The Erasmus undergraduate exchange programme: a highly qualified success story?

Erasmus is regarded as a European success story: an example of cross-border cooperation and an opportunity for students to improve their inter-cultural skills and work capacities. This article takes an in-depth look at this success, examining recent trends in Erasmus mobility. Analysis shows that while certain countries have greater numbers of students outgoing than incoming, the converse situation is found in countries such as Portugal. To explain this imbalance, evidence is drawn from a study of Erasmus in Portugal conducted during 2016. While the popularity of the country as a destination is related to low cost of living, friendliness and educational quality, interviews with managers of the Erasmus programme reveal other factors that limit the participation of local students. This includes the low level of Erasmus scholarships for undergraduates from families affected by the economic crisis, with exchange students also increasingly viewed as tourists and consumers as well as learners.     

The invasion of Iraq: what are the morals of the story?

It is uncontroversial that the invasion and occupation of Iraq involved the following errors: the misinterpretation of intelligence; the underestimation of the number of troops requisite for law and order; the disbanding of the Iraqi army; and indiscriminate debaathification of the civil service. The first error was one of imagination rather than virtue; the others were caused by ‘callousness”, impatience, and consequent imprudence. These vices were partly responsible for massive civilian casualties, which many wrongly assume to teach the fundamentally erroneous character of the invasion. Nonetheless, we should beware such moral flaws in tomorrow's policy‐makers and renounce the managerial mentality that fosters them. Another lesson is that, in so far as nation‐rebuilding requires substantial and long‐term commitments, it must command the support of the nation‐builder's domestic electorate; and to do that, it must be able to justify itself in terms of the national interest. From this we should not infer the further lesson that morality's reach into foreign policy is limited, since, according to Thomist ethics, the pursuit of the national interest can itself be moral. Finally, one lesson that we should not learn from Iraq is never again to violate the letter of international law and intervene militarily in a sovereign state without Security Council authorization. The law's authority can be undermined as much by the UN's failure to enforce it, as by states taking it into their own hands. It is seriously problematic that the current international legal system denies the right of individual states to use military force unilaterally except in self‐defence, while reserving the enforcement of international law to a body, whose capacity to act is hamstrung by the right of veto. Given this situation, military intervention without Security Council authorization could be morally justified on certain conditions.     

Thailand: The Making of a Miracle?

Over the last half century, Thailand has been one of the fastest growing developing countries. This article reviews the causes of that growth. It deals both with the immediate factors, in a growth accounting framework, and with the underlying social and political factors. The author reaches the conclusion that a dynamic entrepreneurial class together with a supportive state were the key elements in Thailand’s rapid and efficient accumulation of production factors. Although in this respect Thailand is similar to a small number of other East Asian countries, the Thai case also has a number of unique characteristics.     

Delivering a national spatial development strategy: a success story?

The Slovenian national planning policy has been in a renewal process since 2014. The process required an evaluation to reveal to which level the defined measures have been delivered and discuss the policy’s future role. The mixed-methods evaluation approach consisted of a document analysis, a questionnaire with local communities and interviews with representatives of the ministries. Implementation of measures depends on multiple factors: capacity, personal priorities of actors, interpretation skills, financial support, political will for co-operation, etc. The potential to mitigate the influence of factors on implementation through a co-evolutionary trend of planning is elaborated in the light of Europeanization.     

William James on a phenomenological psychology of immediate experience: the true foundation for a science of consciousness?

Throughout his career, William James defended personal consciousness. In his "Principles of Psychology" (1890), he declared that psychology is the scientific study of states of consciousness as such and that he intended to presume from the outset that the thinker was the thought. But while writing it, he had been investigating a dynamic psychology of the subconscious, which found a major place in his Gifford Lectures, published as "The Varieties of Religious Experience" in 1902. This was the clearest statement James was able to make before he died with regard to his developing tripartite metaphysics of pragmatism, pluralism and radical empiricism, which essentially asked "Is a science of consciousness actually possible?" James's lineage in this regard, was inherited from an intuitive psychology of character formation that had been cast within a context of spiritual self-realization by the Swedenborgians and Transcendentalists of New England. Chief among these was his father, Henry James, Sr., and his godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson. However, james was forced to square these ideas with the more rigorous scientific dictates of his day, which have endured to the present. As such, his ideas remain alive and vibrant, particularly among those arguing for the fusion of phenomenology, embodiment and cognitive neuroscience in the renewed search for a science of consciousness.     

The Ciempozuelos Necropolis skull: a case of double trepanation?

