Suchergebnisse

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

"Im Zusammenhang mit der Finanzmarktkrise ist in der Europäischen Union Kritik an der Bereitstellung und Berücksichtigung von Expertise laut geworden. Dabei nimmt die Zahl der auch auf europäischer Ebene agierenden Think Tanks und ThinkTankNetzwerken unterschiedlichen Typs in den letzten Jahren rasant zu. Eine systematische Erfassung der wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung im europäischen Mehrebenen system könnte ein Beitrag zu Transparenz und differenzierter Nutzung solcher Expertise sein." [Autorenreferat]

To expand our theoretical and empirical understanding of mobilization and repression in Latin America, this thesis asks three critical questions. Are economic indicators sufficient predictors of social movement emergence in Latin America? What other factors contribute to large-scale mobilization in Latin America? How do government's respond to large-scale Latin American social movements? Specifically, when, and why do democratic governments choose to employ repression against social movements? Accordingly, I construct a quantitative model to test the correlation between rise in protest and worsened economic conditions. I apply it to a comprehensive dataset of political events in multiple South American countries throughout the first quarter of 2018 and the last quarter of 2021. Then, I turn my attention to Chile specifically, to illustrate how economic indicators alone cannot produce a fully predictive model. I contextualize the most recent "Chile Despertó" movement and situate it within the longer historical process of democratization and social movements in Chile. I argue that Federico M. Rossi's concepts of "repertoire of strategies" and "stock of legacies" fills the gaps in the quantitative data by allowing researchers to analyze how public actions emerge because of both institutional constraints and identity-framing processes. Similarly, the state responds in ways that are consistent with their own institutional and constructed identity. Finally, there is strong evidence that the relationship between social movements and repression is in fact relational and interdependent.

We live in an era of financialization. Since 1980, capital markets have expanded around the world; capital shuttles the global instantaneously. Shareholder concerns drive executive decision making and compensation, while the fluctuations of stock markets are a source of public anxiety. So are the financial scandals that have regularly occurred in recent years: junk bonds in the 1980s; lax accounting and stock manipulation in the early 2000s; and debt securitization today. We also live in an era of rising income inequality and employment risk. The gaps between top and bottom incomes and between top and middle incomes have widened since 1980. Greater risk takes various forms, such as wage and employment volatility and the shift from employers to employees of responsibility for pensions and, in the United States, for health insurance. There is an enormous literature on financial development and another on inequality. But relatively few studies consider the intersection of these phenomena. Standard explanations for rising inequality--skill-biased technological change and trade--account for only 30% of the variation in aggregate inequality. What else matters? We argue here that an omitted factor is financial development. This study explores the relationship between financial markets and labor markets along three dimensions: contemporary, historical, and comparative. For the world's industrialized nations, we find that financial development waxes and wanes in line with top income shares. Since 1980, however, there have been national divergences between financial development--defined here as the economic prominence of equity and credit markets--and inequality. In the U.S. and U.K., there remains a strong positive correlation but in other parts of Europe and in Japan the relationship is weaker. What accounts for swings in financial development and inequality and the relationship between them? Economic growth is one factor. Another is the politics of finance. The model presented here is simple but consistent with the evidence: Upswings in financial development are related to political pressure exerted by elite beneficiaries of financial development. Political objectives include policies that favor financial expansion—and finance-derived earnings--and the shunting of investment gains to top-income brackets. Against financial interests is arrayed a shifting coalition that has included middle-class consumers, farmers, small business, and organized labor, upon which we focus here. When successful, these groups cause a contraction in the economic and political significance of finance, which registers in the distribution of income and wealth. In other words, politics drives the swings in financial development and mediates the finance-labor relationship. Political contests occur not only in the public arena but also within firms. We expand the politics of financial development to include contests over corporate resource allocation through the mechanisms of corporate governance. Corporate governance affects the distribution of a firm's value-added among shareholders, executives, workers, and retained earnings. Here too, organized labor is an important player. In both public and private arenas, labor wields influence via its bargaining and political power and, more recently, via its pension capital. Our historical framework draws from Karl Polanyi's classic study of markets and politics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Polanyi challenged economic liberalism by showing that market expansion in the Western countries was not a natural development; it was embedded in politics and society. He also showed that markets are not self-regulating. Undesirable side-effects--instability, monopoly, externalities--can not be rectified by the market itself. As a result, every market expansion is followed by spontaneous countermovements to "resist the pernicious effects of a market-controlled economy." Polanyi called this the double movement: "the action of two organizing principles in society … economic liberalism, aiming at the establishment of a self-regulating market .[and] the other was the principle of social protection aiming at the conservation of man and nature as well as productive organization." Writing in the early 1940s, Polanyi could not foresee the relevance of his ideas to our present age. Today, laissez-faire ideas, including those relating to financial markets, again are with us as are countermovements to contain the market's failings. The focus of this study is on financial markets in the world's richest nations. Much of the material is based on the American experience, although there are comparisons to Europe and Japan. Part I analyzes the mechanisms that link contemporary financial development to rising inequality and risk. Part II considers the political and ideological bases for post-1980 financial development and corporate governance. The next two parts are historical, focusing on the period from the late nineteenth century though the 1970s: Part III describes financialization and Part IV traces political movements to contain it, emphasizing the contributions of organized labor. Part V takes us back to the present. It considers the efforts of organized labor to re-regulate finance and reshape corporate governance, in part by using its pension capital. 1) IMF, World Economic Outlook: Globalization and Inequality (Washington, DC 2007), 48. 2) Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York 1944): 132.

