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The process of policy diffusion is gaining increasing attention among social scientists. Following world society theory, a burgeoning literature reports a positive relationship between national linkages to global cultural norms and the diffusion of public policies. However, previous analyses do not simultaneously control for time-varying domestic cultural orientations. In order to conduct a stricter test of this theory, this article examines the wave of same-sex union (SSU) laws in Europe. While in the mid-1980s, no European country provided explicit recognition to gay and lesbian couples, by 2009, 16 European countries had legalized these unions. Using event history models, the article tests predictions of the world society theory and Inglehart's domestic-cultural theory. Results provide strong support for the world society and domestic-cultural theories. Countries with a higher level of value secularization and stronger links to the global cultural order are more likely to introduce legal protections for SSUs.

The article discusses the impact of World War I on Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe. In modern Jewish history the experience of immigration is almost synonymous with movement to and settlement in immigrant neighborhoods in the heart of big metropolitan cities, especially New York. After 1918, however, traditional immigration countries like the United States closed their gates for most Eastern and Southern Europeans, as well as migrants from Asia. The Jewish migration experience in the German capital Berlin highlights the transition from relatively free migration during the long nineteenth century to a state best described as permanent transit after 1918. Berlin only emerged as an important destination for Jewish migrants from farther east when immigration restrictions put New York and other American cities out of reach. The article focuses on a number of literary descriptions of Berlin as a point of passage, in particular by the Jewish writer Joseph Roth. In his widely published feuilleton articles, Roth described postwar Berlin as a transit city and a city in transition, as a melting pot of different times, visions, and peoples, not least Jews from Eastern Europe (like himself). The experience of Jewish migrants who did not really arrive anywhere fascinated Roth because of the relationship between the preservation of a "supranational" Diaspora identity in time and space with elements of mobility.

This report provides an extensive mapping of the strategic litigation of minorities in Turkey before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the substance and implementation of the EctHR's judgments in these cases and the overall impact these judgments have had on human rights protection in Turkey. While the ECtHR case law played an indispensable role in bringing to light the egregious human rights record of the Turkish Government in late 1980s and early 1990s, the report demonstrates, the relative change in government policies came with the emergence of the EU as an actor in Turkish politics. On the other hand, while forcing the government to start cooperating with the ECtHR, the EU process has not resulted in structural changes in Turkey's legal regime and politics.

This article aims to analyze two fields of the Brazilian cultural policy developed since 2000, during the governments of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. The first analysis focus on the Nacional System of Culture and its goal of generating stability to the national cultural policy through the linking of the federal entities. In this context, the text addresses aspects related to the challenges involved in the multilevel governance in Brazil considering, on the one hand, the tradition of the country in developing systemic policies, and by the other hand, the problems faced to promote a democratic, decentralized and cooperative cultural management. The second analysis seeks the role of the country, represented by the Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs, in processes of cultural cooperation and multilateral negotiation in the Ibero-American space. Thus, the article approaches the unprecedented international dimension that culture has achieved to the Brazilian's policy of foreign affairs, becoming an important diplomatic tool.

This thesis examines public opinion towards membership in the EU, before and after the 2008 global economic crisis, in the newest member states to join the institution in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania). Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, socialist economies and communism maintained a citizenry that never experienced unemployment and that did not have a political voice. Because free-market economic policies and democratic values are new to these countries, public opinion regarding membership in a supranational organization that promotes and fosters these ideals is important to study. Data from the Eurobarometer Public Opinion Survey spring waves 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the World Bank, and Eurostat are used to measure multiple indicators of support for membership in the EU. Ordered logistic regression and means comparison analyses are employed to measure the effect of national-level economic prospects, economic winner/loser status, political party power, age, national identity, gender, and individual-level political ideology on public opinion toward membership. The results demonstrate that multiple indicators affect attitudes toward membership and that a negative shift in public opinion is apparent following the 2008 global economic crisis. At the individual-level of analysis, economic winner/loser status and national identity are significant in the predicted direction in all five models. Age is a significant indicator of support only in 2008, 2009, and 2010. At the aggregate-level, means comparison analyses and t-test statistics indicate that GDP annual growth rates have a positive effect on attitudes toward membership in the EU. As GDP annual growth increases, approval of membership in the EU increases. Eurozone membership and unemployment rates indicate varied support for membership in the EU, and the results of means comparison analyses of political party power at the national-level are inconclusive and exploratory in nature. With all findings considered, future studies can further examine the implications and long-term effects of global financial crises on public opinion towards membership in various international economic organizations. ; 2014-08-01 ; M.A. ; Sciences, Political Science ; Masters ; This record was generated from author submitted information.

