures that promote wider Europeanisation. This also requires forceful institutions, integrating symbolism and clear and effective forms of governance that allow regional diversity to find appropriate political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green parties in western Europe represent a new politics. Their organizational arrangements, political style and policy programmes challenge the 'old' materialist politics of left and right. At the same time, the greens' preference for direct democracy and transparency shows up their internal differences. These parties may share a general radical disposition and a rejection of materialist politics, but they remain divided both over more specific political dispositions and ideological preferences. These fundamental divisions confront the green parties with persistent dilemmas and with difficult strategic choices. This paper identifies these principal fault lines and maps them. Explaining these internal conflicts reveals much about the difficulties of radical parties operating within 'bourgeois politics'. The exercise also raises important questions about the prospects for green parties in the political landscape of western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the partisan foundations of education policies leads to ambiguous expectations with regard to the predominant cleavage structures in party competition on this topic. There is disagreement as to whether leftist or rightist parties are responsible for increasing spending on education, while others claim that educational expansion has become a consensual topic. This paper analyses the cleavage structure of party competition over the topic of educational expansion, relying on data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. It identifies political parties as ‘issue-owners’ and ‘issue-ignorers’, respectively, and finds considerable variation with regard to cleavage structures of party competition between countries and across time. One tentative conclusion from the analysis is that policy legacies play an important role in shaping cleavage structures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous studies suggest, and common wisdom holds, that government participation is detrimental for new parties. This paper argues that the opposite is true. Drawing on a large-N analysis (111 parties in 16 countries) in combination with two case studies, it demonstrates that new parties generally benefit organisationally from supporting or entering a government coalition. Compared to established parties, new parties have the advantage that their leadership is more able to allocate effectively the spoils of office, and can change still malleable rudimentary party structures so as to respond to intra-organisational demands, as well as the functional demands of holding office. The authors conclude by setting their finding in wider perspective and elaborate on its implications for contemporary West European politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper deals with two phases of liberalization in the field of electricity. It does so by utilizing archival material and quantitative data, combining and contrasting it with work done by scholars of European integration. After an overview of interwar electricity discussions on international governance, it discusses the two post-World War II phases. During the first a non-political organization informally arranged to lift interwar restrictions on international electricity flows, and turn it into a reliable operating system. The second phase brought a complete transformation of the existing regime, initiated by the European Commission, turning electricity exchanges into trade flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the impact of legal transplantation in the development of Hungarian media law. It states that the Hungarian media law was influenced by the European concept, which centers on democracy and culture. It mentions that in 1997, private broadcasters ended the monopoly of the national public broadcasting in Hungary while the press market is in a stable condition with economic success of tabloid papers. It also discusses some aspects of Hungary's revised Constitution including the establishment of the Constitutional Court (CC) which is responsible in guarding the rule of law, the constitutional order and the fundamental rights. Moreover, the Broadcasting Act laid out rules for radio and television media.

Civil society participation in international and European governance is often promoted as a remedy to its much-lamented democratic deficit. We argue in this paper that this claim needs refinement because civil society participation may serve two quite different purposes: it may either enhance the democratic accountability of intergovernmental organisations and regimes, or the epistemic quality of rules and decisions made within them. In comparing the European Union and World Trade Organization (WTO) in the field of biotechnology regulation we find that many participatory procedures officially are geared towards the epistemic quality of regulatory decisions. In practice, however, these procedures provide little space for epistemic deliberation. Nevertheless, they often lead to enhanced transparency and hence improve the accountability of governance. We also find evidence confirming findings from the literature that the different roles assigned to civil society organisations as “watchdogs” and “deliberators” are at times difficult to reconcile. Our conclusion is that we need to acknowledge potential trade-offs between the two democratising functions of civil society participation and should be careful not to exaggerate our demands on civil society organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for papers for the special issue of the "Journal of Contemporary European Studies" regarding regionalism and fragmentation is presented.