With this book we present a selection of articles that critically deal with (internationally comparative) large-scale assessments. We acknowledge that studies such as PIAAC are often designed, financed and implemented on the basis of neo-liberal worldviews. Nevertheless, we would like to use the articles that are presented here to show the various ways in which adult and continuing education can benefit and learn from the knowledge that they generate. In PIAAC, for example, there are huge differences between the surveyed variables and the theoretical frameworks on literacies and literacy practices that the New Literacy Studies (NLS) have brought out. This book features eleven articles, which – with the NLS's theoretical considerations and points of criticism in mind – find new and alternative evaluations and interpretations of the data. Not only can they show effects of marginalization on a large scale, but the data can also provide information about mechanisms of power in relation to literacy and basic competencies. (DIPF/Orig.)

The Brexit vote of 23 June 2016 is expected to have a profound impact, not only on Britain itself, but also on the remaining 27 member states of the European Union. This article looks at how the Brexit debate was perceived outside of Britain. Was there a sense of understanding for British concerns or was there rather a focus on maintaining unity in the face of British exceptionalism? Combining insights from European public sphere research and Euroscepticism research, we conduct a qualitative framing analysis of the discourse in leading centre-right newspapers in France, Germany and the Netherlands, as common ground with British Eurosceptics is most likely to be found here. Our analysis shows that initially there was some support for British calls for amending its relationship with the Union, in particular in Germany and the Netherlands. However, as the referendum drew nearer, the discourse shifted towards the need to maintain unity amongst the remaining member states.

Seventeenth-century Korea was a country in crisis--successive invasions by Hideyoshi and the Manchus had rocked the Chosòn dynasty (1392-1910), which already was weakened by maladministration, internecine bureaucratic factionalism, unfair taxation, concentration of wealth, military problems, and other ills. Yu Hyòngwòn (1622-1673, pen name, Pan'gye), a recluse scholar, responded to this time of chaos and uncertainty by writing his modestly titled Pan'gye surok (The Jottings of Pan'gye), a virtual encyclopedia of Confucian statecraft, designed to support his plan for a revived and reformed Korean system of government. Although Yu was ignored in his own time by all but a few admirers and disciples, his ideas became prominent by the mid-eighteenth century as discussions were underway to solve problems in taxation, military service, and commercial activity. Yu has been viewed by Korean and Japanese scholars as a forerunner of modernization, but in Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions James B. Palais challenges this view, demonstrating that Yu was instead an outstanding example of the premodern tradition. Palais uses Yu Hyòngwòn's mammoth, pivotal text to examine the development and shape of the major institutions of Chosòn dynasty Korea. He has included a thorough treatment of the many Chinese classical and historical texts that Yu used as well as the available Korean primary sources and Korean and Japanese secondary scholarship. Palais traces the history of each of Yu's subjects from the beginning of the dynasty and pursues developments through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He stresses both the classical and historical roots of Yu's reform ideas and analyzes the nature and degree of proto-capitalistic changes, such as the use of metallic currency, the introduction of wage labor into the agrarian economy, the development of unregulated commercial activity, and the appearance of industries with more differentiation of labor. Because it contains much comparative material, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions will be of interest to scholars of China and Japan, as well as to Korea specialists. It also has much to say to scholars of agrarian society, slavery, landholding systems, bureaucracy, and developing economies

