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Why do local governments take part in international initiatives and how do they do it? Are those initiatives useful and cost-effective? This paper aims at analyzing the reasons and formulas behind the international activities of second-level local governments by taking the example of one of the most dynamic Spanish provinces. In order to do so, a description of the Diputació de Barcelona (Barcelona Provincial Council)'s international activities illustrates to what extend second-level local governments pursue their own international strategy (both through direct activities and facilitating the international initiatives of their municipalities). An analysis of the goals, mechanisms and budget that the Province devotes to its international efforts leads us to reflect on the specificity, utility and limits of the international action of this type of local governments. Finally, the paper works towards the elaboration of a cost-benefit analysis of the international dimension of local governments, arguing that the international activities of second-level local governments provide an added value to the traditional forms of international relations and yet beg for better coordination mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did Spanish banks Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) and Banco Santander (BS) play a prominent role in the liberalization of banking and financial systems in Latin America since the second half of the 1990s? This paper argues that the decision-makers in the Spanish banks perceived that their firms had a competitive advantage (market knowledge) in these markets and therefore decided to invest there. Market knowledge came from the similarity of the processes of political and economic liberalization in Spain and Latin America. Theoretical models for the study of foreign direct investment have relied heavily on the experience of US multinational enterprises (MNEs). Models developed to explain the investments of MNEs from central and Northern Europe, as well as Japan, tried to adjust the American theoretical model to the peculiarities of these firms. However, in most cases the emphasis was on manufacturing firms. The case of Spanish banks poses several challenges: Spanish firms are latecomers and they operate in service sectors. In this paper I propose a constructivist model that looks at the process of co-constitution between firms and markets. The managers of the Spanish firms helped shape the Spanish financial and banking sector with other agents, mainly the government, regulators and consumers, adjusting their internal structures to the market. In the 1990s, Spanish managers believed that the normative framework resulting from the implementation of structural reforms in Latin America was similar to that in Spain and believed their firms had the knowledge and organizational skills to succeed under such conditions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hypothesizes that Islamic extremists gather and interpret information and experience by participating in communities of practice where veteran militants socialize novices to the norms and practices of jihad; store this knowledge in practices, procedures, and artifacts (including Internet documents and web sites); and select and retain innovations that produce satisfactory results. In other words, Islamists learn, building skills, improving practices, and becoming increasingly difficult for government law enforcers to eliminate. Drawing on the author's fieldwork in Spain and the United Kingdom during the summer and fall of 2007, this paper will increase our understanding of how Islamic militants learn through a comparative case study of extremist networks in both countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain has traditionally been an emigrant country. By 2001, the number of South immigrants living in Spain outpaced for the first time in history the amount of Spanish emigrants residing abroad. The recent increase of migratory movements toward Spain, and despite the lack of research on Spanish national-identity formation, is undoubtedly increasing heterogeneity as well as transforming the national identity of Spain. The review of the primary semi-opened interviews conducted to Spanish NGOs working on immigration in March 2007 reveal that the re-construction of a Spanish national identity at present is highly related to the representation of South immigrants in the Spanish media. This study is interested in investigating whether a Spanish national identity has been re-formulated via the representation of Southern immigrants in Spain. This paper argues that Southern immigrants are socially constructed in Spain in terms of gender, class, and race. These historically particular constructions and representations of Southern immigrants are crucial in informing the re-formulation of a Spanish national identity. To explore these issues, this paper uses content and critical context analysis of the Spanish newspapers El Mundo and El Pais, as well as primary interviews of Spanish NGOs. The purpose of using all these methods is an effort to break some of the methodological and epistemological divides in the field of international relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the movement for gender equality in contemporary Spanish politics. This movement, known as the democratic parity movement, is composed of a loose grouping of feminist activists in left-wing political parties and women’s groups in favor of greater numbers of women in state structures. It is a women’s movement for two reasons. First, its definition, content, development, and issues are specific to women. Second, it is part of a broader struggle for social change, in this case change of basic political institutions. As such, these activists revive claims advanced by the suffragists of the first wave women’s movement and the actions of the second wave to feminize these institutions. This paper examines this movement in two ways. First, it describes the reconfiguration of the Spanish state and asks what effects this reconfiguration might have on social movements in politics. Second, it examines the actual interactions between the parity movement and the reconfigured state, seeking to account for the movement’s strategies and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunger strikes have been an important tactic in many well-known social movements of the last century as with Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, Irish nationalists, the student democracy movement in China and countless less-known instances. Examining current struggles in the world?from the Basque region of Spain, to Chechnya, Chiapas, Indonesia, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Turkey, or Zimbabwe among others?reveals the continued significance of hunger strikes as a form of contentious politics. However, despite the widespread use of hunger strikes and their important place in contentious political activities, social movement scholars have made few empirical or theoretical contributions to understanding this phenomenon. Many rich biographical, historical, and journalistic accounts of hunger strikes exist, often focusing on cultural or psychological characteristics of the actors or the legal, ethical, and theological considerations of their actions. This paper extends this research by looking at the comparative trends in hunger strikes in the 20th century and emphasizing the socio-political motivations that challenge the existing social order?including demands for statehood, political recognition, democracy, economic and social justice, and human, civil, and political rights. Despite the significance of