Freedom to divorce or protection of marriage? The divorce laws in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the early twentieth century

In the period 1909-1927, new laws concerning divorce and marriage were enacted by the Scandinavian countries. Both at the time and more recently, these laws were considered as "liberal" as they promoted greater freedom to divorce based on individuality and gender equality. In this article, the authors first analyze the changes in these Family laws in the early twentieth century. Then, the authors study the effect of these laws on divorce and marriage patterns. As these laws did not modify the trend in divorce rates, the authors ask why this was the case. The authors' conclusions are that the laws were more concerned with preserving the sanctity of marriage and maintaining social order than with promoting individual freedom and gender equality.     

‘The True Love of the People and the Motherland’: The concept of socialist patriotism,socialist nation and anti-nationalism in Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s

In the late 1950s, the concept of socialist patriotism in Hungary was reformulated as a basic political concept in the ideology and propaganda of state socialism. The definite appropriation of Leninist contraposition of socialist patriotism and bourgeois nationalism became paramount in the second half of the 1950s because of the nationalist sentiments of the 1956 revolution. I trace the history of the concept of socialist patriotism in the 1960s and 1970s in socialist Hungary. During this period, socialist patriotism served as a slightly undetermined, yet didactic counter-concept to set against ‘bourgeois nationalism’ which was characterised as a xenophobic sense of nation. From the late 1960s, the doctrine of socialist patriotism confronted a new ideological enemy: supra-nationalism or cosmopolitanism. In the mid-1970s, a new ideological equilibrium was elaborated in Hungary between socialist patriotism and proletarian internationalism, which served the economic and political integration of the Eastern bloc countries. In this sense, socialist patriotism was meant to express a link with socialist political order, its achievements and its institutions, in contrast to the ethnic character and revanchist tendencies of nationalism.     

Engagement or empire? American power and the international order

Three recent surveys of American foreign relations lie at the intersection of topical academic and policy debates. Robert Lieber's Eagle rules? makes a case for American primacy as a precondition for global stability, and in so doing reflects an agenda for US foreign policy that is broadly associated with the current Bush administration. By contrast, Joseph Nye's The paradox of American power argues against US unilateralism, and may be read as an implicit critique of the apparent recent shift in American strategy. Nevertheless, both Lieber and Nye make a case for extensive American engagement with the world as a basis for international stability. By contrast, Chalmers Johnson's Blowback views America's global ‘engagement’ as a thinly disguised diplomatic veil for imperialism. Although they make very different arguments, these three books are usefully considered together. Nye's stress on the importance of soft power, multilateral diplomacy and wider structural changes in the nature of world politics is a useful corrective to Lieber's emphasis on US primacy. But Johnson is right to criticize the excessive and ultimately counter‐productive level of military involvement of the United States around the world. In the absence of a more effective global balance of power, the preconditions for a robust system of international diplomacy as well as the management of globalization will not be satisfied.     

'Left,Right or European? Labour and Europe in the 1940s: The case of the Socialist Vanguard Group'

During the 1940s the concept of a third force of nations led by Britain was a common idea within the ranks of the Labour Party, championed by amongst others Keep Left. However, with the emergence of the Cold War such ideas quickly became subsumed within military alliances (NATO). One organisation which supported the third force was the (relatively unresearched) Anglo-German ethical grouping: the Socialist Vanguard Group (SVG). This paper examines the SVG's evolving 'European' theoretical perspective in this period, whilst re-examining the 'usual' left-right categorisation of bodies operating within Labour's milieu.     

Keystone of the patriarchal family? Indissoluble marriage,masculinity and divorce in Liberal Italy

While divorce laws were introduced in most of western Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, the majority of Italian statesmen exhibited strong reluctance to take such a measure on the occasions it was proposed by a number of progressive parliamentarians between unification and 1920. This essay examines the debates over whether or not to introduce a divorce law during Italy's Liberal period, arguing that many Italians saw indissoluble marriage as a way of protecting the ‘natural’ gender order against the corruptive tendencies of modernity seen elsewhere, particularly in France. Much rhetoric was expended on the notion that marriage protected Italian women in particular, but a divorce law would also have righted the radical asymmetries of power that lay at the heart of the Italian marriage contract. These were asymmetries that gave the husband distinct privileges and helped to construct masculine identity. For that reason, the maintenance of marriage as a contract only dissoluble by death can be read as a determination to protect traditional notions of masculinity.     

