Search

Scholars have argued that historical context shapes national choices about responses to extremism. The influence of Nazism on Germany’s ‘militant democracy’ is the paradigmatic example. However, au...

The EU provides a complex web of opportunities and constraints for the Catalan independence movement. The EU was unwilling to support the Catalan unilateral declaration of independence and go against the wishes of the Spanish government; nevertheless, increased judicialization of the conflict weakened the argument that the Catalan independence crisis is an entirely ‘internal affair’ for the Spanish state. The evolution of supranational legal bodies has pluralized legal systems and created new opportunities for the Catalan independence movement to strengthen their position vis-a-vis the Spanish state. This chapter examines discourses and strategies mobilized in the Catalan independence campaign in order to assess how the EU as an actor or as a political institutional context affects contemporary secessionist politics within member states. More specifically, it examines the externalization strategies of the Catalan independence movement, the counteractions of the Spanish government abroad, and discursive ‘uses of Europe’.

It has long been speculated that banning parties from participation in elections may be counterproductive because it might provoke societal resistance. Using the European Social Survey (2002–2010; N = 195,405), our study suggests otherwise. We demonstrate that party bans enjoy the legitimacy of majority support. This holds true irrespective of countries’ resilience to extremist influences (or lack thereof) resulting from “institutional intolerance,” electoral entry barriers and authoritarian legacies. Individual orientations toward the democratic establishment do matter to a small extent: citizens with authoritarian tendencies and low system support are less supportive, while this is less so for citizens with extremist ideological orientations. Even though party bans entail significant democratic dilemmas, this study reveals societal resources supportive of repressive responses to extremist parties.

This article applies securitization theory to account for the proscription of organizations linked to Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain. I argue that securitization is vital for understanding the evolution of Spanish counterterrorism policy from tolerating to banning political organisations not directly involved in terrorist attacks, but supporting and sympathetic to ETA. More specifically, I examine the role of the judiciary in the initiation of securitization processes in which ETA came to be conceived as a “complex structure” integrating armed and unarmed activists, and the resonance of judicial securitization frames in the public sphere. I do so by analysing evolving conceptions of the relationship between ETA and two organizations—the youth group Jarrai and its successors Haika and Segi and the ETA prisoners’ lobby Gestoras proAmnistia and its successor Alkatasuna—as articulated in court rulings and a sample of 573 newspaper articles published in the Spanish daily El Pais between 1994 and ...

This article presents a theoretical framework for the empirical study of social movements as agents in the transnational transformation of public spheres. It draws on the existing literature on transnationalization of public spheres, which predominantly focuses on the broadcast media as carriers of the public sphere, to conceptualize transnational public spheres and mechanisms of public sphere transformation and to identify indicators for measuring the degree of that transformation. It then turns to argue that conceptualization of transnational public spaces as complex, multilayered, and overlapping permits analysis of social movements as agents of public sphere transformation in the form of actors or arenas, either within transnational spaces or through more routine forms of contestation within the nation state. I then adapt indicators developed to measure the degree of transnationalization of public spheres and illustrate their applicability for the study of social movements using contemporary e...

In July 2015, as Greeks voted in a referendum on the conditions of a third International Monetary Fund (IMF)-European Union (EU) bailout, many social movements around the world rallied, under the b...

Introduction – Explaining party bans, political and legal contexts – Banned parties and banning states in Europe, the political context – Nature of banned parties – Nature of banning states – Tolerant and intolerant democracies, the legal context – Evolving rationales for party bans and procedures for proscription – Contemporary rationales for banning parties – Anti-democratic ideology – Non-democratic internal organisation – Party names – Party orientation to violence – Protecting the present order – Evolving rationales for party bans – Weimar and legitimacy paradigms – Conclusions, directions for future research

When democracies ban political parties, one of the central issues that usually emerges in both public and academic debate concerns the effects of proscription. Some argue that proscription may lead to radicalisation, a growth of militancy and readiness to use violence. Others argue that, in the long run, banning parties may damage the foundations of a democratic polity as the ban may be interpreted as a silent weakening of democratic rights in the state and therefore a failure of democracy itself. However, and notwithstanding its centrality for the conduct of democratic politics, the impact of party bans on party system development has remained mostly under-researched. Trying to address this lacuna, and employing a new dataset of banned parties in Europe between 1945 and 2015, the study reported in this article compares the effects of party ban regulation on party system stability in three different arenas: electoral, parliamentary and governmental. In particular, the impact of party proscription on electoral volatility, fragmentation and closure is examined in three countries: Turkey, Germany and Spain. Using examples both at national and regional (e.g., Basque Country, Navarre, Saxony) levels, and making use of survey data when available, it is found that the banning of a relevant political party not only increases volatility and reduces fragmentation, but also alters the existing structure of competition at the time of government formation. Likewise, the empirical analysis also suggests a number of alternative hypotheses (i.e., organisational succession, electoral system) when trying to explain why the outcomes of some cases within each country deviate from theoretical expectations. Finally, the article also examines the phenomenon of ‘non-banning’ and how the failure of attempts to ban political parties might affect the development of a party system.

