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In the last decade, there have been numerous studies on the rise, characteristics, and consequences of the emergence of populist parties in Western liberal democracies. However, most analyses of European populist parties have focused on the right-wing populist parties. Although some scholars have made valuable efforts to understand left-wing populism in Europe, these studies have paid attention to their ideological-organizational idiosyncrasies or the characteristics of their electoral bases. This paper aims to fill the gap in the economic and political contexts in which Radical Left Populist Parties have achieved significant electoral results putting into practice a fsQCA analysis and examining their uneven electoral performance in Europe. Following some previous work applying QCA techniques, this paper tests the theory on the importance of economic and political factors. Findings indicate that the electoral performance of radical left populism cannot be explained in a univocal way, highlighting the crucial role of equifinality in understanding this political phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly assumed that far-right populist and nationalist movements and parties emerge within, and in reaction to, liberal international orders. This paper challenges that assumption. It shows that, while the rise of the far-right in interwar Europe and in recent decades in the Global North occurred during periods characterized by globalization, it was a globalization that was essentially anti-liberal in nature. During both periods, globalization was shaped, not by a liberal, competitive ethos, but by conservative and counter-revolutionary values and ideologies, and by policies which worked to 'dis-embed' local economies, promote concentration and monopoly, and widen inequality. Far-right politics emerged, therefore, in reaction, not to liberalism, but to established conservative parties which appeared either unable or unwilling to suppress pressures from 'below' and as, therefore, too weak or corrupt to ensure the continuation of conservative policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper explores the rise of rights-based regulation through litigation as a distinctive feature of legal culture in Central and Eastern Europe post-1989. This type of adversarial legalism was born at the intersection of post-communist, European integration, and neoliberal discourses, and is characterized by legal mobilization at national and supranational levels, selective adaptation of adversarial mechanisms, and the growth of rights consciousness. The paper distinguishes Eastern European developments from both American and Western European types of adversarial legalism, assesses the first quarter century of post-communism and represents a first step towards constructing a genealogy of the region's legal culture post-1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to look at definitions of British Romanticism in a European context and from a political perspective. The paper underlines the specificities of British Romanticism, a phenomenon which has been strongly influenced by the larger European Romanticism. What is specific to British Romanticism is its overlapping with Liberalist values and principles. The Romantic ideals of revolutionary poets such as Keats and Byron overlap with Liberalist values. Briefly, British Romanticism could be divided in two phases: a conservative and a revolutionary one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the national populisms of Northern and Western Europe form a distinctive cluster within the wider north Atlantic and pan-European populist conjuncture. They are distinctive in construing the opposition between self and other not in narrowly national but in broader civilizational terms. This partial shift from nationalism to “civilizationism” has been driven by the notion of a civilizational threat from Islam. This has given rise to an identitarian “Christianism”, a secularist posture, a philosemitic stance, and an ostensibly liberal defence of gender equality, gay rights, and freedom of speech. The paper highlights the distinctiveness of this configuration by briefly comparing the national populisms of Northern and Western Europe to the Trump campaign and to the national populisms of East Central Europe. It concludes by specifying two ways in which the joining of identitarian Christianism with secularist and liberal rhetoric challenges prevailing understandings of European national populism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What are the contemporary 'limits of the liberal state' with respect to immigration, citizenship and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in contemporary Europe? The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies examine how recent developments in Europe raise new questions regarding the relationship between liberalism, migration, identity and belonging. In this introduction, we identify three major themes that run through the papers in the issue-the use of liberal norms by states for exclusionary purposes; the possibility of the emergence of 'illiberal liberalism'; and the extent to which identity politics and policy-making may be increasingly transcending and transforming the limits of the liberal democratic state in Europe. After briefly presenting these three themes, we summarise the arguments of the individual authors and suggest possible directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market principles are becoming more prominent in citizen experience of public policy across Europe, as a result of economic globalization and the Maastricht commitment to 'open markets', and cost-constraint, privatization and labour market activation pursued in response to the various pressures confronting welfare states. These principles (inequality, competitiveness, allocation through ability to pay) contradict those traditionally associated with social policy (equity, solidarity, social justice). This paper examines the impact of current changes on welfare values in the various types of European welfare states (including accession states), using international attitude survey data. It shows that most citizens remain committed to mild egalitarianism. Citizen ideology will thus continue to buttress resilience to pressures for restructuring in the