A State Within the State: The Inquisition in Enlightenment Thought

ABSTRACT

Enlightenment thinkers wrote many pages against the Inquisition. In particular, they widely criticized the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions, which they regarded as the epitomes of cruelty and fanaticism. Both inquisitions were established at royal request and remained subjected to the authority of the kings until they were abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, therein the kings nominated the grand inquisitors, who were invested with civil jurisdiction for reasons that were at least as much political as religious. However, Enlightenment writers almost always portrayed the Inquisition as the ultimate example of the many ills derived from clerical authority, ecclesiastical autonomy and monastic despotism. Kings and civil magistrates were, in fact, usually depicted as victims of inquisitorial power. This common portrayal of the Inquisition reveals that the Enlightenment idea of toleration was essentially constructed for reducing the power of churches to disturb public peace and challenge civil authority. Thus, this idea of toleration was in effect less capable of denouncing political intolerance, let alone of promoting the separation of church and state.     

Policy governance from an autopoietic perspective: revisiting Hungary’s regionalization experience

This perspective on Hungary’s post-socialist regional policy governance is informed by an approach that relates region-building and regional governance to social autopoiesis and the self-referential and self-(re)producing nature of social systems such as states. Following debates in regional studies that reflect tensions between the local constitution and external determination of regional governance, we will demonstrate how Hungary has incorporated European Union (EU) policy frameworks through specific appropriations of territorial politics and regional ideas. These appropriations reflect Hungary’s post-socialist transformation not only in terms of responses to global forces, but also as specific spatial practices and regionalization experiences. As we argue, this has in effect resulted in a regionalism without regions – a strategy of Europeanizing territorial politics without creating institutional structures that directly challenge existing power relations. Autopoiesis thus helps explain the resilience of social systems, not only their resistance to institutional change but also their capability to ‘domesticate’ external influences. While criticisms of Hungary’s technocratic and post-political regionalization projects cannot be ignored, our analysis indicates why externally driven intervention in self-organizing governance processes, for example through EU conditionality, has had less impact than expected.     

How much does urban location matter for growth?

This paper analyses the effect of location characteristics on urban growth using regression cubic splines. Our empirical analysis shows that in Spain, differences in accessibility to major urban centres and geographic isolation help explain differences in population growth rates across municipalities between 2001 and 2014. Moreover, even though physical proximity to large cities is usually assumed to be closely related to the attractiveness of a municipality, we found that urban population growth is even more related to the joint effect of distance to major centres and agglomeration. In this respect, there seems to be a threshold from which agglomeration diseconomies come into play such that a greater proximity to major cities and/or being localized within a more densely populated area goes against local growth.     

The political impact of the European Capital of Culture: ‘Maribor 2012 gave us the power to change the regime’

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) is a cultural political initiative of the European Union and is perceived as one of the most prestigious events in the community. Existing studies have neglected the political effects of hosting ECoC in terms of engendering regime change in host cities. The present study therefore tries to fill this gap and demonstrates how the cultural policy of Maribor 2012, including its implementation, impacted on local citizens’ communication and political activities and contributed to regime change in the city at the end of the cultural year. The paper employed document analysis, participant observation of all the main processes of ECoC Maribor 2012 and in-depth interviews with management, programme organisers, cultural operators and participants. It shows that through the empowerment of local citizens by means of bottom-up initiatives in the effective planning and implementation of ECoC, they challenged the regime and neoliberal system of Maribor.     

El codescubridor Juan Niño y el puerto de San Juan en el marco de la marinería andaluza y de los viajes de Colón

Este trabajo de investigación ofrece resultados inéditos en relación con Juan Niño —maestre y propietario de la carabela Niña— que colaboró de forma relevante con Cristóbal Colón en la preparación de la armada en 1492 y en su primera travesía oceánica a tierras americanas. Asimismo, desvela el lugar concreto de vecindad y de residencia de este marino en el puerto de San Juan (Huelva, España) mediante documentación contrastada, así como el periodo en el que se produjo su fallecimiento permitiendo aclarar especulaciones historiográficas que ofrecían determinados datos erróneos sobre su trayectoria vital después del descubrimiento de América. Por último, aporta datos indicativos sobre el estatus socioeconómico y el nivel de rentas disfrutado por el codescubridor de América y por su familia.