The end of the 'Euro-Mediterranean vision'

Relations between the European Union and North Africa have veered away from the political vision expounded under the Barcelona Process. The Union for the Mediterranean will likely deepen this trend. The Euro–Mediterranean space is increasingly characterized by competitive, containment-based and exclusionary security strategies. The more political dimensions of the partnership are now given short shrift and the EU appears inattentive to the dynamics of change within North African societies. Countries such as Spain and the UK have been overly passive in rescuing the Euro-Med vision from French diplomacy and the nature of relations between Europe and North Africa are increasingly out of sync with the changing international system.     

The end of cultural policy?1

ABSTRACT

The article discusses whether we are approaching the end of public cultural policy in Western democracies, because contemporary cultural policy is not adapted to major transformation processes in contemporary societies. I discuss seven different challenges/scenarios that public cultural policy has to confront today: (1) It appears to be very difficult to democratise culture. (2) Public authorities consistently continue to support cultural institutions that may be obsolete. (3) Professional artists are still poor, despite public support schemes. (4) Public cultural policy is still predominantly national, despite the globalisation of cultural production and distribution. (5) Public authorities increasingly justify subsidies to culture with reference to the beneficial effects that art and culture could have outside the cultural field. Therefore, one might argue that other public bodies could take better care of cultural affairs. (6) A specific public cultural sector may appear to ‘imprison’ culture in a bureaucratic ‘iron cage’. (7) Finally, one might argue that a public cultural policy has no sense in a period of stagnating public finances. In addition, I discuss several counterarguments to these challenges, without coming to a definite conclusion. I have based the analysis on available comparative research about the public cultural policies of Western democracies, predominantly Norwegian cultural policy.     

Inequality and American institutions: The end of innocence

Alan Howard. Ain't No Big Thing: Coping Strategies in a Hawaiian‐American Community. An East‐West Center Book. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1974. xxv +311 pp. Tables, figures, bibliography, appendices, references, and index. $10.00.

Donald V. Kurtz. The Politics of a Poverty Habitat. Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1973. xxiv + 243 pp. Figures, tables, appendix, bibliography, and index. $12.50.     

1956 and the PSI: The end of 'ten winters'

The focus of this article is the revisionist course which the Italian Socialist Party embarked upon after 1956 and which led up to the first Centre-Left government. The article challenges two quite well established views. One view is that the transformation experienced by the PSI during the 1956-64 period was simply tactically expedient and devoid of any substance and consistency. This article argues, by contrast, that these years represented, in Alessandro Pizzorno's words, a veritable 'Copernican revolution'. This period of revisionism was as important as the better-known revisionisms elaborated during the same period by other European Socialist parties such as the German SPD or British Labour. The second main argument is that 'structural reformism', the new strategy adopted by the PSI after 1956, was not, as it has often been described, an expression of 'duplicity' owing to the party's incapacity to behave like a genuinely reformist party - a phenomenon that has allegedly long characterized parties of the Left. Instead, the strategy was reflected in the changes to European socialism during the early 1960s. In particular, this period marked a contrast to the previous years which were characterized by the dominance of ideas of 'redistributive' socialism, a ¤ la Anthony Crosland. This period marked also a shift among Socialist parties towards the acceptance of greater state controls over the economy by way of public planning and ownership.     

The end of the West: the once and future Europe

Europe and the United States—the West—urgently need political leadership, economic fortitude and a clear vision of the future if they are to contend with the challenges posed by emerging regional powers and to resist the downward pressures of ‘relative decline’, the central focus of David Marquand's book, The end of the West: the once and future Europe. Central to this goal will be the West's ability to ‘rebalance’ between its institutions and democracy; its power and commitments; and its political and moral authority. Europe must ‘rebalance’ on issues related to ethnicity and identity, governance and authority, and civilization and territory. EU enlargement and its institutional reform processes have exacerbated this imbalance. American foreign policy objectives currently exceed its resources and are hampered by lack of strategic clarity and intellectual vision which keeps the United States from achieving an adaptive leadership model more capable of successfully operating in an increasingly complex and multipolar world. For Europe to become internally healthy and externally productive—both politically and economically—it needs to regain balance between its utopian, institutional objectives and democratic support for its future ambitions and policy course. Strong leadership and a powerful vision of prosperity from the West will be vital to return the transatlantic partnership to global economic and political advantage.     

The end and renewal of ideology in Central Europe and in Hungary

Society has to be understood as a process of fast changes (revolutions) and slow transformations (reformism). This is what has been happening in Central Europe, where the big changes of 1989–1990 were preceded by several small social, political and ideological transformations. When analysing Central European societies, one should also remember that there is an ‘official’ society and a ‘hidden’ society.In addition, the relation of state and civil society is deformed since in most cases the civil sphere is repressed and undeveloped due to the predominance of the ‘official state’. In such societies, you cannot find real hegemony but only dominance, which is practiced by the state not only in the sphere of economy, society and culture, but also in and through ideology.The essence of modern totalitarian society cannot be understood without addressing the permanent existence of unofficial, ‘civil’ ideologies penetrating the ‘hidden’ society at the same time as the ‘official’ ideology. Apart from the slow transformation of ideologies and the crisis of ‘official’ ideology, the strengthening of ‘hidden’ ideology is also required for revolutionary changes. This is how a historically new situation with new ideologies can come into being, in clear contrast to the renewal of old ideologles, which generates a mixture of the old and the new. A look at what happened in Central Europe, but particularly Hungary, should clarify the point.     

Stakeholder engagement with environmental decision support systems: The perspective of end users

Environmental decision support systems (EDSS) are designed to assist natural resource managers and stakeholders to assess problems and select options for change. EDSS that combine community engagement in developing future scenarios with computer‐based land use planning and modelling tools are widely used internationally. However, these EDSS are often not used after the research and development phase. To best understand why the EDSS are not being used in the long term, the end users of the EDSS should be consulted—a perspective that is lacking in the literature. The research reported here presents the perspectives of stakeholders involved in a community climate change adaptation project in western Canada. Evidence from the community suggests that this project was successful in instigating change. However, the EDSS was not used after the project's end. Our findings indicate that, from the end users’ perspective, the project could have had much greater and sustained success had there been ongoing engagement and communication with them, particularly in the form of continued support for the use of EDSS after the development project.