various welfare state regimes. The paper goes on to consider the impact of social change by examining the values of groups with particular interests who are likely to expand in significance as a result of labour market and population changes. This analysis shows that change does not lead in one direction. There is every likelihood that tensions between market and welfare values will be compounded by social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between politics and the supernatural in nineteenth‐century Spain through the figure of Sor Patrocinio: a stigmatized nun and advisor to Queen Isabel II of Spain. I introduce Sor Patrocinio as an example of a "wonder nun:" a type of ultra‐charismatic, supposedly supernaturally gifted religious woman who influenced her country's political agenda. During Sor Patrocinio's rise to fame, she lost control of her public image. In their efforts to dethrone Isabel II, Spanish republicans transformed Sor Patrocinio into a politico‐religious symbol, a living reminder of the anti‐liberal and neo‐Catholic tendencies attributed to Isabel II and her clique. On the one hand, her case exemplifies the struggle of liberalism to form modern nations in Europe. On the other, it shows how some religious women obtained power through their experience of the supernatural during the "culture wars" of the period, reflecting how such experience was shaped by political affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new evidence that sheds light on the influence of institutional quality, trade openness and financial liberalisation on financial market development, using data from 27 economies (the G-7, Europe, East Asia and Latin America) during 1980-2001. The dynamic panel data analysis results demonstrate that real income per capita and institutional quality are statistically significant determinants of banking sector development and capital market development. The trade openness, however, is more prominent in promoting capital market development. In terms of financial liberalisation, the empirical results suggest that domestic financial sector reforms tend to promote banking sector development, whereas stock market liberalisation is potent in delivering stock market development. Nevertheless, the financial liberalisation programmes are more responsive in developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses some changes in the economic 'landscape' (policy cultures, institutions, infrastructures, regulations, and economic processes) within which the European Framework Programmes are formed and implemented. The main changes are: the domestic reform agenda of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation; and the changed globalisation environment. The paper argues that these reforms have transformed the infrastructural conditions underlying technological change in ways that require attention from policymakers. In particular, the domestic reform agendas have had an unintended side-effect - the diminution or closure of large-scale technological and engineering capabilities in formerly publicly-owned industries. Changing concepts of, and approaches to, R&D and innovation necessitate shifts in policy approaches and instruments towards a greater focus on knowledge infrastructures: this is a major challenge facing the Framework Programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a rather unambitious working document,[4.5pc] theEuropean Commission (2002)has presented its analysis of globalization and views on how Europe should respond to its challenges. Provoked by the blandness of this disappointing report, this paper examines whether the EU has other options than pursuing its current policies, which stay within the framework of neoliberal globalization and are roughly equivalent to the ones followed and propagated by the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the manner in which the east of Europe has been theorized in the post cold war environment, and the implications for our understanding of the relationship between east and west. It argues that hegemonic discourses of neoliberalism lend a quality of inevitability to the integration of east into west, which in turn leads to a singular conception of Europe at the end of a trajectory of development. The paper argues that the relationship of western Europe to eastern Europe is more fruitfully explored through the conceptual framework of a center to its margins, which allows for a broader range of analysis on the issues – conceptual and implementational – at stake in transition processes, and which will allow for a theoretical exploration of where power is located and exercised. Because eastern Europe is understood in scholarly and policy communities as politically and geographically European, the study of postcommunist transition in Europe falls outside the purview of a development studies community that is increasingly focused on the emerging north/south divide. In a scholarly environment where the East/West divide no longer constitutes a salient focus of study, there is a need for the development of a framework that will provide a richer understanding of the reconstituted relationships being formed in Europe in the post-cold war environment. This paper argues that the social, economic, and political impact of disciplinary neoliberalism in eastern Europe can benefit from an analysis that takes into consideration the Eurocentric, disciplinary power that lies at the core of the transition process. Toward this end, it is necessary to query the discursive foundations of what constitutes the `properly European' in order to develop a framework for a more fruitful course of analysis with respect to the relationship between Europe and its fluctuating eastern margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the crisis of socialism, Afro-Marxist states have introduced considerable changes simultaneously with Eastern Europe and the USSR. Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia have now in principle adopted multiparty political systems in addition to implementing a variety of economic liberalisation measures. However, unlike in Eastern Europe and the USSR (after the failed coup), the goal of economic liberalisation in Afro-Marxist states is, according to various official indications, a mixed economy and not a fully fledged market system. Why the responses of Afro-Marxist states to the socialist crisis are different from those of Eastern Europe and the USSR, how these responses are likely to affect their development processes and what their indications are to the future of socialism in the African continent have not yet been studied. This paper is intended to provide a preliminary assessment of change in these countries in order to stimulate further study. The paper is divided into two parts. The first outlines critical political and social dimensions of the crisis of socialism in general, and of Afro-Marxism in particular. The second briefly sketches the initial responses of the Afro-Marxist states to the socialist crisis and analyses the potential implications of such change to their economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the events of the Frasheri government in interwar Albania. This government, usually described as liberal or as of the 'Young' represented a novelty for Albanian society of the time, but lasted only one year. This study seeks to investigate what elements characterised this government, who were the protagonists and what consequences had the Frasheri experiment for the country? Through the study of domestic and foreign politics and the analysis of the relationship with the local press, the paper investigates the Minister's actions in detail. The Frasheri government, defined by the historiographical literature as a liberal experiment of the zoghist era, has never been thoroughly studied. Through unexplored sources from the Albanian press and archival sources from Rome and Tirana, this study presents a new interpretation of the Frasheri government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although they would yield social benefits, many political projects are not implemented in democracies. The ongoing debate on reforms around the world provides prominent examples: the reform of European labour markets or the reduction plans for greenhouse gases are cases in point. We suggest a number of improvements which would make liberal democracy more efficient without altering its founding values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically assesses the effect of liberalisation and competition on innovation in the postal sector. The analysis is restricted to end-to-end competition. The effect on the incentives to innovate of letter volume, public ownership and other control variables is also tested. Data on liberalisation, competition and innovation in the postal sector is collected for seventeen European countries over eleven years. Three measures are used as proxies for innovation: (1) an innovation index based on a survey conducted for this purpose; (2) the accumulated number of innovations (based on the same survey); and (3) labour productivity. We also develop a liberalisation index to measure the percentage of market liberalised (in terms of letter volume). Several models are estimated by GLS. In general, the models estimated have a high explanatory power. We find evidence that market liberalisation has a positive effect on innovation and that an increase in the market share of the competitors stimulates the investment in innovation, at least until the market share of the competitors reaches a certain threshold. Letter volume is also significant and has a positive impact on innovation. GDP per capita turns out to be significant and has a positive relationship with innovation in all the models estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of European governments have pronounced multiculturalism a failure and opted for more aggressive means of integrating immigrants into their societies. This paper asks what we are to make of this trend: does it reflect deeply rooted illiberal prejudice or a novel shift in liberal-democratic states' approaches to nation-building? I suggest that aggressive integrationism is reflective of a distinctly 'Schmittian' liberalism, which aims to clarify the core values of liberal societies and use coercive state power to protect them from illiberal and putatively dangerous groups. In contrast to liberal multiculturalists, who counsel accommodation, compromise and negotiation among majority and minority groups, Schmittian liberals see the task of immigrant integration as part of a broader campaign to preserve 'Western civilisation' from illiberal threats. Their framing of the problem in existentialist terms allows them to justify policies that might otherwise be seen to contravene liberal principles of toleration and equality. As such, Schmittian liberalism complicates our understanding of liberal states' approaches to immigration and immigrant integration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses two issues arising from Foucault's work. One concerns his treatment of liberalism in The Birth of Biopolitics, which is probably more familiar through the work of the (mostly) British 'governmentality' school, and the other concerns a comment on relations between the West and the rest in The Order of Things that seems to express an insensitive Eurocentrism. I argue that we cannot make sense of liberalism without grasping the place of this Eurocentrism in eighteenth/nineteenth century western thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reassesses relations between the free-trade and anti-slavery movements in the mid-nineteenth century. It places well-known controversies over the removal of preferential import duties on free-grown sugar into the context of a broader and more complex relationship, in which the Anti-Corn Law League borrowed many of the tactics pioneered by the abolitionists, while also attempting to assume antislavery's mantle of moral reform. In particular, the article situates the campaigns in a transatlantic context complicated by the domestic agendas of American anti-slavery groups and southern cotton growers, both of whom tried to take advantage of the British free-trade movement for their own ends. Finally, it is argued that the apparent success of the League in forcing the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 not only contributed to the decline of anti-slavery as an effective extra-parliamentary movement, but also ensured that other moral reform campaigns such as the peace movement were forced to adopt the language and tactics of free-trade liberalism to survive, generating a lasting legacy that came to fruition with the emergence of the