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A wave of privatisation is unfolding in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis, but it has yet to receive serious scholarly attention. This paper examines the case of Ireland, where an austerity strategy and European Union International Monetary Fund bailout conditionality have given impetus to the transfer of public assets to the private sector. Theoretically, the paper explains the roots of the phenomenon with reference to a reformulated concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' whose usefulness lies in emphasising the politico-economic drivers of privatisation, which have been neglected in the mainstream literature. A typology is presented that argues that accumulation by dispossession manifests itself, in practice, through four main processes: (1) private repossession of assets nationalised during the financial crisis; (2) restructuring of state-owned enterprises; (3) commodification of assets and services hitherto located outside the market; and (4) privatised stimulus through public-private partnerships. The paper's framework should be useful to conceptualise ongoing privatisation processes in other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HALLETT C and WAGNER L. Nursing Inquiry 2011; 18: 359-368 Promoting the health of Europeans in a rapidly changing world: a historical study of the implementation of World Health Organisation policies by the Nursing and Midwifery Unit, European Regional Office, 1970-2003 The World Health Organisation (WHO) was inaugurated in 1948. Formed in a period of post-war devastation, WHO aimed to develop and meet goals that would rebuild the health of shattered populations. The historical study reported here examined the work of the Nursing and Midwifery Unit (NMU) of WHO's European Regional Office during the later part of the twentieth century. The study examined archive sources lodged at the NMU archive. The sources included manuscripts relating to important NMU initiatives, reports and papers published by WHO, and a range of secondary sources. The study identified three main driving forces in the work of the NMU of the European Regional Office of WHO. One of the strongest of these was a drive to develop and promote the nursing profession within the countries of the European Region. The second was the promulgation and implementation of the positive public health strategies of WHO, particularly its '38 Targets for Health for All by the Year 2000'. The third focussed on securing equity across the European continent and on promoting the development of the nursing professions in poorer and less-developed countries. The study concludes that the nursing professions in European states grew in strength and influence, and that the health of populations improved throughout the continent between 1970 and 2003. It discusses the extent to which the role of the NMU in these advances may have been significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political competition is the engine for representative democracy. Within the representation mechanics I look at the political space, the dimensionality of political conflict, and how parties try to affect the relative salience of different dimensions by using direct democratic institutions. The leading question is how we can explain initiative use. The paper asks how the costs and benefits of using initiatives affect parties when they decide whether to use this instrument or not. The major argument is that when party competition increases, we will see higher initiative frequencies because parties try to affect the saliency of specific issues to increase their electoral bases. I analyze annual submission rates, the content of proposed initiatives, and the changing share of partisan actors behind initiatives. The findings highlight that the consequences of direct democratic institutions go beyond changing policy outcomes. For the specific case at hand, Switzerland from 1920 to 2011, it is shown that despite numerous opposite claims, there has been no underlying change in strategy or equilibrium but just a slow evolution of underlying factors such as institutional requirements and partisan competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to build on ongoing work in east central Europe and the former Soviet Union—in geography and beyond—to think through the conceptualisation of post-socialism. The rationale for this is threefold. Firstly, we see a need to understand post-socialist conditions as they are lived and experienced by those in the region. Secondly, we seek to challenge the persistent tendency to marginalise the experiences of the non-western world in a discourse of globalisation and universalisation. Thirdly, we identify a need to ask how the conditions of post-socialism reshape our theorising more widely. Centring our analysis on history, geography and difference, we review a wide range of perspectives on the socialist and post-socialist, but argue for a strategic essentialism that recognises post-socialist difference without eclipsing differences. In outlining how we might understand history, geography and difference in post-socialism, we draw on key theorisations from post-colonialism (such as the articulation of the post- with the pre-, the relationship to the west, the rethinking of histories/categories, the end of the post) and outline post-socialisms that are partial and not always explanatory but nevertheless important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a brief review of system dynamics activity in continental Europe. