Political Models and Political Transfer in the Shaping of Europe

This essays deals with the problem of reconstructing the ideological roots which made possible the phenomenon of political transfer in different European countries. The basis is obviously the dominance of the ‘British Model’ as the normal reference for the European Political Sciences. Even the opponents of such hegemony took it as the unavoidable polemic goal. This founded a sort of political ‘homogeneity’ that let live many different approaches and many national peculiarities, but in the end convinced the majority of European political scientists that some type of representative constitution had to be accepted. It was at the beginning of the twentieth century that the panorama changed. Elie Halévy's work on one side, discussing the sunset of the ‘British model’ in Britain itself, and on the other Max Weber's reflections on what he defined as ‘the community of destinies’ interpret a turning point in the approach of European political sciences to the possibilities of transferring political models.     

Sustainable Water Management Policy: Lessons from Amsterdam

This article focuses on the identification of critical water policy instruments, and opportunities and barriers to transforming urban water use in a sustainable and efficient direction in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The main lessons that can be inferred from past and current water policies and management practices in Amsterdam show (1) the relevance of common action for increasing the quality of or general control over water resources when shared interests of different actors using the same water resource are present; (2) that the effectiveness and applicability of water policy instruments are strongly conditional upon receiving the support of both water users and suppliers; (3) that the governance structure of water provision plays a crucial role in increasing the efficiency of water use.     

Building Barricades: the Political Transfer of a Contentious Roadblock

This article traces the origins of the barricade as one of the most widespread and powerful political symbols of the international socialist labour movement. As a practical instrument of urban revolt barricades have a long history that seems indissolubly linked with Paris. The Paris Commune of 1871 marked the end of an ‘Age of Revolution’ in France. At the same time, however, the Commune constituted a crucial factor for the international transfer of the barricade as a political symbol that would be used and understood by socialists and their opponents worldwide. Socialist international remembrance and veneration of the Paris Commune became the key factor in the international dissemination of the barricade, not only as a symbol but also as an instrument of battle. The mythical representations of the Parisian barricades, in images, in speeches by party officials, in political literature and poetry, informed urban rioters in places were the barricade hitherto had been an unknown phenomenon.     

Mary McLeod Bethune's Feminism: Black Women as Citizens of the World

This article focuses on the particular moment of the 1945 United Nations charter meeting as a catalyst for a shift in Mary McLeod Bethune's feminist thought. The meeting, where Bethune served as the only African American female delegate, signalled a change in Bethune's thinking about equality for black women, so she used the founding of the United Nations as a platform to promote black women's alliances with other women of colour. Her idea was to reframe black women as citizens of the world, thus putting them in a numerical and ideological majority rather than keeping them in a minority position. Bethune has often been viewed as a reformer of race and gender issues in the early twentieth century, but a focus on her activism has hidden the intellectual contributions that she made to a form of black feminism that emerged out of her work with other clubwomen and through the United Nations in the 1920s through the 1950s. Specifically, this article argues that Bethune's intellectual work created a framework for African American women's feminism that emphasised anti-colonialism and their global alliance with other women of colour throughout the world.     

Idols and Grace: Re-envisioning Political Liberalism as Political Limitism

Abstract

An Augustinian analysis of the current version of political liberalism which is increasingly dominating Western politics recognizes it as idolatrous. Nonetheless, because of the parasitic nature of evil, idolatrous human politics may be sustained by God's grace as God gives people time to respond to God and to re-order their disordered loves in relation to Godself, the supreme good. The express recognition of this function of politics enables the advocacy of political limitism, a re-thinking of political liberalism in the light of eternity, which recognizes that politics has only a limited role to play in securing human goods and that the earthly polis is not the most important society.     

Feminism from the Margin: Challenging the Paris/Banlieues Divide

This paper aims to cast light on specifically French constructions of gender, citizenship and nationhood and articulate two bodies of work, one dealing with political mobilizations of racialized minorities in the French context, and the other dealing with gender concerns in urban policy. Emerging social movements in the urban area of Paris are having to take position in a context in which a normative “state feminism” is being used to stigmatize working‐class neighbourhoods in the banlieues as well as their male inhabitants. This paper considers the “double bind” in which feminist activists, and women more generally, find themselves as a result. It argues that some formerly silenced groups are being granted space for expression by the current foregrounding of “women” in urban policy. Drawing on bell hooks' insights on the margin/centre tension in feminist theory as a useful way of thinking about the spatial dimension of these issues, the paper looks at one group in particular that defines itself and its strategies in spatial terms.     

Rhetoric from Brussels and reality on the ground: the EU and security in Africa

This article overviews the development of African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) to date and examines EU involvement in this. The European Union is the major financial partner in both military and non‐military assistance to the African Union (AU). Europe has shifted from being a major UN troop contributor towards the funding of African‐led peace operations, as well as the emergence of time‐limited, high‐impact, missions. With the exception of Somalia, these ESDP operations have provided little direct security benefit to Europe and their success has been limited. They have provided experimentation opportunities of ESDP capabilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad and Guinea Bissau. Events in the eastern Congo in late 2008 demonstrate that the EU needs to consider carefully when it intervenes militarily in Africa: non‐intervention and coordinated bilateral diplomatic efforts by EU member states can be more effective.     