Since researchers Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw published the seminal work of Chapel Hill on agenda-setting theory (AS) at the beginning of the 1970s, its academics have developed their investigations using two methodological tools: a first phase of content analysis, used to study the news coverage and, therefore, the prominence or salience of certain topics or attributes in the agenda; and a second study of statistical nature, based on the verification of the level of correlation between the issues, their senders or the global of the different agendas. Content analysis has generally focused on the relative or comparative importance of some topics over others. It is assumed that some media or social actors are busier than others in certain topics, which has led to a general study of the relative volume of information, to the detriment of the detailed content analysis. Such differences (or similarities) have been traditionally evaluated from the comparison of the frequencies of their main contents, which, by means of Spearman correlations between the senders, have fostered an analysis on the hierarchical order, disregarding the relative or absolute and, therefore, any other information. In view of this need, and to resolve these procedures when the interest lies in the relative importance of the parts of a whole, the thesis deals with the analysis of Compositional Data (CoDa), founded by Aitchinson in 1982, along with the graphic representation through biplots, promoted by Gabriel in 1971, for the study and mapping of the AS theory. The interest in CoDa lies in the proportion of each part or component, since the absolute quantities are irrelevant and only expose the sample size. A very similar problem in all aspects that is established in the study of the AS, where the absolute data are irrelevant and mostly point to the content, the intent of the content, the popularity of the issuer, etc. In this line, only the proportions of each content category or the relative size of one type of content over another are ...

The role of the ethnic factor in political processes in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia has been rather significant since these countries' independence. The author investigates the assumption that after the completion of major Eurointegration procedures, the ethnic factor -which became especially important in the Baltics after independence- relegated to the periphery of political life. After a period of 'independence-induced euphoria' faded, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian power groups had to tackle the problem of civil society formation and the development of a political regime based on democratic procedures. In these countries the processes of elite recruitment were largely affected by the factor of ethic homogeneity of the social structure. This article analyses the process of elite group formation in the Baltics through the lens of the ethnic factor. By applying the ethnopolitical approach, the author concludes that the de facto barriers to non-titular population groups entering power structures, which exist in Latvia and Estonia, "freeze" the system of elite recruitment. In the conditions of increasing social unrest, it may have an adverse effect on the overall political stability in these countries. The results obtained can be used for research, educational, and practical purposes. In the field of research and education, they can be employed in further research on the transformation of the elite structure in the Baltics in view of the ethnopolitical factor, including comparative analysis of the elite re-grouping processes, as well as in developing corresponding university courses. As to the practical aspect, the results obtained can be used by the authorities of the Russian Federation in making decisions regarding interaction with the representatives of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian political elites.