Gladstonian Liberal Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has developed a normative approach to security over the past 15 years, which is strongly rooted in the concept of human security. This paper examines where human security is situated in the contemporary discourse on security and critically assesses both the concept itself and its application in European security policy. It argues that the approach has weaknesses in concept and practice which potentially undermine the normative aspirations of European security, particularly with regard to political agency, the universalisation of liberal values, legitimacy, sovereignty, the notion of security as a collective good and the external as well as internal dimensions of the EU as a security community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe's post-communist states have experienced widely differing degrees and trajectories of democratisation and (economic as well as political) liberalisation. Outcomes have frequently been explained and/or conceptualised in cultural or 'civilisational' terms - i.e. mainly with reference to 'culturalist' or 'essentialist' conceptions of allegedly prevalent 'mentalities', attitudes, belief-systems, value-systems and so-called 'political cultures'. This paper highlights the major objections to explanations and conceptualisations of this kind and advocates an alternative explanatory and conceptual framework that draws on Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) while also taking on board various critical responses to his highly influential ideas and to much of the thinking and research he has precipitated. Making Democracy Work (MDW) is most famous for its use and elaboration of conceptions of social capital, trust, norms of generalised reciprocity, networks of civic engagement and civic community, and for arguing that these have been the key determinants of political and economic outcomes in modern times. However, such phenomena have largely been dependent rather than independent variables, more akin to cultural attributes than to structural determinants. They are far less crucial than Putnam's lucid (but largely neglected) conceptualisation of the ways in which the emergence of more horizontally structured political, social and economic power-relations has increased the scope for and viability of liberal democracy and liberal market economies and, conversely, the ways in which vertically structured political, social and economic power-relations have limited the scope/potential for democratisation and liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A renewal of academic interest in agricultural restructuring in western Europe raises questions about causality, processes and outcomes. In particular, the relationship between deep-set structural tendencies and policy trends and the way these are constituted in relation to, and mediated through, the agency of individual land managers and other actors is emerging as a central research concern of rural social scientists. In this paper we focus on the first part of this equation, arguing that international and European agricultural restructuring needs to be rediscovered as an essentially sociopolitical project, the outcome of a struggle for influence and power between different class fractions of capital during a long and contested transition to a post-Fordist regime of accumulation. Rather than witnessing the shift towards a postproductivist agriculture anticipated by some recent commentators, we argue that the dominant framing is in favour of a neoliberal regime of market productivism, leading to the further integration of large parts of European agriculture into agro-food circuits of capital. While the neoliberal discourse which provides the intellectual justification for this process is heavily contested by advocates of a long standing form of neomercantilism and by a more recently invented discourse of agricultural multifunctionality, the entrenched position of neoliberal ideas and framings within the World Trade Organization (WTO) means that the ideology of the free market is coming to define the terms of international, and thus European, agricultural policy reform. The recent history of reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and wider rural policy reform in the European Union (EU) nevertheless suggests that the European policy stance is one of partial resistance to unfettered liberalization, policy-makers apparently having embarked on an attempt to combine elements of the neoliberal programme with continued commitment to state assistance in various forms. This sets the frame for the regulation of an increasingly bimodal agricultural industry, in which spaces for postproductivism and rural development are being defined and defended in public interest and public good terms but where there are few opportunities to question the enforced segregation and commodification of rural space and environmental provision that this implies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores Martin Heidegger's political philosophy and its relation to the theory and ethical foundations of the liberal state. It first reconstructs the key doctrines of Heidegger's philosophy formulated in Being and Time. It then turns to Heidegger's later philosophy after the famous turning and investigates its relation to the fundamental ontology of Heidegger's earlier years. In a third step, Heidegger's much discussed Nazism and its link — by some commentators fervently defended and by others passionately denied — to his philosophy is the focus of attention. The findings about Heidegger's philosophy are then critically assessed: firstly as to their philosophical merits concerning fundamental questions of epistemology, ontology or philosophical anthropology and secondly as to their relations to the ethical and theoretical foundations of the liberal state. As a result some proposals are made as to whether or not it is justified to regard Heidegger's work as part of the darker legacies of European thought. KEY WORDS: fundamental ontology; Heidegger; Heidegger's Nazism; Kehre; liberalism; liberal state; Nazism; pragmatism; time and being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the logical and historical determinants of European integration and reflects on the potential and dangers this presents for labour movement renewal. Through