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Dietetics as a form of study predates medicine, but the profession did not emerge until the nineteenth century and is still in an emergent stage today in many parts of the world. This paper seeks to demonstrate how the impact of leaders has been critical in terms of the growth and development of the profession. Methods: A narrative review was formed from searching the published literature. Results: The published literature is silent on many aspects of dietetics. In modern times, the majority of written works have come from North America and Western Europe. No work on historical or developmental aspects of dietetics from other parts of the world could be located. Leadership within the profession is well researched, but leadership by the profession in the broader arena of national and international policy and practice is harder to identify. There are calls for curricula to keep pace with the needs of modern healthcare systems if the profession is to flourish. Conclusion: Despite all the changes and the evolution of the profession, much remains unchanged. There are recurring themes throughout the literature reviewed here, those of the breadth of dietetics, the need for evolving curricula, the need for business acumen, the need for diversity and, in more recent times, the ability to work with interdisciplinary teams. But the profession has what it takes. It has within its ranks leaders of today and tomorrow. It is up to the profession to allow those leaders to emerge and take the profession to the next level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have dramatically challenged the tendency of economists to confine their empirical search for the causes of economic growth to the recent past. They argue that the kind of institutions established by European colonialists, either protecting private property or extracting rents, resulted in the poorer parts of the pre-colonial world becoming some of the richest economies of today; while transforming some of the more prosperous parts of the non-European world of 1500 into the poorest economies today. This view has been further elaborated for Africa by Nunn, with reference to slave trading. Drawing on African and comparative economic historiography, the present paper endorses the importance of examining growth theories against long-term history: revealing relationships that recur because the situations are similar, as well as because of path dependence as such. But it also argues that the causal relationships involved are more differentiated than is recognised in AJR's formulations. By compressing different historical periods and paths, the ‘reversal’ thesis over-simplifies the causation. Relatively low labour productivity was a premise of the external slave trades; though the latter greatly reinforced the relative poverty of many Sub-Saharan economies. Again, it is important to distinguish settler and non-settler economies within colonial Africa itself. In the latter case it was in the interests of colonial regimes to support, rather than simply extract from, African economic enterprise. Finally, economic rent and economic growth have often been joint products, including in pre-colonial and colonial Africa; the kinds of institutions that favoured economic growth in certain historical contexts were not necessarily optimal for that purpose in others. AJR have done much to bring development economics and economic history together. The next step is a more flexible conceptual framework, and a more complex explanation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the use of technology to support training and learning there has always been the belief that such new technologies would be able to add value either by reducing costs or increasing effectiveness. The 1980s and early 1990s were a period of enormous optimism as to the promise that such technology could bring. The governments of Europe and the US were generous in their funding of research in this area. In Europe research and development programmes such as ESPRIT, DELTA, RACE, ERASMUS and COMETT, to name only a few, funded a wealth of initiatives aimed at advancing the use of technology. At the margins of the early initiatives was the belief that AI must have a part to play in these developments. This paper reviews the early initiatives and suggests reasons why the potential for the use of AI in education and training has never been truly fulfilled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on a literature review, presents a quantitative overview of the role of natural disturbances in European forests from 1850 to 2000. Such an overview provides a basis for modelling the possible impacts of climate change and enables one to assess trends in disturbance regimes in different countries and/or periods. Over the period 1950–2000, an annual average of 35 million m3 wood was damaged by disturbances; there was much variation between years. Storms were responsible for 53% of the total damage, fire for 16%, snow for 3% and other abiotic causes for 5%. Biotic factors caused 16% of the damage, and half of this was caused by bark beetles. For 7% of the damage, no cause was given or there was a combination of causes. The 35 million m3 of damage is about 8.1% of the total fellings in Europe and about 0.15% of the total volume of growing stock. Over the period 1961–2000, the average annual area of forest fires was 213 000 ha, which is 0.15% of the total forest area in Europe. Most types of damage seem to be increasing. This is partly an artefact of the improved availability of information. The most likely explanations for an increase in damage from disturbances are changes in forest management and resulting changes in the condition of the forest. Forest area, average volume of growing stock and average stand age have increased considerably, making the forest more vulnerable and increasing the resources that can be damaged. Since forest resources are expected to continue to increase, it is likely that damage from disturbances will also increase in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language and wording used in the signatures of paintings by Domenikos Theotokopoulos (' El Greco') reveal a self-conscious construction of cultural identity in the early modern era. This paper argues that El Greco, an artist born in Crete who later worked in Venice and Rome for nearly ten years, and then for the rest of his career in Toledo, Spain, used his signature as a means to broadcast his artistic brand as a Greek other during his decades-long estrangement from his homeland. Regardless of where he worked or of the style that his paintings adopted, he always and without exception drafted his signatures in Greek, while at key moments of his career, especially during his frequent transitions from one city to the next, he appended his name with a declarative ' Cretan' in order to make it unmistakable that the viewer is looking at the work of a foreigner. In so doing, El Greco's use of language - a topic never