existing studies, there is little theoretical rigor that ties hunger strikes to other social movements research, nor is there any extension of hunger strikes beyond individual cases. This paper addresses these concerns, examining trends in hunger strike activities, developing typologies for their existence, and discussing them comparatively so as to determine how each fits at a broader level with regard to social movement theory. Using data assembled from the New York Times Index from 1900 to the present, this paper thus examines how, when, where, and why they hunger strikes have emerged, and by whom have they been utilized to seek social change. It expands the theoretical significance of hunger strikes and their importance to contentious politics and social movement dynamics, thus beginning to fill an important void in the empirical and theoretical literature. In this regard, this paper establishes an important foundation for analysis of this unique protest form, making a key contribution to understanding their complexities and relevance to contentious politics and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite various attempts by their respective governments elements of Corsican and Basque society have continued to employ militant strategies in their attempts for greater autonomy and rights. Some have even used violence to call on complete independence from Spain and France. Corsica and the Basque country are isolated from the rest of the population, both have a history of fierce independence and a desire to protect their language and culture not only within Spain and France, but within the rest of the new highly integrated Europe. This paper will explore potential explanations for the continued violence in Corsica and the Basque country in the face of negotiations and concessions by the state. Issues such as history, culture and the role of the international community will be examined. The paper relies heavily on field research conducted in the region and with European policy makers. Through a greater understanding of the factors that have led to continual violence despite efforts by the state to negotiate in these cases, a clearer understanding of the majority/minority group relationship as a whole can be gained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is essentially a dialogue with Alfred Montero's insightful idea of approaching the generic and controversial concept of "development" through a more empirical notion of "productivity-enhancing synergy" between public and private agents at the heart of developmental outcomes, in his comparative analysis of Brazil's and Spain's subnational governments (Montero, 2002). As a way of discussing his contributions, we decided to subject it to a tentative quantitative test, based on another pair of countries, Brazil and Mexico, in a context of stabilization of the market reforms and of reasonably sustained growth that is different from his original setting. Based on preliminary data gathered, we will indicate that there is a high correlation between market-conforming institutions and developmental performance of the states of Brazil and Mexico, without taking into account how strategic actors and institutions interacted through a "productivity-enhancing synergy". Put it simply, this restricted test will allow us to bring into some questions to Montero's concept of "productivity-enhancing synergy" to possibly advance his contributions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will argue that any reconciliation process will impact the quality of a democratization process. Consequently the main hypothesis is that the intensity and inclusion of specific actors such as former enemies, perpetrators and victims of human rights violations, minorities, new and old political elites and civil society during the transition period and after a post-conflict, war or authoritarian regime is crucial in order to strengthen democratic institutions and mechanisms. A transition period without any elements of reconciliation will lead to functional failures of newly established democratic institutions such as the rule of law or free elections. Society will not be able to learn to experience justice and thus build trust in (new) democratic institutions. But without an experience of justice through reconciliation a democratization process will never fully succeed because strong and stable democracies depend on trust and proper function of institutions. Examples of Germany, Spain and Turkey in Europe after 1949 will be given to underline the main argument. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 90s, migration has been a relatively new phenomenon in some European countries like Spain. The welfare of this country was an important element that has lured immigration especially from less developed areas as Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Spain is considered a new immigration country whereby 8.5% of its 44 millions inhabitants are immigrants. While this number does not include illegal immigrants because of the difficulty in exacting an accurate number, estimates suggest about 1.5 million of people are non-documented immigrants (45% of the total). But, what do the Spanish really think about immigration? What is the general opinion about this phenomenon? I try to answer these questions through the monthly surveys produced by Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas â€" CIS (Center for Sociological Research). Immigration is one of the five issue respondents mention when it asked about ‘three main problems of Spain at the moment’. The main aim of this paper is trying to understand what is the social impact of immigration in Spain and link it to the governmental policy about it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bombings of commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004 and subsequent electoral victory of the "underdog" Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (POSE) raised international awareness of the potential political ramifications of terrorism. Given the POSE's decision to remove Spanish troops from Iraq, it is reasonable to speculate that terrorist activity targets and impacts political decision-making at the highest levels. Do terrorists regularly conceive of national elections as especially important opportunities to pursue their political goals? In this paper, we address this question in the context of the government that most regularly contends with terrorist attacks, Israel. We posit that terrorists optimally seek to engage in violence when it is most likely to influence Israeli political outcomes and decision-making. Thus, we hypothesize that such attacks are likely to increase in periods preceding Israeli general elections, called or otherwise. Empirical tests of this hypothesis across the period 1968-2000 reveal evidence contradicting the hypothesis: terrorist violence, in fact, declines marginally ahead of planned elections and during called elections. One intuitive explanation for this lack of support in the Israeli case (and, in a related manner, the absence of additional terrorist attacks in the US after 9/11) is that terrorists believe that the alternative presented by the opposition party is not palatable enough to step up violent actions before elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 90s, migration has been a relatively new phenomenon in some European countries like Spain. The welfare of this country was an important element that has lured immigration especially from less developed areas as Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The Spanish government through its Prime Minister José Maria Aznar (1996-2004) implemented a new migration policy that had led to a