A decade ago parties were largely absent from research on and theories of EU politics. The role of parties is now a central part of the research agenda, particularly in the area of EU legislative politics. The new research on parties in EU politics has made significant theoretical contributions, led to the collection and dissemination of new datasets, and employs some of the most advanced statistical methods in contemporary European political science. What is still missing, however, is a general theory of the role and impact of political parties, which helps to explain actors' behaviour in EU politics in a range of situations. This paper sketches some of the basic elements of what might be called a 'partisan theory of EU politics', starting from a discussion of how the policy and office incentives of national parties are shaped by the EU's 'upside-down polity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s and early 2000s have witnessed a flourishing of cross-border institutional initiatives in Europe, most notably in the establishment of administrative cross-border regions (or euregios) along the dorsal spine of its former internal political borders. As self-confessed 'laboratories of European integration', they provide windows through which to observe the tensions inherent in the European project, in reconciling macroeconomic integration with the social and political goal of building an authentic transnational demos. Given the on-going problematic of democratic deficit in the euregios, this paper argues that, in order to grasp the stakes involved in creating new transborder regional governance structures in Europe today, one must shift from the political economic analysis pioneered by Alfred Marshall to theories of citizenship elaborated by T. H. Marshall. Reviewing the fraught experience of transboundary governance in the Maas-Rhein euregio, and drawing on T. H. Marshall's tripartite evolutionary schema of citizenship based on civic, political and social rights, the authors reflect on the limits of Marshall's conceptual enframing for understanding the dynamics of internal border regions which are increasingly assuming the exclusionary geopolitical logics of political frontiers. Building on this critique, they propose the idea of the 'frontier political' as a widening horizon of social rights to replace that of a cross-border politics rooted in a priori civic or political rights. They conclude that such a repoliticised arena, defined by qualities of partial invisibility and 'hiddenness' exemplified by the stark constellation of migrant detention camps located at both the inner and outer borders of the EU, offers a chance to rename the problem of euregional citizenship from the perspective of its multiple constitutive outsides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France's resistance to CAP reform has widely been attributed to the weakness of the state vis-à-vis organized farm interests. This paper argues that weak state theories overstate the role of administrative centralization and the organizational capabilities of farm groups and underestimate the role of ideas and of European politics in determining the transformative capacity of the French state. This argument is based on the observation that farm conservatism has persisted in the last two decades in spite of the growing autonomy of the French state vis-à-vis farm client groups. This article argues that we must pay more attention to the way European policy-making impinges upon the resources of the state and the organizational cohesion of farm groups and how the ideas held by domestic reform entrepreneurs determine their ability to win EU support for their blueprint and harness much-needed resources for carrying them out in the face of vested interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the background of the emerging of housing allowance system in Hungary after 1990 in the context of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Housing allowance in Hungary was first introduced as a decentralized (local government managed) programme, but it went through a development process. The programme was more a part of the safety net system than a demand side subsidy, and its limited role can be explained by the lack of financial incentives of local governments. A new programme was introduced in 2004, where the cooperation between central government and local governments is better founded and, hence, will lead to a restructuring of the scope of the benefit programme. The Hungarian housing system seems to move towards a housing and welfare regime in which the state (public housing) plays increasingly less role, the transition process puts more and more burden on the families, and the safety net provides help only to the neediest families (very low-income households and those in a crisis situation). While this seems to be close to a combination of the liberal and‘rudimental’ welfare regimes, the institutional structure of the welfare regime is still in the process of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to go beyond the popular and sometimes quite vague discourse about open and safe borders in the Balkans and about the active role of the EU in the south-eastern periphery of the continent. It tries to look at the real problems and structural conditions that (pre-)determine the nature of borders in this part of Europe. More concretely, it analyses the issues of legitimacy, security and democracy that influence the countries of the region to have borders operating in a relatively normal and predictable way. Moreover, the reform of SEE borders is perceived as part and parcel of the process of (a) European integration and (b) of state-building, democracy and security in this part of the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on European integration is devoting increasing attention to the reconstruction of distinctive strategic attitudes and mediating capacities at the state level. Nevertheless, contradictions and conflicts in the Europeanization of state policies, whilst crucial for understanding the dynamics of institutional change in a European multi-level polity, are still scarcely highlighted. This paper addresses this dimension based on a case study from Italy, a country in which Europeanization fostered significant policy innovations in the second half of the 1990s. Programming for the 2000-2006 Structural Funds period in Ob.2 eligible regions highlights the intergovernmental constraints facing state actors in their efforts to mediate between distributive claims in the domestic arena and national interest representation in supranational arenas, as well as the influence exerted by contradictions in the Commission's policy styles and regulatory rationales in hampering a mediated convergence between contrasting policy aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much recent writing on the restructuring of the nation-state presupposes a functionalist and unidirectional logic defined by capital-centric 'jumping of scales' and 'spatial fixes'. This is the guiding trope underlying much work on emergent forms of supra- as