taken into consideration with regards to the meaning of its deployment in his signatures - reveals much about the politics of cultural identity in the multicultural societies in which he worked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on commodity market integration has boomed in the last 15 years, and a sort of consensus is slowly emerging, at least with regard to trends in the last two centuries. This article argues that this consensus is fragile because the research is haunted by serious methodological shortcomings. The results are not really comparable because authors use a bewildering array of statistical techniques, without bothering too much about their assumptions and, more generally, about the theoretical foundations of their work. Market integration is a multi-faceted process and available techniques can be classified according to the issues they are suitable to tackle. In other words, the methodological choices, together with the available data, have steered the research towards a quite narrow set of issues. Thus we know much less than we suppose. The final section sketches out a research agenda beyond pure measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of empire has loomed large in recent writings on eighteenth-century Britain. This article attempts to encourage greater appreciation of Britain's multifarious connections with continental Europe in this period. It also seeks to establish that empire and Europe were seen by many Britons as complementary rather than competing areas of interest and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two pioneering books published in 1984 arguably launched the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM). The first is Strategic Human Resource Management by Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna; the second is Managing Human Assets by Beer, Spector, Lawrence, Mills, and Walton. This article provides a 30th anniversary review of the two books, partly to honor their pioneering contributions but also to use them as a lens for examining how the field has subsequently evolved and developed. Two recently published SHRM books are used as a benchmark for this analysis. The review identifies areas of SHRM constancy and change, major theoretical and empirical innovations, and newly developed research questions and directions, largely in an American context. Diagrammatic models of SHRM are synthesized and compared from the four books; also, nine specific dimensions of evolution in the field are highlighted with discussion of advances and shortcomings. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New means of speaking after laryngectomy or loss of continuity of the airway have consisted of: 1. Pharyngostome with artificial larynx (artificial mechanism connecting the trachea to the pharynx). 2. Artificial sound to nose or mouth (e.g., bellows, grammaphone). 3. A reed device from tracheostome to the mouth or the nose. 4. Tracheoesophageal fistula with or without a communicating connecting device. 5. Transcervical sound source which is used by placing a sound source on the external neck transmitting the sound into the pharynx. 6. The implanted sound source, or 7. Intra-oral sound source. This paper will review devices used to aid in artificial speech production provided in the past. No attempt will be made at reviewing the surgical literature on voice conservation procedures. Four sections are presented: 1. Early History of Laryngectomy and Review of Historical Artificial Larynges, 2. History of Alaryngeal Speech Production Without an Artificial Device, 3. Studies of Speech Production, Comparisons of Esophageal and Artificial Laryngeal Speech, and 4. Development of the Prototype Self-Contained Intra-Oral Artificial Larynx; synopsis of references reviewed in the first three sections; and a presentation of our new device in the fourth section. Each review is presented in chronological order with dates provided. Each of the first three sections is independent but relates to the common problem of alaryngeal speech. At the onset of design the self-contained intra-oral artificial larynx was thought to be only for persons after laryngectomy who for some reason could not attain esophageal speech. Later it became apparent that there are others, such as quadriplegics with tra-cheostomies, who could also benefit from an artificial larynx which is orally controlled. The artificial larynx being tested at present in our lab is fitted into a dental plate or dental shim with a hearing aid speaker and a built-in exponential horn which opens posteriorly. This artificial larynx is in its third revision and, at present, is externally wired during the testing phases. In its final form the power supply, electronic circuits, off-on switch, speaker and exponential horn will be completely contained in the dental prosthesis. Modifications are being made to obtain appropriate loudness with a decreased voltage requiring fewer batteries fitted into the prosthesis. The circuits will be placed on a microcomputer chip after the best circuits have been obtained by testing externally placed hard wired circuits on several objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the essays included in the book "Population in History." It contains 27 contributions, nearly all by different authors; more than a third of these are on English demographic history, but France is also well represented, with others on Ireland, Scandinavia, Italy, Flanders, and North America. The methods of historical demography have recently been widened by the introduction of analysis based on the "reconstitution" of families from material contained in local records. In spite of considerable activity by demographic historians in the last decade, however, a state of impasse seems to have been reached in which existing techniques of historical demography no longer offer much hope of extending our understanding of the processes of demographic change in the pre-census period on the basis of the strictly limited supply of known statistical data. At last speculation based upon incomplete data is being replaced by reliable computations of all the essential variables in demographic change. This is, then, a very patchy book, a curious compound of scholarship and optimism, of real worth and questionable methodology.