securitization of migration with a very strict migration law. With this Aznar contributes to the maintaining of 'fortress Europe'. At the end of his mandate this position coincided with the terrorism threat. The aim of this paper is to study whether this type of migration policy could be considered as a tool of Spanish foreign policy by trying to assess if Spain has gained or it has lost any ground in the international scenario in this period. In a special way I consider Spain's relations with the European Union, Morocco, Latin America and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geographical boundaries inside Spain include many regions that are culturally distinct from the national Spanish identity, each with its own language and claims to autonomy. Many of these Spanish regions mounted regional movements prior to the Franco dictatorship, including Aragón, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Cataluña, Galicía, and Valencia. However, since the end of the dictatorship in 1975, only four regions have been politically aggressive about increasing their rights: the Basque Country, Cataluña, Galicía, and the Canary Islands. While all of these regions have historical and cultural distinctiveness, only the Basque Country has demanded the right to choose complete separation, while political elites in the other three have instead chosen to pursue increased, but not complete, autonomy through the state's institutional pathways. Why do these regions that are equal in their cultural and historical distinctiveness, want different levels of autonomy from the central state? Specifically, why have some regions--Cataluña, Galicía, and the Canary Islands--opted to a not to pursue independence but to exploit the institutional pathways of the central Spanish state to increase their autonomy, while one region--the Basque Country-- continues to pursue complete autonomy from the central state, using both peaceful and violent means to achieve this end? In this paper, I argue that most attempts to explain the relationship between the Basque region and the central state neglect the role that Spain's anti-terrorism policy has played in structuring that relationship. Specifically, the Spanish state's strategy to end ETA's terrorism created a subset of criminal law that applied only to Basques, which simultaneously legitimized the claims that ETA made about the Spanish state and delegitimized the authority of the Spanish state in the Basque region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a conference paper titled "Radical and Moderate Basque Nationalism: Investigating Strategies for Accommodation." It examines the approaches and strategies favored by the democratic Spanish state in responding to Basque nationalism. It also presents a theoretical discussion of approaches to nationalist conflict management and analyzes the political logic behind the proposal for a status of Free Association between the Basque Country and the Spanish state.

This paper presents evidence that the increase in FDI flows from Spain to LA in the 1990’s has generated a reduction in bilateral conflict between the US and Spain. In fact, these investments have strengthened the relationship (generated an increase in cooperation) that helps to explain why Spain, along with the UK, proved to be the United States’ closest European allies during the conflict with Iraq in 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the case of Basque separatist movement (ETA) in Spain utilizing a theoretical framework that highlights the influence of human rights conditions in the origins of terrorist activity. The paper provides a historical overview of the Basque movement, highlighting their terrorist activity as well as human rights violations carried out be the state. In our analysis, we go beyond examining the role of the individual or terrorist entrepreneurs in ETA, to examine the attributes at the state and international level, which contribute to terrorism. We posit that terrorism is likely to ferment in middle areas of subsistence and security rights where they feel other options of dissent are limited due to the low levels of political rights. In fact, we argue that the denial of security rights is a necessary condition for terrorist activity. This paper examines the human rights conditions within Spain to ascertain the levels of political, subsistence, and security rights over the years and apply these conditions to the theoretical framework of terrorist activity presented. This analysis will then be compared to our previous cases on the IRA in Northern Ireland and the terrorist activity associated with the Chechen separatist movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in Western Europe, postauthoritarian countries in Southern and Eastern Europe that joined the EU in the mid 1990s and early 2000s reacted to demands for labor market deregulation in sharply different ways: radical deregulation (Slovakia, Hungary), partial deregulation (Spain, Czech Republic) and resistance to deregulation (Greece, Slovenia, Romania). What explains this variation?The paper draws on three representative cases (Slovakia, Spain, Romania) to argue that the observed variation in the tabling of pro-deregulation measures can be explained by the degree to which domestic policymaking elites were integrated into transnational networks of neoliberal elites and organizations. The paper expands the spectrum of transnational policy diffusers from the “usual suspects” found in constructivist accounts of neoliberal transition (IOs, academic economists, government technocrats) to the less noticed transnational political party networks and transnational civil society networks. However, the paper cautions that the causal effects of this independent variable are mediated by the relative institutional strength of pro-regulation domestic coalitions. The evidence used for this paper was drawn from archival research, in-depth interviews and elite surveys carried out in 2006 and 2007. The historical analysis approach used in the paper is consolidated with network mapping and expertise codification methods used by innovative strands in the sociology of professions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Spain's Valley of the Fallen, the brainchild of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (1939-1975) and the country's largest monument, as a site for exploring the politics of memory. The Valley of the Fallen represents a point of departure for current debates in Spain about how the past should be remembered or suppressed, but also, in more fraught ways, how the past can be understood in relation to contemporary debates and tensions surrounding the questions of empire, colonialism, and immigration. Spanish society is now revisiting the Valley of the Fallen as Spain struggles not only with the meanings of Franco's defeat of a progressive republic, but with the country's relationships to its Christian imperial past, to northern Africa past and present, and to current tensions regarding immigration. The paper argues that the Valley of the Fallen makes for a useful point of comparison regarding contemporary debates about empire and occupation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper Title: The EU and the Danish Mohammed Cartoon CrisisAbstract: The paper focuses on the role of the EU in the crisis in Danish foreign policy that followed from the cartoons of Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper in September 2005. It has been a tacit norm in EU foreign policy cooperation that EU member states help each other in times of major national foreign policy crises. This can be illustrated by the immediate EPC/ EU support for Britain and Spain after the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in 1982, and the terrorist attacks against Spain and Britain in 2004 and 2005. For Denmark the cartoon issue was clearly perceived as a crisis in Danish foreign policy and, indeed, for Danish international trade. The paper analyses and answers three questions: 1) in what way did the Danish government attempt to use the EU during the crisis? 