Suchergebnisse

The new government in Israel is politically further to the right than any other before it. The success of the radical right parties and their inclusion in the government are the results of a long-term transformation of Israel's political landscape. One characteristic of this development is the genesis of a right-wing majority, accompanied by a shift to the right of the mainstream, and the political legitimisation of the most radical segment of Israeli society. The common denominator of this government is its anti-liberal impetus, which amounts to a reorganisation of the state. The government intends to weaken democratic mechanisms, especially the system of checks and balances, the status of the Supreme Court, and that of fundamental rights. Instead, majoritarian principles are to be strengthened, placing few limits on government majorities. This disruptive approach also applies to the conflict with the Palestinians. Here, victory is sought: The integration of the West Bank into the legal territory of the state of Israel is to be made irreversible. (author's abstract)

Why do supporters of radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe hold economically left-wing policy preferences? In this article, the author argues that this can be explained by welfare chauvinism. First, in ethnically heterogeneous societies, minority groups provide a plausible scapegoat for the grievances emphasized by radical right parties. Therefore, the majority population is sensitive to shifts in the status quo which accrue from policy changes that give minorities greater benefits. Support for redistribution will therefore be lower in more ethnically diverse countries. The salience of shifts in the ethnic group hierarchy also means that objective economic insecurity is less likely to intersect with redistributive preferences. Second, radical right supporters will prefer welfare policies that restrict eligibility to the majority population. This allows radical right parties to combine leftist economic policies with more authoritarian values. The empirical results confirm these expectations. This research contributes to our understanding of the attitudinal bases of radical right party support in Central and Eastern Europe.

Against the backdrop of international migration and the rise of right-wing populism, debates on citizenship policies intensified. This article seeks to explain why some Central and Eastern European countries adopted more inclusive access to nationality rules for non-ethnic immigrants than others. Encompassing the period from 1990 to 2014, the analysis focuses on four factors: left–right ideological position of governments, electoral strength of far-right parties, the size of expatriate/kin minority populations, and the importance of national minority issues. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the article found that strong far-right parties, important national minority issues, and sizable expatriate/kin minority populations all contributed to restrictive citizenship policies in Central and Eastern Europe. However, none of these factors were necessary or sufficient. Meanwhile, inclusive access to nationality rules were adopted in those countries where far-right parties failed to register important electoral successes and national minority issues were relatively insignificant.

The rise of populist radical right parties fuels a discussion about the roots of their success. Existing research has demonstrated the relevance of gender, education and income for explaining the far-right vote. The present study contributes to the aforementioned debate by focusing on the role of religiosity. The data collected in the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016) allow examining in more detail the political relevance of attendance at religious services and other measures of religious devotion. This study focuses in particular on 15 countries, 11 from Western Europe and 4 from East-Central Europe. In none of the Western European countries is there evidence of a positive relationship between religiosity and vote for a populist radical right party. In fact, in many countries of this region more religious voters are substantively less inclined to support far-right movements. The situation is different in parts of East-Central Europe. In Poland, and to a weaker extent also in Hungary, the probability of a vote for right-wing populists increases with religiosity.

This article examines the struggle by women to gain access to higher education opportunities in law and to secure the right to work in the legal profession between the 1880s through the 1940s in Central and East Central Europe. Activists challenged the exclusion of women from universities and the field of law by testing meritocratic and democratic principles or holding to account constitutional commitments to equality. The lawyers' movement they subsequently created acted as a spearhead for the legal wing of the women's emancipation movement that sought to reform women's rights in national legislation and the civil codes. These processes were integral to the negotiation of gender roles in Central European countries from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Moreover, the rise of pan-European female lawyers' associations illustrates the broader significance of these legal struggles. In the history of the women's rights movements, the right to work in the legal professions and in civil service was also integral to the larger struggle for full citizenship rights.

This article examines the struggle by women to gain access to higher education opportunities in law and to secure the right to work in the legal profession between the 1880s through the 1940s in Central and East Central Europe. Activists challenged the exclusion of women from universities and the field of law by testing meritocratic and democratic principles or holding to account constitutional commitments to equality. The lawyers' movement they subsequently created acted as a spearhead for the legal wing of the women's emancipation movement that sought to reform women's rights in national legislation and the civil codes. These processes were integral to the negotiation of gender roles in Central European countries from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Moreover, the rise of pan-European female lawyers' associations illustrates the broader significance of these legal struggles. In the history of the women's rights movements, the right to work in the legal professions and in civil service was also integral to the larger struggle for full citizenship rights.