This thesis addresses the manner in which the European Australian psyche is haunted by questions of origin, place and identity. Structured equally between a written dissertation and a visual practice, the reproduction of the national and individual subject is located around questions of narrative, memory and mimetic identity. The thesis explores these questions through the relationship between contemporary Australian heterosexual masculinity and the historical form of the colonial convict. The figure of the convict is used as a means of deconstructing the contemporary performance of Australian gender and national identity. In this dissertation the critical force of the convict is located around the conflation of the Gothic and the monstrous with the convict form. The contention of this dissertation is that the representation of convict identity and masculinity as monstrous and deviant established a gendered template, which continues to impact upon contemporary Australian masculinity. The process of exploring this relationship is located at the intersection of gender, history, and colonialism. At this juncture a gap in the current research exists between the gendered analyses of convict masculinity on the one hand and the research examining contemporary Australian masculinity on the other. Situated within the vernacular articulation of modernity, the visual practice is a material expression of the ideological properties that navigate within and across the everyday. Working within an interdisciplinary and intermedial approach my thesis draws upon various cultural forms to discuss the spectral fragmentation of the monstrous convict body. This method of critical comparative analysing enables my thesis to foreground the manner in which Australian masculinity continues to be haunted by the fracturing and marginalisation of convict identity. However, the thesis concludes by arguing that the negative significance of difference, located around Australian national identity and contemporary heterosexual masculinity, is ...

This eBook includes revised papers which were initially presented at the conference "2012 EUDO Dissemination Conference: The Euro Crisis and the State of European Democracy", co-funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme, EACEA decision no. 2012-2718/001-001. ; The book is divided in five sections. The first two sections explore the diverse ways in which the institutional system of the European Union has been affected by the unfolding Euro crisis and the efforts to contain that crisis. The contributions look at the impact on the relations between the EU institutions (for example, was there an increase of the power of the intergovernmental institutions?), the innovations in EU decision-making (such as the 'invention' of reverse majority voting in the Council), the experiments with the use of soft law instruments and with greater differentiation (between the EU-27 and sub-groups such as the EURO-17), and the use of international agreements situated outside the EU legal framework, which were used to adopt the Fiscal Compact and the European Stability Mechanism. The third section looks specifically at the prominent but rather secretive and, democratically speaking, somewhat anomalous role played by the European Central Bank in containing the Euro crisis. In the fourth section, the focus of analysis shifts from the European to the national level. The contributions to that section examine political and institutional changes that are taking place at the national level, and the way in which national elites have tried to accommodate the new demands from 'Europe' or to influence the decisions taken in the European arena. The authors of the fifth section present contrasting views on how the crisis has affected the significance of European citizenship and the rights attached to it, as well as the attitudes of European citizens towards the European Union and towards each other. ; Foreword Bruno de Witte, 4 SECTION I: THE IMPACT OF THE EURO CRISIS ON THE EU'S INSTITUTIONAL BALANCE 1. The Eurozone Crisis and the Legitimacy of Differentiated Integration, Thomas Beukers, 7 2. Legal Issues of the 'Fiscal Compact'. Searching for a Mature Democratic Governance of the Euro, Roberto Baratta, 31 3. Contradiction, Circumvention and Conceptual Gymnastics: the Impact of the Adoption of the ESM Treaty on the State of European Democracy, Jonathan Tomkin, 64 SECTION II: AT THE MARGINS OF THE UNION: INSTITUTIONAL EXPERIMENTS IN THE EURO CRISIS 4. Interstitial Institutional Change in Europe: Implications of the Financial and Fiscal Crisis, Adrienne Héritier & Yannis Karagiannis, 83 5. The Outcomes of Intergovernmentalism: the Euro Crisis and the Transformation of the European Union, Sergio Fabbrini, 101 6. Reverse Majority Voting in Comparative Perspective: Implications for Fiscal Governance in the EU, Wim Van Aken & Lionel Artige, 129 7. Unions within the Union: Contested Authority over Regulatory Responses to the Financial Crisis in Europe, Karolina Zurek, 162 SECTION III: THE EURO CRISIS AND THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK 8. The Crisis of the Euro and the New Role of the European Central Bank, Giulio Peroni, 83 9. The Euro Crisis, Institutional Change and Political Constraints, Francisco Torres, 193 10. La prise d'autorité de la Banque centrale européenne et les dangers démocratiques de la nouvelle gouvernance économique dans l'Union européenne, Cécile Barbier, 212 SECTION IV: THE EURO CRISIS AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL 11. The Euro Crisis and New Dimensions of Contestation in National Politics, Alexia Katsanidou, 242 12. Can Fiscal Councils Enhance the Role of National Parliaments in the European Union? A Comparative Analysis, Cristina Fasone & Elena Griglio, 264 13. Governing Portugal in Hard Times: Incumbents, Opposition and International Lenders, Elisabetta De Giorgi, Catherine Moury & João Pedro Ruivo , 306 14. National Fiscal Responses to the Economic Crisis: Domestic Politics and International Organizations, Klaus Armingeon, 329 15. The Discursive Double Game of EMU Reform: the Clash of Titans between French White Knight and German Iron Lady, Amandine Crespy &Vivien Schmidt, 350 SECTION V: EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP IN TIMES OF CRISIS 16. EU Citizenship and Intra EU Mobility: a Virtuous Circle Even in Times of Crisis, Anna Triandafyllidou & Michaela Maroufof , 370 17. Crisis and Trust in the National and European Governmental Institutions, Felix Roth, Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D. & Thomas Otter, 392 18. Crumbling or Coping? European Citizenship in (the) Crisis, Ulrike Liebert, 408