The focus of this study is the analysis of a trepanation performed on the skull of an adult male from the famous Bell Beaker necropolis of Ciempozuelos (Madrid) excavated at the end of the 19^th century. The unusual characteristics of the pottery and other associated grave goods gave rise to the use of the name ‘Ciempozuelos’ to define the regional Bell Beaker style; this refers to similar finds from other sites on the Meseta of central Spain. Although trepanations from Chalcolithic contexts in the Iberian peninsula are not infrequent, they are unusual in Bell Beaker inhumations. Furthermore, this skull is exceptional not only for the type of trepanation performed, but also for the subsequent cranial deformation apparently resulting from the operation, as well as evidence of a second subsequent trepanation which indicates a very short post‐surgical survival period for the individual. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The rise of Nordic defence cooperation: a return to regionalism?

During the Cold War, Nordic cooperation blossomed and the region's identity was strong, yet defence was left outside the Nordic framework. After the end of the Cold War, Nordic cooperation waned and it was largely replaced by cooperation within the framework of the European Union. During the past couple of years, however, Nordic defence cooperation has been boosted by a number of initiatives and common projects. This article analyses this recent rise of Nordic defence cooperation. In terms of theory, it revolves around the question of how material and identity factors explain security cooperation in today's Europe. During the Cold War, identity was an easy explanation for societal cooperation between the Nordic countries, but geostrategic factors and national interests based on them determined (the lack of) defence cooperation. Even today, Nordic defence cooperation is justified more by cost‐efficiency and geographical proximity than by common identity. This article argues that Nordic identity nevertheless plays an important role in motivating defence cooperation. It is not driven by pure cost‐efficiency or strategic calculation. The role of identity needs to be understood, however, not as a kind of independent force but as part of the political process. Nordic identity explains the rise of the region's defence cooperation in two ways: it facilitates informal cooperation between defence officials at various levels; and it is easy to sell international defence cooperation politically to domestic audiences if it is done in the Nordic context. Yet Nordic cooperation is not seen as contradicting European or NATO cooperation.     

The evolution of the responsibility to protect: at a crossroads?

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), now ten years old, has been widely accepted at the international level. As the books under review demonstrate, debates around its legitimacy are over. Instead, we see a developing second generation of literature focusing on how the R2P needs to be understood more concretely in both academic and policy terms, as well as how it affects the linked issues of humanitarian intervention and state‐building. Within this literature, we see new and important questions emerging. These include how and when we should intervene and whether we can be successful at it; how we can assist states to ensure they fulfill their own responsibilities towards their populations; and where international authority lies. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are hard ones. Implementation, and how it reflects embedded culture at the international level, may be as hard—if not harder—as introducing the doctrine originally.     

The legacy of fascism in the present: ‘third millennium fascists’ in Italy

New political groups directly or indirectly related to the European fascist past are gaining strength and significance in the political arena of the new millennium. Starting from an analysis of CasaPound in Italy, a movement and party whose activists define themselves as ‘third millennium fascists’, this article explores the legacy of fascism in current Italian politics. Analysing CasaPound’s history, political programme and some of the main features of its organization as a community, the article examines the prominent role the fascist legacy plays in structuring this movement, for which history constitutes a source of legitimization and identity formation. Fascism is not traced as something isolated in history, but instead its history is presented as a legitimate legacy with a significant place in Italy’s political landscape.     

The legacy of Atatürk: the limits of conditionality in Turkish European Union membership negotiations

There exists a significant and sustained difference between the ability of the European Union to successfully socialise those member states who have joined since the fall of Communism, and its apparent inability to similarly socialise Turkey. Despite some impressive legal and constitutional reforms since 2001, a key shortcoming remains, the unwillingness of many in the Turkish judiciary to implement those revised standards in a consistent way. Existing explanatory accounts of this inability would focus on the credibility of the Union offer of membership, the duration of negotiations or the importance of Turkish domestic standards. None of these, however, are able to account for why Turkey seems to occupy a half way position, exhibiting reformed laws but unreformed legal practice. To address this shortcoming this article shall combine existing scholarship on the importance of domestic normative contestation within Turkey with an appraisal of the shortcomings of the Union's conditionality policy itself that emerge from the conceptual studies of conditionality.     

Halil İnalcık (1916–2016): a preliminary anatomy of a legacy

Halil Inalcik (1916–2016) was the pre-eminent historian of the Ottoman Empire in the world from his establishment as a published scholar in the 1950s until the time of death. This article is an initial examination of his legacy to the study of Ottoman history broadly. His goal was to create an empirically-based narrative of Ottoman history from beginning to end, based on exploitation of the vast resources of the Ottoman archives as well as the extensive library of Ottoman narrative chronicles, together with non-Ottoman sources. In addition, he invested extensive energies in training several generations of Ottoman historians. Overall, his impact on scholarly and public perceptions of the Ottoman Empire has been unmatched to the present day.     