This chapter examines contemporary practices of militant democracy in the case of party bans. This focus is pertinent insofar as party bans tend to be seen as the most militant, intolerant, or repressive measure to be deployed against anti-system parties or movements, and as such, the riskiest in terms of effects on democratic quality. After an overview of party ban cases in postwar Europe, the chapter evaluates explanations for why some democracies have banned parties while others have not. More specifically, it focuses on the distinctive experiences of new democracies, party orientations to violence, historical experiences of authoritarianism, the effectiveness of alternatives to party bans, the role of securitization discourses and the dynamics of democratic competition. The advantage of focusing on such explanations for party ban practices is that it permits the analyst to look beyond official rationales for party bans to understand how variation in political context, decision-making rules, political discourses and constellations of actor interests may influence what is ultimately a grave decision to limit access to both political power and the public sphere.

This article examines the Europeanization of social movements following the European sovereign debt crisis. It develops a theoretical framework to measure degrees of social movement Europeanization, incorporating targets, participants, and issue frame dimensions of mobilization. Europeanization of social movements occurs when they collaborate with similar movements in other countries, claim a European identity, invoke Europe-wide solidarity, contest authorities beyond the state and ascribe responsibility for solving the crisis to European Union (EU). By targeting EU authorities, social movements may contribute to the construction of the EU as a crisis actor and through deliberative processes define the roles and identities of such actors.

The article addresses Europeanization of social movements in the context of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. Europeanization occurs when movements collaborate, or make horizontal communicative linkages with movements in other countries, contest authorities beyond the state, frame issues as European and claim a European identity. The article presents a theoretical framework and research design for measuring the degree of social movement Europeanization followed by results of a pilot study on mobilization in Spain and Greece during 2011. While many contentious action events studied only encompassed the domestic arena, the pilot study showed a relatively high degree of Europeanization in the Greek case, suggesting the viability of future research. El presente artículo aborda la europeización de los movimientos sociales en el contexto de la crisis de la deuda soberana europea. La europeización se produce cuando los movimientos colaboran, o establecen vínculos horizontales, con movimientos de otros países, contestan a las autoridades más allá de los límites del Estado-nación, identifican cuestiones como europeos y reclaman una identidad europea. El artículo presenta un marco teórico y un diseño investigación para medir el grado de europeización de los movimientos sociales seguido por los resultados de un estudio piloto de la movilización en España y Grecia durante el año 2011. Mientras que muchas de las acciones de protesta estudiadas solamente apelaban al ámbito doméstico, el estudio piloto muestra un relativamente alto grado de europeización en el caso griego, lo que sugiere la viabilidad de futuras investigaciones.

This article addresses the question: under what conditions do democracies ban political parties? It does so by testing three hypotheses generated by a disparate literature on party bans in a ‘most likely case’, namely, the proscription of radical Basque nationalist parties Herri Batasuna, Euskal Herritarrok and Batasuna in 2003. These parties were banned for their integration in a terrorist network led by Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). The hypotheses are that democracies ban anti-system parties if (i) anti-system parties do not unambiguously eschew violence; (ii) alternatives to proscription are not effective; and (iii) relevant office holders have reason to believe they will not be disadvantaged in their pursuit of office or votes for supporting the ban. Case study findings confirm the hypotheses other than that on violence, given that ETA’s political wing escaped proscription for around two decades before it was banned. Explaining this finding – or addressing the question of why the parties were not banned until 2003 – the article develops two further hypotheses, namely, that democracies ban anti-system parties if (iv) the parties have been ‘securitized’ as an existential threat to the state or democratic community and (v) proscription is the preference of all veto players.

This article explores the literature on democratization to account for the proscription of political parties in democratizing states. A survey of 22 party bans in 12 European states identifies two distinct classes of proscription derived from the ‘degree of democratization’ present in a banning state. I identify features of ‘new’ and ‘incomplete’ democracies that help explain proscription. Case studies on Germany, Austria, Russia, Latvia and Greece illustrate the impact of ‘modes of transition’, heightened uncertainty, political tensions and instability on ‘new democracy bans’, and the impact of illiberalism, limited checks on executive power and circumscribed political participation on ‘incomplete democracy bans’.