Beired's study, originally submitted as his doctoral dissertation at the University of São Paulo, is a good example of the increasing interest in the Latin American right over the last decade. Long ruefully neglected by scholars, since the early 1990s an increasing number of articles and books have appeared that deal with right-wing movements and groups in various countries in more detail, for instance Sandra McGee Deutsch's and Ronald H. Dolkart's edited volume on the Argentine right from 1910 to the 1980s; Mario Sznajder's and Alberto Spektorowski's articles on the Chilean National Socialist Movement of the 1930s and the Argentine Nacionalistas of the 1930s and early 1940s, respectively; and Kevin J. Middlebrook's recently edited book on conservative parties, the right, and democracy in Latin America, covering the last two decades. To this by no means complete list one certainly also has to add McGee Deutsch's comparative work on the right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile during the first half of the last century, published in the same year as Beired's book.

In 2015, Germany experienced a record high influx of refugees - and received international praise for its 'welcome culture'. At the same time, however, attacks on refugees rose to an alarming level. This article describes the distribution of these attacks and probes their causes, using detailed socioeconomic and political data while modelling a hierarchical data structure. Controlling for further relevant factors taken from the extant literature, the analysis first tests whether the strength of extreme right political parties plays a role and, second, it models a contagion effect, taking into account spatial as well as temporal proximity. The findings suggest that the strength of right-wing parties in a district considerably boosts the probability of attacks on refugees in that area. They also corroborate the idea of behavioural contagion. The set of social-structural variables employed as controls yielded only limited explanatory power.

Copyright © 2016, The Honors Undergraduate Research Journal, University of Oklahoma. All rights revert to authors. ; Over the past several decades, Islamist extremism has become an omnipresent topic in discussions of global politics, national security, and international relations. However, women have been conspicuously absent from such discourse. Although women play a unique and profound role in both the perpetuation and opposition of Islamist extremist movements, female voices are consistently overlooked and neglected in both the mainstream media and academic scholarship. This dearth of women's perspectives is particularly appalling considering that women are often the population segment most intensely affected when religious extremism takes hold in a society. When women are excluded from the conversation and denied a seat at the table, an important component of the discourse is lost. Because women often serve as the backbone of the family and, by extension, society, they are likely to be a key factor in countering Islamic extremism and must, therefore, be an integral part of the conversation in order to find a solution. ; Although political theorists at one time believed that religion was on the decline as a global political force, the consensus amongst contemporary scholars is quite the contrary—rather than fading into obscurity, religion has emerged as a powerful influence in the wake of increasing modernization and globalization. Islam, as the world's second largest religion, is no exception to this trend. An Islamic resurgence began with intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century and by the 1970s had become politically influential globally. This revival of Islam in the public sphere led to Muslims the world over demanding regimes that favored Islamic law and morality. Regrettably, this reemergence of religion in public life and international politics has given rise to an increase in religious extremist groups and movements, which include many Islamist and radical Muslim campaigns. Women play a variety of roles in extremist organizations including that of the victim, supporter, dissident, or active participant. This study will attempt to examine the role of women in modern Islamist extremist movements. I will analyze the contributions of women in the formation and maintenance of such movements and the motivations of women who support or join. Additionally, I will investigate current efforts and tactics to hinder Islamist extremism, and the ways in which feminism and women's empowerment can be mobilized to counter Islamist extremism. ; The Honors Undergraduate Research Journal (THURJ) is a publication of the Joe C. and Carole Kerr McClendon Honors College at the University of Oklahoma. The views expressed in THURJ are solely those of the contributors and should not be attributed to the Editorial Staff, the Honors College, or the University of Oklahoma. ; undergraduate

Prejudice against Jews was part of the political, cultural, economic and social landscape in the Union of South Africa long before Nazism made inroads into the country during the 1930s, at which stage Jews constituted approximately 4.5% of the country's white or European population. Racial discrimination in a country with diversified racial elements and intense political complexities was synonymous with life in the Union long before Apartheid, with its strictly enforced legal, political and economic segregation, became the country's official policy with the accession to power of the National Party under Prime Minister Dr Daniel François Malan in May 1948. Although the Jews, while maintaining their own sub-cultural identity, were classified within the country's racial hierarchy as part of the privileged white minority, the emergence of recurrent anti-Jewish stereotypes and themes became manifest in a country permeated by the ideology of race and white superiority. This was exacerbated by the growth of a powerful Afrikaner nationalist movement, underpinned by conservative Calvinist theology. Fear of Communism in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the First World War; disquiet over the arrival of what was seen as disproportionately large numbers of Jewish immigrants during the 1920s; and the effects of the severe world-wide economic depression after the Wall Street stock market crash in October 1929, set the scene for an unprecedented period of antisemitic activity. This was reflected, in part, in legislation aimed at curbing Jewish immigration and the emergence of several antisemitic movements. This dissertation, which covers the period between the First and Second World Wars, explores the perception that South African antisemitism was a foreign import. Based on an examination of archival sources and contemporary publications, the study concludes that prejudice against the Jews was evident in the weltanschauung of right-wing and extremist Afrikaner nationalists long before the influence of Nazism became apparent and was not dependent on the influence of Nazi propagandists in the country. Aggressive Afrikaner nationalism along with economic antisemitism characterised the years between the end of the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War. Antisemitism became a significant issue in elections and towards the end of the 1930s opposition to Jewish immigration was included as an official plank in the political platform of the opposition Purified National Party. Jews were also banned from party membership in the Transvaal, where most Jews resided. Attempts by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and its affiliates together with several non-Jewish organisations to counter the increasing influence of antisemitism, principally among the Right and Radical Right in the ranks of the Afrikaner nationalists, also marked the inter bellum period on which this study focuses.