The World Food Programme: a case of benign US policy?1

The World Food Programme (WFP) is currently the largest and arguably one of the most successful of the United Nations Special Agencies, yet there has been little examination of it by international relations scholars since the early 1990s. This article seeks to analyse the normative and political characteristics of the WFP which have contributed to its effectiveness. Among its most significant findings is that American agricultural interests, interpreted through the prism of domestic political norms, have dovetailed with ‘feed-the-hungry’ norms that are projected and implemented by the WFP, resulting in the strong support of the United States for the WFP. This support undermines the perception, promoted by some critics, that the UN is incapable of acting in ways that are compatible with the national interests of the United States and other significant member-states who inherently pursue ‘national interests’ in institutional environments.     

The Future of WAC: A Fringe or a Popular Professional-Social Network?

In response to Shepherd and Haber??s (Public Archaeology 10(2):96?C115, 2011) article ??What is up With WAC??? I argue that, on the one hand, it is possible to adopt the authors?? new definition of Indigenous with certain modifications that enable it to accept a diverse constellation of responses to dwelling-in-displacement and explain the origin of these inequalities. On the other hand, I argue that WAC is not a reactionary organization of colonial heritage but that it makes great efforts to respond to 21st century postcolonial archaeology.     

The sinking of the Mary Rose warship: a medieval mystery solved?

The cause of the sinking of Henry VIII's Vice Flagship, the Mary Rose, as she sailed out to meet the French fleet on 19th July AD 1545, has remained an enduring mystery and contested encounter between the English and French Navies. The French claim was that the ship was holed by French cannon fire, whilst the English maintained that she sank due to a poorly executed navigational manoeuvre during the engagement. On the day of the sinking there was a total listed crew complement of 415 men onboard. Minimum number analysis of the commingled human assemblage identified only 179, from which we sampled 18 individuals from differing decks within the ship. We measured δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N in bone collagen, and δ¹⁸O and δ¹³C in enamel apatite of these individuals in order to obtain information about their diets and origins. While the collagen δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N data are similar to other medieval populations, the δ¹⁸O data indicate that a significant proportion of the crew did not originate in Britain, but rather they emanated from warmer, more southerly, regions. These data suggest the presence of 33–60% of non-natives, possibly mercenaries and/or ‘prest’ men, amongst the crew. Together with the contemporary remark shouted from the Mary Rose to a passing ship, that the Captain had the “type of knaves of whom, he could not rule”, our results lend weight to the suggestion that poor communication may well have contributed the observed fatal navigational manoeuvre which led to her sinking.     

William Shakespeare’s New Place: investing in,or inheriting a legacy?

SUMMARY: New Place is the name of the house that William Shakespeare purchased in 1597 and the place in which he died in 1616. The house was constructed in Stratford-upon-Avon over a century previously but had disappeared by 1759, leaving only an empty gap in the street frontage. How much time Shakespeare spent there has long been debated, but recent excavation and analysis of the surviving evidence has led to the notion that New Place was carefully chosen by Shakespeare to be his primary residence and the place to live with his family and compose much of his later writing. The importance of Hugh Clopton, the former owner and builder of New Place, and the welcome associations that his name brought to the property, is also debated here. Shakespeare’s motives, his pursuit of status, desire for investment and obligation to his family are all explored through the use of archaeological data and the historical evidence for the house.     

Desiring Sameness? The Rise of a Neoliberal Politics of Normalisation

Since the 1990s the dominant political discourse of social movements concerned with "sexual politics" has been that of seeking access into mainstream culture through demanding equal rights of citizenship. I focus on the changing politics of sexuality in the context of new forms of social governance associated with neoliberalism, central to which is professionalisation and particular forms of knowledge production. Changes in political organising, coupled with the growth in identity‐based consumption and the greater visibility of lesbians and gay men as consumer citizens, have provided a variety of opportunities for new professional careers. I discuss these developments and suggest that a key aspect of this increase in professionalisation is the construction of the gay and lesbian subject as part of a national and, in some instances, an international constituency. Finally, I consider how, in recent years, new forms of professionalisation of knowledge production about lesbians and gay men have emerged, not only in terms of political and market interests, but also in the academy.     

‘The realities of power’: David Stoll and the story of the 1982 Guatemalan genocide

ABSTRACT

In a short opinion piece published in late 2013, anthropologist David Stoll claimed that genocide did not occur in Guatemala under the military dictatorship of José Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–83), that the charges against the former general and his subsequent conviction were unsubstantiated, and that human rights conditions for the country’s Indigenous peoples, including the Ixil population of northern Quiché department, actually improved under his government. By looking at the definition of protected groups under the United Nations Genocide Convention, and such basic notions as perpetrator motives and intent in international humanitarian law, this article will address Stoll’s latest contribution to a ‘counter-narrative by Guatemalans who perceive that their side of the story [was] left out’ of the 2013 genocide trial.