2) what was the EU response to the crisis? 3) why did the EU reaction take the form it did? The focus in the paper is on 2 and 3.The main suggestion is that clear EU support was not swift and forthcoming compared with the previous crises mentioned. The primary reason for this was the character of the issue. Rather than being a traditional foreign policy or security issue, the Mohammed cartoon crisis went to the core of the debate about religious tolerance versus freedom of expression where national and global issues were inseparable. Different national discourses on this issue within the EU made it difficult for Denmark to gather support. The issue thus suggests that the character of EU support for national foreign policy in times of crisis very much depends on the area in case. In a broader sense, it suggest that the EU may not be a unitary actor vis à - vis the global religious/political issues which flow from the cartoon crisis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proponents of globalization contend that European countries are now converging on an Anglo-American model of capitalism. Contrary to this prediction, this paper will show that in Spain globalization and EMU have promoted rather that undermined coordination among economic actors. Unable to escape from economic interdependence the Spanish economic actors have developed coordinating capacities at the macro and micro levels to address and resolve tensions between economic interdependence and political sovereignty. In this paper I show that institutional change is a political matter and therefore it is possible to develop coordination capacities in countries that lack the strong tradition of Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs). The main claim is that in the industrial relations realm the trajectory of chance in Spain parallels development in the CMEs more closely than those in the Liberal Market Economies (LMEs). The central argument is that successful coordination depends not only on the organization of the social actors but also on their interests and strategies. This paper looks at the evolving interests of capital and the structural and political constraints within which employers define and defend their interests. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last fifteen years, Spain has experienced a remarkable increase in its immigrant population among which Maghrebien Muslims make up a significant percentage. Parallel to that a strong tendency to conversion to the Islamic religion has been observable in Andalusian cities like Granada and Cordoba since the end of the Franco regime. In the face of these two phenomena, anti-Islamic and anti-?Moorish? attitudes, which reflect different dimensions of discrimination, prevail in large sectors of the Spanish general public. These attitudes in fact are deeply-rooted and nothing else than historically transmitted stigmatisations of ?the other?. Especially afflicted by this newly emerging ?islamophobia? are Muslim women, whose social role, in the opinion of the majority society, is reduced to motherhood and obedience to their husbands, but who are becoming more and more an important protagonist in the process of forming a Muslim community. The ethnographic study presented in this paper addresses the largely unknown daily life-world of these Muslim female migrants living inside the secularising, but still mainly Catholic southern Spanish society. The paper analyses both the more general, often overlapping and mutually reinforcing sources and forms of citizenship-based, ethno-national and religiously motivated discrimination, and more specifically gender-related forms of exclusion. Such discrimination and exclusion comes both from the non-Muslim majority society and from within Muslim minority communities. Finally, these experiences of discriminatory practices are contrasted with official public definitions of and attitudes towards discrimination as well as with the awareness of ethno-religious discrimination and gender-based exclusion shown by non-governmental organisations and public institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From country of emigration, Spain started to become a net receiver of immigrants in the early 1980s. In the absence of a nationally specific tradition on the issue, the first Spanish immigration policies were strongly influenced by the will of its EEC counterparts to restrict potential migratory flows towards their territories. The restrictive discourse underlying the newly established regulatory framework aimed at discouraging potential migrants. Despite the maintenance of a tough discourse, and the strengthening of border control measures (with a considerable increase in human and financial resources devoted to that task), Spain became in 2004 the second largest receiver of migrants in the world (immediately after the US), and the stock of foreign residents gradually increased to represent more than 8% of the Spanish population. The first aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by quasi-cyclical ?amnesties? (1986, 1991, 1996, 2000-01, 2005), and yearly quotas of working permit, in the transformation of Spain into a net receiver of migration flows. In close interaction with regularisations, the accumulation of stocks of undocumented migrants will be linked to the selective enforcement of border control policies, trying to reveal the patterns that explain the nature and composition of migratory flows affecting contemporary Spain. Finally, the paper will try to analyse the inter-relation of Spanish and EU immigration policies, highlighting the changing nature of the process of ?Europeanisation? of national policy making in this sphere, as well as the increasing profile of immigration issues within the Spanish political agenda. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the phenomenon of the foreign fighter as a product of interest framing by transnational movements. Expectations of the logic of collective action and realist theory make it appear unlikely that foreign fighters would volunteer without an imminent threat to their own state, yet as current events in Iraq demonstrate, foreign fighters often represent a significant concern in counter-insurgency planning. While the choice to fight in any conflict is the product of individual decision-making, individuals who travel outside their own state to become combatants require external support of their activities. How movements establish the perception of the responsibility to intervene requires determining which incentives are most effective in overcoming collective action barriers, and why individuals identify with the interests of the transnational organization over those of their polity or their more narrow self-interest. This paper contends that social network analysis offers the most robust methodological tool for analyzing the frame bridging and transformation processes that indicate how transnational movements recruit combatants and form issue coalitions. As a case study, I examine the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Virtually no volunteers arrived in Spain without the assistance of the Comintern, which recruited globally. As in the current case of Iraq, while most foreign fighters came from the most immediately proximate states, volunteers also traveled from distant regions