Search results

A review essay on a book by Lenka A. Rovna, Kdo vladne Britanii? ([Who Governs Great Britain?] Prague, Czech Republic: Sociologicke nakladatelstvi, 2004). References.

The article deals with district level electoral competition in Canada & Great Britain. Analyzing fragmentation, degree of competition & district heterogeneity of party support, using a calibrated set of research tools (Laakso-Taagepera's N, graphical methods, second-first loser ratio (SFLR) & Gini index as measure of heterogeneity), we argue that in respect to the Duvergerian agenda, Great Britain & Canada now represent proximate (and not -- as before -- distal) cases. This convergence has been accompanied by the departure of both electoral arenas from the former status quo in at least one of the dimensions under observation. We briefly discuss possible reasons for that departure, mostly exogenous of electoral rules, stressing their increasing importance for the Duvergerian agenda in general. Adapted from the source document.

The article outlines the main theoretical models of nuclear proliferation and the motives that are driving states to obtain nuclear weapons. It also focuses on theoretical concepts dealing with variants and alternatives of the future fate of nuclear arsenals and roles played by nuclear weapons. Attention is also paid to the roles of nuclear weapons in the past views of Great Britain and France. The article analyses their motives for joining the nuclear club and also the reasons that led them to keep their nuclear arsenals in the second nuclear age. The authors conclude that these two countries were driven to cross the nuclear threshold not just by security motives, but by other motives as well. Because of the fact that some such motives remain relevant even today, it is rather unlikely to presume that the two states would be willing to abolish their nuclear arsenals in the foreseeable future. Adapted from the source document.

This paper deals with the issue of building Wales as a unique region in the context of the European Union and its resources. The author focuses on the period after 1999, i.e. the time when devolution took place and when official Welsh representatives emerged via the National Assembly for Wales (NAW). Since then, Wales has entered into cooperation with the EU, in order to gain access to resources provided by the Union. The cooperation is however of a specific kind, since officially, Welsh representatives have to communicate with the EU through the political representation of Great Britain. Nevertheless, by acting informally, Welsh representatives manage to avoid the British government in relevant contexts and communicate with the EU directly. In this way, they are able to exploit the formal and informal rules for their advantage (i.e. for building Wales as a unique region). The main purpose of this text is to show that the case of Wales can be replicated by any region that has official political representation, even if it has only weak representative institutions and has to deal with limitations posed by the existence of a central government.

The article investigates the practice of female marriages in 19th century Great Britain and United States and argues that female marriages provided model for more progressive forms of the legal marriage between men and women. Unlike homosexuality in the 20th century, the same-sex relationships between women in the 19th century often enjoyed social recognition and some women in female marriages occupied prominent social positions. Because they were considered to rest on contract, female marriages served as inspiration for the contractual view of marriage advocated by many supporters of the Victorian marriage reform. The contribution of women in female couples to the success of the marriage reform was further underlined by their belonging to influential social networks. The author also argues that while the structuralist anthropology of mid-20th century, represented through the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, had limited understanding of homosexuality as a socially legitimate phenomenon, the Victorian anthropology of the second half of the 19th century was relatively more open regarding the same-sex relationships. It is contended that authors as diverse as Henry Maine, Johann Bachofen, or Frederick Engels provided impulses in their work both for a positive evaluation of the same-sex relationships and for a more egalitarian understanding of marriage.

This study is based on a comparative analysis of political elites' circulation in six countries -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Finland, the Netherlands & Great Britain during the 1993-2003 period. For the purposes of the comparison, in each case study the members of parliament or the lower chamber are chosen as a representative sample of the political elites. The comparative analysis assesses the correctness of the following hypothesis: The type of elites & their circulation is interrelated with the type of political system. The study is methodologically based on the modern theory of elites & its hypothesis that every type of political system is tightly connected with the type of political elites that exist within it, & that every type of political elites can be distinguished by a specific type of circulation. Thus, by measuring the circulation of political elites we can infer the type of political elites & even the type of political regime. This study assesses the circulation of parliamentary representatives in the six selected countries during the 1993-2003 period & finds out that in the Central European states the figures are clearly distinctive from the respective figures in the Western European states, thus confirming the original hypothesis. Tables, Graphs, References. Adapted from the source document.

"In recent years, sociology in Britain -and in national contexts influenced by British sociology- has been diagnosed by various parties as suffering from a wide range of ailments. These forms of selfcriticism become ever more acute in terms of their potential effects as huge transformations in university funding regimes are brought to bear on the social sciences. But none of these critiques engages satisfactorily with what is a much more foundational and serious set of problems, namely the very nature of sociology itself as a historically-situated form of knowledge production. Sociology claims to know the world around it, but in Britain today much sociology seriously fails in this regard, because it operates with radically curtailed understandings of the long-term historical forces which made the social conditions it purports to analyse. A sophisticated understanding of the contemporary world is made possible only by an equally sophisticated understanding of very long-term historical processes, precisely the sort of vision that mainstream British sociology has lacked for at least the last two decades. This paper identifies the reasons for the development of this situation and the consequences it has for the nature of sociology's knowledge production, for its self-understanding, for its claims to comprehend the contemporary world, and for its apparent social "usefulness". A markedly more selfaware and historically-sensitive sociology is proposed as the answer to the pressing question of what aspects of sociology should be defended in the turbulent context of British higher education today." (author's abstract)

Due to the different and mutually incompatible interpretations of Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, there is still an ongoing dispute between the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Spain on the question of the sovereignty of Gibraltar. In the United Kingdom's view, which is largely shared by legal scholars, Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht grants full and entire sovereignty over Gibraltar to the UK. Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Spain argues that Article X yielded to the crown of Great Britain only the property of Gibraltar's castle, town and port. Sovereignty over Gibraltar, however, continued to be retained by the Spanish state. In spite of their disagreement, both states started negotiating a form of condominium at the beginning of the 21st century. In the end, they failed to achieve this goal, which seems to be incompatible with the UN General Assembly resolutions on the decolonization of Gibraltar. The people of Gibraltar, who are the third actor in the Spanish-British dispute, claim their own sovereignty and their right to self-determination. However, according to the UN General Assembly, the decolonization of Gibraltar requires as a precondition that the Kingdom of Spain and the UK solve their dispute on the question of sovereignty. Otherwise the decolonization of Gibraltar cannot occur. Both the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Spain are European Union members but their inter-state dispute under international law cannot be solved within the EU context. Thus, three hundred years after the signature of the Treaty of Utrecht, the future of Gibraltar remains completely unclear. Adapted from the source document.

"This study deals with historic cultural contacts between Europeans and the Benin Empire, one of the most significant native African cultural centres between the 15th and the 17th century. The study focuses particularly on the development of the Benin Empire on the background of acculturation and diffusion of European cultural elements and complexes. The study describes the first contacts between Europeans and the Benin Empire and the subsequent business activities, including slave trade. Special attention is paid to European colonial expansion that culminated in the 1897 British invasion which led to the conquest of the Benin City. The aim of the study is to draw attention to the role of the exogenous cultural change and acculturation processes, which caused the fall of once a socially, economically, politically and culturally stable African empire." (author's abstract)