well as sub-national regional governance within the European Union. In this paper, the author takes issue with such formulations as they apply to Europe's cross-border regions, arguing that their territorial dynamics must be embedded within a larger geo-historical framework which takes into account another period of attempted capital-centred transcendence—namely, European overseas imperialism. Drawing on early 20th-century Marxist theories of imperialism, the author juxtaposes the period of state scale restructuring within the Dutch colonial context in Indonesia with contemporary efforts at cross-border institution-building in the Dutch-German-Belgian euregios. In so doing, he sketches the conditions for new forms of post-scalar, trans-sovereign political agency that may be emerging at the interstices of the European interstate system. European state theory is thereby invited to engage with broader post-colonial debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article analyses the influence and status of the Central and Eastern European states within an enlarged European Union. It analyses two European Union policy negotiations: the Services Directive and the European Union's Financial Crisis Rescue Plan. Central to understanding the influence of a member state within negotiations are its economic size and knowledge of the Brussels policy-making apparatus. Nevertheless, as the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe have gained experience of the European Union policy negotiation process, they remain limited in their ability to influence outcomes. Therefore it can be concluded that while knowledge during negotiations is a necessary condition for successfully influencing outcome, alone it is insufficient because economic weight is particularly pertinent to those outcomes. As a result, the status of the new member states within the European Union is best described as being that of a junior partner, despite the assumed parity of Union membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article subjects 'Europe' and 'European politics' to critical reflection. The article advances in three parts. The first section discusses the importance of narrative in the broader discursive construction of Europe as a political object and reality. The aim of this section is to demonstrate the utility of two conceptual heuristics in particular—'imaginary' and 'field'—insofar as they help to delineate specific discourses and practices related to European politics. The second section explores two imaginaries now influential in shaping the intellectual common sense around Europe: the 'academic' and 'bureaucratic' imaginaries. The article closes with the third section arguing that to contest Europe requires the destabilization of two assumptions that are foundational for both imaginaries of Europe: (1) the idea that Europe is something 'already there'; and (2) Europe is something we 'already know'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Franco Venturi's concept of a general European ‘crisis’ in the period 1768 – 89, which is covered in volumes III, IV and V of Settecento riformatore . With this concept Venturi allied himself with R. R. Palmer, A. Sorel, J. Juarès and others who sought to explore the larger context of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. Critics of the English translation of Venturi's volumes III and IV (1989?–?91) have failed to perceive a European political crisis in this period. However, Venturi's concept also involved a birth of European public opinion, a development that has been affirmed in English, French and Italian studies more recently, despite a tendency to substitute a cultural for a political history of the Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that European integration is provoked and sustained by the development of causal connections between three factors: transnational exchange, supranational organization, and European Community (EC) rule-making. We explain the transition, in any given policy sector, from national to intergovernmental to supranational governance, in two ways. First cross-border transactions and communications generate a social demand for EC rules and regulation, which supranational organizations work to supply. We thus expect that Community competences will be unevenly constructed, both across policy sectors and over time, as a function of the intensity of these demands. Second, once EC rules are in place, a process of institutionalization ensues, and this process provokes further integration. Although we recognize the importance of intergovernmental bargaining in EC politics, our theory is not compatible with existing intergovernmental theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the reported opposition of European intelligence practitioners to the establishment of a European intelligence service agency. Topics discussed include the need for this intelligence capacity to ensure protection in the European Union (EU) region according to the arguments raised by some politicians, the operational priorities of the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (INTCEN), and the varying political preferences of EU member states.

There is a growing body of research on the impact of the electoral system ‘ballot structure’ on the behaviour of politicians. We offer a clear, ordinal and rules-based three-way coding (closed, flexible, open) of the electoral systems used in European Parliament elections, taking into account both the ballot type and the intra-party seat-allocation rules. For the notoriously difficult group of flexible list-systems, we show how these operated in the 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections, and introduce an additional behavioural distinction between ‘weakly flexible’ and ‘strongly flexible’ subtypes at the party-list-level. We then illustrate how the type of ballot used in an election can influence individual policy representation by looking at the vote-splits between Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in the European People’s Party in a vote on tackling homophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are currently witnessing a remarkable conjuncture between the escalation, acceleration, and diversification of migrant and refugee mobilities, on the one hand, and the mutually constitutive crises of "European" borders and "European" identity, on the other, replete with reanimated reactionary populist nationalisms and racialized nativisms, the routinization of antiterrorist securitization, and pervasive and entrenched "Islamophobia" (or more precisely, anti-Muslim racism). Despite the persistence of racial denial and the widespread refusal to frankly confront questions of "race" across Europe, the current constellation of "crises" presents precisely what can only be adequately comprehended as an unresolved racial crisis that derives fundamentally from the postcolonial condition of "Europe" as a whole, and therefore commands heightened scrutiny and rigorous investigation of the material and practical as well as discursive and symbolic productions of the co-constituted