as well. Rather than a mercenary or cultural motivation, these foreign fighters had a shared identity as anti-fascists that they perceived as under threat even when their own state was not yet threatened by violence. Network analysis indicates that the amount of strong ties established between the individual and the transnational network relative to the state or other identity explains the identification of the fighter with the movement rather than another institution.While insurgencies are by definition weaker than states, the foreign fighter is evidence of the power of transnational organizations to displace national affiliation. As the West confronts more globalized insurgencies and movements, policymakers and political scientists may do well to consider the example of the Spanish Civil War and how the power to frame interests does not always lie with the most powerful actors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes Spain?s foreign affairs on the context of the Common Foreign Policy and Security of the European Union (EU) and how it has been important for the definition of foreign policy. In other hand, the paper also examines the internal topics and state structures related to decision making on Spain?s external affairs vis a vis its International Relations all over the world. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some within academic and public quarters have stated, oftentimes forcefully, that the spread of radical Islam within the correctional facilities of the United States and other states, poses an inherent and immediate threat to the security of these countreis. The goal of this paper is to examine the actual extent of the threat posed by the spread of radical Islam within the prison systems of the United States and other states. In the course of the paper we will attempt to answer the following questions: How do we define the risk? What is its nature? Is it a true threat or merely a perceived one? If an actual threat, what measures can our officials take to identify it and what can they do to mitigate and control it within our prisons? There is no denying that to some extent the threat is real. We seek to examine the true extent of this threat. Those who have investigated the rise and spread of radical Islam within our prisons consistently suggest that threat is grave. The cases of Richard Reid and Jose Padilla, both former inmates who converted to Islam and who later took up the cause of terrorism, are cited as core evidence. An al-Qaeda training manual seized by British authorities in 2003 which directs its operatives, should they be incarcerated, to actively recruit fellow inmates, is also frequently referenced. Beyond these pieces of evidence, however, the proof is limited at best. Instead, it is simply assumed that terror organizations are actively constructing a ?fifth column? composed of former inmates within our borders.To this end, we will attempt to both clinically examine and, if possible, test the threat posed by radical Islam within our prisons in an effort to determine the nature and extent of the threat. We examine a series of case studies looking at individual cases in the United States, and then place recruitment in US prison systems in a cross national comparative framework. At the individual level, we will examine cases of Padilla and Reid. We also examine the cases of other lesser-known individuals (such as Jose Emilio Suarez-Trashorras) who are known to have converted to radical Islam while in prison and who later became involved in terrorist activities. Such examinations are important insofar as they will allow us to partially address the first two questions posed above. At the international level, we will compare the US with the UK, Spain and France, three countries known to have serious problems with Islamic radicalization within their prison systems. An examination of these cases will permit us to address the remaining two questions.In addition to our case studies, we will present our preliminary descriptive and analytic statistics. It must be noted that an absence of accurate statistics is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to properly evaluating and understanding the extent of Islam radicalization within Western prisons, particularly those of the United States. Within the US, for example, prison officials do not formally survey prisoners as to their religious affiliations. Moreover, were such surveys to be conducted, the inmates are not required to respond. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the few informal surveys that have been conducted by corrections officials tend to demonstrated that many inmates simply do not know what denomination of a given religion they practice. This is a significant hurdle. That being said, we compile as thorough an examination of our Muslim prison population as possible by utilizing federal and state data, in order to at least begin to identify trends indicating the extent of conversion and subsequent radicalization of inmates. We are currently in the process of also developing a survey of Muslim prison chaplains designed to shed further light as to the percentage of radicalized Muslim inmates indoctrinated within our correctional facilities... ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long attempted to explain why some ethnicconflicts result in violence while others never reach such a point.While many have looked for a structural or institutional explanation tothis question the role of a group's culture has long been ignored. Thispaper will exam the role of culture in predicting ethnic conflict. Usingfour case studies: Russians in Latvia and Estonia, the Basques in Spainand the Corsicans of France the role of culture in the state/minoritygroup relationship will be explored. The paper examines two issues:First, there is evidence that some cultures are more accepting ofviolence than others and this culture develops and changes over time dueto historical factors and secondly, it is how both the group and thestate perceive culture which is most important. The conflict between thestate and its minority groups is framed by how they perceive culture andhow likely a group is to resort to violence. This study will rely onprimary interviews with members of both the majority and the minoritygroups and secondary sources to supplement the interviews. The analysisof culture will come from the interviewees themselves and the secondarysources. As it is how they perceive culture which frames therelationship, their opinion of the acceptance of violence in the cultureis most important. This paper will illustrate how informal institutionssuch as culture are as important in the understanding of ethnic conflictas the formal structures. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will be a reflection on the ?logic? of the exception which liberal democratic governments claim they have no choice but to follow to meet a situation of crisis, threat or apprehended threat. The Spanish government has had to face just such a situation after the terrible events of March 11 2004 and has apparently avoided the sort of security paranoia which seized the US after 9/11. True, article 116 of the Spanish constitution provides measures to be taken in case of what it calls a ?state of alert?, ?state of exception? and ?state of seige?, and has repressive legislation in place to deal with Basque terrorism, yet there never was any question of invoking article 116 or of adopting special laws to meet a new source of terrororism. Neither at the level of discourse nor practice, has the Zapatero government opted for the politics of fear. In one area, that of immigration and asylum seekers, it has even gone against the general tendency towards tightening-up which is prevelant in most Western societies. The paper will examine more closely the Spanish situation to see how far this first impression is exact, and to see what this case tells us about how far it is possible to go to escape the logic of the exception, despite strong external and internal pressures. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contrasts the varying politico-economic performances of Spain and Puerto Rico since the 1940s. From the 1940s until the early seventies, Puerto Rico's growth record was one of the fastest in the world. The mixture of rapid growth and social advances made the country a model of economic development. An abrupt cut in economic performance took over in the seventies, when average performance took over and remained so up to the present time. By contrast, Spain's economic performance was poor until the sixties. At that time the country started a period of rapid convergence to European levels that stopped during the transition period following the death of dictator Franco in 1975 but was reinstated coinciding Spain's entry into the European Community in October 1985. The paper examines and draws lessons from the details of politico-economic environment and economic policies that lie behind these distinct economic performances. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spain’s decentralization process after the death of Francisco Franco went hand-in-hand with the country’s democratization. Indeed, for many proponents of the creation of the ‘estado de las autonomias,’ decentralization was a necessary component of the transition to democracy. Is this common assumption borne out by the evidence, however? That is, was the primary cause of the devolution of authority in Spain pressure for enhanced democracy? Moreover, and perhaps even more importantly, has the autonomous community system in Spain resulted in a more ‘democratic’ society, in terms of citizen participation, government responsiveness, etc.? This paper seeks to answer these questions through an examination of Andalucia’s role in the decentralization process in Spain, and the consequences of the establishment of the regional government for democratic participation of the region’s citizenry. Andalucia’s leaders were primarily responsible for ensuring that other regions, not only the historic nationalities, would move forward rapidly toward autonomy. The paper analyzes these leaders’ motivations and rationale for promoting autonomous status for Andalucia, and the degree of public support and/or pressure present, during and since the transition to democracy. It then examines the level of participation of citizens and societal groups in a particular policy domain, the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent proliferation of civil war studies has identified aseries of state structural factors associated with civil war. Thesestudies largely employ a cross-national data approach utilizingannual macro-level data. Although these studies have improved ourunderstanding of the structural factors associated with civil war,this method of analysis has hampered the development of micro-leveltheories of conflict escalation, and little is known about thenature of interaction among actors in a civil war. Existing theoriessuggest three possible relationships between actors in a civil war;policy inertia (Goldstein and Freeman 1990) in which actors operateindependently from one another, the greed hypothesis (Collier andHoeffler 2002) in which actors profit from the ongoing conflict, andactor competition (Garrison 2007) in which actors adapt to theactions of the opposition. To explore the applicability of thesethree hypotheses a time series event count model is employed withmicro-level daily data from five completed civil wars (Russia1917-1920, Spain 1936-1939, US 1861-1864, El Salvador 1978-1991, andIreland 1922-1923). Results indicate strong support for thecompetition hypothesis. This support is further strengthened withanalysis of two lower level conflicts (Spain 1980-1995 and NorthernIreland 1980-1995), which supports the inertia hypothesis,suggesting that civil wars contain unique actor interactions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current wave of fundamentalist terror and the anti-terror response it has generated raise a lot of important questions; questions that have been all too readily glossed over in the hasty turn to rhetoric by powerful people who should at least be think ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the decades long conflict between Spain and the Basque secessionist organization ETA, this study explores the determinants of state reaction to secessionist violence. Among the factors analyzed is the intensity and location of violence, the ideological disposition on a left-right dimension of the party heading the target state, popular support for the secessionist group, and economic vitality. The analysis reveals that while secessionist violence generates both repressive and conciliatory reactions on the part of the state, it is more likely to be met with conciliation. Furthermore, rightist and leftist governments are equally likely to employ repressive measures, especially when popular support for a secessionist organization is shown to have decreased, whereas leftist governments are more prone toward conciliation. Finally, this study develops the idea of symbolic reassurancesâ??or state rhetoric intended to assuage a particular constituencyâ??in the context of secessionist conflict and violence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events of September 11, 2001 as well as more recent cases in Spain, Saudi-Arabia, and the Middle East, have shown that terrorism is no longer a phenomenon that can be ignored in the analysis of international affairs. An example of this is the electoral failure of the incumbent party in Spain and the subsequent withdrawal of their troops from Iraq following the train bombings in Madrid. Furthermore, it seems quite apparent that terrorist incidents often generate negative emotional reactions. We have argued elsewhere that negative emotions influence both the processes and outcomes of foreign policy decision-making by reducing the cognitive capacity of the decision maker and by inducing a thematic bias on the process (Geva, Redd & Mosher 2004, Redd, Mosher & Geva 2004). The focus of this study is on the effects of negative emotions on the sensitivity of decision makers to the quality of the information they use to make their choices. Specifically, an experimental procedure is utilized to explore the conditions where decision makers opt to evaluate the reliability (i.e., quality) of each piece of information pertaining to an international crisis or alternatively search for more information and ignore their reliability. Essentially, we ask, "Will the traditional tradeoff between quality and quantity of information faced by decision makers be affected by emotional biases?" The results of the experiment are discussed in terms of the effects of negative emotions on decision thresholds and choice propensity calculations within the cognitive calculus model of foreign policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how the institutional peculiarities of a small Member State may affect the defense of the EU against terrorism. It tracks the institutional characteristics of the national security actors in Ireland, determines what key pressures have formed such characteristics and designs how they may color the actors' inputs EU level. The EU has accelerated the development of strategic and tactical responses to the challenges of countering international terrorism, since the train bombings in Madrid, Spain on March 11, 2004.