This paper examines recent debates on the European Union's (EU) constitution and their impact on territorial politics in Spain. Analysis of the preferences and participation of autonomous communities and minority nationalist parties in treaty decision processes and the 2005 Spanish referendum, addresses questions about the mobilization of territorial actors, their ability to influence politics beyond the state, political cleavages on EU issues and the role of European integration in domestic disputes on nationalities questions. I argue that innovations in EU treaty processes provided new access for some Spanish territorial actors, but treaty outcomes reflected their limited impact. Ethno-territorial and ideological cleavages present in domestic politics on territorial matters extended to EU issues with territorial dimensions. Finally, while constitutional treaty debates provided minority nationalist leaders with opportunities to articulate distinctive political profiles both at home and abroad, s...

Thirty six children of parents who attended the adult outpatient service in the Werribee Mercy Mental Health Program were screened for possible emotional and behavioural problems using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The proportion of children identified with difficulties was 50 percent, much higher than in the general population. Fifty eight percent of the children had chronic problems and the difficulties were perceived to be moderate to severe in 53 percent of the sample. The burden of these difficulties on the family was also high. Despite this, only a small proportion of children were then referred for further assessment and treatment. More psycho-education for both clinicians in the adult service and for parents is required. Difficulties in recruitment resulted in low numbers for this study. There continues to be difficulty in parents consenting for their children to be assessed.

A large literature now examines ‘European identities’, or employs the concept of ‘identities’ in analysis of the EU. This is something which could not be said of earlier phases in EU studies (Keeler, 2005: 571), even if some of the founding fathers of EU studies address it in their work (Haas, 1958, 1964; Deutsch, 1953, 1957). Ernst Haas, for instance, defined European integration as a process that involved a ‘shift of loyalties’ by ‘political actors in several distinct national settings’ to a ‘new political centre’ (1958: 16), while Deutsch includes a ‘sense of community’ in his conception of integration (for further discussion see Risse, 2005). Growing academic interest in the study of identities in Europe responds to what Rosamond (2007) calls ‘external’ and ‘internal’ drivers. Academic interest in the topic is a response to changes ‘on the ground’, or external drivers. The post-Cold War, post-Maastricht and even post-‘war on terror’ context has been one in which European integration and certain kinds of identity polemics have become more contentious. This has raised questions about the relationship between identity, on the one hand, and the legitimacy of EU institutions, prospects for meaningful democracy beyond the state and the very future of the EU on the other. Moreover, large scale and continuing enlargement of the EU since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the prospect of Turkish membership and growing contestation over the coexistence of Christian, Islamic and secular traditions in European societies have increased cultural diversity in the EU and the salience of debates on identity. However, academic interest in European identities also reflects the evolution of theoretical debates on the EU, or internal drivers. It is no coincidence that increasing attention to issues of identity coincide with the onset of what Weiner and Diez (2009) describe as the second ‘analysing governance’ and third ‘constructing the EU’ phase of theory building, which focus more attention on issues of polity and the social context of European integration.

This article investigates whether increased concern to ‘bring Europe closer to the citizen’ and the more inclusive European Convention format enhanced the influence of member state territorial actors in EU treaty-making. To this end, four questions are explored in a case study of Spanish territorial actors' experience of the Convention process: What did regions and minority nationalists hope to gain from the Convention? Who represented them there? What domestic pressures could they apply on Convention members? To what extent did individual Convention members defend or articulate regional and minority nationalist preferences? It is concluded that while the Convention method facilitated participation of actors formally representing certain Spanish territorial actors for the first time, overall the Convention method did not greatly improve their involvement in debate. This was largely due to the partisan and representative mandates of the Spanish Convention delegation, limited domestic collaboration...

Objective: To investigate whether intercessory prayer had an effect on the outcomes of a group of children with psychiatric conditions, using a triple blind randomized study design.Conclusion: This study was unable to show any additional benefits for patients who received intercessory prayer compared to those who received treatment as usual.

Objective: To examine the level of agreement between clinical diagnoses by a community child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) and diagnoses generated by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Method: A computerized algorithm developed by Goodman et al. was used at a community CAMHS in Australia to predict child psychiatric diagnoses on the basis of the symptom and impact scores derived from the SDQ completed by parents (n = 130), teachers (n = 101) and young people (n = 38). These diagnoses were compared with the diagnoses made by clinicians in a multidisciplinary community outpatient team and an independent clinician that examined the case notes and was blind to the SDQ scores. Results: The level of agreement between SDQ generated diagnoses and clinical team diagnoses was moderate to high, ranging from 0.39 to 0.56. Correlations between the SDQ and an independent clinician ranged from 0.26 to 0.43. All were statistically significant. Conclusion: The SDQ is a useful instrument to aid clinicians in diagnosis and could be used as part of the initial assessment process.