Technology Transfer from University to Industry

The present national technology transfer policy suffers from the limited focus on structural barriers, as well as the reluctance of American business to invest in precommercial research and development. A growing consensus from the national debate suggests that policy attention be reoriented, thereby giving a greater emphasis to precommercial technology development (TD) research. This paper examines whether the nation's research-intensive universities, a reservoir of virtually unlimited scientific and technological resources, can possibly go beyond basic research and produce economically viable technology efficiently. To this end, the paper introduces key principles that help organize TD research within the research-intensive university. It also presents the results of a large-scale TD experiment being carried out by a research-intensive university under federal sponsorship. The midterm result strongly indicates that with modest financial support and some internal cultural adjustment, research-intensive universities can break through their ideological barriers and efficiently translate new scientific advances into commercially viable, cutting-edge technology. This is possible because, among other factors, the research-intensive university can build on its awn comparative advantage of strong fundamental research.     

Political change in the Arab oil monarchies: from liberalization to enfranchisement

The oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf region have typically been portrayed as patriarchal autocracies characterized by traditional tribal rule that have taken on the characteristics of a modern state. The historical debate on these rentier states has centred on how their substantial oil income since the 1970s has allowed them to pacify their citizenry from making demands for enfranchisement. Power was thus firmly able to rest with the elites. Since the end of the Cold War, winds of change flamed the desire for reform and the late 1990s saw significant political changes. The empirical data indicates that this pace has increased, albeit at differential speeds, within the context of the post‐9/11 war on terror. Interestingly, this has been the case despite turmoil in Iraq and a shift to the right in Iranian politics. The fundamental drivers of reform in the Arab oil monarchies continue to be the ruling elites themselves, however. The character of the reforms does appear to be mainly liberalizing rather than democratizing, but developments in some oil monarchies suggest that this process can be viewed as an early or intermediate stage of a wider enfranchisement of civil society.     

Ni Putes ni Soumises: A Republican Feminism from the Quartiers Sensibles

This article examines the activist movement Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS), whose féminisme d'urgence offers a powerful reformist voice which articulates contemporary feminism with traditional Republicanism. NPNS map the quartiers sensibles as male-dominated spaces which have deteriorated since the 1980s. They do so because they campaign against the abuse of women, mainly sexual violence. We examine their claims, and rely on the few statistics available. We then outline the key ideas which inform NPNS's strategies of resistance to sexual abuse: thus, a second section focuses on victim support. Thirdly, we discuss NPNS's interventions in schools. These preventative measures nurture core values of French citizenship while stressing the need for the sexes to learn to respect each other and live together in harmony (mixité). We also examine NPNS's contentious stance on the voile musulman and laïcité. We note that the radicalism of NPNS reveals paradoxical tensions (in particular with regard to laïcité ) which are at the core of French politics, and is open to accusations of instrumentalisation.     

Feminism,Pacifism and Political Violence in Europe and China in the Era of the World Wars

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.     

Political Obstacles to Decentralization: Evidence from Argentina and the Philippines

Decentralization has swept across the developing world in recent years. Although the speed and scope of the shift toward more decentralized practices is striking, decentralization is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Rather, it faces enormous political obstacles and can be subject to serious setbacks. This article accounts for attempts by national politicians to thwart decentralization in two countries that recently adopted some of the most significant decentralizing changes in their respective regions: Argentina and the Philippines. Based on fieldwork in each country, it suggests that even after the political decision to decentralize has been made, national politicians may face deep‐seated incentives to preserve centralized control over fiscal policy. In Argentina, President Carlos Menem partially reversed the previous decentralization of revenue because fiscally‐independent provincial governors were a challenge to his political interests and capabilities. In the Philippines, legislators attempted to reverse and then circumvent decentralization since it threatened their status as brokers claiming personal credit for negotiating fiscal transfers from the centre. The article identifies an intermediate outcome in both countries, according to which decentralizing policies are neither entirely reversed nor implemented as initially designed.     

Private Citizens as Policy Entrepreneurs: Evidence from Autism Mandates and Parental Political Mobilization

Growing bodies of research in the social sciences point to politicians, bureaucratic officials, interest groups, and other actors who serve as policy entrepreneurs. In this paper, we argue that private citizens can also serve a primary role as policy entrepreneurs. To analyze this phenomenon, we investigate the behavior of private citizens and their role in changing state policies surrounding insurance mandates for autism coverage. Using a thematic analysis of focus groups and interviews conducted with individuals active in the push for autism policy change, we demonstrate that private citizens meet all of the requirements identified for policy entrepreneurs in the existing literature. We then investigate when, why, and how these private citizens step forward into the policy process as entrepreneurs. We show that entrepreneurship occurs when private citizens have needed resources, a sense of duty to fix a policy status quo they see as unjust, and a stake in policy change. We conclude by discussing the importance of our findings to the study of public policy and their generalizability beyond autism policy.