The article discusses the reasons behind the increase in the risks of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the energy sector in Spain. It provides an overview of major Spanish business enterprises that operate in Latin America. It explores the inherent risks of FDI to stockholders of source corporations. It explains the economic impact of privatizations in Latin America and its implications for the long-term outlook for Spanish investments in the energy sector.

The article explores the motivations of former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar for sidelining Spain's traditional alliance with Europe and embracing the U.S. policy in post-September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It offers an overview of the terrorist attacks in Madrid, Spain on March 11, 2004 and the election on March 14. It states that most of the think-tank communities in Brussels, Belgium perceive the Spain-U.S. alliance as negative. It argues that Spain will continue to be loyal to the U.S. unless a conflict arises in the EU.

The article describes how the expansion of NATO is visualized to impose costs on small states. It notes that some of the European pessimists against the organization originate from hard power considerations. Also cited are developments which reinforce NATO optimism, including the creation of a NATO Response Force (NRF) to better reflect a strategic concept more attuned to crisis management. It presents cases of Denmark, Spain and Poland that demonstrate the small-state dynamic building within NATO.

Liberal theorists argue that economic exchange reduces conflict and facilitates relations among states. Realist theorists claim that economic relations are instruments of state power. I will review these theories and analyze how the recent investments of Spanish firms in Latin America have led Spain to insert itself as an active player in the Inter-American state system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the anxieties and reactions sparked by events, like the transport system terror attacks of 9.11.0l in the USA, 3.11.2004 in Spain, and 7.7.05 in London. As either collections of soft human targets or cargoes of hard-hitting destructiv ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy and Spain are two countries with a very important numbers about immigration (legal and illegal). The aim of this paper is analyzing the approaches that both are implementing about this phenomenon. Despite their social and economic similarities they ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the mid-1930 and 1975 Spain was governed by a right-wing authoritarian regime headed by General Francisco Franco. This paper analyzes the feminist protest withing the Spanish catholic church in Franco's Spain. Multiple international factors affe ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political future of Euskadi (Basque Country) is at a crucial juncture. Basque nationalism, a political and ideological journey fathered by Sabino Arana in the end of the 19th century, has been successful at obtaining an exceptionally high degree of autonomy for the region, while falling short of enabling the Basques to decide their own future. Basque identity remains fraught with tension; however, the tendency towards inclusive and non-essentialist self-definitions that reconcile parochialism and cosmopolitanism and agglutinate the two polar social collectives of nationalists and non-nationalists within the Basque Country is growing. And Basque culture, historically marginalized, has blossomed in an environment of globalization, post-modernity, and European integration. This enables greater levels of flexibility towards and interaction with the neighboring Spanish province of Navarre, the Basque-French territories, and the Basque diaspora. In essence, the country’s imagined borders are expanding and include virtual bridges which span international borders and oceans alike. A political accommodation, however, is far from settled. The current negotiations with the terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), which declared a permanent ceasefire last year, bring to the fore many questions about the future of the Basque country that remain unsolved and make Spaniards uneasy. The purpose of this paper is to assess both the limits and the possibilities for a settlement of the political question, and the impact that alternative scenarios would have in Madrid, Brussels, and Vitoria-Gasteiz. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cases of protracted conflict, the development of a peace process is often stymied by the fact that the search for the middle ground generally proves elusive as the extremists succeed in an ever escalating and polarizing outbidding contest for ethnic support. In the 1980s and early 1990s, attempts at a negotiated peace settlement to the Spanish/Basque conflict succumbed to such pressures. However, toward the end of the 1990s a grassroots movement in support of all-party dialogue, led by the group Elkarri, emerged. This movement has been successful in maintaining sufficient pressure on all parties to the conflict to keep a peace settlement on the political agenda. In this paper, I examine the emergence and evolution of the Basque Peace Congress fostered by Elkarri and its role in sustaining support for a peace process among all parties to the conflict. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1977, an Amnesty Law was passed by the newly established Spanish Parliament which granted immunity from prosecution for past human rights abuses and the release of all political prisoners. In 2004, in response to complaints by relatives of victims in the Civil War (1936-39) brought to the UN Working Group on Forced Disappearances, the Spanish government established a Commission to investigate the crimes committed during the Civil War and Francoism (1939-1975) and to indicate the appropriate forms of reparation to these victims. In response to the Commission report, the government drafted a law on reparation for those who fought for democracy and who suffered political oppression and violence as a result. That draft law is now under parliamentary discussion. It is unlikely that it will pass the desired threshold of qualified majority. Instead, it has accentuated political disagreement, and augmented grievances about related concerns, including how to end terrorist activities of ETA. This paper offers a cautionary tale about the idea of the parliament as an effective and adequate human rights mechanism for responding to claims for transitional justice in critical periods of transition and in broader democratization processes. Of special interest is whether the parliament (seen as the most prominent democratic institution) is apt to help