Subject of the final master's thesis is topical, because development and functioning of the common European Union monetary policy is especially important step in European integration, opening the way for final political approach of the member states. Thus a detailed study of this sphere of the European Union politics is necessary striving to cognize possibilities and challenges of the future integration processes. The last expansion in the Euro-area happened on 1 January 2009, when the euro was introduced in Slovakia. A number of the EU member states that use the currency of the European Union increased up to sixteen. Though Estonia still hasn't reached complete integration in the EMU process, yet in May 2010 European Commission officially suggested Estonia to join the Euro-area from 1 January 2011. Objective of the research is to assess Slovakia's and Estonia's economic and legal convergence. Considering the objective of the research and set tasks, stages of development of the Economic and Monetary Union in Europe are covered in the work in theoretical aspect, advantages and disadvantages of participation in the Economic and Monetary Union are highlighted; policy of the European Central Bank and other institutions of the European Union in the process of euro-area expansion is analysed; conformity of Slovakia's and Estonia's macroeconomic indices to criteria of Maastricht convergence and harmonization of the European Union Law and national law of the mentioned countries and estimation of Slovakia's benefits being in euro-area is presented as well as Estonia's preparation to join the Economic and Monetary Union. Performed dynamic analysis of Slovakia and Estonia's inflation, government budget deficit and gross debt, long-term interest rate and national currency stability level as well as analysis of the documents of the European Union, Slovakia and Estonia has revealed that Slovakia's convergence criteria have stabilized just after joining the EU and particular attention was paid to inflation reduction process. In convergence reports of 2008 published by the European Central Bank and European Commission Slovakia satisfied economic convergence criteria at least during the short period, however price stability and fiscal development durability in the long-term perspective remained unvalued. Situation in 2009 is a matter of great concern not only because of the price increase tendencies but also through unreliable management of public finances. Situation in Estonia is a bit different; however stabilisation of convergence criteria is also noticeable after joining the EU. While Slovakia has been trying to stabilize and retain convergence criteria keeping within control limits, Estonian Government spared a lot of attention towards securing stability of public finances, and this is proved by the fact that fiscal surplus and amount of gross debt of the government sector having prevailed during the period 2003 – 2008 haven't exceeded the limit of 8 per cent of GDP. However economic crisis that broke in 2008 caused overheat of Estonian economics. Inflation became uncontrolled and reached 10,6 per cent, deficit of government sector increased, simultaneously increasing the gross debt of the government sector. Thus Estonia's convergence in the long-term perspective is estimated as nondurable through macroeconomic imbalance likely to recur in future. The most important legal standards that required harmonization in Slovakia and Estonia: regulations ignoring objective, functions, independence of the National Bank of Slovakia and the Bank of Estonia. Legal preparation is necessary for smooth introduction of the euro, providing necessary procedures of the introduction of the euro. However there are still certain demerits in the law of the Bank of Estonia related to integration of the Bank of Estonia to the European System of Central Banks with respect of issuance of banknotes and collection of statistical information. Research methodology. A comparative historical method was applied describing origin, development and conception of common monetary politics of the European Union. Analysis of literature and legal documents was applied in order to ascertain the role of the ECB and institutions of the European Union in the process of euro area expansion. A data analysis method was applied in order to establish macroeconomic problems in Slovakia and Estonia. A comparative analysis method was applied while analysing and assessing economic and legal convergence in Slovakia, Estonia and euro area. A generalization method was applied to make clear whether thorough satisfaction of economic convergence criteria and legal standards has been implemented in Estonia; assessment of Slovakia's benefit in euro area is presented, and final conclusions are drawn.