figures of "Europe" and "crisis" in light of racial formations theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly research on the emergence of anew politicsagenda of democratic regeneration, driven by the electoral growth of challenger parties, has focused the analysis primarily at the national and supranational levels, leaving the subnational level underexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap through a comparative analysis of party competition in peripheral regions of Italy, Spain and Great Britain during the European Great Recession. UsingRegional Manifestos Projectdata, it shows that the regionalisation of the state and the presence of a centre‒periphery cleavage represent no obstacle when it comes to responding to a change of preferences among the electorate. The transformation of political spaces in the aftermath of the Great Recession is happening as much at the regional as at the national level. At the same time, the political relevance of challenger parties and the diversity of regional responses contradict the alleged secondary nature of regional dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the role and modes of operation of metaphorical framing in ancient Greek and modern European and American political discourse. It looks at how concepts such as citizenship, ownership, family, morality, finance, sport, war, domination, human life, and animals are used to reframe political issues in ways promoted by the speaker, and how they may continue to be reshaped in the ongoing political discourse. The analysis of examples of ancient Athenian public rhetoric and of modern European and American political debates reveals the differences and some striking similarities in the ways political and civic values were expressed and reframed in antiquity and how they are used today. This essay also discusses the potential effects of such framing in antiquity and in more recent times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction outlines the possibilities and perspectives of a history of ‘European solidarity’. While – given the high frequency with which the term is used in contemporary political debate – this is most certainly a hot-button issue, the topic has long been neglected by researchers on the history of European integration and European ideas. The reasons for this lack of empirical studies lie in the vagueness and the normativity of the term. This introduction thus conceptualizes ‘European solidarity’ as an analytical tool for research and discusses three major approaches to its historicization: first, deconstructing ideas and discursive notions of ‘European solidarity’, a term that has been omnipresent in primary sources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; second, investigating concrete practices of ‘European solidarity’, for example in welfare-state policies or in the work of civil-society actors; third, looking at historical limits of ‘European solidarity’ which help to bring contesting perceptions and motives into view. Finally, the introduction addresses the question of the analytical benefits of a history of ‘European solidarity’: it points among other things to new periodizations that help to avoid a teleological orientation in European historiography, as well as to the detachment of the European integration process from the institutionalization of the European Communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historical background, proliferation, and later internationalization of public declarations of forgiveness and remorse, first made in Europe a few decades after the end World War II. The author suggests that these declarations should be understood as a political practice, and bases her claim on three premises: (1) after 1945, politicians began apologizing not only for their own crimes but mainly for those perpetrated by the communities they represented; (2) these declarations implied a tacit acceptance of responsibility of both the group that declares its remorse and of the group that accepts and possibly forgives the former for its past crimes; (3) apart from representing a shared collective moral responsibility, declarations of forgiveness and remorse imply the continuity of a nation (or of other kinds of human collectivities). These three premises apply if declarations of forgiveness and remorse are not banal and conventional, but function as a political ritual. The author discusses the main controversies relating to these declarations, such as the problem of collective responsibility or the neglect of the victims of past crimes, and concludes that, despite their flaws, authentic declarations of forgiveness and remorse have important moral and political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The politics of fiscal consolidation in thirteen European countries are statistically analysed. Based on the political economy literature, political factors are identified that explain for the consolidation. Variables are selected representing strength of government and political orientation, and fiscal consolidation is distinguished into spending cuts and cuts in administration. The statistical analysis of political explanations for cutbacks hardly yields significant results and nor does the analysis of fiscal and economic effects of consolidation. The analysis of political effects of consolidation does lead to significant results. Some earlier political economic findings are not supported for our sample of thirteen European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines an alternative logic for candidate renomination to the European Parliament (EP), based upon the size and ideological nature of a Member of the European Parliament’s (MEP’s) home party, as well as timing of EP elections. I derive expectations from the second-order election hypothesis to show that parties from outside of the national mainstream should expect to benefit disproportionately from EP elections and therefore renominate experienced incumbents at higher rates. Using original data on the career behaviour of MEPs during the 2009 and 2014 elections, I find that such parties are more likely to treat EP contests as ‘first order’ in their importance, particularly when European elections are held during the midterm period of the national election cycle. My findings have new implications for the differentiated volatility of the EP, specifically, as well as for internal party dynamics in multi-level systems, more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the development of political, military, and economic programs to improve the national security in Europe. The said programs are expected to make a significant change in the standards of living and to achieve a significant reduction in strategic and conventional armaments. The proposed measures should be properly balanced in each stage so that at no point could any state or group of states gain an important military and political advantage over the participants. In particular, the figures for arms reductions, reparations, and commercial credits are contributors in the military, political, and economic fields.