these victims to secure their rights or whether it, in fact, undermines the prospects of transitional justice in consolidating democracies. It considers the role of the Spanish Parliament as well as complementary democratic institutions, such as that of the Spanish constitutional court in its capabilities and willingness to step in and exercise judicial review over laws that settle accounts with respect to transitional justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By mid-2006, for the first time in almost half a century, all actors and observers of the Cuban drama that has attracted the attention of a wide spectrum of the world’s public opinion were in agreement. All breathed a sort of a mix of expectation, calm, anguish, and hope in front of the moderately imminent biological (as the term is customarily used in Cuba) ending of at least the current political leadership. What was not actually expected was that the vigil was going to end so suddenly and not exactly for the terminal reason (the death of Castro) that most feared or hoped for. What it was less clear then and it is less clear now, of course, is the doubt consisting in deciphering if this chapter of the recent history of Cuba will also represent a drastic change of regime. In other words, this paper argues, the ultimate questions was not only ‘and now, what?’ What was demanded was to know if all the uncertainty created by Castro’s illness was going to end in a succession or a transition. In this context, each sector, actor and observer has performed according to individual or group needs and desires. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address the social and international contexts within which different doctrines of exclusion were implemented: the regulation and exclusion of the *Conversos* in 15th century Spain; competing doctrines ofexclusion and inclusion of the Jews in Revolutionary France; and the social and political regulation of the Poles in 19th century Prussia. For each case, I will recast the contradictory social relations in which an institutionalized doctrine of exclusion mediated the social relations of specific social agencies. Through this comparative analysis, the political position of Torquemada, Alonso de Espina, l'Abbé Grégoire, Clermont-Tonnerre, and Max Weber will be analysed in turn. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 19th century, the obsession of Spanish reformists has been to make up the lost ground with modernized countries. This paper examines the integration experience of Spain in the European Union in order to study how integration has affected its economic structures and economic performance. It examines the relationship between regional integration, economic growth, and economic reforms in this country, and draws some lessons based on its EU integration experience. In particular it looks at the impact of European Monetary Union (EMU) integration in the Spanish economy. While the overall benefits of EMU membership are undeniable, contrary to expectations It has not led to a process of deep economic structural reforms that would have fostered the development of an economic growth model based on value added and productivity. The examination of the Spanish case will show that the process of economic reforms has to be a domestic process led by domestic actors willing to carry them out. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital theory claims that the wealth of a nation is vested in its people. In a global economy characterized by complex production, communication and logistical processes, the argument continues, knowledge has become a key factor in international competitiveness. Since 2001, Canada's immigration policy has been framed by human capital theory, revising previous policy that brought immigrants to compensate for shortages in specific trades and professions. Shifting to a human capital approach has meant identifying the most qualified potential immigrants in the world, based on their formal qualifications, skills and especially their educational attainments. The assumption is that they will contribute to Canada's global competitiveness by improving the quality of the labour force. Once such immigrants arrive in Canada, however, they find their skills, qualifications, work experience and talents go unrecognized and they have a difficult time establishing themselves. Their experiences represent a personal tragedy, but also the breakdown of the 'human capital' approach at the domestic level, with implications for Canada's competitiveness strategy. Indeed, the paper suggests that Canada's policy reflects a new form of mercantilism, where people are treated much like territory once was. In a similar way to Portuguese or Spanish mercantilisms of old, the new Canadian mercantilism wastes many of the human resources it has worked so hard to acquire. Simultaneously, the approach potentially undermines less industrialized economies by contributing to their deskilling, again underscoring the parallels between Canada's current immigration policy and mercantilism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latin American countries are the only Western countries that aren't gaining ground on United States and the EU. This paper explores the role of trade and institutional liberalization in promoting growth and development in Spain and Latin America. Can the Latin America's gap be explained by the existence of domestic and international trade barriers that impede the efficient reallocation of resources? To what extend non-economically-driven preferential arrangements difficult development? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent trends in international migration represent a challenge for both policymakers and scholars. New political, economic, social and security concerns have emerged in relation to the movement of people across borders. The transnational activities of private and public actors related to migration have intensified. States have recently developed new mechanisms to protect their citizens abroad, reinforce the links with the home country, promote the immigrant's organization and lobby in the host country, and channel their economic resources towards new initiatives. The issue challenges traditional ideas about sovereignty, national identity, territory, political and economic rights, and space, as well as representativeness and legitimacy of political institutions. This paper analyze the transnationalization of states' policies, focusing on the involvement of the Argentine government in the recent regularization of the status of foreign residents in Spain (within which Argentines are one of the four main nationalities of origin and have doubled their numbers in the last few years). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]