This article evaluates 165 studies from various disciplines, published between 2000 and 2019, which in different ways link past climate variability and change to human history in medieval and early modern Europe (here, c. 700–1815 CE). Within this review, we focus on the identification and interpretation of causal links between changes in climate and in human societies. A revised climate–society impact order model of historical climate–society interactions is presented and applied to structure the findings of the past 20 years' scholarship. Despite considerable progress in research about past climate–society relations, partly expedited by new palaeoclimate data, we identify limitations to knowledge, including geographical biases, a disproportional attention to extremely cold periods, and a focus on crises. Furthermore, recent scholarship shows that the limitations with particular disciplinary approaches can be successfully overcome through interdisciplinary collaborations. We conclude the article by proposing recommendations for future directions of research in the climatic change–human history nexus. This article is categorized under:Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Acute rheumatic fever (ARF) most commonly presents in children aged 5-14 years old. Lifelong rheumatic heart disease (RHD) can result. This study investigated time trends in ARF and RHD using inpatient data from the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne (RCH).Methods: A retrospective cohort study covering the period 1937-2013 was conducted using records from RCH, a quaternary paediatric hospital in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Patient data were identified using RCH classification of diseases coding for ARF or RHD for years <1952. For the period 1952-1987, this system was used in addition to identifying International Classification of Disease (ICD) discharge codes that corresponded to ARF or RHD. From 1988-2013, only ICD codes were used to identify patient data. Descriptive epidemiological analyses were performed, including incidence rate calculations using historical census population denominator data. Analyses focussed on children in the peak age group.Results: Among children aged five to 14 years, a total of 4337 RCH admissions with ARF/RHD occurred for 3015 patients. A sharp decline in first ARF/RHD hospitalisations at RCH occurred from 1959, following a peak mean annual incidence rate during 1944-1947 of 40.1/100 000 children (95% confidence interval (CI): 36.6-43.9; P < 0.05). Over 1996-2013, the mean annual incidence rate was 1.6/100 000 (95% CI: 1.3-1.8) and reached 2.3/100 000 (95% CI: 1.3-3.7) in 2005.Conclusion: The burden of ARF and RHD treated at RCH declined following the 1940s, mirroring changes seen in North America and Europe. Despite this, inpatient treatment for these conditions continued to be provided right up until the end of the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Economic literature suggests that economic factors and the availability of amenities act as determinants of migration choices together with socio‐demographic factors. Migration has also been found to be the consequence of political instability. This article argues that specific political events, i.e., democratic elections, may be linked to migration flows. By using European data over the 1999‐2012 time period, our system GMM estimations reveal that there is an emigration political cycle across European democracies and across the young democracies of Central and Eastern European countries. We observe that regular elections tend to diminish emigration ratios, whereas endogenous elections have the opposite effect. These results suggest special challenges for governments and oppositions, which are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Current comparative policy research gives no clear answer to the question of whether partisan politics in general or the partisan composition of governments in particular matter for different morality policy outputs across countries and over time. This article addresses this desideratum by employing a new encompassing dataset that captures the regulatory permissiveness in six morality policies that are homosexuality, same‐sex partnership, prostitution, pornography, abortion and euthanasia in 16 European countries over five decades from 1960 to 2010. Given the prevalent scepticism about a role for political parties for morality policies in existing research, this is a ‘hard’ test case for the ‘parties do matter’ argument. Starting from the basic theoretical assumption that different party families, if represented in national governments to varying degrees, ought to leave differing imprints on morality policy making, this research demonstrates that parties matter when accounting for the variation in morality policy outputs. This general statement needs to be qualified in three important ways. First, the nature of morality policy implies that party positions or preferences cannot be fully understood by merely focusing on one single cleavage alone. Instead, morality policy is located at the interface of different cleavages, including not only left‐right and secular‐religious dimensions, but also the conflicts between materialism and postmaterialism, green‐alternative‐libertarian and traditional‐authoritarian‐nationalist (GAL‐TAN) parties, and integration and demarcation. Second, it is argued in this article that the relevance of different cleavages for morality issues varies over time. Third, partisan effects can be found only if individual cabinets, rather than country‐years, are used as the unit of analysis in the research design. In particular, party families that tend to prioritise individual freedom over collective interests (i.e., left and liberal parties) are associated with significantly more liberal morality policies than party families that stress societal values and order (i.e., conservative/right and religious parties). While the latter are unlikely to overturn previous moves towards permissiveness, these results suggest that they might preserve the status quo at least. Curiously, no systematic effects of green parties are found, which may be because they have been represented in European governments at later periods when morality policy outputs were already quite permissive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Governments led by nonpartisan, ‘technocratic’ prime ministers are a rare phenomenon in parliamentary democracies, but have become more frequent since the late 1980s. This article focuses on the factors that lead to the formation of such cabinets. It posits that parliamentary parties with the chance to win the prime ministerial post will only relinquish it during political and economic crises that drastically increase the electoral costs of ruling and limit policy returns from governing. Statistical analyses of 469 government formations in 29 European democracies between 1977 and 2013 suggest that political scandals and economic