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The Eastern Pact on Mutual Assistance (called at the beginning 'Eastern Locarno') was a Franco-Soviet initiative which drew much attention of politicians and public opinion in Europe in 1934. It was a proposal to be implemented into the collective security system. The article addresses the following questions: What was the main aim of British diplomacy in European affairs in 1934? Was London interested in the idea of an Eastern Pact on Mutual Assistance? Did the British diplomats see any profit for their country's security in a Franco-Soviet proposal? Were they active in European diplomatic relations in the case of the Eastern Pact and if so to what extent? How did they understand collective security in East Central Europe? And how did they assess attitudes and motivations of the proposed signatories of this new coalition of states?

Since the Central African Republic (CAR) gained independence from France in 1960 it has faced deep social, economic and political crises. The country has witnessed 10 military coup attempts between 2005 and 2015, which have aggravated political and economic development of the CAR. The most recent by leader of the Seleka coalition group, Michel Djotodia, against the government of Bozize in March 2013 that saw hundreds of thousands displaced and thousands killed. Although the violence in the CAR partially polarized Muslims and Christians, we argue in this paper that the driver of the conflict in the CAR is more a struggle for power among political elite. The aim is to explain the main motivations behind the political crisis and the changing dynamics of the violent conflict in the CAR.

The Eastern Pact on Mutual Assistance (called at the beginning 'Eastern Locarno') was a Franco-Soviet initiative which drew much attention of politicians and public opinion in Europe in 1934. It was a proposal to be implemented into the collective security system. The article addresses the following questions: What was the main aim of British diplomacy in European affairs in 1934? Was London interested in the idea of an Eastern Pact on Mutual Assistance? Did the British diplomats see any profit for their country's security in a Franco-Soviet proposal? Were they active in European diplomatic relations in the case of the Eastern Pact and if so to what extent? How did they understand collective security in East Central Europe? And how did they assess attitudes and motivations of the proposed signatories of this new coalition of states?

This article describes the failure of issue management communication in resolving an enduring pollution crisis stretching over two decades in South Africa's South Durban Industrial Basin (SDIB). A crisis of responsibility has arisen from a postmodern, neoliberal order. Concerns of residents are overridden in favour of nationally significant economic growth objectives. As a result "local" issues are communicated by global coalitions seeking environmental justice through modernist notions of "science" communicated in a postmodern, global context. The lack of public confi dence, trust and the unmet expectations of participation in the environmental decision-making of government agencies and corporations is revealed. Local mobilisations look to broader spaces of engagement, including international activist organisations and international media as the unresolved crisis is deepened by state coercion and industry intransigence.

This paper aims to specify the meaning of gentrification in rapidly peri-urbanising metropolitan regions in the context of Indonesia's rapid transition to decentralisation and democracy. It discusses a case study of conflict over an environmental revitalisation project in a peri-urban area of Bandung City. The analysis focuses on the political processes, tactics and strategies supporting and opposing peri-urban gentrification and their consequences. The analysis illustrates how these political dynamics mediate the interaction between the movement of capital and the spatial reorganisation of social classes. It is argued that in the context of a peri-urbanising metropolis, gentrification needs to be narrated less in terms of class-based neighbourhood succession and more in terms of competing cross-class coalitions emerging at local and regional levels.

Part 4: Digital Equity ; International audience ; We focus on the discussion about the proposal of shifting to a post paid mobile Internet tariff model based on usage, and its impact on universal use and service access for the poor sectors of the country. This proposal aims to address the problem of cellular data network saturation, by charging per downloaded kilobyte instead of allowing unlimited use. We analyze the position of important actors using the Advocacy Coalition Framework. The study reveals the absence of public policies on IT connectivity and infrastructure in Costa Rica. Based on the results, we conclude that the proposed change does not solve the saturation problem, but rather imposes limitations on access and usage for low-income people, generating social exclusion and digital divide.

Energy issues should have provided clear political lessons to governments over the past fifteen years, especially the United States, which twice led coalitions to battle in the Middle East over matters in which oil played a significant role. It was also a period when revenues from oil and the symbolic ties between the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and Washington, became central to the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. Even in the domestic arena energy should have been front and centre, providing lessons for the future. For in the USA there were periodic spikes in gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and electricity prices, major power disruptions on both coasts and frequent public debates over LNG imports, environmental regulations, and resource exploitation on government lands, among other issues.

Governments often provide their citizens with goods and services that are also supplied in markets: education, housing, nutritional assistance, etc. We analyze the political economy of the public provision of private goods when individuals care about their social image. We show that image concerns motivate richer individuals to vote for the public provision of goods they themselves buy in markets, the reason being that a higher provision level attracts more individuals to the public system, enhancing the social exclusivity of market purchases. In effect, majority voting may lead to a public provision that only a minority of citizens use. Users in the public system may enjoy better provision than users in the private system. We characterize the coalition structures across voters that can prevail in a political equilibrium.