The French Far Right and Immigrants in Times of Crisis: The 1930s and the 1980s
Ralph SCHOR
Like the 1930s, the 1980s were characterized, in France, by a profound economic, social, and moral crisis. As usual, the far right exploited the general mood of anxiety to place immigrants in the center of the debate, blaming the immigrant communities for the country's problems. The extremists forget the demographic and economic sources of immigration. Instead, they attribute the arrival of foreigners to political maneuvers by the left and the anti-national right.
Immigrants settled in France are accused of being a source of unemployment, of occupying more than their share of housing and hospital beds, of aggravating crime, of indulging in obscure political plots, and of destroying French identity. In the 1930s, the group designated as most dangerous was the Jews; in the 1980s, it was the North Africans. As a result, the extreme right urges that borders be closed, that access to citizenship be restricted, that as many foreigners as possible be turned away. Although racist ideas were commonly expressed in the 1930s, they are no longer openly espoused today, with the exception of certain fringe groups. But, aside from this difference and the origin of the groups perceived as most threatening, the modus operandi of the xenophobic process has varied little in 50 years.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Does Antifa Endorse a Specific Positive Political Ideology? -- The Complicated History of Antifa Groups -- Antifa Is Based on a Rejection of Fascism, but Its Factions Also Embrace Specific Positive Goals -- Antifa's Decentralized Structure Contributes to the Movement's Ideological Diversity -- The Political Network Known as Antifa Is Organized Around Reactionary Ideals, but That Is Not the End of the Story -- Antifa's Posture of Resistance Is Deliberate and Part of Its Effectiveness -- Antifa Lacks a Distinct Positive Political Vision -- In Order to Remain Relevant, Antifa Needs to Settle on a Clear Set of Political Goals -- Is the Threat of Fascism Enough to Justify Antifa's Aggressive Tactics? -- The Specter of Fascism in American Life -- The Right Is Prepared for Violence and the Left Should Be, Too -- The Psychology of Right Wing Authoritarianism -- When Political Institutions Fail to Contain Fascist and Far Right Movements, Aggressive Opposition Becomes a Moral Necessity -- Authoritarianism Is a Threat to America and Decentralized Movements Are Necessary to Defeat It -- The American Left Is Degrading Itself by Engaging in Violent Tactics -- Left Wing Violence Is Out of Control in the United States -- The United States Is Experiencing a Major Political Crisis and Antifa Is Making Things Worse -- Antifa Is Undermining the Efforts of Peaceful Activists on the Left -- Does the Antifa Model Provide a Constructive Blueprint for the Future of the Left? -- Antifa's Impact on Contemporary American Politics -- Antifa's Small-Scale Violence Pales Next to the Large-Scale Threat of Fascist and Far Right Movements -- The Left Is Aimless and in Need of a New, More Assertive Direction -- To Accuse Antifa of Opposing Free Speech Is to Entirely Miss the Point.

The dissertation consists of six self-contained chapters that are related to selected incentives in fiscal federalism by using the example of the federal system in Germany. The dissertation elaborates on political as well as fiscal incentives. Chapters 2 and 3 examine election cycles, based on the political business cycle theories. Chapter 2 examines whether election cycles occur in fees of German municipalities. The results show that municipalities have a leeway to decide on fees and use this leeway to improve election prospects. Chapter 3 investigates election cycles in salary increases of German state MPs, for which the states have the decision-making authority. The results do not show that electoral motives influence increases in MP salaries. Chapters 4 and 5 investigate how government ideology influences economic policy-making. Chapter 4 analyzes whether government ideology influences income inequality in the public sector of the German states by using data on salaries of civil servants. The results do not show that left-wing governments were more active in decreasing income inequality in the public sector than center or right-wing governments. Chapter 5 analyzes whether government ideology predicts tax policies of the German states. A reform of the fiscal constitution in 2006 allowed the states to set the tax rates of the real-estate transfer tax. By investigating the tax rate increases of the German states, the results show that left-wing governments were more active in increasing the tax rates than right-wing governments. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate fiscal incentives within the federal system in Germany by analyzing whether the institutional setting also provides incentives for states' tax policies. The German fiscal equalization scheme redistributes revenues among the federal and state level and between states equalizing funds for the states. The devolution of tax setting powers to the states in 2006 provides an interesting set-up to investigate the combination of tax autonomy and fiscal equalization. The descriptive results in Chapter 6 and the empirical analysis in Chapter 7 show that equalization substantially influences tax policies of the states. The redistribution of revenues within the equalization scheme provides incentives for the states to raise rather than to lower their tax rates.