Suchergebnisse

This article examines relationships between historical administrative systems and civil service politicization across Europe. I argue that to appreciate when and how history matters, we need to consider public service bargains struck between politicians and senior bureaucrats. Doing so complicates the relationship between historical and current administrative systems: a bureaucratic, as opposed to patrimonial, 18th-century state infrastructure is necessary for the depoliticization of ministerial bureaucracies in present-day Western Europe. However, the relationship does not hold in East-Central Europe since administrative histories are tumultuous and fractured. Combining data from across the European continent, I provide evidence in support of these propositions. Points for practitioners This article addresses policymakers dealing with reforms of personnel policy regimes at the centre of government. It considers the importance of history for politically attractive reforms, as well as the limits of this importance. I argue that 18th-century state infrastructures shape the extent to which political appointments are politically attractive tools for administrative control. I show that only in countries that feature a bureaucratic, as opposed to patrimonial, 18th-century infrastructure are ministerial top management occupied by a permanent, as opposed to politically appointed, staff. However, in East-Central Europe, a ruptured administrative history ensures that the distant past does not similarly shape the extent of political appointments.

Europe at the millennium -- Agriculture and rural life -- Trade 1000-1350 -- Cities, guilds, and political economy -- Economic and social thought -- The great hunger and the big death -- The calamitous fourteenth century -- Technology and consumerism -- War and social unrest -- Fifteenth century portraits

The concept of general interest is firmly implanted in our Constitution and in our legal texts. The clause "general interests" legitimizes the action of government and the very existence of the State as well as its powers to limit the spheres of freedom of citizens. However, our legal system does not offer a definition of what general interests are. In this study we try to find the characteristics that allow us to orient the administrative action towards the satisfaction of the general interests as well as to identify the elements that construct the concept. ; El concepto de interés general está sólidamente implantado en nuestra Constitución y en nuestro textos legales. La cláusula "intereses generales" legitima la acción de gobierno y la existencia misma del Estado, así como sus poderes de limitación de las esferas de libertad de los ciudadanos. Sin embargo, nuestro ordenamiento jurídico no ofrece una definición de lo que son los intereses generales. En este estudio se intentan encontrar las características que permiten orientar la acción administrativa hacia la satisfacción de los intereses generales, así como identificar los elementos que construyen el concepto.

This introductory essay reviews recent debates on social history, with a focus on the revival of this field of studies in post-communist East Central Europe and its potential impact on rejuvenating approaches to the social history of Europe. The first part of the essay provides a brief overview of the emergence of social history as a reaction to the dominant political history of the nineteenth century and its crystallization in different national schools, and highlights recent responses to the poststructuralist and postmodern critiques of "the social." The second part focuses on traditions of social history research in East Central Europe, taking Poland and Romania as main examples. The third part summarizes the main claims of the articles included in this issue and evaluates their implications for future research. It is argued that, at first glance, post-communist historiography in East Central Europe provides the picture of a discipline in transformation, still struggling to break up with the past and to rebuild its institutional framework, catching up with recent trends and redefining its role in continental and global historiography. The recent attempts to invigorate research in traditional fields of social history might seem largely obsolete, not only out of tune with international developments but also futile reiterations of vistas that have been for long experimented with and superseded in Western Europe. At closer scrutiny, however, historiography in East Central Europe appears—unequal and variegated as it is—as a laboratory for historical innovation and a field of experimentation, and interaction of scholars from various disciplines and scholarly traditions, in which old and new trends amalgamate in peculiar ways. It is suggested that the tendency to reconceptualize the "social" that we currently witness in humanities and social sciences worldwide could be not only reinforced but also cross-fertilized by the "social turn" in East Central Europe, potentially leading to novel approaches.