recessions are major drivers of the occurrence of technocratic prime ministers. Meanwhile, neither presidential powers nor party system fragmentation and polarisation have any independent effect. The findings suggest that parties strategically choose technocrat‐led governments to shift blame and re‐establish their credibility and that of their policies in the face of crises that de‐legitimise their rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Internacional del Trabajo is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What explains variation in tax outcomes between European states? Previous studies emphasise the role played by political institutions, but focus mostly on the input side of politics - how access to power and policy making is structured - and the institutions of relatively recent times. It is argued in this article that output-side institutions related to the implementation of political decisions also matter and have deep institutional origins. As the classic literature has argued, the early modern period from 1450 to 1800 was formative for the development of fiscal capacity, but European states diverged in the stock of capacity they acquired. This article tests whether these differences still affect contemporary tax outcomes using a novel measure of fiscal capacity, based on the age, extent and quality of state-administered cadastral records. The empirical analysis shows that, on average, countries with higher early modern fiscal capacity have higher tax revenue today, compared to countries with lower early modern fiscal capacity. This association is robust to different model specifications and alternative measurements. The findings have important policy implications as they indicate how deeply the current fiscal problems of the continent are entrenched, but also point to what needs to be prioritised within ongoing tax reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on populist parties - or 'supply-side populism' more generally - are numerous. Nevertheless, the connection with demand-side dynamics, and particularly the populist characteristics or tendencies of the electorate, requires more scholarly attention. This article examines in more detail the conditions underlying the support for populist parties, and in particular the role of populist attitudes amongst citizens. It asks two core questions: (1) are populist party supporters characterised by stronger populist attitudes than other party supporters, and (2) to what extent do populist (and other) attitudes contribute to their party preference? The analysis uses fixed effect models and relies on a cross-sectional research design that uses unique survey data from 2015 and includes nine European countries. The results are threefold. First, in line with single-country studies, populist attitudes are prominent among supporters of left- and right-wing populist parties in particular. Second, populist attitudes are important predictors of populist party support in addition to left-wing socioeconomic issue positions for left-wing populist parties, and authoritarian and anti-immigration issue positions for right-wing populist parties. Third, populist attitudes moderate the effect of issue positions on the support for populist parties, particularly for individuals whose positions are further removed from the extreme ends of the economic or cultural policy scale. These findings suggest that strong populist attitudes may encourage some voters to support a populist party whose issue positions are incongruous with their own policy-related preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies have suggested that higher public pensions are associated with lower income inequality among the elderly, whereas the reverse is true for private pensions. Van Vliet et al. () empirically test whether relative shifts from public to private pension schemes entail higher levels of income inequality among the elderly using panel data from the OECD SOCX and the EU-SILC databases. Contrasting earlier empirical studies using either cross-sectional or time-series data, they do not find evidence that shifts from public to private pension provision are associated with higher levels of income inequality or poverty among the elderly. The aim of the current article is to extend the analysis of Van Vliet et al. by: (1) adding additional countries; (2) adding additionally available years; and (3) using revised OECD SOCX data. In contrast to Van Vliet et al., we find that a greater relative importance of private pensions is associated with higher levels of income inequality and poverty among the elderly. A central explanation of the difference in conclusions stems from the revision of OECD SOCX data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims This study investigates the link between personal income and smoking among adolescents, and aims to answer the following questions: (i) to what extent is personal income related to smoking, independent of family socio-economic status (SES) and (ii) does the association between personal income and smoking apply to different subpopulations? Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Six cities from European countries (Amersfoort, the Netherlands; Coimbra, Portugal; Hannover, Germany; Latina, Italy; Namur, Belgium; Tampere, Finland) in 2013. Participants A school-based sample of 10 794 adolescents aged 14-17 years. Measurements We modelled smoking experimentation, weekly smoking, daily smoking and (among daily smokers) smoking intensity as function of personal income, adjusting for age, sex, family SES, parental smoking and country. We tested interactions between personal income and covariates. Stratification analyses were performed for the variables for which interactions were significant. Findings Adolescents in the highest income quintile were more likely to be smoking experimenters [odds ratio (OR) = 1.87; P < 0.01], weekly smokers (OR = 3.51; P < 0.01) and daily smokers (OR = 4.55; P < 0.01) than those in the lowest quintile. They also consumed more cigarettes per month (β = 0.79; P < 0.01). Adjusting for family SES did not modify the significance of relationships, and increased the magnitude of the association for daily smoking. None of the interactions between covariates and personal income was significant for smoking measures. For the intensity of smoking, the interaction was significant for SES. The stratified analysis showed a non-significant association between smoking intensity and personal income among the oldest adolescents and those with the lowest SES background, while significant among younger and higher SES backgrounds. Conclusion In the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Finland, adolescents' personal income is related positively to smoking behaviours independent of family socio-economic status (SES). However, among low socio-economic status adolescent daily smokers, the association between the intensity of smoking and personal income is weaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How