Suchergebnisse

Introduction: the ends of empire: chronologies, historiographies, and trajectories / Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and António Costa Pinto -- Part I. Competing developments: the idioms of reform and resistance -- Development, modernization, and the social sciences in the era of decolonization: the examples of British and French Africa / Frederick Cooper -- A modernizing empire? Politics, culture and economy in Portuguese late colonialism / Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and António Costa Pinto -- Commanders with or without machine-guns: Robert Delavignette and the future of the French-African "imperial nation-state," 1956-58 / Martin Shipway -- Part II. Comparing endgames: the modi operandi of decolonization -- Imperial endings and small states: disorderly decolonization for Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal / Crawford Young -- British, French and Portuguese decolonization compared: political culture and strategic options in multilateral consultations / Bruno Cardoso Reis -- Exporting Britishness: decolonisation in Africa, the British state and its clients / Sarah Stockwell -- Acceptable levels? The use and threat of violence in the decolonization of British Central Africa, 1953-1965 / Philip Murphy -- Part III. Confronting internationals: the (geo)politics of decolonization -- Inside the parliament of man: decolonization, apartheid, and the remaking of the United Nations, 1945-1970 / Ryan Irwin -- Cold War and decolonisation in the Congo: Lumumba and the neo-colonial transfer of power 1960 / John Kent -- The international dimension of Portuguese colonial crisis, 1961-1968 / Luøs Nuno Rodrigues -- Last days of empire / John Darwin

In the last decades, a new trend of ministerial selection emerged in Southern Europe, with an increased number of appointees in party governments being recruited from outside the realm of politics. Also, the current financial crisis favoured the formation of a few technocratic cabinets. In this context, Southern European democracies are relevant cases for comparison, because expert and non-partisan ministers (usually described as the independents) are to be found in large numbers. This paper investigates the determinants of this pattern of ministerial recruitment, and in assessing the main hypothesis postulated in the literature, operationalises the analytical distinction between politicians and experts, establishing their number and evolution over time, and sketches a tentative profile of both ministerial types, highlighting a few significant differences and contrasts.