The last election in the Slovak and Czech Republic was special. It not only took place before the official electoral period (pre-elections), but new political parties were "again" successful. The article focuses not only on both elections in the last two years in a comparative perspective, but it analyses the opportunity structure of success as well, including types of new political parties (according to Lucardie). The article seeks to answer the question: why are new political parties electorally successful, able to break into parliament and even become part of a coalition government? We assume that the emergence and success of new political parties in both countries relied on the ability to promote "old" ideas in a new fashion, colloquially referred to as "new suits" or "old" ideological flows in new breeze.

We analyze and compare three separate efforts to code bias in Malaysia's media and find strong empirical evidence of an ongoing and profound progovernment bias in coverage. We also find, however, significant variation in bias between different types of news outlets. While Malay and Anglophone sources tended to be strongly progovernment, Chinese-language and online outlets were far more impartial. We demonstrate that both the general bias and the variation in it are largely the result of two factors: (1) government censorship and (2) ownership structures that link many major outlets to the ruling coalition. These findings provide a detailed view of the struggle for media independence in a less-than-democratic regime and supply insight into media bias across both authoritarian and democratic regimes in Asia, as well as outside it.

Depuis plus d'un an, l'« État islamique » fait la une de l'actualité pour ses avancées territoriales et sa mise en scène de l'horreur. Mais au-delà de ces aspects, l'organisation du calife auto-proclamé Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi comprend une dimension civile d'où il tire sa légitimité. L'administration des territoires sous son contrôle passe par une exploitation des ressources naturelles et humaines dont regorgent les territoires syrien et irakien. Les revenus que le groupe en tire lui permettent de financer ses opérations militaires et son embryon d'État. Un an après le début des bombardements d'une coalition emmenée par les États-Unis, l'« État islamique » a montré une capacité étonnante d'adaptation et de flexibilité. Une meilleure compréhension du groupe djihadiste est aujourd'hui nécessaire pour l'ensemble des acteurs œuvrant à sa disparition.

The practice of live tweeting while following a television programme is quickly becoming a widespread phenomenon. However, in Italy, commenting on a political debate via social media is a novelty. This article presents the first exemplary case study in an Italian context, the 'Italia bene comune' debate, hosted by SkyTg24 on 12 November 2012. This debate focused on elections to designate a candidate to lead the government from the centre-left coalition. The findings indicate the new hybridisation of media: television's centrality is confirmed regarding its domination in the public space in which political discussion occurs, and the web demonstrates its own capacity for an active role in an event central to Italian politics. The new element was the active participation of a vocal minority who commented online as the media event unfolded live on television.

John Kannankulam and Fabian Georgi show, that the dominant authoritarian neoliberal fraction of the german Federal Government made a change of course in summer 2012. It quits with some ordoliberal principles and stops resistance against the mutualization of debt and expansive monetary policy. The alliance of a national-conservative and an ordoliberal fraction broke up. The contradiction within the (neo-)liberals and conservatives result in a foundation of a new right-wing party, the AfD, Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany). Anyway new conflicts arise and the Great Coalition of Merkel's CDU and the Social Democrats hold on its hard-line (against greece): austerity. John Kannankulam and Fabian Georgi reconstruct the dynamics on the basis of four phases in which the authoritarian-neoliberal fraction prevail.

AbstractThe global financial crisis of 2007 turned into a sovereign debt crisis that placed the economies within the EU in jeopardy. Despite hastily decided rescue packages, bailouts and far‐reaching reforms of economic governance in the EU the situation still looks grim in some Southern member states. In the course of these rescue attempts technocratic decision making at the European level and within the most crisis‐ridden countries became more influential. Instead of rethinking the economic system, political accountability shifted from citizens to markets in order to 'fix the system'. The knowledge base informing political decision making remained largely intact, allowing a dominant, international advocacy coalition to impose reforms deemed 'necessary'. The price to pay is a decline in trust in elected representatives and the threat to fall back behind even Schumpeterian‐style democracies.

The article examines the representation of housing risk in contemporary Australian policy discourse through a critical analysis of two policy texts from the recent Victorian Coalition government (2010–2014). Drawing on governmentality theory and contemporary debates on neoliberalism, it examines how these policy texts perpetuate a discourse in which 'housing risk' is primarily understood as an issue for individuals to manage, rather than as an issue with predominantly structural roots. It then explores how this particular neoliberal representation of 'housing risk' supports policy solutions that ultimately responsibilise individuals through a narrow focus on education and employment as the pathways to independence in the private housing market. The article argues that this situation is problematic in a context of increasing rates of homelessness and diminished access to affordable housing across Australia.