does international migration impact the composition of the demos? Constitutional doctrines and democratic theories suggest contrasting responses: an insular one excludes both non-citizen immigrants and citizen-emigrants; a deterritorialised one includes all citizens wherever they reside; a postnational one includes all residents and only these. This article argues that none of these predicted responses represents the dominant pattern of democratic adaptation, which is instead a level-specific expansion of the national franchise to include non-resident citizens and of the local franchise to include non-citizen residents. This is demonstrated by analysing an original dataset on voting rights in 31 European and 22 American countries, and outlining a level-sensitive normative theory of citizenship that provides support for this pattern as well as a critical benchmark for current franchise policies. The findings can be summarised in two inductive generalisations: (1) Voting rights today no longer depend on residence at the national level and on citizenship of the respective state at the local level; (2) Voting rights do, however, generally depend on citizenship of the respective state at the national level and on residence at the local level. In the article, these are called the patterns of franchise 'expansion' and 'containment'. The former supports the idea of widespread level-specific expansion of the franchise and refutes the insular view of the demos. The latter signals corresponding level-specific restrictions, which defeats over-generalised versions of deterritorialised or postnational conceptions of the demos. In order to test how robust this finding is, cases are analysed where the dominant patterns of expansion have been resisted and where unexpected expansion has occurred. With regard to the former, the article identifies constitutional and political obstacles to voting rights expansion in particular countries. With regard to the latter, the article shows that even where national voting rights have been extended to non-citizen residents, containment remains strong through indirect links to citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses price information relating to 12 towns and wage information from 18 towns to develop a real wage index for unskilled urban labourers in Germany during the three-and-a-half centuries preceding the onset of rapid industrialization. Combining the new series with information from other parts of Europe establishes two stages of real wage divergence during the seventeenth to nineteenth century. The first occurred in the middle of the seventeenth century when real wages in centres of trade and finance located on the rim of the North Sea rose far above the level prevailing in their hinterland. The second stage unfolded from the second quarter of the eighteenth century when the real wage in south England, northern and central Italy, and Germany began to diverge; Germany followed a middle path between the other two countries. The second commercial revolution, which improved business techniques and promoted Smithian growth, goes a long way towards accounting for this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses periodical publications regarding the economic history of Europe after 1700 that were published in 2013, including bibliographies of articles. Topics addressed include the relation of living standards to demography, the history of money and finance, and economic growth and development.

The article discusses fertility among descendants of immigrants in some European countries such as Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Spain on the basis of childbearing patterns and birth order. Topics include migration and family policies, fertility dynamics, and influence of mainstream society on fertility behavior.

An introduction is presented which discusses various topics within the issue including sport science in Europe, structure and dynamics of European sports science, and forms of interdisciplinarity in sport science research centres in Europe.

Was there an agro-ecological crisis in Europe which preceded and contributed to pushing forward the agricultural revolution? This article presents a new theoretical and empirical approach to this controversial perspective on agricultural transformation and relates to an ongoing debate on conditions of growth in pre-industrial societies. The results demonstrate that there were indeed indicators of a crisis, which grew stronger during the eighteenth century and culminated in the early nineteenth century. The crisis was, however, not general, but was rather restricted to areas that stand out due to poor natural conditions for agriculture. In other words, the crisis was conditional. Furthermore, the findings show that the crisis could push forward changes that were important for enabling agricultural transformation and growth. However, both the emergence and reversal of the crisis were connected to new opportunities opened up by market development. Enough differences were found between different types of regions to suggest that there were many development paths within the agricultural transformation process, and that they were not necessarily linear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconsiders the relative growth performance of centrally planned economies in the broader context of postwar growth in Europe. It reports a new dataset of revised estimates for investment rates in eastern European countries between 1950 and 1989. Complemented with data on other growth determinants, this evidence is used to re-evaluate the socialist growth record in a conditional convergence framework with a panel of 24 European countries. After controlling for relative backwardness, investment rates, and improvements in human capital, the findings show that centrally planned economies underperformed due to their relative inefficiency only after the postwar golden age. In the 1950s and 1960s, eastern Europe was falling behind mainly due to relatively low levels of investment and weak reconstruction dynamics. Both are explained, in part, by the lack of labour-supply flexibility that, in turn, resulted from the comparatively much larger negative impact of the war on population growth in eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine cooperatives were relatively scarce in Europe before the Second World War, but by the 1980s accounted for more than half of all wines made in France, Italy, and Spain, the three major producer countries. Unlike Danish dairy cooperatives, whose success before the First World War was linked to their ability to improve product quality and compete in high-value niche markets, wine cooperatives are often associated with the production of large volumes of low-quality products. This article argues that the initial slow diffusion of wine cooperatives was caused by the difficulties of improving quality due to environmental conditions in European vineyards ('terroir') and measurement