Using data from 16 countries and employing multilevel analysis that encompasses the national, regional, and individual levels, we find that both economic and social factors trigger anti-immigrant attitudes among Europeans. Regional per capita GDP is positively correlated with tolerant attitudes while the regional unemployment rate drives prejudice. We find a moderating relationship between immigrant population size and per capita GDP, which suggests that, as the size of the immigrant population increases, prejudice rises but only in poorer regions. In more affluent regions, an increase in the immigrant population corresponds to increased tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the collapse of communism, political radicalism has been an important part of the political scene in Europe. The 2008 financial crisis furthered this trend, giving rise to new waves of radicalization. Albania appears to be a curious exception to this trend. Unlike most other countries in Eastern Europe, there have been no successful radical parties in Albania since the collapse of communism in 1991. In the same fashion, social protests in Albania in recent years have been fleeting and far less radical than other protest movements in other countries in the region (Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey). This article argues that the relative lack of political radicalization in Albania is due to its traumatic communist past combined with a high level of bipolarization. The bitter experience with national–communism reduced the attractiveness of both far right and far left discourses in Albania. The high levels of political bipolarization, on the other hand, divided the Albanian political sphere into two antagonistic camps. Such a deep division subsumed other possible cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The three articles included in this second special section devoted to the interactions between religion and territorial politics in southern Europe continue the underlying research questions about the multiscalar interactions between religious mobilisation and policymaking, focusing on different denominations and scales of observations. The three articles point out three relevant elements for the analysis of religion and local politics. First, they show how contextualised exogenous factors influence the structures of opportunities for religions in the public and the political spheres. Second, they inchoately reveal the weakness of simplistic readings of the secularisation thesis. Third, they evidence the importance of a local and localised approach in analysing the relationships between religion and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Proposing an ‘inverted telescope’ for border studies, we problematized existing calls to ‘see like a border’, arguing that such moves miss an opportunity to define what is properlypoliticalabout b/ordering space. Inverting the telescope on borders that matter reveals an ontologically grounded politics of bordering, one that illuminates an inherent multiplicity to borders that can best be captured in those contact zones that resist our conventional understanding of where European borders lie. Focusing on localized bordering practices that contest demarcation and re-appropriation within the logics of global, European and state-centered geopolitical designs, we canvas the ontological politics emerging from the furnace of three spatio-temporal European horizons: the Istrian peninsula connecting Slovenia and Croatia; the historical, path-dependent trajectory of a seasonal labor force crossing Polish and Danish borders; and a ‘European’ border located deep in Amazonía. We name the space produced by the tensions in each of these theatersCafé Europa, designating both a material location of border praxis as well as a collective intellectual project in which the authors are themselves self-reflexively implicated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties. This development appears unsurprising, as Islamophobia has somehow become a kind of ‘accepted racism’, found not only on the margins of European societies but also at the centre. Another interesting concomitant shift is the attempt by such parties to gain wider acceptance in mainstream societies by distancing themselves from a former antisemitic profile. While the main focus on an exclusive identity politics in the frame of nation-states previously divided the far right and complicated transnational cooperation, a shared Islamophobia has the potential to be a common ground for strengthening the transnational links of right-wing parties. This shift from antisemitism to Islamophobia goes beyond European borders and enables Europe's far right to connect to Israeli parties and the far right in the United States. Hafez's article explores this thesis by analysing the European Alliance for Freedom, a pan-European alliance of far-right members of the European parliament that has brought various formerly antagonistic parties together through a common anti-Muslim programme, and is trying to become a formal European parliamentary fraction in the wake of its victory in the European elections in May 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses an annual review of national affairs in Europe covering the period from July 2013 to June 2014. Topics covered include the acceleration of economic growth in Great Britain, the violence in eastern and southern Ukraine, and the continuing stagnation of the French economy. Also mentioned are other drivers of strategic change in Europe.

The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001 and subsequent events not only ignited a ‘war on terror’, but also marked a crucial change in the policies on integration of migrants of Islamic background in Europe. Most countries departed from integration policies based on some sort of recognition of cultural diversity and emphasized national culture as the only legitimate format for citizenship. The result is a strengthening of a frame of governance with the aim to regulate Islamic practices and to mould outlooks, institutional settings and legal arrangements into the nation-state format. This has been referred to as the ‘domestication of Islam’. One of the consequences is the narrowing down of research agendas and academic knowledge production. In this article I explore this process and address important fields of study that tend to be neglected in the study of Islam in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]