The EU has been making strong inroads into the realm of security over the last few years. This is a remarkable development, since security matters used to be the preserve of states. The articles presented in this special issue all testify to the breadth of the EU security agenda, as they all try to capture some aspects of the EU's fast-changing security policies following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009. In parallel with a broadening of the EU's security agenda, an increase in supranational security governance in the EU can also be observed. The transition to supranational governance is reached in two ways. First, cross-border security threats generate demand for EU laws, which supranational organisations then supply. Reasons for changes in the EU polity are exogenous shocks, the fact that rule innovations are endogenous to politics, the diffusion of organisational behaviour and models of action, and policy entrepreneurship, whereby institutional entrepreneurs construct and revise 'policy frames', which engage other actors and define new relationships between them and chart courses of action. As the articles in this special issue demonstrate, 11 September 2001 provided such a major exogenous shock required for a change in the EU polity, which EU institutions exploited by providing increasing EU legislation, and even, as a by-product, stabilising a European legal order.

Authors examine the nature and scope of the tourism law and its place in the Lithuanian legal system according to the theory of law, assess the main legal acts regulating the tourism sector, their relation to each other and problematic aspects of their application in practice, disclose the status of the legal framework of the tourism sector at national, international and supranational levels, examine the impact of European Union law on the Lithuanian tourism law. Authors conclude that currently the tourism law may be treated not as a separate branch of law, but, according to its subject and method of regulation, as a separate inter-branch law institute. Legal norms of this law institute regulate the whole spectrum of social relations formed between various subjects acting in the field of tourism industry when organizing a travel (directly or through agents), providing tourist information, accommodation, health and wellness, transportation, catering, entertainment, conference organisation and other tourist services. After discussing the complex nature of legal norms regulating the tourism field it is concluded that the scope of the tourism law is changing, by encompassing new more complex relations with greater diversity, therefore the institute of the tourism law may gradually transform into an independent branch of law. The authors also discuss the legislative trends at national, international and supranational levels in the tourism law area with particular attention to the new Package Travel Directive. The article, inter alia, concludes that this Directive, due to a maximum harmonisation approach (as opposed to an earlier minimum harmonisation approach), is of particular importance to the national tourism law in Lithuania.

Authors examine the nature and scope of the tourism law and its place in the Lithuanian legal system according to the theory of law, assess the main legal acts regulating the tourism sector, their relation to each other and problematic aspects of their application in practice, disclose the status of the legal framework of the tourism sector at national, international and supranational levels, examine the impact of European Union law on the Lithuanian tourism law. Authors conclude that currently the tourism law may be treated not as a separate branch of law, but, according to its subject and method of regulation, as a separate inter-branch law institute. Legal norms of this law institute regulate the whole spectrum of social relations formed between various subjects acting in the field of tourism industry when organizing a travel (directly or through agents), providing tourist information, accommodation, health and wellness, transportation, catering, entertainment, conference organisation and other tourist services. After discussing the complex nature of legal norms regulating the tourism field it is concluded that the scope of the tourism law is changing, by encompassing new more complex relations with greater diversity, therefore the institute of the tourism law may gradually transform into an independent branch of law. The authors also discuss the legislative trends at national, international and supranational levels in the tourism law area with particular attention to the new Package Travel Directive. The article, inter alia, concludes that this Directive, due to a maximum harmonisation approach (as opposed to an earlier minimum harmonisation approach), is of particular importance to the national tourism law in Lithuania.