problems, rather than institutional shortcomings. Cooperatives only became widespread when the state found them a useful instrument to regulate markets, especially after 1950. The problems associated with poor wine quality were never resolved, and cooperatives have become increasingly uncompetitive in the market place, especially following the major decline in per capita consumption and shift towards premium wines from the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars in the fields of archaeology and numismatics have long been familiar with the phenomenon of periodic recoinage (renovatio monetae), which dominated monetary taxation in medieval Europe for almost 200 years. However, this form of monetary taxation is seldom, if ever, discussed in the literature of economics or economic history. No economic theory has ever been proposed to explain periodic recoinage. The present study aims to make up for this absence. It examines the qualities that typically differentiate regions with periodic recoinage from those with other monetary systems and analyses how periodic recoinage was monitored and enforced. The principal example of frequently renewed coins is uni-faced bracteates, which were often subject to annual or even biannual recoinages. Although bracteates were not the cause of periodic recoinage, their features facilitated frequent renewals. The study discusses the economic consequences of periodic recoinage and links the breakdown of this monetary system with the end of bracteates' role as the principal coin in the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines international collaboration between Western and Chinese feminists in the interwar decades. Focusing on the 1927-28 'mission to Asia' sponsored by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the article shows that, contrary to what existing historiography would lead us to suspect, neither feminist Orientalism nor colonial nationalism stood as a serious impediment to the formation of a truly international feminist alliance. Instead, European and Chinese women's varying experiences and memories of international conflict, and their varying understandings of the relationship between feminism, pacifism, militarism and political violence, defined the limits of global feminist collaboration in the late 1920s. The WILPF delegates, like many European women in the 1920s, were living in the shadow of the First World War, a conflict they condemned as futile and barbaric; their Chinese 'sisters' were living in the midst of a battle to determine the political future of their nation. For both sets of women, the question of women's emancipation was fundamentally entwined with broader national and international struggles. This article incorporates reports, personal letters and diaries of WILPF delegates as well as articles, speeches and letters by Chinese women to offer new insights into one of the earliest efforts to build a truly international women's movement and draw our attention to the centrality of warfare in defining the limits of global feminist collaboration in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on economic inequality in early modern Europe is complicated by the lack of appropriate data for reconstructing income or wealth distributions. This article presents a study of income inequality in mid-eighteenth-century Old Castile ( Spain) using the Ensenada Cadastre, a census conducted between 1749 and 1759. The article describes the information provided by this census and then discusses its advantages and disadvantages for reconstructing income profiles and calculating income inequality. This is followed by analysis of a dataset derived from the Cadastre that consists of more than 4,000 observations from Palencia (a province in northern Spain) and contains information on sources of household income, each household head's main occupation, residence location, and other household characteristics. Demographic data from this census is used to weight observations in the sample and thereby minimize selection bias. Findings show that inequality in eighteenth-century Spain was probably substantial despite its relative backwardness; that the relationship between inequality and per capita income was not clear-cut and was probably influenced by measurement of the higher incomes; and that although income inequality was largely driven by uneven land distribution, labour income also contributed to overall inequality-especially in urban centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers new technologies and fatal accident rates in European coal mining from 1850 to 1900. Its contributions are twofold: to recover and emphasize improvements in small-scale mine technologies such as safety lamps and ventilation, and, second, to deny any role at this time for later macroinventions such as electrification and mechanization. We discuss the influence of these safety-improving technologies as well as government regulations on different kinds of fatal accident rates. It is proposed that an important and overlooked source of the reduction in fatalities from certain kinds of accidents was the introduction and diffusion of a variety of safety-related technologies, none of particularly large scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the collapse of party membership in the last half-century has consumed much of the focus of party scholarship, the notion of membership itself is surprisingly under-theorised. This article presents a tripartite framework for understanding party membership as a constructed concept: from the perspective of the state, the individual and the political party. As organisational mediators and strategic electoral actors, political parties construct varying notions of membership in order to mobilise resources and gain legitimacy, while balancing the participatory demands of citizens with the legal and normative expectations imposed by the state. Using a number of illustrative examples from Europe and beyond, the article analyses the development of supporters' networks and the extension of participatory opportunities to non-members. Designed in part to address this membership decline and to offer individuals a different way of engaging with political parties, these initiatives are seen as a crucial step in the evolution of modern parties towards looser, more individualised and amorphous networks of affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does voter polarisation affect party responsiveness? Previous research has shown that political parties emphasise political issues that are important to their voters. However, it is posited in this article that political parties are not equally responsive to citizen demands across all issue areas. The hypothesis is that party responsiveness varies considerably with the preference configuration of the electorate. More specifically, it is argued that party responsiveness increases with the polarisation of issues among voters. To test these theoretical expectations, party