The Tortoise or the Hare? Incrementalism,Punctuations, and Their Consequences

In this article, we contrast the long‐term consequences of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium. We test what the impact of each of these types of policy change is on long‐term budgetary outcomes for the American states. Policy scholars have applied both theoretical approaches to the study of budgetary spending as an extension of policymaking. Given the two contrasting paradigms of policy change, we develop the following line of inquiry: Does punctuated equilibrium create a different budget in the long term than incrementalism? We address this question through an analysis of American state budgets because the U.S. states provide a rich variation in both budgetary outcomes and political institutions. We use budget data from all American states across all government functions for the period between 1984 and 2009. We find that, first, state budgets and budget functions vary in their degree of punctuation and, second, the degree of punctuation in a state's budget function corresponds to smaller long‐term growth. Additionally, the kind of spending matters: allocational budget categories are more likely to exhibit punctuations.     

The NATO-Warsaw Pact competition in the 1970s and 1980s: a revolution in military affairs in the making or the end of a strategic age?

The NATO-Warsaw Pact military competition at the heart of the Cold War was also the incubator of a ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (RMA) in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, which predates the better-known American concept of RMA of the 1990s.     

The philosopher,the ordinary believer,and their piety: Spinoza’s philosophical religion

This paper explores the nature and working of Spinoza’s philosophical religion. In doing so, it critically engages with Carlos Fraenkel’s study of the tradition of philosophical religions and Spinoza’s place in it. Spinoza can be said to be part of this tradition because the relation of his philosophical conception of God to the conceptions of God of some popular religions (especially Christianity) can be construed as that of the universal versus the particular, in which the particular expresses something of the universal, in an inadequate yet more readily accessible way. The account of Spinoza’s philosophical religion provided is kindred to Fraenkel’s, but it also explicitly discusses a crucial issue which Fraenkel only sparingly addresses, viz. the question how we must envisage the transition from a confused, imaginary to a more rational conception of God. A related issue the paper addresses concerns the question whether – and, if so, how – the dogmas of the universal faith can be reinterpreted philosophically. These discussions underpin a critical assessment of Fraenkel’s claim that Spinoza’s philosophical religion project is, ultimately, flawed.     

The Affluent Worker or the Divided Party? Explaining the Transformation of the ALP in the 1950s

This article argues that the Australian Labor Party was transformed in the 1950s, shedding its rhetorical commitment to socialism as well as many of its democratic ties to the organised working class. It also attempts to explain this transformation. The argument that this transformation was the product of rising working-class incomes and declining class consciousness is considered, before being rejected on both empirical and theoretical grounds. An alternative political explanation, which focuses on the interactions between the Party, its working-class constituency, and its leadership, is then offered. The article thereby aims not only to reconceptualise a specific moment in the history of Labor, but to reorient our theoretical approach to the Party, and our understanding of political change in the early postwar decades.     

“The electors shall meet in their respective states”: Bias and the US Presidential Electoral College, 1960–2012

American Presidential elections are indirect, reflecting popular support for the candidates through the institution of the Electoral College to choose the President. In common with other plurality-based electoral systems, the College tends to exaggerate the apparent mandate received by the winner of the popular vote but, on occasion, can deliver victory to the second-placed candidate. Despite a sizeable literature on its operation and vagaries, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the question of systematic bias in the College: does one party receive a consistent advantage over the other from the College's operation? The paper examines the evidence for such a bias in each Presidential election since 1960. Although biases have occurred and in some cases were substantial, neither major party is a consistent beneficiary; the prime source of bias is to be found in the relative effectiveness of parties' own vote-winning strategies.     

Inside “the system”: engineers,scientists, and the boundaries of social protest in the long 1960s

By the end of the 1960s, many engineers and scientists in the US questioned the social and political dimensions of science and technology. This introspection came as critics assailed science and technology as elements of the militaristic, alienating structure of modern society. Engineers and scientists repudiated, appropriated, or sometimes even acted in concert with these critics. Also relevant, however, in engineers' and scientists' evaluations of their role in society were the emergence of “engineering science,” pre‐existing political ideologies, and simply making a living in a volatile economy. This paper presents dissention from three vantages within the technical community: design engineer Steve Slaby at Princeton University, the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the activist organization Science for the People, located in chapters across the country. These cases differ in the actors' level of political consciousness, their involvement in military research, and the tactics they employed. All, however, suggest cause for reassessment both of the borders between “critics” and “scientists” and of the culture of “total control” ascribed to the era.     

Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England: A Turning Point in the 1960s?

Attitudes towards autonomy and personal freedom changed in the 1960s in England, but hardly touched the needs of dependent older people. In particular, deeply embedded public and professional attitudes and priorities linked to little change in ‘psychogeriatric’ treatment for those who were mentally unwell. Total beds in psychiatric hospitals decreased, but those remaining were increasingly and disproportionately occupied by older people receiving custodial care, often long term, despite evidence that appropriate treatment could prevent admission and facilitate discharge. Widely publicised scandals of inhumane care of older people in psychiatric hospitals prompted a more responsive government approach to improving services.