Subject of the final master's thesis is topical, because development and functioning of the common European Union monetary policy is especially important step in European integration, opening the way for final political approach of the member states. Thus a detailed study of this sphere of the European Union politics is necessary striving to cognize possibilities and challenges of the future integration processes. The last expansion in the Euro-area happened on 1 January 2009, when the euro was introduced in Slovakia. A number of the EU member states that use the currency of the European Union increased up to sixteen. Though Estonia still hasn't reached complete integration in the EMU process, yet in May 2010 European Commission officially suggested Estonia to join the Euro-area from 1 January 2011. Objective of the research is to assess Slovakia's and Estonia's economic and legal convergence. Considering the objective of the research and set tasks, stages of development of the Economic and Monetary Union in Europe are covered in the work in theoretical aspect, advantages and disadvantages of participation in the Economic and Monetary Union are highlighted; policy of the European Central Bank and other institutions of the European Union in the process of euro-area expansion is analysed; conformity of Slovakia's and Estonia's macroeconomic indices to criteria of Maastricht convergence and harmonization of the European Union Law and national law of the mentioned countries and estimation of Slovakia's benefits being in euro-area is presented as well as Estonia's preparation to join the Economic and Monetary Union. Performed dynamic analysis of Slovakia and Estonia's inflation, government budget deficit and gross debt, long-term interest rate and national currency stability level as well as analysis of the documents of the European Union, Slovakia and Estonia has revealed that Slovakia's convergence criteria have stabilized just after joining the EU and particular attention was paid to inflation reduction process. In convergence reports of 2008 published by the European Central Bank and European Commission Slovakia satisfied economic convergence criteria at least during the short period, however price stability and fiscal development durability in the long-term perspective remained unvalued. Situation in 2009 is a matter of great concern not only because of the price increase tendencies but also through unreliable management of public finances. Situation in Estonia is a bit different; however stabilisation of convergence criteria is also noticeable after joining the EU. While Slovakia has been trying to stabilize and retain convergence criteria keeping within control limits, Estonian Government spared a lot of attention towards securing stability of public finances, and this is proved by the fact that fiscal surplus and amount of gross debt of the government sector having prevailed during the period 2003 – 2008 haven't exceeded the limit of 8 per cent of GDP. However economic crisis that broke in 2008 caused overheat of Estonian economics. Inflation became uncontrolled and reached 10,6 per cent, deficit of government sector increased, simultaneously increasing the gross debt of the government sector. Thus Estonia's convergence in the long-term perspective is estimated as nondurable through macroeconomic imbalance likely to recur in future. The most important legal standards that required harmonization in Slovakia and Estonia: regulations ignoring objective, functions, independence of the National Bank of Slovakia and the Bank of Estonia. Legal preparation is necessary for smooth introduction of the euro, providing necessary procedures of the introduction of the euro. However there are still certain demerits in the law of the Bank of Estonia related to integration of the Bank of Estonia to the European System of Central Banks with respect of issuance of banknotes and collection of statistical information. Research methodology. A comparative historical method was applied describing origin, development and conception of common monetary politics of the European Union. Analysis of literature and legal documents was applied in order to ascertain the role of the ECB and institutions of the European Union in the process of euro area expansion. A data analysis method was applied in order to establish macroeconomic problems in Slovakia and Estonia. A comparative analysis method was applied while analysing and assessing economic and legal convergence in Slovakia, Estonia and euro area. A generalization method was applied to make clear whether thorough satisfaction of economic convergence criteria and legal standards has been implemented in Estonia; assessment of Slovakia's benefit in euro area is presented, and final conclusions are drawn.