responsiveness is analysed across nine West European countries from 1982 until 2013. Data on voter attention and voter preferences with regard to specific policy issues from a variety of national election studies is combined with Comparative Manifestos Project data on parties' emphasis of these issues in their election manifestos. The findings have major implications for understanding party competition and political representation in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on political participation asserts that protest has increased over the last four decades, all over the world. This trend is derived from surveys asking questions about participation in various forms of protest, including demonstrations, boycotts, and unofficial strikes. The latter question made sense in the context in which it was formulated, Britain in the early 1970s, and with regard to the original methodological aim, measuring 'protest potential'. The absence of a generic question on strikes, however, distorts our understanding of protest. Two sources of data on Britain in the 1980s and 1990s - a population survey and an event catalogue - comprehensively measure strikes. They show that strikes greatly outnumbered demonstrations and other forms of protest. Another claim in the literature, that protesters are highly educated, no longer holds once strikes are properly counted. Strikes in Britain, as in many countries, have dramatically declined since the 1980s. This decline more than offsets any increase in demonstrations and boycotts, meaning that the total volume of protest has decreased. The episode illustrates how survey questions, when replicated without scrutiny, can misconstrue social trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several essays that appeared in the journal concerning the comparative history of political activism, engagement, and mobilization in Europe and the U.S. It discusses representative government in Europe, the concept of communalism and its relationship to political participation and the goals of national governments, and partisan political communication. It also discusses universal suffrage in post-revolutionary France, local activism in the U.S. during the late 20th century, and partisanship.

This article attempts to map the relations between nation-building processes in 19th-century Europe and city cultures with their urban sociability. Three patterns are surveyed: [1] the modern-national assimilation of medieval and early-modern city cultures (sample case: Orléans and the French cult of Joan of Arc); [2] the modular replication across cities of urban festivals as cultural mobilizers (sample case: the spread of Floral Games festivals in Southern France and Northern Spain); [3] the reticulation of city-based practices into a nationwide and nation-building network (sample cases: the role of choral societies in German cultural nationalism; and its transnational knock-on effect in the Baltic Provinces). By choosing the city as our social focus and placing it (or rather, its ideal-type ' Urbania') alongside Gellner's ideal-types of ' Megalomania' and ' Ruritania', we can avoid the finalism of studying regionalist and nationalist movements in the analytical framework of the post-Versailles state system, and we gain a better understanding of the granulated, localized social basis of such movements and the translocally homogenizing role of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour market shortages, structural problems and unfavourable demographics have all prompted governments to act, often by focusing on high-skilled immigration. However, policy responses have been very different. Some countries were able to adopt quite open high-skilled immigration policies, while others did not. This article provides a political economy explanation for this. It argues that, despite similar pressures, high-skilled immigration policy outputs vary due to shifting coalitions between disaggregated sectors of native high-skilled, low-skilled labour and capital. To probe this argument, the article examines coalitions in four countries (France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom) from the late 1990s to present, and draws on original interviews with policy-makers, unions and employers' associations; official documents and the literature on immigration, political economy and public policy. The varying labour market organization of actors informs differences in coalitions which in turn has resulted in different high-skilled immigration policy outputs, cross-nationally and over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Antipode is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Rhine transport was not an absolute condition for German industrialization. Railways proved to be efficient, and in the 1840-1870 period were essential for the industrialization of the Ruhr area. The key questions addressed in this article are: why did inland navigation not disappear from the Rhine region (as it did elsewhere), even recovering after the 1870s? And why did it have an unassailable competitive advantage from the 1890s onwards? Political developments leading to the liberalization of Rhine shipping and the canalization of the river created the opportunity to increase the scale of shipping. This gave it competitive advantages when it came to bulk transport. This article uses new data on freight rates in the Rhine delta to demonstrate the course of Rhine competitiveness. Furthermore, it identifies the institutional conditions, and the technological and organizational improvements, that were the basis of this growing competitiveness. The conclusion is that the element of German international trade that went by the Rhine correlated with the cost of Rhine shipping when compared to that of railway transport. As a consequence of the recovery of Rhine shipping, the port of Rotterdam became stronger than its Belgian neighbour, Antwerp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the far-reaching liberalization of the French banking system over the past quarter century, French banks suffered far less in the international financial crisis (2007-2009) than banks in the United Kingdom and Germany. However, the French system also suffered far more-at least in the first stages of the crisis-than the banking systems of Southern Europe. By several measures, French banks were world leaders in financial innovation, and the French banking system was highly exposed to international market movements. The limited impact of the crisis, however, owed to the specificities of French 'market-based banking.' Deliberate state action over the two decades prior to the crisis created a specific kind of banking system and encouraged forms of financial innovation, the unintentional consequence of which was the limited exposure to the securitization that caused the damage wrought during the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Academic Emergency Medicine is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)