the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ a regulatory gap has been established between political mobilisation at the national level and neo-liberal regulation at the European level. The historical determination of this form is traced through an exploration of the social struggles against neo-liberalism that have developed within member states and transnational mobilizations that bridge this regulatory gap by linking resistance across national boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of populism and its relationship with modern democracy has gained considerable attention in recent years. This article aims at advancing our understanding of how populism affects different models of democracy and tests the proposed arguments empirically. Building on a large scholarly literature on populism and democracy, we take stock of existing arguments and theorize which democratic models may be affected by populism in a positive or negative way. Moreover, we move beyond the normative debate and analyse the effect of populism in power on different models of democracy empirically. We do so by merging data on populist governments in Europe and Latin America from 1995 until today with the Varieties of Democracy dataset, which enables us to capture the relationship between populism and different democratic models in these regions. Despite mixed‐theoretical expectations, our results suggest a rather negative impact of populism on the electoral, liberal and deliberative models of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussing An Outline of a Theory of Civilization by the Japanese thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi, this essay shows how theorists of liberal nationalism might draw on "non-Western" theoretical resources to enrich their normative ideas and better appreciate their own tradition. I argue that Fukuzawa's work represents an alternative strand of liberal nationalism that complements its mainstream counterpart pioneered by David Miller, Yael Tamir, and others. More specifically, I argue that Fukuzawa's contributions help us reconsider three central claims made by his more mainstream peers: (1) cosmopolitanism poses the most important threat to liberal nationalism, (2) the strength of liberal nationalism lies in its perceptiveness about ordinary people's sense of national belonging, and (3) liberal nationalism emerged in mid-nineteenth-century Europe and spread elsewhere in the age of decolonization. In so doing, I show how the current "comparative turn" in political theory can benefit a specific debate—on liberal nationalism—within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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An institutionalized party system is often regarded as a precondition for a well-functioning democracy. Recent recesses in democracy and, in particular, in the liberal dimension of democracy in relatively established party systems, however, warrant a fresh look into how party system institutionalization shapes liberal democracy. We use a dataset that covers 58 European party systems over more than a century to assess how party system institutionalization in the governmental arena – closure – is related to more robust liberal democracy. Our results show that stable coalition combinations are conducive to higher levels of liberalism, while infrequent government changes and the exclusion of new parties from the governmental arena have a detrimental role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transatlantic religious networks promoted by Americans after World War I not only delivered human and financial resources but they also brought about significant changes in religious and political thought and practice in Europe. The experiences, networks and narratives created through two world wars equipped Europe with an ideological arsenal, which it marshalled against the Soviet threat during the cultural Cold War and which provided the European integration process with resources and legitimacy. The invocation of 'spirit' proved an extremely effective way of legitimizing the European project: it identified materialism as the seed of destruction of civilization; it promoted an interfaith narrative that was acceptable to different churches and religious sensibilities; and it represented human rights as the historical legacy of Christianity. Salvador de Madariaga's life reflects the evolution of the role of religion in the twentieth century, especially with regard to non-denominational Christianity. He was a committed missionary of ecumenist global civic conscience and a crusader for freedom of conscience against totalitarian interference. His defence of liberalism and his repeated calls for a cultural construction of Europe were rooted in his conviction of the intrinsically spiritual nature of all human beings, his identification with the legacy of Christianity and his desire to guarantee universal freedom of spirit. This article analyses documents from Madariaga's personal archive and other archives in Europe and America in order to chronicle his spiritual journey and to understand his crusade to create a 'Europe of the spirit'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is set out to study whether Germany's European politics can be confined into Kantian (liberal) or Bismarckian (realism) realm and to what extent these two traditions can shed light on the current policy of Germany within European Union. The clash of idealism and realpolitik are going to be used as a means to shed light on Germany's current hegemony in the EU. It is also aimed to point out how permanent emphasis on national interest is prevailing in Adenauer's period and how Bismarckian way of dealing with international relations still protects its validity today. It is argued that Germany's ongoing integration policy (Kantian perspective) is an incremental tool in service of recognition in the international arena in 50s and then paving the way for a renewed hegemony of Germany in the continent. It is a significant descriptive study since it points out how Kantian approach is utilized as a means to reach Bismarckian Germany since many scholars focus on the overlap of national interest and integration policies but not questioning whether German national interest is the prime beneficiary in the process even after the WWII. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]